Nigeria protests lead to 24-hour Lagos curfew

Airport shut as city governor condemns ‘anarchy’ and violence surrounding Sars police brutality protests

People in Lagos demonstrating against police brutality in Nigeria. 

Photograph: Sunday Alamba/AP


Emmanuel Akinwotu in Lagos
Tue 20 Oct 2020 

The government of Lagos has imposed an immediate 24-hour curfew, shutting down protests against police brutality that have erupted across Nigeria and paralysed large areas of the state that includes Africa’s largest city.

The protests have been against the notorious Sars police unit, now dissolved but accused of scores of extra-judicial killings. More broadly the protests have been against systemic abuse by Nigerian police forces. Early in the protests, police fired on protesters in the Surulere area of Lagos and elsewhere. Armed gangs have attacked protesters in Lagos and the capital Abuja.

The demonstrations had “degenerated into a monster threatening the well-being of our society”, said Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the governor of Lagos, in a statement on Tuesday.

His statement came after a police station was set on fire in the Iganmu area of Lagos on Tuesday morning. The national police chief also ordered the immediate deployment of anti-riot forces following increased attacks on police facilities, a police spokesman said.


Nigeria's anti-police brutality protests bring Lagos to standstill

“Criminals and miscreants are now hiding under the umbrella of these protests to unleash mayhem on our state,” he said, promising that the government would “not watch and allow anarchy”.

In recent days violence on the streets has fuelled unrest across Nigerian cities, amid one of the most striking protest movements in a generation against police brutality.

Four Nigerian states, and the capital, Abuja, have banned protests or adopted curfews effectively banning demonstrations.

Several protesters yesterday targeted Lagos airport, blocking off entrances to its international and domestic terminals, causing flight delays.

A one-minute silence on Monday among the crowds near Murtala Muhammed airport, Lagos, to remember ‘lives lost to police brutality’.

 Photograph: Benson Ibeabuchi/AFP/Getty

Outrage against the federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad, commonly called Sars, reached a tipping point after footage posted online early October showed Sars officers dragging a man from a hotel in Lagos before shooting him in the street.

Thousands of mainly young people have taken to the streets, many for the first time, demanding immediate police reforms. Protests led by young people have raised more than £200,000, setting up helplines for protesters in trouble, covering medical aid and providing private security.

In response to widespread demonstrations, which are not common in Nigeria, the government has dissolved the unit and adopted numerous measures, including judicial panels to investigate Sars abuses and compensation for victims.

Yet protests have grown, amid criticism that the pledges do not go far enough, following several previous pledges to reform or overhaul the unit.

Many people are incensed that Sars officers have not been arrested despite a deluge of video evidence showing abuses, including, in recent weeks, at demonstrations. The government said though that in Lagos four officers were arrested for violence against protesters and were under trial.

The announcement of the new police unit, the Special Weapons and Tactics (Swat) team, to partly replace Sars, has caused anger too.

In recent days, people wielding machetes, knives and clubs have attacked protesters, leaving many injured according to Amnesty International.

At least 15 people have died since protests began two weeks ago, Amnesty said. The organisation condemned widespread violence by police forces against peaceful demonstrations.

Amnesty International Nigeria said yesterday: “In the past few days we have documented escalating violence and coordinated attacks against peaceful #EndSars protesters.” It said police had used “excessive force” leading to many casualties.

Footage posted online showed dozens of young men with machetes, knives and sticks arriving at the scene of a protest sit-in outside the Lagos state government secretariat last Thursday, then attacking fleeing protesters.

Witnesses accused security forces of standing idly by. Lagos’ government condemned the violence and ordered an investigation.

In Benin City, in the southern state of Edo, people broke into a prison on Monday morning. Footage on social media showed several prisoners fleeing and climbing out of the prison, joining groups of men in the city vandalising property.

Edo’s governor, Godwin Obaseki, ordered a 24-hour curfew, blaming vandalism “by hoodlums in the guise of #EndSARS protesters”.

In Obalende, a busy market area in Lagos, people put up road blocks with tyres and rocks and extorted cash from drivers, as protests took place nearby, mirroring similar reports across the city.

The unrest has grown, alongside warnings from the army that soldiers would be ready to intervene, and calls from government officials pleading with protesters to end the demonstrations.

Chocolate industry slammed for failure to crack down on child labour

Children as young as five still exposed to hazardous work in countries including Ghana and Ivory Coast, report reveals

Cocoa beans drying in the sun, Ivory Coast. Hazardous work includes the use of sharp tools, working at night and exposure to agrochemical products. Photograph: Michael Dwyer/Alamy

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Oliver Balch
Tue 20 Oct 2020 

Nearly 20 years after the world’s major chocolate manufacturers pledged to abolish employment abuses, hazardous child labour remains rife in their supply chains, a new study finds.

Research from the University of Chicago finds that more than two-fifths (43%) of all children aged between five and 17 in cocoa-growing regions of Ghana and Ivory Coast – the world’s largest cocoa producers – are engaged in hazardous work.

In total, an estimated 1.5 million children work in cocoa production around the world, half of whom are found in these two west African nations alone. Hazardous work includes the use of sharp tools, working at night and exposure to agrochemical products, among other harmful activities.

The report, commissioned by the US Department of Labor, notes that the overall proportion of children working has gone up by 14 percentage points in the past decade. The increase is accompanied by a 62% rise in production over the same period.

The findings raise difficult questions for industry in particular. Back in 2001, big brands such as Nestlé, Mars and Hershey signed a cross-sector accord aimed at eliminating egregious child labour. Despite missing deadlines to deliver on their pledge in 2005, 2008 and 2010, they continue to insist that ending the illegal practice remains their top concern.

In response to the scathing report, US chocolate giant Mars reiterated that child labour has no place in cocoa production and said it had committed $1bn to help “fix a broken supply chain”.

Campaign groups dismiss such comments as a duplicitous smokescreen. Indeed, a lawsuit stating that international chocolate manufacturers knowingly profit from abuses against children is currently being heard in the US supreme court.

