Ep 342 - From Corbyn to Palestine: an MMT Analysis with Chris Williamson - Macro N Cheese

Episode Transcript
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(00:43):
All right, folks, this isSteve with Macro and Cheese. You
know, I've tried really hardto integrate a lot of ideas because
modern monetary theory is whatgot this podcast off the ground.
It's what continues to fuelthe underlying economic blueprint
of what we believe and how webelieve it. But we've also come to

(01:03):
believe that it is absolutelyvital to pick a side and to begin
to integrate the working classstruggle into this conversation.
Otherwise, we're just talkingto stockbrokers. We're just talking
to a bunch of elites. And Ireally am not interested in manufacturing
new elites. I would muchrather give the working class power
to fight the dominion ofcapital and the dominion of that

(01:26):
ruling class. So thecombination of working class struggle
and modern monetary theory,the intersection of those two, is
really where this podcastendeavors to go. Now, in the last
couple episodes, we have triedreally hard to allow experts who
are maybe not politicallyaligned with us necessarily to help

(01:47):
us understand ways of gettingconsensus building and working on
getting people to understandone another. My last interview was
about deliberative polling andthere were some people that took
great issue to that. And Ifeel badly about that because quite
frankly, the left, if youlisten to my interview with Derek
Varne, showed that there arelike hundreds of leftist tendencies

(02:09):
and strains that will not evenregard one another. They will not
talk to one another, that willnot unite with one another because
they have had beef for 50years or a hundred years with each
other, some dating back toStalin and the ice axe to Trotsky's
head. So there's people thatjust will not talk to each other.
And unfortunately, the blackand white nature of some of these

(02:32):
conversations leads people tonot be able to abstract the value
of seeing tools and techniquesused by perhaps our oppressor or
perhaps someone that doesn'tsee eye to eye with us and leveraging
it for bringing the workingclass together. I feel badly I haven't
been able to make that casefor some. But you know what? I'm
not pizza. I can't makeeverybody happy. But today I'm hoping

(02:53):
that I will make some peoplehappy. Because part of that ongoing
process, my goal has been tobring about people who understand
working class struggle, whoare absolutely adamant about tearing
down the neoliberal order,that are not against understanding
intersectional struggle, butplacing intersectional struggle behind

(03:15):
the concept of working classstruggle, where we all have common
ground and we all have acommon purpose. And that is what
brought me to my guest fortoday. My guest's name is Chris Williamson.
He's a former member ofParliament and shadow minister for
the Labour Party, currentlydeputy leader of the Workers Party
of Britain led by GeorgeGalloway. And we are going to talk

(03:38):
a little bit about all thatstuff that we just talked about right
there with this podcast. Sowith that in mind, Chris. Welcome
to the show, sir.
Thanks for inviting me. Verygreat pleasure to be with you today.
Yeah, it's been a minute. Ihave never spoken to you before,
so this is our first episodetogether, and this is really fantastic
because I've spoken to guysthat really revere you. Like, we

(04:00):
got Steve over there, my buddySteve hall, the Death of the Left
Simon, his co author. I mean,we got a lot of really interesting
people that we've spoken toover there, and I'm glad to finally
be making your acquaintance.
Well, that's very kind of youto say that. Thank you.
Absolutely. With that in mind,though, you know, one of the things
that brought me to you was Ihad given a fairly harsh critique

(04:25):
of Gary Stevenson, who is aneconomist who has gotten a lot of
air under his wings. But hegets the economics badly wrong, especially
when it comes to understandingthe state as a monopoly currency
issuer and the state's abilityto provision itself. He made the
offhand comment that the UKWas not going to be able to finance

(04:46):
the welfare state anymorebecause it was going to go broke
because it didn't have enoughtaxpayer dollars. And it's this kind
of stuff that folks like, evenGrace Blakely and others who have
great sensibilities, they'dprobably be great allies in many
ways, but get the economics sobadly wrong that you kind of have

(05:06):
to walk it back and disabusethem of this. And then I saw your
critique. I shared it around.I didn't want to get specific, but
let's look at Gary. We don'thave to talk specifically about him,
but the kinds of argumentsthat they push forward.
Well, I've got a lot of timefor Gary Stevenson. I think he's
helped to shift the debate inBritain in regards to the need for

(05:27):
a wealth tax. Where he gets itwrong, of course, is that he implies
that these wealth taxes arenecessary in order to fund a good
Society. And I've tried toengage with him. I don't think he's
necessarily seen my remarks orif he has, he hasn't responded to
them to make the point thatyou were making just before you asked
me to come in and respond. ButI think the fact that there is a

(05:49):
debate now about the need fora wealth tax in Britain is valuable.
Where we need to shift it, ofcourse, is to make the point that,
you know, wealth taxes areneeded to provision the government
to pay for a good society, butthey're necessary to address the
grotesque levels of inequalityand the power that goes with that.
And obviously we've seen amassive increase in the UK of number

(06:11):
of billionaires andmultimillionaires. And of course,
they use that wealth to leverpolitical power. And, you know, I've
been trying to make thisargument about the way in which the
monetary system operates. Ioften quote Henry Ford, who said
that if people understood howthe banking and monetary system operated,
there'd be a revolution beforetomorrow morning. And I say our job

(06:33):
as socialists is to createthat revolution. But we've had, what,
40 or 50 years now of thiskind of neoliberal propaganda. The
Thatcherite Tina Maxim. Thereis no alternative. And that way of
describing how the monetarysystem works, which it doesn't work
in the way which theydescribed it, but it's very seductive
because people see their taxesbeing paid and the services being

(06:56):
provided, and obviously theythink that's how that it works. I
mean, that is, as I say, avery seductive proposition. It kind
of sort of makes sense,doesn't it? And I think what we're
trying to say is kind of a bitleft field and sometimes a little
difficult for people to grasp.But I think once people do understand
it, when people do grasp it,then I think, you know, they become
converts pretty muchovernight. So I think it's really

(07:18):
worthwhile continuing to makethe case that, you know, there is
no real impediment on acurrency issue in government. It
has access to all the money itever could wish to have. And the
only restriction really is theavailability of real resources in
the economy. And even when youget to a point where you are assuming
you haven't got a completelysocialized economy, but where you

(07:38):
are competing for resourceswith the private sector, where you
can use a taxation system,then of course to actually tax away
the competition from theprivate sector to ensure that there
is the space for thegovernment's priorities. And what
I would like to see is asituation where we have an interventionist
government using theflexibilities available to a currency

(07:59):
issuing government, which itis, in order to create a good society
again. I mean, we had arelatively good society in the time
that I grew up in the 1960sand 70s. In fact, when I was at school
in the 1960s, we were beingtold to get ready for the later generation,
because by the time of the1990s, we were told they would only
be working about 15 hours aweek. And there were programmes on

(08:21):
British TV, things likeTomorrow's World, it was called,
and it was talking about thisbrave new world with all this new
technology and how it's goingto free up the people to grow as
individuals, to grow aspeople, to grow as communities. And
local authorities back thenwere being told in the UK to build
leisure centers and golfcourses and tennis courts and invest

(08:41):
in adult education and so on,because people have a lot of spare
time on their hands and weneed to make sure that we got facilities
for people to be able toexpress themselves in this brave
new world that we were toldwas going to be just around the corner.
But of course, Factory gotelected in 1979 and Reagan the following
year. And of course, it wentin the opposite direction ever since.

