MUST READ - Syriza stood up to the money men – the UK left must do the same
I would argue that the left everywhere must stand up to the money men
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/25/syriza-uk-left-labour
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Syriza stood up to the money men – the UK left must do the same
Just imagine: if Labour wasn’t so in thrall to economic bodies and their predictions, we might have a radical left of our own
'A leftwing party that cannot face down the risks raised by investors will never be credible.'
‘When you study the successful experiences of transformative movements,” said Pablo Iglesias of Podemos, the new party of the Spanish left, “you realise that the key to success is to achieve a connection between the reality you have diagnosed and what the majority actually feels.”
This statement is more than bleedin’ obvious. It is crying out for a response that includes an expletive and Sherlock Holmes. Yet that’s what Iglesias has built: a successful, transformative movement. And in Greece, that’s what Syriza has built too, as demonstrated on Sunday, when a country that only a few years ago saw the rise of the fascist Golden Dawn party, went to the polls with a majority supporting the radical left. That, to a degree, is also what the yes campaign built in Scotland. So we know it is possible, to diagnose a reality that so many people actually feel. It should be possible, also, to decipher how these movements did it.
What they and others like them – the successful German campaign for free higher education, for example – have in common, first of all, is that they reject the prevailing economic verities. Conventional political debate in the UK has parties thrashing out positions, which they then justify and defend with reference to the International Monetary Fund or the Office for Budget Responsibility or the Bank of England. Economic projections, or rather the bodies who make them, stand as the final authority on what constitutes a good decision.
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