On 7th November, King Charles III will open the next session of the UK parliament. It is likely to be the last before the general election expected to take place towards the end of 2024.
The King’s speech, written by the government, is the key part of state opening of parliament. It sets out the government’s policy priorities and legislative programme. So what can we expect, or not expect, the Conservative government to do to save its skin?
After 13 years in office and five Prime Ministers the government is spent and is unlikely to reverse any of its economic policies that have resulted in the highest ever public debt of £2.6 trillion (97.8% of GDP) and highest rate of inflation for 41 years.
The government won’t end austerity and real wage cuts. The average real wage is lower than in 2005. 14.4m were living in poverty in 2021/2022. 3.8m people experienced destitution in 2022, including around one million children. In the period 2012-2019, government imposed austerity caused nearly 335,000 excess deaths (nearly 48,000 a year) in England and Scotland.
A government obsessed with privatisation, outsourcing and cuts to public spending may pay lip-service to public investment, but won’t do much to deal with crumbling schools and public buildings. Parts of the National Health Service have been privatised by stealth and the government won’t do much to relieve the healthcare crisis. Some 7.8m people in England are waiting for hospital appointment (1 in 7 of the population). Some .2.6m are chronically ill and unable to work. In the five years to 2022, around 1.5m died whilst awaiting a hospital appointment.
The government is trapped by its subservience to defunct ideologies. It won’t modify Brexit and reach out to Europe to boost investment, trade and jobs. It won’t increase investment in infrastructure. In an OECD league table of investment in productive assets, the UK is ranked at number 35 out of 38 countries.
Civilians try to reach survivors, dead bodies amid destruction caused by Israeli strikes on Bureij refugee camp located in central Gaza Strip on November 02, 2023. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Dear Congressional Leaders Sen. Schumer, Rep. Johnson, Sen. McConnell and Rep. Jeffries:
We strongly urge Congress to hold public hearings, with testimony from a broad range of witnesses, before voting on President Biden’s request for an additional $14.3 billion in military funding to further subsidize Israel’s overwhelming military superiority over Hamas in the war that erupted on October 7, 2023.
We believe these questions, among others, should be examined:
1. Why should American taxpayers pay for Israeli military spending incurred because of its stupendous intelligence failure and ongoing genocidal war? 2. Does Israel need the additional aid since the United States already provides Israel $3-4 billion annually and statutorily guarantees it “a qualitative military advantage” over its neighbors? 3. Can the United States afford the $14.3 billion in additional spending with a national debt soaring past $33 trillion, and annual trillion-dollar budget deficits? 4. Israel is among the top 20 global economies in terms of GDP per capita. Could the $14.3 billion be better spent on assisting the world’s 71 million impoverished internally displaced refugees, many created by undeclared, lawless, U.S. wars? 5. Would the military subsidies make the United States even more of a co-belligerent with Israel in a war against Hamas and, under international law, legally responsible for war crimes or genocide? 6. Should the additional $14.3 billion in deficit or unpaid-for funding be conditioned on Israel’s compliance with the laws of war and the Genocide Convention as certified under oath by the President, the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense with an accompanying written explanation? All of these officials have urged the Israeli government to “comply with the laws of war.” 7. How did the Biden Administration come up with the outsized figure of $14.3 billion for a prosperous economic, technological, and military superpower having a greater social safety net for its people than the United States?
Asking the American people for their advice on sending $14.3 billion to Israel for its acknowledged, defense blunders is not difficult. Conservative Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie polled 49,000 people from his impoverished state. They registered overwhelming opposition to sending these billions of dollars for Israel’s daily slaughter of the civilians in Gaza, nearly half of whom are children.
Disaster is courted when the United States races to begin or join military conflicts without measured, sober second thoughts born of hearings and debates that entertain diverse views. The House held no hearings on the ill-fated Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 which expanded the Vietnam War. The Resolution passed unanimously with but 40 minutes of debate. Senate action was only modestly less rash in voting 98-2 to open the gates to a trillion-dollar military disaster.
Congress never inquired whether the Executive Branch’s dubious Domino Theory was fantasy. Indeed, Vietnam today is an ally of the United States.
Congress held no hearings before approving the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) with but one dissenting vote, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA). After spending more than $2 trillion fighting the Taliban over 20 years, the United States de facto conceded defeat in 2021 with an even more militant version of the Taliban now in power in Afghanistan.
Such hearings will not place Israel in jeopardy. Hamas is no existential threat. And all the world can see Israel pulverizing Gaza daily, including its civilian population, half of whom are children, with brutal air and land attacks on critical civilian infrastructure.