(09:02):
Although the first monetaristgovernment really, in this country
was the Labour government,actually led by Jim Callaghan, as
his name was the PrimeMinister, and Dennis Healey was the
Chancellor at the time. Andbearing in mind that the Bretton
woods agreement had beenjettisoned in 1971, so the pound
sterling had been a floatingfiat currency for five years by the
time in 1976, when DennisHealey went to the International

(09:24):
Monetary Fund on a falsepremise and borrowed, I think it
was something like $3.9billion, and never, of course, had
to draw it down, andsubsequently admitted, for the wrong
reasons that it was a mistake.He said he was badly advised by his
treasury officials. But inexchange for that loan that was never
needed and never used, theInternational Monetary Fund insisted,

(09:44):
as they always do, on a rangeof austerity measures. And that led
then directly to aconfrontation with the organized
working class in this countryand what was referred to as the Winter
of discontent in 1978-79, itmade the Labour government incredibly
unpopular and assistedMargaret Thatcher into power in that

(10:05):
election year of 1979. And hadhe taken a different approach then,
of course, that would havenever happened. And Labour got elected
in 1974 on a commitment tobring about an irreversible shift
in the balance of wealth andpower for working people and their
families. And they hadembarked on a kind of alternative
economic strategy and theywere bringing about that vision that

(10:26):
they set out in the manifesto.But that was all jettisoned after
Dennis Healey went to the IMFin 1976. And then, you know, as I
say, the rest is history.We've been living with getting on
for 50 years now, only 45years of neoliberalism, which has
been an absolute disaster forworking class people. You know, globalized
economy has been absolutelycatastrophic for working class people

(10:47):
in the UK and certainly in theUnited States and of course across
Europe where we've seen, youknow, jobs offshore to low wage economies.
And we've now got somethinglike 15 million people in the UK,
the sixth biggest economyeconomy in the world, living in poverty.
Maybe it's an absolutescandal. It doesn't have to be that
way. And I think if we canraise people's expectations, race

(11:07):
people's consciousness, raisepeople's awareness about how the
economy works and austerity isan absolute political choice that
we don't need billionaires.And indeed, when Jeremy Corbyn was
the leader of the LabourParty, some of the billionaires,
like a chap called Lord AlanSuga, I don't know whether you've
heard of him or not, he'squite a big name in the uk. He threatened
to leave the UK if Corbyn evergot elected to Parliament. I put

(11:28):
out a statement saying that'sgreat news and I'd be happily driving
to the airport because wedon't need butcher's billionaires
to deliver a good society. Buteven Jeremy, even Jeremy Corbyn was
actually captured by this kindof neoliberal thinking. And his Shadow
Chancellor, John McDonnellsimilarly. I mean, John had met with
Bill Mitchell. I tried topersuade him to meet with Stephanie

(11:50):
Kelton who had agreed to comeover to Parliament. She was on a
speaking tour at theinvitation of Mariana Mazzucarta.
She agreed to take some timeout to come speak to John, but he
wouldn't talk to her,unfortunately. He said he didn't
have the time. He was had tobe in the Parliament chamber. I mean
he was making an excusereally, you know, and sure. And unfortunately
we missed a real opportunitythere because when Jeremy Corbyn

(12:11):
was standing for theleadership in 2015, he was very much
putting forward a kind of anMMT sort of perspective, really.
He didn't call it that. He'ssort of using those insights anyway.
I mean, there are aspects ofMMT that I don't necessarily agree
with myself, but fundamentalkind of issue in relation to using
it as a lens to understand howthe monetary system operates. That
was something he had embraced.And he was being advised at that

(12:31):
time by an excellent economistin the UK called Richard Murphy.
He founded the Tax JusticeCampaign and was talking about people's
quantitative easing and wasmaking the case that, look, the government
can invest directly in theeconomy and build a good society,
et cetera. This actually gotlabeled corvinomics by Labour's Shadow
Chancellor. Labour was ourpower, obviously at the time. A chap

(12:51):
called Chris Leslie, helabeled it corvinomics, which was
actually quite a nifty strapline and we kind of embraced it.
The tragedy is that Jeremythen, when he won the leadership,
never actually sought topromote Corbynomics.
That's such a shame. That issuch a shame. One of the things that
you brought up, and I want tohearken in on this, you're from the
uk, I am from the UnitedStates. And when we talk about these

(13:15):
concepts of monetarysovereignty, mmt, monetary operations,
et cetera, we are constantlyinundated with the pushback from
many well intentioned peoplethat the only reason why the United
States could ever do thesethings is because it's got the quote
unquote petrodollar. And it'sbecause of this, it's because of
that in reality is not a truestatement at all. And it may give

(13:39):
the US privilege becausethat's part of empire here. But you
know, the UK has the samearrangement in its own right. Japan
has the same arrangement inits own right, Australia has the
same arrangement in its own.Russia, China, they all have the
same arrangement within theirown right. The difference is, and
you can look at China, whopurposely uses the power of each

(14:03):
of these tools to greatprecision. They don't play the game
of losing. They do the bestthey can to meet the needs of the
people. Our governments arecaptured, our governments are captured
by capital. They are servingthe needs of capital. And in the
end we are left holding thebag. The big, big problem, aside
from what I consider to be afundamental lack of democracy and

(14:26):
lack of agency within, is themyth, the monetary myths that are
pervasive in all these quoteunquote official and establishment
friendly groups, and even theones that are up and coming that
take the monetary storycompletely wrong. And so therefore
you end up playing in aneoliberal world again and again.

(14:50):
It's different names doing itwith different sensibilities. And
I think the key pushback thatI hear from most people when you
try and explain these monetarytruths to them is they mistakenly
take the political sphere andact as these are immutable truths
that can't be budged, it can'tbe changed. When in reality it's

(15:11):
like a hammer in the hands ofa carpenter. You can build a beautiful
cathedral, but a hammer in thehands of Ted Bundy will get you a
dead girl. So it's the sametool used differently. So you think
about the lens of MMT and you,or just in general, these heterodox
framings. People mistakenlytake the way that the neoliberals

(15:33):
use these things, the waycapital bastardizes these things,
and assume they are immutabletruths. But what would happen if
a socialist government, aworking person's party led government,
had these tools and understoodhow to use them? How different would
the outcomes be?
Well, it would be 180°difference, wouldn't it? Of course,

(15:54):
the capitalist powers woulduse all the influence that they've
bought to try to derail thesocialist government. But I think,
for example, John McDonnell,who was the Shadow Chancellor, they
were tying their one handbehind their back going into that
election. Indeed, how theywould became very close actually
in 2017. But he incorporatedwhat he referred to as a fiscal credibility

(16:17):
rule, and the plan was toreduce the deficit year on year and
that the fiscal credibilityrule, he said, could be suspended
in an emergency if thecircumstances required it. However,
he then actually delegatedthat power to the bank of England
Monetary Policy Committee. Hedidn't have the power to do it. I

(16:38):
mean, I was making the point.But we could be then in the perverse
situation where a CorbynLabour government that was supposed
to be breaking the mold ofBritish politics and implementing
a genuine socialistalternative could be in the ludicrous
situation of actually havingto implement austerity. Because the
bank of England MonetaryPolicy Committee might not agree
that we've reached thecircumstance where it's appropriate

(17:01):
for it to be suspended. So asI've said, it's 40, 50 years of this
kind of propaganda and thepeople who ought to know better seem
to be kind of willfully blindto the opportunities that are sitting
in front of them. I mean, oneof the best things, or perhaps one
of the only good thingsreally, that Gordon Brown, when he
was the Chancellor of theExchequer in the uk, was to keep

(17:21):
us out of the euro. I mean,had Britain gone into the eurozone,
then effectively would havebeen relegated to the status of a
local council because wewouldn't be in control of our own
currency then. And obviouslywe saw what the EU and the European
Central bank and IMF did toGreece, I mean, absolutely crucified
the country. But they were inthe euro and it made it more difficult

(17:41):
for them to respond. AlthoughI think they did still have some
aces up their sleeve. Theyjust refused to use them even though
the Greek people voted. Imean, this was the socialist government.
Syriza had come in and, youknow, everybody really had great
high hopes for them. Andagain, they've still got a lot of
time for Yanis. For a fact, Ithink Janus did approach that with
a good deal of integrity. Andwhen they went to that referendum,
won it by, I think it was 65%in favor of rejecting austerity.

(18:06):
That was being insisted uponby the so called troika. He went
to see Tsipras, who was thePrime Minister. When he went into
his office, he got his head inhis hands. He was actually crestfallen.
The Greek people had votedthat way because he wanted the excuse
to say, look, we've got nochoice but to implement this now
the Greek people have votedfor it. They went ahead. I mean,
they bowed down to thepressure that had been put upon them,

(18:27):
but they weren't in apowerless position as Giannis Varoufakos
was making the point at thetime. Nevertheless, they did. But
as I say, being kept out ofthe Eurozone was, as I say, the best
thing that Gordon Brown everdid. But we've never ever though
then used the abilities thatthe currency, issuing sovereign currency
actually offers. Other thanduring the pandemic when there was
lockdown in this country, itwasn't so much in the United States,

(18:50):
but here, I mean, peoplecontinue paid for by the government,
get 90%, I think, of theirwages where they weren't able to
go to work. There was allsorts of subsidies handed out to
businesses to actually getthrough the situation that they found
themselves in. This was aconservative government, of course,
it was in power. TheChancellor went on to become the
Prime Minister. Rishi Sunakwas saying there will be of course,
a reckoning, you know, we'llhave to sort of at some point, you

(19:12):
know, pay for this. And indeeda lot of the government bonds, I
mean, they go through thiskind of like circus. It's a nonsense
really. It's like thegovernment owns the bank of England
in the UK and they sell bondsor the government sells bonds and
then they're purchased by thebank of England. And much of the
resources that were raisedduring that time or paid out during
that time of the pandemic wasas a result of the bonds purchased

(19:35):
by the bank. It's like taking10 pounds or $10 out of your left
pocket and lending it to yourright pocket and saying, well my
right pocket owes my leftpocket £10. It's your same pair of
trousers, mate. What are youon about? Ridiculous. But yeah, I
mean this, this sort of charodgoes and now we've got the Labour
Party so called, they're evenas bad, if not worse than the previous

(19:55):
Tory administration. Butyou've got the, a new Chancellor
of the Exchequer, RachelReeves sign off these bonds or the
bank of England, she has thepower to tell them to stop signing
off the bonds that they boughtthrough a reluctant market. And so
they're having to increase theinterest rate, you know, the yield
that's available on thosebonds. Well, don't sell the bloody
things. They don't need tosell them. I mean what they're doing.

