‘Farage is just a pound shop Trump’
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/farage-is-just-a-pound-shop-trump
National Education Union vows to fight Reform UK’s election candidates and racist policies
REFORM UK is a racist and far-right political party led by a “pound shop Donald Trump,” thundered National Education Union (NEU) general secretary Daniel Kebede today at the annual conference of Britain’s largest teaching union.
Delegates donning “Stop Racist Reform UK” T-shirts voted to use the union’s political fund to campaign against Reform election candidates with racist policies and campaigns.
Passed weeks before next month’s local elections, the motion highlighted Reform’s campaigns against migrants, denouncing it as among the organisations seeking to build “on the despair, poverty and alienation in our society by scapegoating refugees, asylum-seekers, Muslims, Jews and others who do not fit their beliefs.”
Speaking after the debate, Mr Kebede said that Reform is a right-wing populist organisation whose denials of racism don’t ring true with how they “seem to be attracting an awful lot of former BNP activists.”
“Nigel Farage has clearly said that he would like to see private healthcare,” the union leader said, before raising concerns over what a party that has “declared war on the teaching profession” would do to education.
“He is friends with [US President] Donald Trump and Elon Musk,” Mr Kebede continued. “Musk wants to ‘gamify’ education and Trump has just abolished the US Department for Education,” he said.
“We will absolutely be using our political fund to campaign against candidates as appropriate.”
Asked what he thought was behind Mr Farage recently vowing to “wage war” on the NEU, he added: “It’s just nonsense straight out of the Trump playbook.
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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/farage-is-just-a-pound-shop-trump
Badenoch green-lights local Reform pacts
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/badenoch-green-lights-local-reform-pacts
KEMI BADENOCH took the first tentative steps towards agreement with the hard-right Reform party today.
The Tory leader green-lighted local deals by Tory councillors to take control of councils in partnership with Nigel Farage’s supporters.
Ms Badenoch claimed that she still ruled out a national deal with Reform to unite the right-wing, but local pacts will be a clear stepping stone towards some type of agreement.
Most opinion polls now show Reform leading the Tories, and sometimes Labour too.
It is estimated that the split between the two right-wing parties might have handed Labour as many as 100 seats at last year’s general election.
Tory strategists fear that, despite Labour’s polling slump, that outcome could be repeated at the next election in the absence of any deal with Reform.
…
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/badenoch-green-lights-local-reform-pacts
Reform Candidate Arron Banks Has Repeatedly Mocked Basic Climate Science
Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog.
The multi-millionaire Brexit funder has claimed “CO2 and climate change is the ultimate hoax”.
Arron Banks, who is standing as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK candidate for West of England Mayor, has repeatedly rejected elemental climate facts.
The right-wing populist Reform UK describes itself as an “environmentalist” party. However, its leaders and candidates – including Banks – have frequently attacked the science of human-induced climate change.
In a trail of social media posts on X (formerly Twitter), Banks has attacked the notion of climate change as “rubbish”, “absolute cock”, “a scam”, and “the ultimate hoax”.
Reform is standing in several regional mayoral contests in May and has talked up its chances of gaining large numbers of council seats in the local elections.
Banks, the businessman who helped to fund Farage 2016 Brexit campaign, is standing for West of England Mayor, which encompasses Bristol, South Gloucestershire, Bath, and North East Somerset.
Reform UK, an anti-immigration party, campaigns to scrap the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target and to expand fossil fuel extraction.
As DeSmog revealed, the party received £2.3 million between the 2019 and 2024 general elections from climate science deniers, fossil fuel interests, and major polluters.
However, the views of Reform UK and Banks don’t appear to match those of voters in the West of England.
Polling from the area in 2022 found that 65 percent of people supported net zero, while only 11 percent opposed the 2050 target. And while Reform UK has pledged to strip renewable companies of state subsidies, an overwhelming 87 percent of people said they supported renewable projects in their local area.
Reform UK and Banks were approached for comment.
Climate Denial Posts
In his social media posts, Banks has publicly attacked the science of human-induced emissions causing climate change.
In January 2024, responding to Conservative MP Chris Skidmore resigning over the government’s support for new oil and gas projects, Banks posted: “CO2 & climate change is the ultimate hoax.”
In December 2023, Banks made the familiar argument that the climate has always changed regardless of human emissions. He posted: “Climate change has been in constant flux since the planet was created. A miniscule amount of CO2 in the atmosphere isn’t the likely driver.”