Charity Ryerson, founder of US campaign group Corporate Accountability Lab, echoes a widespread feeling that the chocolate industry is guilty of “mind-boggling hypocrisy”. If it wished to, it could end child labour tomorrow, she said.

“In the past 20 years, the cocoa industry has invested enormous skill and resources in public relations around sustainability, but the increase in child labour demonstrates it has utterly failed to bring that same expertise and investment to create real sustainability.”


US could become ‘safe haven’ for corporate abusers, activists warnre

Cocoa buyers flatly deny the charge, arguing that the issue is complex and not easily fixed. The explanations for their repeated failure stretch from the legal (they don’t own the cocoa farms where abuses happen) to the practical (auditing is expensive; identifying origin farms is complex) through to the nit-picking (the Harkin-Engel protocol on cocoa is nonbinding and only covers the “worst” forms of child labour).

According to the Fairtrade Foundation, only around 6% of the chocolate industry’s total revenues makes its way back to farmers – fair-trade models seek to counter this by increasing consumer prices and passing on the premium to farming cooperatives.

Louisa Cox, impact director at the Fairtrade Foundation, concedes that more help is needed to tackle “practical problems” if child labour is finally to become a thing of the past. Her list includes the provision of long-term finance, training and technical services, as well as helping farmers diversify beyond cocoa.

Taking a leaf out of the fair-trade book, the governments of Ghana and Ivory Coast this month rolled out a price-premium scheme (known as a “living income differential”) for all cocoa sales. The move also includes efforts to avoid oversupply, forward sales and other deflationary practices.

'It is serious and intense': white supremacist domestic terror threat looms large in US

From the frequency of attacks to the scope of ambition, racist terror groups – encouraged by the president, are showing unparalleled activity in the modern era

A militia group, including Pete Musico, right, who was charged over a plot to kidnap the Michigan governor, stands in front of the governor’s office after protesters occupied the state capitol building in Lansing, Michigan, on 30 April 2020. Photograph: Seth Herald/Reuters

Ed Pilkington
Mon 19 Oct 2020 

On 6 October Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, released his department’s annual assessment of violent threats to the nation. Analysts didn’t have to dig deep into the assessment to discover its alarming content.

In a foreword, Wolf wrote that he was “particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years. [They] seek to force ideological change in the United States through violence, death, and destruction.”




Gretchen Whitmer: Trump 'inciting domestic terrorism' with 'Lock her up!' rally chant

Two days later, the FBI swooped. It arrested 13 rightwing extremists who had allegedly been plotting to carry out a range of attacks in Michigan, including the kidnapping of the Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer.

Later revelations revealed that a group of anti-government paramilitaries that included some of those arrested had also discussed kidnapping the governor of Virginia.

The double strike, just days apart, of the threat assessment and the Michigan plot arrests marked an important moment in America’s tortured history of racist terrorism. US authorities appeared not only to have woken up finally to the extent of the white supremacist threat but were actually doing something about it.

As the FBI director, Christopher Wray, told Congress in February, “racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists” have become the “primary source of ideologically motivated lethal incidents” in the US. The danger overshadowed the jihadist threat that has dominated the security debate since 9/11.

Last year was the deadliest on record for domestic extremist violence since the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. White supremacists were responsible for most of that bloodshed in 2019 – 39 out of 48 deaths, including 23 people who died at the hands of an anti-Hispanic racist in El Paso, Texas, and a Jewish worshipper murdered at Poway Synagogue in California.

The makeshift memorial for victims of the shooting at the Cielo Vista Mall Walmart in El Paso, Texas, on 6 August 2019. Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

While federal authorities may be showing a new resolve to tackle the problem, experts on white supremacy warn that the extremists are showing even greater determination. The movement is stirring, nationwide.

“The threat is serious and intense,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a terrorism and extremism expert at Brookings. “It is by far the most serious domestic danger in the US on many levels – the frequency of attacks, the level of recruitment, the scope of ambition of the groups and the wider political capital they are building.”

If 2019 was the deadliest year in a quarter of a century for domestic terrorism in America, 2020 is shaping up to be the year that white supremacy spreads its wings. Groups are showing a degree of confidence unparalleled in the modern era.

Agitators have seized the dual opportunities of the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests to come out of the shadows and on to the streets. Even before the start of the pandemic, they were flexing their muscles.

Felbab-Brown recalls attending the gun rally in Richmond, Virginia, in January that attracted thousands of extremists carrying semi-automatic assault rifles. “There were militia members from all across the US, Trump supporters with guns, gun rights supporters, all mixing together in large crowds. They drew energy from each other, enlarged their networks and emboldened their thinking – and that was before Covid.”

Since the pandemic struck in late January, the rightwing surge has gathered pace. Armed groups of extremists have presented themselves as vigilante security guards, ostensibly protecting property during anti-police brutality protests but in reality confronting peaceful protesters and sowing chaos and violence that has culminated in loss of life.

Though studies have noted the rise of far-right violence in the US as far back as 2007, there is one aspect of today’s political climate that makes the current threat level uniquely dangerous: Donald Trump. In the recent presidential debate with Joe Biden he notoriously declined to denounce the extremist group the Proud Boys, exhorting them to “stand back and stand by”.

Gun rights advocates attend a rally organized by The Virginia Citizens Defense League near the state capitol building on 20 January in Richmond, Virginia. 

Photograph: Zach Gibson/Getty Images

Trump has done far more than refuse to criticize white supremacist groups – he has actively communicated with them through his Twitter feed and dog-whistles blown on the campaign trail. “He may not be talking to them in person, but he definitely is talking to them through the frequency,” Felbab-Brown said.

Trump has issued calls to arms to domestic terrorist groups during pandemic lockdowns in Democratic-controlled states. In April his cry of “Liberate Michigan!” was interpreted by militant groups as an invitation to storm the state capitol with their weapons.