(20:17):
Exactly, it's just ridiculous.I mean, as I say, I mean, you know,
quoting what Bill Mitchellsaid, the bond market is basically
corporate welfare. That's whatwe need to be emphasizing. We don't
need to sell bonds, we don'tneed to provide welfare for the super
rich. Who are the people thatbuy these government bonds? They're
super rich oligarchs andcorporations. It's just absolute

(20:38):
nonsense. You mentioned Japan.Japan has been in this situation
on a number of occasions, Ibelieve, where the bond yields have
gone negative. So actuallypeople are buying these bonds and
actually getting less backthan what they paid for.
Japan's buying their own bondslike crazy because it's fake. It's
just nonsense. It's just themost ridiculous thing. I couldn't
agree more. Let me pivotslightly here. You are obviously

(21:01):
part of the Workers Party ofBritain and you've got Jeremy Corbyn
right now starting his ownkind of party and it's got a lot
of energy behind it, you see alot of talk about it, et cetera.
Obviously there's a lot ofskepticism as well. Capture infiltration.
The fact that they still don'thave the right economics, possibly.

(21:24):
We don't know, we'll see. Myguess is that probably won't get
the right economics in there.Give me your assessment of this new
Jeremy Corbyn project.
I think it's really exciting.It illustrates, I think, that there's
a massive appetite in the UKfor an alternative. The Labour government
has been absolutelycatastrophic. Talk about setting

(21:45):
yourself up to alienate asmany people who voted for you as
possible. And bear in mindthat the Labour government got elected
on a very small share of thevote. In fact, no government in history
has ever been elected with 32%and got a majority with a 32% of
the vote of the people thatvoted in the election. And Sir Keir

(22:06):
Starmer sitting on a supermajority, he's getting on for two.
It might even be over 200majority in the House of Commons
on a vote which was about 2 or3 million fewer than Jeremy Corbyn
achieved in 2017. And aroundabout the same. Not much more than
we achieved the Labourer Partyachieved in the disastrous election
of 2019, which we were told bythe right wing Labour Party aficionados

(22:29):
that that was the worst resultin the Labour party's history since
1935. But because of thevagaries of the first past post electoral
system, it's enabled theLabour Party to secure this massive
majority. And that's becausethe Tory vote was split. I mean,
people were pissed off withthe Tory party, there's no doubt
about that. And most peoplestopped at home, actually. I mean,

(22:49):
the biggest cohort were thosethat didn't bother to vote. So it
was the second lowest turnoutin history and the lowest proportion
of the vote for a winninggovernment actually in history. So
only I think it's less thanone in five people have voted for
Secure Starmer. So yeah, therewas no real great appetite for them.

(23:09):
And as I say, the Conservativevote was split because of the Reform
Party led by Nigel Ferray,that actually took a lot of votes
from the Conservatives.Actually a lot of working class people
voted for them as well,although I think there is potential
for many of those people. Someof them are bigots, some of them
are racists and bigots, andthey do play on that reform a lot.
And some people on the leftmake the mistake of just dismissing

(23:29):
people who voted reform. Andbefore that there was a party called
the United KingdomIndependence Party, or UKIP for short.
They were also demonized anddismissed as a bunch of right wing
bigots. But what Jeremy saidwhen he was standing for the leadership
in 2015, when he was askedabout the UKIP vote, he said, well,
people voted UKIP out ofdesperation. And I know that's absolutely

(23:51):
true because I lost my seat. Imean, I was got elected first in
2010 and then lost it in 2015by a very narrow margin, just 41
votes, and then won it back in2017. And we targeted UKIP voters,
who are now predominantly theReform voters. We targeted them explicitly
and many of them came back andhad been previous Labour voters and
came back to support theLabour Party. And there was an Interesting

(24:11):
poll undertaken just thisweek, in fact, of reform voters and
what they thought about JeremyCorbyn compared to Sakiya Starmer.
And he won on every singlemetric Jeremy Corbyn did by an absolute
huge margin. Whether he couldbe trusted more, whether they thought
he would be better on theeconomy, better in terms of public
services, the whole list ofthings. And, you know, Starmer is

(24:32):
the most unpopular PrimeMinister and even more unpopular
than Thatcher was at thelowest level that she was had. Wow.
So it is very exciting. Itwill remain to be seen, though, what
their electoral chances willbe. I think that they're in with
a good chance, but I thinkmore and more important is their
economic proposition andwhether they are, and which I'm hoping
they will do, collaboratingwork with groups like the Workers
Party, because we've got aclear position on some key issues.

(24:55):
It might be seen as slightlymore socially conservative than,
you know, all the people thatare maybe supporting the new Jeremy
Corbyn initiative, but many ofthe people that are members of the
Workers Party have also signedup to find out more about this new
initiative. And it's 600,000people at the last count had signed
up in double quick time. Sothere's definitely an appetite there.
And the opinion polls for aparty hasn't actually properly been

(25:18):
formed yet, showing it'sgetting in the order of between 15
and 20% of the vote, and incertain constituencies, a substantial
share of the vote. And infact, in the Prime Minister's own
constituency, he would lose tothis new initiative whenever it gets
off the ground. I've been intouch with another economist, Steve
Keen, you may know him, SteveKeen, but another good heterodox

(25:39):
economist, and he told me thathe was hoping to speak with some
of the people around Jeremyand hopefully they will embrace a
different approach to whatthey did when Jeremy became the leader
of the Labour Party.Essentially, we need to dust off
the old Corbynomics idea,really. I think if they do that,
then that would be great. Imean, I've had my own sort of discussions,
battles even within theWorkers Party, when we've not got

(26:01):
a settled position in relationto this yet. I'm hoping we will get
there. I mean, I'm very clearabout the opportunities. Not only
does it enable us to explainand argue how we would deliver a
good society, because one ofthe things that the right wing often
say and the media will oh,it's all very well, it's all pie
in the sky. How are you goingto afford it? But as Tony Ben always

(26:22):
Used to say, if you're goingto fall the money to kill people,
we can afford the money tohelp people. And I think having a
clear eyed view about how themonetary system works enables you
to explain precisely how youwould do it. And actually also, I
mean, that's the otheradvantage of being able to expose
the lies that are beingpeddled by the mainstream political

(26:44):
parties and the media tohoodwink people into believing that
we can't have good qualitypublic services, that we can't have
decent pensions, that we haveto charge working class students
ridiculous amounts of money. Ithink it's about £11,000 a year to
go to universities. It'scrazy. When I was growing up, I didn't
go to university, as ithappens, it went into the building
trade, less school at 15. Butmany of my contemporaries did. Not

(27:08):
only do they not have to paytuition fees, she got a grant to
go to university. And duringthe vacation period, in the summer
holidays, they were able toclaim unemployment benefit. I mean,
it was a totally differentsituation. And housing was plentiful.
Working class people were ableto buy their own home. I mean, I
was an apprentice bricklayerand at 19 years of age I was earning

(27:29):
enough money. Me and mygirlfriend, who went on to become
my wife, we saved up and wewere able to buy a brand new three
bedroom, semi detached housebacking onto a waterfront in a desirable
village about eight milessouth of where I was born. And working
class people were able to dothat. And some didn't buy. Some got
what was called a councilhouse made local authorities. They

(27:50):
still have actually a housingstock, but much of it has been sold
off under what was called theright to buy when Margaret Thatcher
came into power. But you couldget a council house if you wanted
one. And a lot of mycontemporaries didn't necessarily
buy straight away. They wentinto a council house and the rents
were very low. They were ableto save for a few years and they
went and bought their ownhouse and then that house was released
for someone else. So, youknow, in need of a home as it were.