In January 2024, he mocked the notion that carbon emissions were causing climate change and extreme weather. “The climate is in permanent flux”, he posted, “20,000 years ago an Ice sheet covered Scotland & half of England.” Banks added an attack on climate activist Greta Thunberg, writing: “Luckily we didn’t have Greta around to tell us a tiny bit of CO2 was the cause. We’ve always had floods & extreme weather like 1953 floods.”
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s top climate science body, has stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, and has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought”.
Climate scientists working for the IPCC have also said that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”.
As stated by Dr Philipp Breul, a climate scientist from Imperial College London: “We are causing the climate to change significantly faster than it has, to the best of our knowledge, in the last million years.”
‘Snow on the Ground’
Banks – who attended Donald Trump’s inauguration as U.S. President in January – has also suggested that cold weather disproves the rise in global temperatures.
In December 2022, Banks posted: “I’ve got to say global warming is coming on a treat, snow on the ground and shaping up to be the coldest December on record. It would be very funny if they got it all wrong and we entering a new ice age.”
When challenged, he dismissed climate models as “worthless”.
“The climate is in constant flux and always changing”, he posted. “The sheer number of mathematical variables in any climate model render them worthless. Scientists can forecast all they like but guesses remain guesses… enjoy the snow and ice.”
In fact, climate models have accurately predicted global temperature rises, and observed warming has tracked with the forecasts.
In January 2024, Banks responded to reports of cold temperatures in Sweden by posting: “-43c … global warming knocking it out of the park. Let’s hope the windmills can keep us warm.”
Despite cold weather in winter, global average temperatures have been rising over the past century, with some of the hottest years on record taking place in the last decade.
In October 2022, Banks shared a post by Reform UK’s then leader Richard Tice, with a (now deleted) article from the Daily Skeptic, which falsely claimed that “global warming has largely stopped in its tracks”.
Banks commented: “It would be almost amusing to find after bankrupting the western world in pursuit of the net zero cult that the climate is cooling… just like [Covid] lockdown everybody lost their mind.”
Net Zero ‘Scam’
Banks has also attacked efforts to cut emissions to net zero by 2050, which scientists agree is the only way to limit temperatures to 1.5C.
The Reform UK candidate has attacked net zero as a “religion”, a “cult”, and a “scam”.
In July 2021, he posted: “Net zero is the new religion for stupid people” and, in April 2023 he said: “Net zero and climate change have all the hallmarks of a scam.”
When the UK was hosting the COP26 climate summit in November 2021, Banks posted that “protecting the environment is essential but totally different to the absolute cock that is climate change”. He added: “The climate has been changing since the start of time!”
A few weeks earlier, Banks had posted: “I own a country park with tens of thousands of trees and have seen no ill affects of climate change.”
The following summer, Banks once again pitted environmentalism against climate action, posting: “There is a huge difference between global climate change & looking after the natural world. One is complete rubbish the other is an absolute necessity.”
Bankrolling Farage
Banks was a major funder of campaigns for the UK to leave the European Union.
A former Conservative Party donor, he gave £1 million in 2014 to Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party (UKIP), which also campaigned against climate policies.
During the 2016 EU referendum, Banks gave £8.4 million to Leave.EU, the unofficial Brexit campaign, which was led by Farage and chaired by Tice.
In January this year, Farage helped to launch a new UK/Europe branch of the Heartland Institute, a notorious U.S. climate denial think tank.
Interviewed at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in February, the Reform UK leader claimed it was “absolutely nuts” that CO2 is considered to be a pollutant, while admitting that he is “not a scientist”.
Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog.
“Vote Banksy for Bristol,” he said, as his candidacy was announced at Reform UK’s local election launch in Birmingham.
He admitted he was “really unpopular in Bristol”, but claimed the city was a “five-way battle” which Reform could win.
John McDonnell: This government has one last chance to take a progressive path. Otherwise, we’re at the point of no return
If someone read out the following list of policies, which party would you think was in power? Depriving 2 million pensioners of the winter fuel allowance. Refusing to scrap the two-child benefit cap to lift nearly half a million children out of poverty. Raising tuition fees for students by more than the rate of inflation. Cutting overseas aid to the poorest people across the globe by half. Cutting £5bn from benefits for disabled people. Introducing a new round of cuts to government department spending and laying off 50,000 public sector workers.
I very much doubt even 12 months ago you would have thought that this would be the Labour party in government.