His incendiary “law and order” posture in the wake of largely peaceful protests has had similar effect, as did his defence of Kyle Rittenhouse, the white teenager charged with killing two people amid anti-police brutality protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

On Thursday, and again over the weekend at his rallies, Trump returned to the theme of the enabling of extremists during the NBC town hall in which he effectively endorsed the toxic pedophilia conspiracy theory espoused by QAnon, the rightwing movement identified by the FBI as a potential domestic terrorism threat. The president also renewed his attacks on Whitmer – an astonishingly rash act given the terrorist plots against the Michigan governor.

“Trump’s messages to the groups have been egregious and disastrous, on a par with the behavior of Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines,” Felbab-Brown said. “They have been enormously harmful to the US.”

Donald Trump participates in an NBC News town hall event at the Perez Art Museum in Miami on 15 October. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Michael German, a fellow of the Brennan Center for Justice who worked in the 1990s as an undercover FBI agent infiltrating white supremacist and militia groups, has studied how Trump’s racist appeals and implicit encouragement of violence have played with far-right militants. “Now they feel sanctioned. They think, ‘my violence is no longer criminal, it’s allowed, it’s what the president wants us to do’,” he said.

German has watched too as the groups have grown more methodical and practiced in their tactics over the past four years of Trump approbation. The tacit approval they have received from the Trump administration has rendered them far more effective and dangerous.

“As an undercover agent, I was present in the room when militants tried to convince a recruit to carry out a violent act and either go to the grave or become a fugitive. That’s a hard hump to get over. If you feel the president of the United States has authorized you to engage in this activity, it’s a lot easier.”

With white supremacy showing a new vitality, German is skeptical that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are serious about taking on the threat. The recent acknowledgments of the extent of the danger from Wolf and Wray are a step in the right direction, but much more urgency is needed.

“I want to see it in data. I want to see the arrests, the investigations, I want to know what the FBI is actually doing. I suspect the data would show that there have been a lot of deaths caused by white supremacists, but disproportionately few investigations,” German said.

The FBI’s use of resources tells its own story. The agency divides its counter-terrorism pie up 80 to 20: 80% goes on fighting international terrorism, 20% domestic.

An armed civilian stands on a roof during protests on 25 August over the shooting of Jacob Blake by a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

 Photograph: Tayfun CoskunAnadolu Agency/via Getty Images

The bureau’s own figures compiled for 2008 to 2018 indicate that the balance of threat is the exact reverse – some 73% of all extremist murders in the US in that period were by far-right terrorists, only 23% by Islamist terrorists.

At least at the federal level, the FBI is having some success in infiltrating extremist groups as the arrests of the alleged Michigan kidnap plotters attested. The record among state and local law enforcement looks far less impressive.

Among local police forces, the pattern is less likely to be infiltration of far-right groups by officers than the other way round – extremists are inveigling themselves into police forces. German’s work for the Brennan Center, drawing on FBI policy documents, has pointed out that white supremacist and anti-government groups often have “active links” with law enforcement officials.

Yet the justice department has no national strategy for spotting and removing white supremacist police officers.

On Thursday, armed members of the Boogaloo Bois – extremists agitating for a second civil war – illegally assembled outside the police headquarters in Newport News, Virginia. Instead of arresting the men for violating a ban on firearms on city property, the police chief handed their leader a bottle of chocolate milk and allowed him to address his ranks through a microphone and sound system that the force provided.

An insight into the world that is being created by this heady combination of a supportive president and fraternizing local police amid the turmoil of the pandemic and a fast-approaching volatile election is afforded by a new podcast from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Baseless takes listeners inside the leadership of the Base, a domestic terror group dedicated to destroying US democracy and sparking a race war that they believe and hope will transform America into a white ethno-state.

Drawing on 83 hours of secret recordings of top leaders inside the Base, including its founder Rinaldo Nazzaro whose true identity was revealed by the Guardian in January, the podcast conveys with chilling intimacy the scale of the white supremacists’ ambitions.

Armed Boogaloo Boy protesters led by Mike Dunn holding a banner during a demonstration against new firearm restrictions.

 Photograph: Chad Martin/Sopa Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

The militants describe the intricate vetting process that they follow for all new recruits. Potential new members are required to fill out a questionnaire that asks them whether they have had any military training.

Promising applicants are then invited into the “vetting room” in which a panel of five or six Base extremists, headed by Nazzaro, quiz them through an encrypted phone app. If they pass that stage, they are then given a task such as posting flyers around schools and college campuses that say “Save your race, join the Base”; and “Learn, train, fight, organize”.

The Base perceives itself not so much as an organization, but as a web of like-minded violent extremists. “We see ourselves more of a network,” Nazzaro is heard saying on the tapes.

But the one quality above all others that the terrorists crave is military experience. One in five of the 100 individuals who make an appearance on the recordings have had combat training as former or serving military personnel.

“This is a clear target,” said Jamila Paksima, co-producer of the Baseless podcast. “They are looking for people with military experience who can then train other recruits. So the US government is equipping people with the skills of warfare that are then potentially being turned back against the American people.”

The G2 interview

Cornel West: 'George Floyd's public lynching pulled the cover off who we really are'

‘They could kill me any day; that’s all right with me. I am going down swinging, brother’ … West. Photograph: Philip Keith/The Guardian

The G2 interview
Cornel West: 'George Floyd's public lynching pulled the cover off who we really are'
As the US philosopher and civil rights activist looks ahead to the presidential election, he discusses Joe Biden, Black Lives Matter and why Barack Obama was more Kenny G than John Coltrane

by Hugh Muir
Mon 19 Oct 2020

Cornel West is a thinker. Readers of Prospect magazine recently voted him the world’s fourth-best thinker. And right now he is thinking about 3 November, and whether the United States will reject or endorse Donald Trump. No one knows what will happen; not even West, not least because in the US he sees contradictions that even he can’t fully explain.

One such contradiction was Charlottesville, Virginia on the day in August 2017 when far-right activists menaced a community, killed a woman protesting against racism and then basked in the affirmation of Trump calling them “some very fine people”. West – always dapper in black suit, black scarf, white shirt, gleaming cufflinks and with his grey-flecked afro standing proud – was there.