(28:10):
But now, I mean, the councilhousing, public housing, has been
massively reduced because ofwhat was called the right to buy.
Much of it has been bought upby private landlords. They're now
charging former council housesthree, four, five times the amount
of rent that is being chargedin an equivalent council house today.
And many people who arestarting out in life, young couples,

(28:33):
even professional couples, andparticularly in places like London,
they can't afford to buy andit's very difficult for them to afford
to rent. And so they're payingridiculous sums of money for their
housing costs. And this is anabsolute crazy situation. And doesn't
have to be this way. We canhave a credible and sensible housing
market which is actuallyaccessible to everybody. You know,

(28:54):
it's accessible to workingclass people. We could actually find
ourselves a situation. But afriend of mine used to work in further
education and he had linkswith the old Soviet Union and he
would go and meet hiscontemporaries in the old Soviet
Union, and he said they earnedconsiderably less than he did. He
said, but they had much moredisposable income. Their housing
costs were next to nothing,and they were regularly eating out
and going to the ballet. Andthey were all this kind of culture

(29:16):
which was open to them. Theyhad the resources to be able to do
that, which is kind ofsomething you can only dream about
even back then. This is goingback into the time when things were
better in the uk, but thingshave really gone from bad to worse
now. And that's where I thinkpeople are looking for this alternative
and are hoping, I think, thatthis Jeremy Corbyn initiative will
deliver that alternative. Butit has to get the economic issue

(29:37):
right in order to achievethat, in my opinion. And I think
if he does that, then we couldsee significant changes brought about
in the uk.
One of the things that Istruggle with, I've been doing this
podcast now for almost sevenyears, and I've been doing, I guess,
MMT activism now for over 15years. And in that space, I've never,

(29:57):
ever seen a working classpolitics that matches up. I mean,
I see people with a great slabof policies, but they're hodgepodge,
they're not consistent,they're not like interwoven, they're
not a coherent strategy.They're band AIDS on heart attacks
a lot of times. Because at theend of the day, even with understanding
the monetary system withoutfundamental changes to the capital

(30:20):
order, without fundamentalpower dynamics shifting, these things
are suggestions. Or maybethey're not even that. Maybe they're
something very temporary, thatthe next political cycle will be
just jerked away. And for me,I guess I don't have any real hope
at this point. It doesn't meanthat I don't have hope. I just don't
see a clear group of peoplethat are not content with bourgeois

(30:45):
society and running with thebig dogs and flying first class and
living la vida loco. And theother side being people that get
this stuff, that arefundamentally focused directly for
the working class with thismonetary understanding, you know
what I mean? Like You've gotthis weird split where there's not
a real coherent critique ofcapital, a real critique of the state

(31:06):
capture by capital, and a realcritique of the neoliberal order
married up with anunderstanding of the monetary system.
What does working classpolitics look like to you in that
space? And let me just saybefore you go into this, we have
folks within our organizationwho are trans. We have people that
are homosexual. We have women,old, young, and we believe in an

(31:31):
intersectional politics. Now,I'm not here to say that we should
prioritize microaggressionsand identity politics, but I believe
that the working classstruggle is working class people,
whether they're gay, trans,whatever. So how does a working class
politics that focuses on classanalysis, focus on working class

(31:53):
struggle, remain open to thebroader working class and not diminish
the real life of oppressionand struggle they face? How do you
incorporate all of that? It'svery tricky, isn't it?
Well, I mean, I think it isfocusing on the kind of bread and
butter issues and that comesback down to the economy. Stupid.
The famous Clinton campaignslogan, which is where the left,

(32:14):
in my opinion, has gone wrongfor the last 50 years or more, where
the emphasis has been onidentity politics. And they've tried
to give the illusion thatthey're being radical still whilst
relegating class and economicinequality quality to oblivion. Really.
I mean, you know, it's notsomething they've really necessarily
focused on. I mean, certainly,you know, Blair, okay, they talked
about reducing child povertyand so on. We should be eliminating

(32:36):
poverty. Another one aboutchart. We should be eliminated. Don't
just reduce it. We should beeliminating poverty and the sixth
biggest economy in the world.There is absolutely no justification
for anybody to be living inpoverty, for anybody to be struggling.
Amen.
Everybody should have a rightto a decent house of decent income
and a decent standard ofliving. The ability to be able to

(32:59):
retire at a reasonable age andenjoy that retirement. These things
are not sort of pine dreams.These things are all doable and possible.
But I think that's where thedanger is. If the left is seen as
obsessing on those issues,that then drowns out the good discussion
that we need to be having. Thearguments that we need to be having
about the creation of a goodsociety where we can eradicate these

(33:19):
grotesque levels of economicinequality and poverty, etc. It and
we do get sidetracked. But Ithink that what we've said in the
works party, I mean, you know,we're hoping that we can reach some
sort of A electoral agreementwith a new initiative. But, you know,
we need to focus on five,maybe up to 10 issues. For example,
with, say we're going to bringall the public utilities in the UK
back into public ownership,that we will basically free up education

(33:44):
again and make it, you know, apublic good, as it were, get rid
of tuition fees, that we wouldcommit to a proper housing system
where people can get access todecent housing, that would regulate
the housing sector, theprivate rented sector, to stop people
having to pay such exorbitantrents that we would kick the avaricious
privateers out of the publicsector altogether. The public sector

(34:08):
delivering, like the NationalHealth Service should be all about
delivering public service, notprivate profit. And they're saying
that because I know that thevast majority of the British public
support that, right across thepolitical spectrum, from right to
left, there is an overwhelmingmajority in favor of that sort of
approach. And I think if wecan get some sort of electoral agreement

(34:29):
and a strategy whereby that isthe focus, that is the main emphasis,
we can part the identitypolitics stuff up and focus on these
issues. Fred Hamilton wasright when he talked about the importance
of working across the piece interms of black and white working
together. It made the point,you don't stop or address discrimination,
racism. With black racism. Youhave to have a more kind of considered

(34:52):
approach. You know, you do itwith solidarity. You don't address
the problems caused bycapitalism, by black capitalism,
you address that withsocialism. This is the kind of thing
I think we need to beemphasizing. It's that kind of economic
question, I think, which hasgot to come to the fore. And as I
say, those are the issues thatwe know from polling and discussions
that have taken place in theUK that the people are overwhelmingly

(35:15):
in favor of them. And theseare the policies of Jeremy Corbyn.
In fact, there's quite anamusing little clip on YouTube where
there's a chap who was aformer Conservative MP, became a
broadcast, a bit of a comedianas well, actually, Giles Brandreth
his name was, and he wentaround the capital of the Home Counties,
it's basically the kind ofvery strong conservative area of
the country around London,looking for what he called secret

(35:37):
socialist. And he was stoppingpeople on the street and asking them
whether they supported some ofthe issues that I've just gone through
about regulating the privaterental sector, kicking the privateers
out of the National HealthService, scrapping tuition fees,
bringing the railways backinto public ownership, bringing the
water industry back to publicownership, and gas and electricity
and so on and so forth.Everybody was agreeing. And then
he was saying to them, do yourealize that you are a secret socialist,

(35:59):
sir, or you're a secretsocialist, madam? And they would
like, step back in horror alittle bit, say, well, what do you
mean by that? Well, these arethe policies, he said of Jeremy Corbyn.
And he had a clipboard in hishand. He turned it around and there's
a big picture of Jeremy Corbynon it. And some of these people recoiled
in horror. They were, oh,well, I don't know, you know, because
they'd done a number onJeremy. The media really kind of
demonized him.
The anti Semite.
Yes, A little less bullshit.Yeah, absolutely.