It is expected that in the spring statement, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will seek to justify this effective return to austerity by the necessity to maintain “iron” economic discipline through a rigid adherence to her fiscal rules. The chancellor’s argument will be that the world has changed, which is true, but this prompts the question: why, then, doesn’t the government’s strategy change to meet the situation it now finds itself in? Even Germany’s iron laws welded into its constitution are being adapted to the new economic realities.
Media briefings suggest that in her spring statement speech on Wednesday Reeves wants to be upbeat about Labour’s achievements so far. She is likely to cite the welcome rise in the minimum wage, but may fail to acknowledge that even working full-time on the minimum wage means a person is nearly £10,000 below the annual income, after tax, calculated by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation as necessary to secure an acceptable standard of living.
In recent interviews Reeves has already claimed this year’s above-inflation rise in wages as a government success, but has failed to mention that even with this long awaited rise, wages remain so low that 37% of people having to claim universal credit are actually in work. At least she will have some big numbers to cite on investment in the NHS and infrastructure. The problem is that much of the new NHS money could be drained away by the strains placed on it as disabled people find they are unable to cope without the support that has been taken away from them. This will include elderly people without adequate physical care and younger people without mental health support.
The problem with the increase in infrastructure investment is also that the memory of the cut in Ed Miliband’s green investment budget lingers in the mind and, as Reeves has repeatedly been warned, infrastructure investment takes a long time to feed into growth on any scale in the economy, and any benefit is likely to land after the next election.
The danger now is that the government’s standing could be irretrievably damaged as the Labour party is branded just another austerity party. This will provide the key that opens the door to the populist Reform UK. Nigel Farage’s party doesn’t need to present a rational, implementable alternative economic policy programme. It will simply go full Trump to distinguish itself from both Conservatives and Labour by portraying itself as anti-establishment, the defender and voice of the working class – while targeting immigrants, wokeism and even some corporations.
The polls and council byelection results are showing that there is a crisis of confidence in the government, reflecting the reactions and worries about recent policies among our supporters and even party members. But it is not too late to turn things around. In the very short term, a relaxing of the fiscal rules would enable the chancellor to raise sufficient taxes from those with the broadest shoulders to prevent a return to ongoing austerity.
It is not rocket science to implement a programme of marginal tax rises that would end cuts and fund the progressive policies any Labour government would aim to pursue. The list is obvious: equalising capital gains tax with income tax rates; a realistic rise in corporation tax; a financial transaction tax; the introduction of a small wealth tax on multimillionaires, called for by the Patriotic Millionaires group.
There are also many non tax measures to help people who are still struggling with the cost of living, such as fair rent controls, service charge caps, stricter controls on energy and water price rises, and reviews of food price rises to prevent price gouging. However, the spring statement and the subsequent public spending review in June should define what the long-term strategy of the government is rather than responding to the short-term political and economic mess it has created for itself. For this I urge the chancellor to look beyond just stabilising our economy and managing the existing system slightly more efficiently than the Conservative chancellors before her.
People want long-term change that provides everyone with a decent quality of life and addresses the grotesque levels of inequality in our society and the environmental crisis. Over the past 25 years, I have followed the work of Richard Wilkinson and subsequently his colleague Kate Pickett at the Equality Trust. Their detailed research has forensically revealed the impact of inequality on our society and economy. To quote the trust’s report timed to coincide with the election of the new government last year: “Biased public policies and flawed economic systems are serving a few wealthy people at the expense of the wellbeing of people and planet.”
The report went on to outline how the duty that was enacted in the Equality Act 2010 to reduce inequalities resulting from socioeconomic disadvantage could be implemented by redistribution power and wealth in our society. This includes new policy-making mechanisms that empower communities to identify and design the services to address their needs, wealth taxes to fund these, universal social security programmes and community wealth-building.
I thought and hoped, maybe naively, that this was the sort of programme that the incoming Labour government would implement. The track record of the government so far is, sadly, remarkably distant from this progressive approach. The spring statement could be the opportunity to change that narrative, not just by bridging the short funding gap with redistribution but more importantly to narrate and launch the longer term progressive path we need to achieve true Labour goals.
My remaining hope is that the chancellor will seize that opportunity, for I fear that if she doesn’t it will be impossible to recover the ground we have lost.
I am quoting the full article assuming that John McDonnell owns the copyright and intends that it is widely published. I will alter this post if asked to by the Guardian.