“I remember seeing those folk looking at us and cussing at us and spitting at us and carrying on. And then the charge, and the anti-fascists coming in to save our lives. But what I also remember is walking by the park and seeing these neo-fascist brothers listening to some black music. I said: ‘Wow, this is America, isn’t it? These neo-fascist brothers listening to some Motown just before they going to mow us down.’ Ain’t that something?”

What West says matters because of his CV and because he straddles so many platforms: in academia, in the media, in popular culture. He seems too learned to be embraced by popular culture and too popular to have sway in academia, and yet he manages both. It’s capital he intends to expend between now and November.

“I am not crazy about Biden,” he says. “I don’t endorse him. But I believe we gotta vote for him. I am not in love with neoliberal elites either. I think they have to take some responsibility for this neo-fascist moment. But in the end, this white supremacy is soooo lethal … and it cuts so deep.”

West is arrested in Ferguson, Missouri, for an act of civil disobedience in protest at the killing of Michael Brown by police two months earlier, October 2014. Photograph: Charles Rex Arbogast/AP

He pauses and his measured delivery becomes staccato. There is pain there. “When you think about it, 65% of white brothers voted for Trump and 50% of white sisters. That’s the kind of country we live in. It’s like ... Wow! If it wasn’t for black folk and brown folk and progressive white folk … you voted for him then and you will vote for him again? Is that what we are talking about? With his impact on the world ...everybody knows he is a gangster, everybody knows he is a pathological liar and a xenophobe.”

And how will it turn out? Will Trump win again? If he loses, will he go? West pauses and reflects. “It’s hard to say. Some of us gonna go in and escort him out. He will probably say the election was rigged, he will probably say it was illegitimate. He could call on his troops to not accept the result of the election. Then we are really in a mess, my brother ... civic strife, man.”
Trump is creating a character for himself. Like a dumbed down version of a Pirandello play

It is, many say, the Covid election. Trump belittled it, under-reacted, ignored his scientists, caught it, recovered – or so he claims – and then made his recovery part of the narrative. Par for the course, says West. “He is creating a character for himself. Like a dumbed down version of a Pirandello play. He is trying to convince us that he is the strongman who is the only one who can save America: that he is a Superman bouncing back from the virus he was in denial about.”

West, 67, sees himself as part of an “anti-fascist coalition” against Trump. He is rooting for the least worst. “What I don’t want to do is present Biden as some great defender of the poor and working people,” he says. “I don’t want to lie. We have had enough lies with Trump.” It’s Hobson’s choice. “When there is a cold-hearted, mean-spirited neo-fascist like Trump, I have got to try and push Biden over the line.”

The same applies to Kamala Harris, Biden’s running mate, and with Biden already 77, a potential president. “She is a brilliant black sister,” says West. But, “she is very much a part of that class and imperial hierarchy”.

West’s yearning to be part of the dominant debate began in childhood in Sacramento, California, where he grew up with his mother Irene, a feted teacher, his father, Clifton, an air force civilian administrator, and three siblings. The Wests raised their progressive voices in the Shiloh Baptist church, as civil rights demonstrators and through the Urban League, a historic civil rights organisation. They took the young Cornel to see Martin Luther King. “He was very powerful. I was too young to understand all his words, but he had an impact on my soul.”

A keen scholar, West took his activism to elementary school. Aged eight, he was kicked out because he refused to salute the flag. A teacher tried to coerce him and a fracas ensued. He had his reason; a family horror, a very American outrage – the death of his great-uncle. “My great-uncle was part of a group from the military who came back from the first world war; a number who were lynched in uniform. They put the flag around them to let them know they were not going to be full citizens, even though they had been willing to give their lives for the country.”

But the young West – assertive and school-less – was lucky to be bright and have supportive parents who knew their way around the system. His mother eventually found him a school across town and then returned each day to teach in her own. West found his metier. “I had a wonderful time,” he says. “I was blessed to bounce back.”

‘When there is a cold-hearted, neo-fascist like Trump, I have got to try and push Biden over the line’ … West. Photograph: Philip Keith/The Guardian

He was set on a stellar trajectory. In 1970, he went to Harvard, graduating in 1973 with a degree in near Eastern languages and civilisation. Then he went off to Princeton to become the first African American to graduate there with a PhD in philosophy. After lecturing at Harvard, he went on to the Union Theological Seminary, New York, the University of Paris and Yale University’s Divinity School. At Yale, during an anti-apartheid campus protest, he was arrested and briefly jailed. In 1988, he returned to Princeton where he spent six years teaching religion and African American studies before re-entry to Harvard – a tenure that ended explosively in 2002 when he fell out with the university’s then president Lawrence Summers. Re-route again to Princeton for more pioneering teaching of African American studies before, in 2017, a triumphant return to Harvard gazetted with fanfare in the New York Times.

Central to his rock star ascent are his books. The first clutch were worthy and well-received. Then in 1993 came West’s collection of essays, Race Matters. It became the lens through which much of the US discussed race: a standard work in colleges and universities, it was the defining text over which the political and intellectual battles were fought. Bill Clinton, the then president, called West to the White House for a private consultation. Some hailed the book, since republished in a 25th anniversary edition, as an arrow through America’s dark heart. Others questioned his analysis. But few argued with the book’s contention that race mattered and, in its wake, West mattered, too.

Today, he presents as a genial man of firm positions and strong faith, drawn from a well of Christianity that means Trump, Michael Bloomberg and even Tucker Carlson – the notorious rightwing Fox News anchor – are referred to as brother. Which can lead to problems – for example, when he refers to the controversial head of the Nation of Islam. “When I call Trump a brother, they say: ‘Oh Brother West, my God, he’s so open-minded.’ But I call Louis Farrakhan a brother, and they say: ‘Oh Brother West must be antisemitic.’ As a Christian you are told to love thy neighbour, and it’s not love thy neighbour with qualifications, its love across the board.”