(36:22):
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(36:45):
Jeremy actually facilitatedthat, I've got to say, because he
kept apologizing and allowinghis best comment. In fact, I fell
victim to that myself becauseI called it out for what it was.
It was a scam. And I defendedpeople who've been falsely accused.
And for that I was thenaccused myself. And I was eventually
suspended from the LabourParty when Jeremy Corbyn was the
leader. I was then reinstatedafter an inquiry, but then I was

(37:07):
resuspended two days laterbecause there was a big furore that
was kicked up by the Zionistlobby and the right wing, who were
predominantly Zionists anyway,of the Labour Party. And so the General
Secretary resuspended me. Ithen took the Labour Party to the
High Court in Wool. There itwas a second suspension was ruled
unlawful and the Labour Partyhad tried to. Again, this is under

(37:28):
Jeremy's watch. This shouldnever have been allowed to happen.
And the General Secretary wassupposedly an ally, but they'd gone
to court on three separateoccasions to try and delay the hearing.
I was calling for an expeditedhearing because I was concerned that
it was going to be an electionand if I was suspended, I wouldn't
be able to stand as a Labourcandidate. And at that point in time,
there was what was referred toas a fixed term Parliament. So the

(37:48):
election, unless you couldachieve a 2/3 majority in the House
of Commons, would be. Not havebeen held until 2022. But I was concerned
that, you know, if. If thatproposition was put, then, you know,
they might actually be able togo anyway. They went three times
to try to get it delayed andon the third occasion, each time
got thrown out. On the thirdoccasion, the judge set a date for
the hearing, I think about aweek hence. And within about 36 hours

(38:13):
I received a letter from theparty. And I thought initially when
I saw it from the party whenit opened it, that it made seems
sense they weren't going topursue the matter any further. They
were going to lift that secondsuspension, but it wasn't to do that
at all. He said that we knowthat you are in the High Court in
a week's time over thissuspension, but there are new allegations
that have been made againstyou and therefore, irrespective of

(38:34):
the outcome of that, you willremain suspended. They were determined
to get me out. I mean, and theZionist lobby is a pernicious lobby
and they were determined todestroy Jeremy Corbyn, even though
Jeremy did his level best tobend over backwards to accommodate
them. And really what heshould have done is to stand up and
fight them and call them outas they reveal themselves to be.
But we always knew that theywere this kind of genocide ideology.

(38:56):
I think had he done that, hewould have been in a much stronger
position and all probabilitycould have gone on to win the election
and become the Prime Minister.
Speaking of genocidaltendencies and Zionism, I am increasingly
concerned about. We all shouldbe concerned, let's just be fair.
Across the world, the power ofthe Zionist lobby, if you will, has

(39:21):
radically impacted thepolitical landscape in the United
States, definitely radicallytouched NATO, all the NATO countries,
the European countries inparticular, I mean, a lot of these
countries are just straight uprepeating the lies, the unsubstantiated
lies about the Hamas rapingand all the beheaded Jewish, oh,

(39:43):
the poor Jewish babies thatthe Hamas. Do you condemn Hamas and
all this insanity? It is likea disaster disease how badly that
mindset has permeated themedia, the mainstream media, the
political discourse, you nameit. And now in the United States,
and I want to throw this overto you for your side here a little

(40:04):
bit, but more in particularhow it impacts working class politics.
I see in the US now suddenlythe Democrats in our political lie
of a theatrical production wecall us electoralism, they are suddenly
now two years basically intothis genocide, are suddenly acting
like they're going to try tostop now. They didn't. They, of course

(40:28):
failed. They always fail. Bythe way, there's the performative
act of, oh, yeah, we're nowagainst it two years later, after
Gaza has been basically turnedinto a concrete rubble jungle and
the people are emaciated andstarving and homeless and dying and
literally being killed everytime they try and get food. Now all

(40:49):
of a sud, they want to get apat on the back for saying, yeah,
maybe we shouldn't provideoffensive weapons. It's like, where
have you been for two years,you terrible evil people? Right?
And they want a pat on theback. How in the world did this Zionist
plague, if you will, impactall these governments in the way
that it has? I mean, it isamazing how in lockstep, in spite

(41:13):
of all the evidence andoppressed people that don't have
tanks rolling through, don'thave nuclear weapons, that don't
have any kind of sophisticatedmilitary apparatus, don't have even
the ability to feedthemselves, their hospitals are gone,
their schools are gone, theirhomes are gone. How in the world
is it that we're still talkingabout, but do you condemn Hamas?
I mean, it's ridiculous. Thisis universal. It is like a plague.

(41:36):
How did this happen?
It's truly offensive, isn't it?
Deeply.
It's just not the last twoyears, of course. Oh hell no. They've
been bloating the Zionistentity for 77 years. In reality,
I mean, it is new in the sensethe scale of the genocide, but the
massacres, the abuse of thePalestinian and oppression of the
Palestinian people has beengoing on really, you know, as I say,
for 77 years. And indeedbefore that, I mean, Israel was a

(41:59):
country born out of terrorism.The terrorist Zionist extremists
had waged a terrorist campaignfor 30 odd years. And in the end
it was a Labor government. Itwas that transformational labor government
on the domestic front. Andtheir foreign policy had left a lot
to be desired from 1945-51.But they surrendered really to the
terrorists in actuallyagreeing to give a land which they

(42:21):
didn't really own to a groupof people who had no legitimate claim
to it at the expense of thepeople who live there. I mean, it's
absolute disgrace. Now Britaindoes have a particular responsibility,
I mean, going back even beforethat, you know, to the so called
Balfour Declaration. It waspart of the, you know, the British
Mandate after the First WorldWar when they carved up the Ottoman
Empire. And Britain given theresponsibility of looking after Palestine,

(42:43):
they've got a verysophisticated process of infiltrating
all pillars of the differentcountries in the west, from the political
sphere, through the media andthe entertainment industry and so
on. And they've kind of reallycornered a market. I mean, this is
one of the things that we tryto expose on the program that I present
each Week Palestinedeclassified We sort of expose the
Zionist entities, Israel'sattempts to fight the solidarity

(43:05):
with the illegally occupiedpeople of Palestine. They use every
dirty trick in the book to dothat. I mean even the Epstein scandal,
I think it looks like Israel'shands are all over that in order
to obtain compromise onpoliticians and so on. And of course
it's a disgrace, it's anoutrage. And when you start to call
it out, you get accused ofanti Semitism, although that is wearing
thinner and thinner. I meanshalom alone. He wasn't a former

(43:28):
Israeli Minister, oh yes, 20odd years ago said it's a trick,
we always use it. Holocaustdenial and anti Semitism. I mean
it's just a nonsense. And oneof Jeremy's mistakes when he was
Jeremy Corbyn, leader of theLabour Party is he accepted a decision
of the Labour Party's NationalExecutive Committee to embrace, fully
embrace the working definitionof antisemitism. On the illustrative

(43:51):
examples, and I think it's 11,is it? Or something like that in
the IHRA working definition.11 examples, I think about six or
seven of them relate tocriticism of Israel. I mean it's
just a kind of Zionist charterand Jeremy should have kicked it
into touch completely. I meanif I'd have been him when he lost
that vote at the NationalExecutive Committee, I would have
said, I know I've lost today,but I think they're wrong. And I'm

(44:11):
going to take this to thefloor of the legislature, the FI
conference later this month. Ithink had he done that, he would
have probably carried the day,but unfortunately he didn't. And
it was then used as a stick totake out even more people. But anti
Semitism, it doesn't reallyexist in Britain at all actually.
I mean very, very rareinstances they try and claim support
for Palestine as anti Semitic.I mean this is what they do. But

(44:33):
truth be told, but they'revery, very rare. I mean, and inside
the Labor Party it really is,I mean, statistically non existent.
I'm going back to where theparty was around 600,000 and there
was an investigation launchedinto how many complaints of antisemitism
have been and what percentageof the party membership that worked
out too. And I think it wassomething like 0.04%. And of the

(44:54):
complaints that had been made,I think several hundred, 200 had
come from one individual. Wow.And most of them were just not even
legitimate. They were evenanti Semitic. And some of the complaints
that were being made relatedto people who weren't even in The
Labour Party, you know, theywere complaining about, oh, this
is an example of anti Semitismof the Labour Party by people who
weren't members of the LabourParty. I mean, the whole thing was

(45:15):
a nonsense. And as I say,unfortunately, Jeremy gave it legs
by continually apologizing.And as I said to him at the time,
every apology you make andevery concession you give is just
feeding the beast and makingit stronger. And ultimately they're
going to come for you anddestroy this project. And they did.
I mean, that's what reallykilled the Corbyn project. It was
the anti Semitism thing. Imean, what finished it off. What
delivered the coup de grace,of course, was the commitment to

(45:37):
a second referendum on Brexit.People in the working class communities
up and down the country hadvoted overwhelmingly in favor of
leaving the European Union.And so this was inevitably going
to play very badly. And soconsequently Labour ended up losing
lots of seats in thatelection, although a lot of people
again said, because theturnout wasn't as low as the last
election, but it wasn't ashigh as it ought to have been. And