A Palestinian man carries a dead child that was found under the rubble of a destroyed building, following Israeli airstrikes in Jabaliya refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip, November 1, 2023
ACTIVISTS in the United States called on Thursday for a Global Shutdown for Palestine on November 9.
Since Israel began its brutal bombardment of Gaza, activists have been mobilising to demand an immediate ceasefire, an end to all aid to Israel and a lifting of the siege on Gaza which many experts have described as a war crime.
Activists from organisations such as the Palestinian Youth Movement, National Students for Justice in Palestine, ANSWER Coalition, The People’s Forum, and International Peoples’ Assembly have called for direct action such as “marches, walk-outs, sit-ins and strikes directed at the politicians, businesses, and workplaces that fund, invest in and collaborate with Israeli genocide and occupation.”
Palestinian poet and writer Mohammed el-Kurd said: “We must not wait for history to pass us by. Everyone, regardless identity or sector, must heed the calls coming from the Palestinian streets and take action against genocide.
Yara Shoufani, a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement, said: “We are calling for a total anti-normalisation of zionism.
“We will continue to fight until any and all material support for zionism is made unsustainable and ends.”
Some 13 of the 31 members of Labour’s shadow cabinet have received donations from a prominent pro-Israel lobby group or individual funder, it can be revealed.
The list of recipients includes party leader Keir Starmer, his deputy Angela Rayner, shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, and even the former vice-chair of Labour Friends of Palestine, Lisa Nandy, who is now shadow international development minister.
These donations were provided by Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), a pro-Israel lobby group which takes MPs on “fact-finding” missions to the region, and Sir Trevor Chinn, a multi-millionaire business tycoon and long-time pro-Israel lobbyist.
More than half of Starmer’s shadow cabinet are listed as parliamentary supporters or officers of LFI.
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Pro-Israel lobbying
Sir Trevor Chinn is a British multi-millionaire who has spent decades working in the motor industry, chairing such organisations as the AA, the RAC, and Kwikfit.
Chinn is also a longstanding pro-Israel lobbyist. Since the 1980s, he has funded LFI and Conservative Friends of Israel and played a leading role in groups such as Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) and the Jewish Leadership Council.
The Guardiandescribed BICOM in 2009 as “Britain’s most active pro-Israeli lobbying organisation – which flies journalists to Israel on fact-finding trips and organises access to senior government figures”.
It added that the organisation had “received nearly £1.4m in two years from a billionaire donor whose father made a fortune manufacturing arms in Israel”, referring to Poju Zabludowicz, a London-based business tycoon.
Starmer received a £50,000 donation from Chinn during his campaign for the Labour leadership in 2020 – and failed to declare this until after he’d won the election.
Declassified has found that Chinn has donated to eight other members of the shadow cabinet, including Rayner, Lammy, Reeves, Streeting, shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson, shadow work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall, and shadow environment secretary Steve Reed.
Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay has called for next week’s King’s Speech to tackle the climate and nature emergencies.
Green Party Co-leader Adrian_Ramsay. Wikipedia CC.
Ramsay said:
“Rishi Sunak has decided when in a climate hole keep digging. Pushing ahead with new oil and gas drilling licences is an act of environmental vandalism. Especially at a time when the country is reeling from hugely damaging storms and floods, which scientists warn will become more frequent, ferocious and destructive as our planet heats.
“It seems fossil fools are driving government energy policy – pushing a false narrative that extracting more climate-wrecking oil and gas out of the North Sea will lead to energy security and lower bills. Nothing could be further from the truth.
“Green lighting energy giants to exploit fossil fuel reserves they then sell on the global market at global prices cannot provide either security or cheaper energy bills. This can only come from ramping up cheaper and abundant renewable resources such as solar and onshore wind together with a mass home insulation programme.
“That’s why Green MP Caroline Lucas has set out five Bills that the government ought to introduce to tackle the climate and nature emergencies and address the cost-of-living crisis, including a Just Fossil Fuel Phaseout Bill and a Green New Deal Bill.
“The attack on road safety measures is a further deplorable and desperate attempt to pick up a few votes through creating a culture war. But the fact that the Conservatives need to go to such extremes to create a wedge issue with Labour shows that Labour simply aren’t offering the bold alternative or hopeful vision that our communities so desperately need.
“It is clear, whoever forms the government after the next general election, we are going to need more Green MPs pushing legislation that will lead to a greener, fairer, healthier and safer country.”