Happier days … with Obama at a fundraiser in Harlem, 2007. Photograph: Hiroko Masuike/Getty Images

Any love for Barack Obama, however, is disfigured by the solid line he draws from Obama’s time in office to the rise of Trump. He has called his country’s first black president a “war criminal” because of his use of drones. Now, he says: “People don’t understand the weight of the bailout of Wall Street. Why would you use a trillion dollars for the top 0.01% and leave your people dangling, go to them every four years and act as if you’re their hero?”

I wouldn’t be who I am without an Aretha Franklin or John Coltrane

For West music and culture are vital to his thinking. No one else juxtaposes the thoughts of great poets and philosophers with those of Curtis Mayfield or Bootsy Collins. “I wouldn’t be who I am without an Aretha Franklin or John Coltrane,” he says. He also prizes hip-hop. As we speak, he is preparing for a hip-hop summit aimed at increasing voter registration. “Geniuses like Rakim and Tupac are wrestling with their conception of what it means to be human in their context,” he says. “They are artists and all the artists, as Shelley says in his Defence of Poetry, are the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world’.”

So, too, the Wachowskis, the cult film-makers who hired him to play Councillor West in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. “That was something,” he recalls. “We had intellectual dialogue with Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne, reading Schopenhauer and William James. They are very much intellectuals, they really are.”

West in The Matrix Reloaded. Photograph: Warner Bros

But when this politico-cultural lens seeks out Obama, crosshairs appear. “It is just sad that the first black president ended up being Kenny G rather than John Coltrane,” he says. “What can you say? ‘Go on Kenny G, play your notes; you’re alright …’ Obama’s alright. He’s not a fascist or anything. But we’re looking for Coltrane.”

Since the death of George Floyd, people have also been searching for diagnoses and radical prescriptions. An unprecedented stirring, to West’s mind, simply explained. “George Floyd’s public lynching connected with the pandemic, connected with the neo-fascist gangster in the White House, and pulled the cover off who we really are and what our system really is,” he says. “We have been living a lie for so long.”

The killing of Breonna Taylor, and the grand jury decision that no police officer should be charged with her death, “shows the system is decrepit; rotten,” West says, quietly. “That is why it is more concerned with bullets going through the white neighbour’s door than the bullet that killed the black sister.”

From race matters to Black Lives Matter: “A beautiful new moment in the struggle for black freedom.” But even there West sees pitfalls and offers advice. There must be clear objectives, he says. It must be “a profoundly human affair that is always multi-racial, multinational, multigender, multi-sexual orientation”. Crucially, it must prioritise those who need it most. “The focus must be on empowering the least of these, to use the biblical term – the poor and working-class. When you are overthrowing monuments, that is not empowering poor people. It becomes a symbolic gesture.”

That strategy, he says, requires deep thought. “Lincoln was a white supremacist for most of his life but, I mean, my God, he grew. He was a force for good. What happens is you begin to alienate certain members of a larger community that you are trying to speak to.”

When I first interviewed West, he was being feted at Cambridge University and in London, while David Cameron was at No 10, dispensing social division and austerity. “Britain is in deep trouble,” West said then. Neither of us saw what would follow. “Johnson,” he spits contemptuously, “is the kissing cousin of Trump. He is just more educated, more polished and more sophisticated, but I think he is in the same Trumpian zone with Netanyahu and Modi and Bolsonaro. I hate to say that I might have been right about Britain,” he says. Then he chuckles and shrugs in sympathy: “I didn’t see Johnson coming either.”

Over Zoom, he is a lesson in deliberation: rocking back and forth in his own time register, but that’s deceptive because he is also a blur of activity. There are the demands of academia, the summits, his podcast The Tightrope, an engaging double act with Prof Tricia Rose, the sociologist from Brown University in Rhode Island, spanning race, social affairs and culture. He is slightly giddy, preparing for the academic Oscar award of a hugely prestigious Gifford lecture in 2024, one of the series hosted by Edinburgh University since 1888 and described as “the highest honour in a philosopher’s career”. His subject: wrestling death and dogma and domination.

He is also a very vocal supporter of Julian Assange and the fight to stop his extradition to the US. “He’s a truth teller,” says West. “He has been simply laying bare some of the crimes and lies of the American empire.” But will he pay the price? “I am praying for him,” he says, “but I don’t think it looks good, man.”

If the times are bleak, with just a glimmer of hope for 3 November and thereafter, West insists they follow a predicted trajectory. “Militarism, racism, poverty and materialism; all four of these will suck the energy out of American democracy,” he says, reciting reverently. “Martin Luther King said that right before they killed him – and the truth-tellers often get killed, as you know. That’s the way of the world.” Should he be concerned? He cocks his head and laughs: “Oh shoot, they could kill me any day; that’s all right with me. I am going down swinging, brother, like Ella Fitzgerald and Muhammad Ali – with a little bit of Rakim and some Coltrane.”

To tackle sexual violence in Bangladesh the culture of victim blaming must end 

There are still those who ask ‘what was she wearing’. An urgent conversation is needed about toxic masculinity and consent
  

Protesters demand justice on 14 October for the alleged gang-rape and torture of a woman in in Dhaka. Photograph: Zabed Hasnain Chowdhury/SOPA I/REX/Shutterstock

Shireen Huq and Syeda Samara Mortada
Mon 19 Oct 2020 

There has been growing outrage among Bangladeshi citizens over the past two weeks at a string of gruesome gang rapes and sexual assaults reported in the media. There is a deep lack of confidence that the victims will ever get justice, as well as anxiety over the traditionally-held view that a woman and her family lose “honour” when she is raped.

The question remains: did the woman ask to hold this honour that has been bestowed upon her? Is a woman’s honour held in her body? According to Ain O Salish Kendra, an organisation in Bangladesh that provides legal assistance to victims of violence, between January and September this year, men raped 975 women, killed 43 women after raping them, and attempted to rape 204 others. This is not the actual number of rape cases, but the figure that has been reported publicly – the true toll will be a lot higher.