(45:59):
so a lot of people stoppedaway and other people who would normally
have voted for the LabourParty voted Conservative because
Boris Johnson was saying thathe was going to get Brexit done and
he was actually portrayinghimself as the anti establishment
leader. And it's absoluteabsurdity. He's a pillar of the establishment,
but people bought that. And ofcourse he was aged and abetted by
the media and endangered andabetted by the Labour Party and the

(46:22):
Labour leadership who hadagreed to have a second referendum
on Brexit. But Jeremy, thatwas against Jeremy's instincts again.
And I think Jeremy's politicalcapital had been absolutely decimated
by the anti Semitism scam. Andso he didn't really have, I don't
think, sufficient sway anymoreto be able to hold. The line which
the Labour Party had in the2017 election was that we accept

(46:44):
the outcome of a referendumand we will get on and deliberate.
Although they thenprevaricated on it, which was unfortunate.
But he was held hostage by, tosome extent by the parliamentary
Labour Party members ofParliament, Labour MPs who were overwhelmingly
hostile to him, overwhelminglypro Zionist as well, overwhelmingly
hostile to me as well, as itturns out. But I was leading a campaign

(47:05):
to democratize the LabourParty, to make all MPs subject to
an endorsement process inbetween each election. I feel like
a primary, I think, in theUnited States. Don't all of your
elected representatives haveto do that anyways? It's pretty common.
No. It's unfortunate. But overhere, these political parties are
considered privatecorporations and they're held by
their own bylaws. And if theychoose to have a primary or they

(47:28):
decide not to have a primary.
Okay, yeah. It's not common,is it, though, for a primary to take
place in that sense, inbetween elections. So when you're
elected, then in order tostand again, you may have to get
endorsed. Anyway, that waswhat I was arguing for in the UK
and for the Labour Partyanyway, to make them accountable
to the members, actually. Imean, you know, we would become the
biggest political party, makesall the.

(47:50):
Sense in the world.
And we're saying, look, thesepeople are representing the Labour
Party, there's nothing to befearful about. Democracy. And actually
being more accountable, as itwere, to your members, that's a good
thing. It'll make you a betterrepresentative. Because often, I
mean, a lot of these MPs areaway with the fairies. They're completely
seduced by the Westminsterbubble. They love all that. I mean,

(48:10):
I never did, I've got to say.And so they become divorced from
reality on the ground. Whereasordinary rank and file members will
keep you rooted, as I'm sayingat the time, they could be your eyes
and ears. This is something toembrace. It will make you a better
representative. It will makeus more relevant to the people that
we're seeking to represent inParliament, the electorate, as it
were. But Jeremy, you know, hekind of blinked. There was a lot

(48:31):
of pressure against it. Therewas all sorts of demands from the
right wing of the partycalling on Jeremy to take action
against me. This isdisgraceful, what I was doing. It
was bringing the party todisrepute all this democracy. And
he, in the end, when he onlycame to the conference in 2018, the
self. Same conferenceactually, where I saying he should
have taken the IHRA workingdefinitions to. So earlier that same

(48:53):
month, he had accepted theIHRA working definition of anti Semitism,
which was the signing of hissort of death warrant, and then by
not implementing or voting forthe democracy reforms to make MPs
accountable, which he hadasked the General Secretary of one
of the biggest trade unions inthe country that was affiliated to
the Labour Party, to voteagainst him. And the way the votes

(49:14):
work at the Labour Partyconference at that point in time,
they're probably going tochange it now, but I don't know.
But anyway, then they weredivided. 50% went to the constituency
Labour parties, in all thewords, the ordinary rank and file
members of the labour party.And 50% went to the trade unions
and socialist societies andthe affiliated socialist societies.

(49:34):
And the vote split almost 50,50, I think it was something like
about 95, 96% of theconstituency delegates, the ordinary
rank of our members were infavor of and wanted and voted for
these open selections, as wecalled them. And it was a slightly
bigger figure for the tradeunions. And that's because there's
only one trade union that wasa small union, the fire brigade union,

(49:56):
that voted for these democracyforms that members wanted. And the
Unite the Union, which was tosay the biggest union at the time,
they used their vote, theirblock vote, which would have equated
to around about 20% of thetotal votes against. Now, if they'd
have voted in favor, wouldhave gone through with a big majority.
And it was actually their ownpolicy. The United Union had voted

(50:18):
in 2016 in favor ofimplementing open selections in the
Labour Party, so theirdelegation at conference voted against
their own union policy. Andthat was According to Len McCloskey,
who was the General Secretaryat the time of the United Union,
because he'd been asked to doso by Jeremy Corbyn. So this was
catastrophic. I mean, talkabout signing your own death warrant.
And then I was Jeremy'sloudest champion in Parliament. And

(50:40):
then a few months after that,I was suspended on the phony allegations
about anti Semitism. I'd spendmy life fighting racism in the 1970s
when I was a young bricklayer,Prentice bricklayer. Casual racism
was quite a thing. And I gotbeaten up, nearly beaten up on more
than a few occasions forchallenging racism on the building
side that I worked on. And Iwas involved in the anti fascist

(51:00):
movement there, what's calledthe Anti Nazi League, confronting
fascists on the street.Because there was a right wing faction
in Britain at that time calledthe National Front, which was gaining
substantial ground actually,and was winning a lot of council
by elections in the country.And then the Anti Nazi League was
founded as a sort of bulwarkagainst. So I was involved in all
that. But then I'd got labeledas a bigot, as a racist, as an anti

(51:20):
Semite, and ended up gettingsuspended from the party, eventually
resigned from the party justahead of the 2019 election. I was
dropped then as an officialcandidate because I was still suspended
even though I'd won that HighCourt hearing. But they then introduced
a new suspension based onabsolutely absurd accusations. I
mean, there was nothing. Oneof the accusations against me was
that I called on the rightwing Labor MPs who were complaining

(51:42):
about the fact that I wasgoing to attend the 2019 conference.
I wouldn't. I wasn't going tobe allowed into the main conference
itself, but I was going to bespeaking at lots of the fringe meetings
and these were packed meetingsthat I did and they were saying I
had no place, I shouldn't bethere, blah, blah, blah. And this
went into the media. So themedia came to me for a comment and
I said, these people need topipe down and get behind the leader,

(52:05):
focus their criticisms againstBoris Johnson to these right wing
Tories and work for a Labourvictory. That was used against me.
What they were saying was itwas some sort of anti Semitic trope.
When I used the reference topiping down as if it was a reference
to the pipes in the gaschambers. You can't make this up.
Absolutely ludicrous that theywere able to concoct this very thin

(52:28):
sort of crime sheet againstme. That it had the desired effect.
It stopped me from being ableto stand as a candidate. I mean,
who knows? I mean, had I beenelected, you know, I might have been
standing in front of Labourleadership, you never know. But it
would be very different toSakiya Starmer got to say that all
the Labour candidates in thatsubsequent leadership election after
Jeremy stepped down, Jeremyshouldn't have stepped down as quickly
as he did. I think it would bebetter stay in for a year and let

(52:51):
the dust settle. But heresigned almost. Well, he announced
his resignation straight away.So a selection process started for
a new leader and that is whereSir Keir Starmer emerged as the successful
candidate. Although he claimedthat he was going to continue the
legacy of Jeremy Corbyn, weknew this was a complete bloody lie.
But every single one of them,including Rebecca Long Bailey, who
was a sort of alleged Corbyncandidate, as it were, they all brought

(53:12):
into the Zionist nonsense,they all bent the knee to the Zionist
lobby. I would not have donethat. Of course. I think now a lot
of people have had their eyesopened. Many of the people on the
sort of optics left, if I canput it like that, a lot of the people
that obsess about identitypolitics, they were joining in the
feeding frenzy against me.They were joining in with the right

(53:33):
wing attacks on, on me, sortof amplifying these allegations about
antisemitism. It's ironic nowbecause many of these characters
are now articulating theircriticisms in a way very similar
to what I was saying back inthe day. But they've never really
acknowledged, you're just.
Ahead of the curve.
Yeah, they've never got anyfar Off Owen Jones. You may or may
not have heard of Owen Jones,a commentator in the uk, quite a

(53:54):
prominent one, alleged lefty.He wrote a book after the election
in 2019 called this Land andhe devoted about six or seven pages
to me and headed it up. Thissection was. I was the king of the
cranks. That was a term thatthey used against people like me,
you know, we were cranks,cranks and anti sea match, you know.
Yeah, it's a tragedy, mate. Imean, it's not just me. There were

