What is to be done ?

I share Alan Bellamy’s anguish at the expressions of racism, homophobia and misogyny in the wake of a Trump victory and the Brexit vote, though I voted for Brexit on grounds of the democratic deficit just as I voted Yes in the Indyref, but he is right to pose the question ‘what do the rest of us do’. I hoped for a Bernie Sanders victory in the American election since a Clinton victory seemed to promise the continuation of a huge, failed, political elite who have led the world into chaos including an unprecedented media and political offensive against Russia. In the West, Blair, Brown, Cameron, Merkel, Hollande, Obama offered hope and delivered war, insecurity and poverty while, in the same period, the upper echelons of our society engorged themselves with wealth.

The educated , Guardianised middle class, among whom I include myself, have provided well intentioned support from a position of good salaries, security and comfortable superannuation in retirement but have failed to offer hope to the half of our society who are paying for leadership failure through austerity, low wages, benefit cuts, housing shortage and a restoking of the Cold War. The’ new imaginative ways’ that the editor referred to must address these issues but go further by controlling huge,globalised, tax- avoiding, corporate capital institutions who are able to blackmail us and erode our democracy with the connivance of our political elites. It requires a degree of radicalism that we are slow to consider but it is a discussion we should be having for the sake of children and grandchildren.

John Inglis