So last week a group of women got together to form an alliance called “Feminists Across Generations”. We want to protest against the violence which women and girls are suffering, irrespective of their class, occupation or any other identity marker; be it at the hands of family members, strangers, or state actors from law enforcement or the military.
We are angry. We are angry at families, schools, and at the government for blaming the victim

We are angry. We are angry at families, schools, and at the government for blaming the victim and for forcing them to change instead of holding perpetrators to account. Those who continue to ask what he victim was wearing, where she was, who she was with and what time it was. Those who continue to say that she was “asking for it”.

Feminists Across Generations stood to protest against not just individual cases of violence against women, nor to focus on the trial and punishment of perpetrators, but to question the cultural and social practices that have nurtured and allowed this violence to breed; the systemic discrimination against women both de jure and de facto that persist; the inequality that underwrites our structures of governance and justice, and the provision of social services.

The goal of organising has to be broadened, beyond criminal justice, to include discourse around toxic masculinity and a strategy to bring about an end to the culture of rape and sexual violence.


Surviving on a bag of rice: plight of Bangladeshi garment makers

Systemic change is necessary and the modernisation of Bangladesh’s antiquated laws, such as the Character Evidence Law, which allows survivors to be questioned in the court of law on their “character”. More than ever, it is time to target societies, mindsets and the culture of impunity. It is time for all citizens to come together and demand freedom for women and girls, not protection. We demand safety on the streets at any time of the day or night, on public transport, at schools, at work and in our homes.


Gender-based violence is a national emergency in Bangladesh. It should be declared as such. No form of violence can be considered “normal”, nor can it be considered part of any culture. Together – women and men – we must continue the fight to help realise a Bangladesh that is free of rape and sexual violence.

We demand zero tolerance for victim-blaming at all levels of society (structural, institutional, societal and individual). We demand that rapists are no longer sheltered in our homes, schools and workplaces – families need to hold their boys and men accountable for any and all violence they perpetrate. We claim our right to occupy all public spaces without fear of violence, at any time and for any purpose.

Comprehensive sex education, including a clear understanding of consent, must be made mandatory in all schools. We ask that swift action be taken against all those weaponising cyber tools to commit violence against women. We request that rape laws are reformed to recognise and criminalise marital rape, irrespective of the age of the victim who is subjected to rape by her spouse.

We are opposed to the death penalty. It is not a solution. Talking about the death penalty has not brought justice for Nusrat Jahan Rafi, Kalpana Chakma, Yasmin Akhter, Sohagi Tonu or any of Bangladesh’s other lost women and girls. There are many more who live in fear.

We want an end to the culture of rape.


Shireen Huq is the founder of Bangladeshi women’s activist organisation Naripokkho and Syeda Samara Mortada is an activist with the SheDecides movement

The pursuit of herd immunity is a folly – so who's funding this bad science?

Links between an anti-lockdown declaration and a libertarian thinktank suggest a hidden agenda
 

‘lockdowns are one of numerous measures that scientists have called for, and are seen as a short-term last resort to regain control.’ Pedestrians cross the Millennium Bridge in a quiet London, as it enters a new phase of lockdown. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

Sun 18 Oct 2020 

Earlier this month, in a wood-panelled room at a country estate in Massachusetts, three defiantly unmasked professors gathered around a large oak table to sign a declaration about the global response to the pandemic. One academic had flown across the Atlantic from Oxford; another had travelled from California. The signing ceremony had been carefully orchestrated for media attention, with a slick website and video produced to accompany the event, and an ostentatious champagne toast to follow.

You may not have heard of the “Great Barrington declaration” but you’ll likely have seen the headlines that followed it. Journalists have written excitedly about an emerging rift in the scientific community as the consensus around the most effective response to Covid supposedly disintegrates. The declaration, which called for an immediate resumption of “life as normal” for everyone but the “vulnerable”, fuelled these notions by casting doubt on the utility of lockdown restrictions. “We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity”, it stated.

Scientists were swift in their response. The declaration’s core assumption, that population immunity will be achieved by allowing life to go on as normal and shielding only the most vulnerable from the virus, is entirely speculative. The thrust of its argument is based on a false opposition between those who argue for lockdown and those who are against it, when in fact lockdowns are one of numerous measures that scientists have called for, and are seen as a short-term last resort to regain control.

And shutting away the most vulnerable as life continues as normal is not only inhumane, but impossible: by this measure, the carers, household members and frequent close contacts of vulnerable people would also need to isolate. Moreover, young people with pre-existing conditions they don’t yet know about can be equally susceptible, and “long Covid”, with its debilitating host of symptoms, affects people of different ages.

The truth is that a strategy of pursuing “herd immunity” is nothing more than a fringe view. There is no real scientific divide over this approach, because there is no science to justify its usage in the case of Covid-19. We know that when it comes to other coronaviruses, immunity is only temporary. The president of the UK’s Academy of Medical Sciences, in a detailed rebuttal, describes the declaration’s proposals as “unethical and simply not possible”.

It’s time to stop asking the question “is this sound science?” We know it is not. Instead, we should be more curious about the political interests surrounding the declaration. Within hours of its launch, it had seeded political and ideological impact disproportionate with its scientific significance. The hashtag #signupstartliving began trending on social media. Its three signatories were later received by Alex Azar, the US secretary of health and human services, and by Scott Atlas, recently appointed as Donald Trump’s health adviser, who tweeted on 8 October that “top scientists all over the world are lining up with the @realDonaldTrump #Covid_19 policy”. And on a call convened by the White House, two senior officials in Trump’s administration cited the declaration.

Was this ever really about science? When scientists disagree, we expect them to provide evidence for their position. Yet the declaration’s many contentious statements are unreferenced – and the manner of its launch seems designed to amplify publicity over substance. If anything, the tactics employed in this performance have serious implications for the public’s trust in scientists.

It is already clear that the declaration is being used to legitimise a libertarian agenda. Indeed, some authors have questioned if it was ever anything about health, or whether its motivations were always purely economic; as the professor of political economy Richard Murphy put it, the declaration was “the economics of neoliberalism running riot … revealing in the process its utter indifference to the interests of anyone but those who can ‘add value’ within that system”.