(54:16):
so many good people. KenLivingston, Mayor of London before,
was leader of the GreaterLondon Council. Somebody who frankly
had done more in publicoffice, in my opinion, had done more
than anybody in public officeto advance the cause of anti race
going back into the early1980s. In fact, he earned the shoebriquet
as a loony lefty in partbecause of his stance on fighting
racism. And he was drummed outof the Labour Party. He was accused

(54:39):
of being this anti Semite,being a Nazi apologist, would you
believe. It's a tragedyreally, because Ken was such a big
figure in the party. I don'tknow if you've heard of Ken Livingstone,
but he was such a big figure,an inspirational figure in the party
and he should be venerated asan elder statesman of the Labour
movement. But he wasabsolutely ostracized after this
happened and I was about theonly person, you know, keeping in
touch with him. And he was nolonger invited on to talk shows and

(55:02):
things like that. She was aregular feature talking head because
of his background and he'salways got some useful things to
say. Tragically now he's gotdementia and he's not in a good way.
It seems a very sad end reallyto somebody who has contributed so
much to the movement. I guessyou must have heard of this chap
called Mark Wadsworth. He's ablack rights campaigner. That was
his stock in trade. He was avery prominent black rights campaigner

(55:25):
and you know, in the 80s andso, 70s 80s, a journalist and such,
really good guy. There's avery famous case in Britain where
as a young black kid who gotstabbed to death by a group of racists
and they all got away with it,actually, you know, I mean, there
were a bunch of racists in theMetropolitan Police Force and they
were able to get away with it.And there was a long going campaign
to get justice for the StephenLawrence family and Nelson Mandela

(55:46):
was visiting the country andMark Wadsworth introduced Nelson
Mandela to the StephenLawrence family and catapulted it
to an international calledCelebrity. And eventually, you know,
there was a part of theprosecution and they did get some
justice. There was adocumentary made about the Stephen
Lawrence case after thejustice had been served. And it was
a three part documentarybecause there's a lot of issues to

(56:07):
kind of unpack, as it were.But the first documentary was devoted
to an interview with MarkWadsworth, or about half of it was
devoted to a discussion withMark Wadsworth that was broadcast
on the very day that theLabour Party expelled him for being
a racist. I mean, can youbelieve it? It's just unbelievable.
And this was Mark me, KenLevinson, many, many others, you

(56:27):
know, many Jewish comradessuffered a similar fate because of
our opposition to the Zionistentity, because of their support
for the Palestinian people,because of their support for Jeremy
Corbyn and for a socialistalternative. And that was unconscionable.
We know even the Israeli PrimeMinister was criticizing Jeremy Cor
Corbyn. I mean, I knownotwithstanding Donald Trump, normally
this is completelyundiplomatic for a foreign head of

(56:48):
state to be levelingcriticisms on the political situation
in another country in thatsense, but particularly a so called
ally. But this was what wewere up against and unfortunately
we lost.
Yeah.
But hopefully we can regroupnow. And as we've already said, this
new initiative that JeremyCorbyn has launched, I wished he'd
done it sooner before lastyear's election, but, you know, better

(57:09):
late than never, could standas in good stead and could see a
complete reconfiguration ofthe political scene in Britain. And
that will be a thoroughly goodthing if we can make it happen.
Indeed. I wanted to bring upone final thing, if you have time.
Yeah.
And that is as we look at theNazification of Germany, you know,
as Hitler rose to power,people were unemployed. The economic
conditions were absolutely atravesty. Working class conditions

(57:33):
were absolutely abysmal. Andwhat do you see when the working
class doesn't have meaningfulwork, when it can't afford to take
care of its family, whenpeople that are used to providing
for their families are nolonger able to provide for their
families, not in a way thatthey feel proud of, the work itself
is not fulfilling,unemployment through the roof, et

(57:54):
cetera? This is when we seethe rise of right wing fascism. This
is one of the core elementsthat you see. And then what follows
with that is scapegoating. Yousee a lot of the problems that stem
from lack of economicopportunity and lack of good jobs
and lack of good workingconditions. Et Cetera. Do you feel

(58:14):
that the rise of identitypolitics has masked the lack of understanding
of that job security and ofthat economic safety that families
once had? Do you feel that ithas allowed that to go undealt with
in the service of anidentitarian politics that has not

(58:38):
served the identities it'sintending to serve either As a result,
you know, within the MMTcommunity, and I know you said you
have your differences here,I'm a huge advocate for the job guarantee
as a meaningful way ofoffsetting the ebbs and flows of
the business cycle. And I saythis as a socialist, somebody who
would love to claim the meansof production and eliminate the capitalist

(59:01):
state, as it were. Knowingthat requires a whole lot more than
what I think most people areprepared to do at this moment. I
believe that the lack ofmeaningful work, the lack of the
ability to be proud of yourincome, proud of your work, proud
of your ability to tend toyour own family has had such disastrous

(59:22):
effects not only on societybut on. But it leads to a lot of
the scapegoating that createsthe very problems that identity politics
claims to try to solve.
Without question, in myopinion, identity politics has a
lot to answer for. And youknow, the kind of middle class predominantly
who kind of obsess about thisand who dominate inside the left
as it were in this countryanyway, betrayed the working class.

(59:44):
And it does lead to thisresentment and there is that danger
that people could be seduced,were desperate by the othering. The
right wing always do. We sawthis in Nazi Germany and we're seeing
it today, you know, with thisso called reform party. They obsess
about illegal immigration andasylum seekers and so on. What we've
been saying in the Workersparty is that we understand there's

(01:00:06):
a concern about massimmigration. And I mean that's not
great from the perspective ofthe countries from which people are
leaving, because often thebrightest and best are leaving those
countries. And that obviouslyhas a negative impact then on their
economy, economies. But healso has an impact here in terms
of the ability of thecapitalist class then to exploit
this new labor market, as itwere, this new group of workers that

(01:00:27):
come into the country and theypay them lower wages and it kind
of has an effect of drivingdown wages, particularly when trade
unions have been initiated andthe level of trade union penetration
now is nowhere near what itused to be. And indeed many of the
industries in which tradeunions did dominate, of course have
gone, they've been offshoredto low wage economies. You know,
we've got to find a Way of notnecessarily bringing those back but

(01:00:48):
ensure that new high techindustries are set etc can create
new good quality jobs forpeople. And you mentioned the job
guarantee scheme and that'sone area where I'm not sure necessarily
the job guarantee scheme iswhere we should go because I don't
know about. Over in the UnitedStates, certainly in the uk there
was a sort of a temporaryemployment scheme for young people
back in the day, sort of justafter I left school, so I didn't

(01:01:10):
need to go through this. Therewas much fuller employment when I
first left school. But as the70s went on then, you know, unemployment
became significantly higherand they brought in this thing called
the youth training scheme andthere's a lot of stigma attached
to it. This kind of, it wasn'ta proper job and a real job. And
I think there's a danger thatpotentially there could be a stigma
associated with a jobguarantee. Although, you know, I'm

(01:01:31):
not necessarily against it inprinciple. What I would prefer to
see is a big expansion of thepublic sector to create proper long
term jobs, as it were, forpeople. Important to overcome any
potential stigma that might beassociated with a sort of temporary
job guarantee initiatives. Andthere's so much that needs to be
done in the public sphere interms of the infrastructure in Britain,

(01:01:54):
much of what we have got isfalling into dilapidation and certainly,
you know, it's fading at theages anyway, let's put it like that
at best. And so we could havea lot of people doing that type of
work. We have a social carecrisis in this country that could
be addressed with properinvestment. Care works, provide a
free care system at the pointof need at the minute, people having
to pay for their care. And so,you know, particularly for working

(01:02:16):
class people who are maybeseduced into buying their council
house, having a capital assetperhaps for the first time in their
life. But when they're at theend of their life, if they're in
need of care, they're havingto sell that in order to be able
to pay for their care at leastafter they die. It's then sold so
the kids don't benefit from itas it were. So I think there are
things that could be done inthat regard in terms of, of, you
know, investing, as I say, inour infrastructure, in our public

(01:02:37):
services. More teachers, Imean obviously you can't do these
things overnight, you need totrain them up. But with a goal towards
reducing the pupil teacherratio in schools, building more schools,
of course, providing moredoctors and nurses, higher education,
there's A whole range ofdifferent things that could be done,
I think, in the public sectoras permanent proper jobs, as it were.