Alarming new data shows the UK was the 'sick man' of Europe even before Covid
Richard Horton

As we approach one of the most important elections in the history of western democracy (itself described as a referendum on lockdown), we should be asking who funded this piece of political theatre, and for what purpose. The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), where the declaration was signed, is a libertarian thinktank that is, in its own words, committed to “pure freedom” and wishes to see the “role of government … sharply confined”.

The institute has a history of funding controversial research – such as a study extolling the benefits of sweatshops supplying multinationals for those employed in them – while its statements on climate change largely downplay the threats of the environmental crisis. It is a partner in the Atlas network of thinktanks, which acts as an umbrella for free-market and libertarian institutions, whose funders have included tobacco firms, ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers. Our questions to the AIER about its relationship to the three signatories went unanswered, but it has posted a number of articles about the declaration and herd immunity on its website.

These are not the names one would associate with sound public health policies. But the trio of scientists who fronted the declaration were able to put the weight of the world’s most prestigious academic institutions behind their statements – Stanford, Harvard and Oxford – giving the declaration a sheen of respectability. The views of these scientists about lockdown and the pursuit of herd immunity are no doubt sincerely held (though, notably, not published in any peer-reviewed scientific articles), but they are falling into a trap set by the right.

Rightwing free-market foundations and institutions have long attempted to savage the public reputation of well-intentioned policies such as those aimed at curbing ecological threats and limiting smoking. Some of the tactics these organisations have used in the past are those we see at play in the Great Barrington declaration: discredit the scientific consensus, spread confusion about what the right response is and sow the seeds of doubt. It seems that lockdown restrictions aimed at bringing the virus under control are merely the latest target in this rightwing stealth campaign.

The science is clear: attaining herd immunity to coronavirus via uncontrolled infection is a fringe view, peddled by a minority with no evidence to back up their position. What’s less certain is the political and economic interests that lie behind this declaration. Let the debate begin on those.

Trish Greenhalgh is a professor of primary care health sciences at Oxford University. Martin McKee is professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Michelle Kelly-Irving is a social epidemiologist working for the French institute of health research – Inserm – based at the Université Toulouse III, France

UK

Government urged to sell cocaine and ecstasy in pharmacies

Campaigners say sale of drugs should be nationalised to undermine organised crime
 

A mock-up of how a packet of legal, prescription cocaine would look. Photograph: Halo Media/Transform Drug Policy Foundation


Henry McDonald
Tue 20 Oct 2020 


Cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines should be “nationalised” and sold legally in government-run pharmacies to undermine global drug-related crime, a UK drugs reform charity has recommended.

In a book – with a foreword written by the former prime minister of New Zealand Helen Clark – the drugs liberalisation campaign group Transform has sought to set out practical ways to sell the drugs in state-run special pharmacies as an alternative to what it calls the “unwinnable war against drugs

The book includes a mock-up of what a packet of legal, prescription cocaine would look like, including health warnings, which Transform said could be sold over the counter by specially trained chemists.

The book proposes that a specialist regulatory agency, overseen by the government, could license production of the drugs.

Only a single adult use dosage of the drugs would be available in unbranded pharma-style plain packaging with highly visible health warnings and risk information. The new regulatory agency would determine prices and there would be a ban on advertising the drugs.

The sale would be managed by a state monopoly to minimise profit incentives, which Transform said would only increase sales. Specialist new pharmacies would open under strict controls with vendors trained to offer health and risk-reduction advice to drug users.

The book’s authors stressed that sales should be limited to over-18s, with only one dose per purchase.

Transform’s chief executive, Dr James Nicholls, said the book’s practical suggestions offered a way out of a war on drugs that had failed for more than 50 years. “Our proposals would take drug supply away from organised crime groups, creating a system that reduces harm rather than increasing it. The status quo can’t continue,” he said.

The father of two sons who both died on the same night from adulterated ecstasy supported the move towards a nationalised, publicly controlled supply system for the three stimulant drugs.

Ray Lakeman, a campaigner with Anyone’s Child: Families for Safer Drug Control said: “It’s time to accept drug use happens and find ways to make it safer. I hope this book helps make those reforms a reality.”

In the foreword, Clark writes: “As consensus grows that the ‘war on drugs’ has failed, so does the need for a frank exploration of the alternatives … It is essential that we begin a serious discussion on how we regulate stimulants.”

Asked whether there were any moves to reconsider the law on drugs such as cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines, a Home Office spokesperson said: “Absolutely not.”

The Home Office spokesperson added the government remained opposed to legalising cannabis “because it is detrimental to health and mental health”.

• This article was amended on 20 October 2020. An earlier version incorrectly stated that the Transform campaign was backed by the former president of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos. The credit for the main image caption was also updated.

UK

The Conservatives are shrinking the state – to make room for money and privilege

Boris Johnson’s talk of restoring sovereignty is a lie. He is handing democratic power to economic elites, not the people

A protest against privatised contracts for coronavirus test and trace, Bristol, August 2020. 

Photograph: Simon Chapman/LNP

Wed 14 Oct 2020 

George Monbiot

The question that divides left from right should no longer be “how big is the state?”, but “to whom should its powers be devolved?”. In his conference speech last week, Boris Johnson recited the standard Tory mantra: “The state must stand back and let the private sector get on with it.” But what he will never do is stand back and let the people get on with it.

The Conservative promise to shrink the state was always a con. But it has seldom been as big a lie as it is today. Johnson grabs powers back from parliament with both fists, invoking Henry VIII clauses to prevent MPs from voting on crucial legislation, stitching up trade deals without parliamentary scrutiny, shutting down remote participation, so that MPs who are shielding at home can neither speak nor vote, and shutting down parliament altogether, when it suits him.

He seeks to seize powers from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: the internal market bill appears to enable Westminster to take back control of devolved policies. He imposes the will of central government on local authorities, refusing to listen to mayors and councils while dropping new coronavirus measures on their cities. He claws back powers from the people, curtailing our ability to shape planning decisions; shutting down legal challenges to government policy; using the Coronavirus Act and the covert human intelligence sources bill to grant the police inordinate power over our lives.