(01:02:57):
And I think if we couldactually give people that dignity
of work and dignity of beingable to earn a decent salary as well.
Because a lot of the povertyin Britain is in work poverty, people
having to be topped up withSocial Security benefits, welfare
payments to top up theirmeager wages. I mean, this is ridiculous.
And what we're doing, ofcourse, is we're subsidizing bad
employers. If an employercan't afford to pay a worker a decent

(01:03:20):
wage, they probably shouldn'treally be in business, in my opinion.
You know, I absolutely agree.One of the things I want to say though,
just as a point of reference,right, Warren Mosler refers to the
job guarantee as a transitionjob. No matter what, there's a floor
there, you can't bounce belowthe floor. So Mary, what you just
said, because he also says,and rightfully so, though, hey, if
you want these jobs out there,fund them. There's no reason you

(01:03:41):
can't do it. Ain't your hardearned tax dollars paying for it.
So don't sweat it, folks.Don't get all bunched up because
you think you're paying forsomebody to have a job. The reality
is the state can, provisionitself can produce all these jobs,
great jobs, the best jobs, paythem whatever you want them to make.
There's nothing preventing youfrom doing that. And so when you

(01:04:02):
do see how much, much serviceshave been eroded in the name of neoliberal
profit scraping. Yeah, thatthere's literally no reason the state
cannot provide really, reallyhigh end, good quality jobs with
benefits, et cetera. And onceyou fill that up and once you ensure
those jobs are there, the needfor a quote unquote job guarantee

(01:04:26):
would be minimal at bestbecause the private sector has no
impetus to have fullemployees. So it's up to the public
sector to provide a job forall, since it's produced a tax that
everyone has to pay. And theonly way they can pay that tax is
if they have income. If theydon't have income, they can't pay
the tax. And this is anotherform of demonization that goes on.

(01:04:48):
So I think you're absolutelyright in terms of fund, fund, fund.
I believe wholeheartedly inabsolutely filling up those public
sector jobs, creating creategood quality jobs that fill the public
need and then have thatsecurity at the bottom if need be,
to prevent people from fallingthrough the cracks. You know, again,

(01:05:09):
I would like to get rid of theentire capitalist state as it were,
and allow workers their properplace. But that, again, requires
an entirely different level ofcommitment from people at this point
than I think most are educatedenough to understand or willing to
fight for at this point.
Unfortunately, we can get along way down that road, though.
I think that is very doable,in my opinion. And it just requires

(01:05:32):
political will, frankly, fromthe leaders who kind of get into
power to put these sorts ofsystems into operation. You know,
we do that, then the sky's thelimit, really, is my opinion, and.
But passionate about israising people's consciousness about
how the system works. And Ithink once people realize that they
wouldn't tolerate theinjustice of poverty and inequality

(01:05:52):
that is endemic in the.
UK and the US by the way.
Well, the US I guess it's evenworse, but it's just some of the
stuff I've seen. It's kind.There's hardly a bridge. Isn't there
anywhere in the world there'snot homeless people. And obviously
in the United States is therichest country in the world, there's
even less justification thanthere is in the United Kingdom for
that to be the case. But,yeah, I mean, I'm more optimistic.
I don't know, you were sayinglack of hope or something. I'm not

(01:06:13):
saying you didn't have anyhope, but you didn't.
In electoral politics, I havevery little hope.
Yes. Well, I mean, obviouslythe light of experience suggests
that you are right, but maybeI'm naive, but I think there is the
potential. I mean, I want tobelieve we have an electoral system.
Let's use it to deliver thegood things that people need. And
where I think the Labourgovernment of 1945-51 went wrong,

(01:06:36):
is that the fascination theybrought about didn't actually put
in a system that wasimpossible to break, as it were.
And a lot of the gains that wemade back then have been lost now.
And so we're kind of more orless starting again, really, from
where we were back in 1945.But it was able to be done then,
I think we could easily do itnow and do a better job of it as
well, actually. But what wealso need to be doing is we need

(01:06:59):
to be raising people'sconsciousness all the time. And this
is where the trade unions, Ithink, have fallen down. Indeed,
they should be, you know,engaged in political education and
giving people the tools, as itwere, to understand, you know, how
the system works, et cetera,to recognize, you know, what we've
got and how we can improve onit and maintain it. Because otherwise,
you End up losing it.
You know, that's it. I wasabout to say, and this will be my

(01:07:21):
final point before I let usclose out. I'm not just talking about
maintaining political gains,but I'm talking about maintaining
infrastructure, maintainingthe services, maintaining the public
housing, maintaining theroadways, the bridges, the electrical
grid, the Internet, whateverit is, right. If you just think about
the cost of maintenance asinstead of a cost, if you will, but

(01:07:44):
more of an investment intopeople's lives and so forth, the
amount of jobs just toproperly maintain everything is so
unbelievably abundant. We justliterally pinch pennies on the maintenance
side. We build all thesewonderful things many, many moons
ago and then we just allowthem to deteriorate. And if we invested

(01:08:05):
in that, the amount of jobsand the amount of satisfaction people
would have in seeing the fruitof their labor right there before
them, the aesthetic ofprogress would be so intoxicating,
I believe. I think that wouldbe a real change. Someone could believe
it, I think.
So. We were sort of halfwaythere, you know, in some ways in
the 1960s and 70s. I justthink back then, the local authorities,

(01:08:28):
the local councils, theyemployed, just as one example, an
army of grounds maintenanceworkers, of gardeners and so on.
And so all of our roundaboutsand dual carriageways and so on,
they were abundant in thesummer with flowers. And it took
lots of people to kind ofmaintain this. The local authority
in the city where I live, theyhad a massive nursery where they
grew lots of plants and so onfor the purposes of beautifying the

(01:08:51):
city as it were. And that'sjust one example. There's so many
other things in just makingsure that the roads, the pavements
and are properly maintainedand so on. Again, back in the days,
all of the pavements in thecity were made up of paving slabs,
beautiful paving slabs, andthey were maintained like that. And.
But as time has gone by, it.You don't have painting slabs anymore.
Otherwise, other than it maybe in the city center, they've been

(01:09:14):
replaced with tarmac. And ifyou look at the use, this thing called.
It's like a slurry, it's likea kind of watered down tarmac that
they spray over it. I mean, itlooks bloody awful. But when you
were laying slabs, properpaving slabs as it were, it took
skilled workers, a lot ofworkers to keep on top of that. Because
when they became cracked orwhatever, they'd have to go and maintain
them and mend them and thingslike that. We were on the way to

(01:09:34):
doing that sort of and thingbut where we fell down is we didn't
think and the labor movementdidn't properly politically educate
their members to understandwhat they'd gotten and that it was
in danger or could be indanger of being lost as it has been
lost now. So you have to makethe revolution, then you've got to
maintain it, haven't you? Youknow, that's the thing.
And you've got to, you got tocounter revolution.

(01:09:55):
Yeah.
All right, listen, Chris,you've been an amazing guest and
I appreciate you spending along time time with me today. This
has been amazing and I hope Ican have you back on in the future.
Tell everybody where we canfind more of your stuff, how we can
follow you.
Yeah, well, I'm on socialmedia. If you look for me on Twitter
@darbychrissw, I regularlypost on there. I also present a program

(01:10:20):
called Palestine Declassified.You can catch that on Rumble. We
also post on social media. Youwon't be able to reach us on YouTube,
however, because we've beenbanned from YouTube, would you believe?
But there we are. That's thestory, and I might tell you, if you
do have me back on, about howafter leaving Parliament, I've been
banned from the parliamentaryestate because I've been deemed a
threat to national security.But that's as another story, so I

(01:10:41):
won't go into that. Butanyway, I mean, it's a nonsense,
but anyway, it's because Isupport the Palestinian cause. But
anyway, never mind.
I am going to have you back onto talk exactly of that. I appreciate
you bringing that up verymuch. Let me just tell everybody
we are real progressives. Thispodcast is Macro and Cheese. My name
is Steve Grumbine. I am thehost. My guest Chris Williamson has

(01:11:03):
been amazing and I want tothank you for joining me today. This
organization is a 501C3 inAmerica. For those of you listening,
it is a non profit, meaningthat we can receive donations and
you can get a tax write off atthe end of the year. So it's a win
win for all of us. If you haveanything that you can give, we survive

(01:11:23):
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without further ado, on behalfof my guest Chris Williamson, on
behalf of the podcast Macroand Cheese, we are out of here.

(01:12:15):
Production transcripts,graphics, sound engineering, extra
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Ep 342 - From Corbyn to Palestine: an MMT Analysis with Chris Williamson

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep 342 - From Corbyn to Palestine: an MMT Analysis with Chris Williamson