His promises to restore sovereignty are lies. While using the language of liberation, he denies power to both people and parliament. He promised to curtail the state, but under his government, the state is bursting back into our lives, breaking down our doors, expanding its powers while reducing ours.

Instead, he gives power away to a thing he calls “the market”, which is a euphemism for the power of private money. This power is concentrated in a small number of hands. When Johnson talks of standing back and letting the private sector get on with it, he means that democratic power is being surrendered to oligarchs.

Under the Conservatives, the state shrinks only in one direction: to make room for money and privilege. It grants lucrative private contracts to favoured companies without advertisement or competitive tendering. It gifts crucial arms of the NHS to failed consultants and service companies. It replaces competent, professional civil servants with incompetent corporate executives.

We need a state that is strong in some respects. We need a robust economic safety net, excellent public services and powerful public protections. But much of what the state imposes are decisions we could better make ourselves. No Conservative government has shown any interest in devolving genuine power to the people, by enabling, for example, a constitutional convention, participatory budgeting, community development, the democratisation of the planning system or any other meaningful role in decision-making during the five years between elections.

The Labour party’s interest in these questions is scarcely more advanced. The 2019 manifesto talked of “urgent steps to refresh our democracy”. It called for a constitutional convention and the decentralisation of power. But these policies were scarcely more than notional: they lacked sustained support from senior figures and were scarcely heard by voters. During his bid to become Labour leader, Keir Starmer announced that “we need to end the monopoly of power in Westminster”. He called for “a new constitutional settlement: a large-scale devolution of power and resources”. Since then we’ve heard nothing.

When challenged on its policy vacuum, Labour argues that “the next general election is likely to be four years away … There’s plenty of time to do that work.” But you can’t wait until the manifesto is published to announce a meaningful restoration of power to the people, and expect it to be understood and embraced. The argument needs to be built – and Labour local authorities, by developing powerful examples of participatory politics, need to show how Starmer’s promised new settlement could work. Instead there’s a sense that the parliamentary Labour party still sees its best means of enacting change as seizing a highly centralised system, and using this system’s inordinate powers to its own advantage.

For many years, Labour relied on trade unions for its grassroots dynamism and legitimacy. But while the unions should remain an important force, they can no longer be the primary forum for participatory politics. Even at the height of industrialisation, when vast numbers laboured together in factories and mines, movements based in the workplace could only represent part of the population. Today, when solid jobs have been replaced by dispersed and temporary employment, and many people work from home, the focus of our lives has shifted back to our neighbourhoods. It is here that we should build the new centres of resistance and revival.

Starmer has so far shown little interest in reigniting the movements that almost propelled Labour to power in 2017. But even if Labour wins an election, without a strong grassroots mobilisation it will struggle to change our sclerotised political system. Any radical political project requires a political community, and this needs to be built across years, not months.

The popular desire to take back control is genuine. But it has been cynically co-opted by the government, which has instead passed power from elected bodies to economic elites. The principal task of those who challenge oligarchic politics in any nation is to offer genuine control to the people, relinquishing centralised power and rewilding politics. Yes, the state should stand back. It should stand back for the people, not for the money.

• George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Covid-19 has exposed the catastrophic impact of privatising vital services

Global markets have failed to provide people with basic needs like housing and water, say present and former UN special rapporteurs

Leilani Farha, Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, Koumbou Boly Barry, Léo Heller, Olivier De Schutter, Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona

Public services policy
 

‘By continuing to opt for contracting out public goods and services, 

governments are paying lip service to their human rights obligations.’

 Photograph: Boniface Muthoni/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

Mon 19 Oct 2020 

The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the catastrophic fallout of decades of global privatisation and market competition.

When the pandemic hit, we saw hospitals being overwhelmed, caregivers forced to work with virtually no protective equipment, nursing homes turned into morgues, long queues to access tests, and schools struggling to connect with children confined to their homes.

People were being urged to stay at home when many had no decent roof over their heads, no access to water and sanitation, and no social protection.

For many years, vital public goods and services have been steadily outsourced to private companies. This has often resulted in inefficiency, corruption, dwindling quality, increasing costs and subsequent household debt, further marginalising poorer people and undermining the social value of basic needs like housing and water. We need a radical change in direction.

The Conservatives are shrinking the state – to make room for money and privilege
George Monbiot

There was a glimmer of hope when people seemed to recognise the crucial centrality of public services to the functioning of society. As French president Emmanuel Macron put it on 12 March, the pandemic had revealed that there are goods and services that must be placed outside the laws of the market.

Take water, a commodity all the more vital as washing your hands is one of the best ways to protect yourself from the virus. About 4 billion people worldwide experience severe water scarcity during at least one month of the year. In the Chilean Petorca province, for example, one avocado tree uses more water than the daily quota allocated to each resident. Despite increasing daily water allocation to residents, the ministry of health revoked this decision just eight days later – an indication of how authorities continue to put the interests of private companies above the rights of their people.

And what about the long-awaited vaccine? Recognising that we cannot rely on market forces, more than 140 world leaders and experts have called on governments and international institutions to guarantee that Covid-19 tests, treatments and vaccines are made available to all, without charge. But the reality is that pharmaceutical companies around the world are competing to sell the first vaccine.
By contracting out public goods and services, governments are paying lip service to human rights

The global mantra to practise physical distancing to avoid spreading the coronavirus is meaningless for the 1.6 billion people living in grossly inadequate housing, let alone the 2% of the world’s population who are homeless. Yet most governments seem unwilling to step back into the housing arena to regulate the financial organisations that have helped create these conditions. The financialisation of housing by these actors has for years resulted in higher rents, evicting low-income tenants, failing to properly maintain housing in good repair and hoarding empty units in order to increase their profits.

By continuing to opt for contracting out public goods and services, governments are paying lip service to their human rights obligations. Rights holders are transformed into the clients of private companies dedicated to profit maximisation and accountable not to the public but to shareholders.

This affects the core of our democracies, contributes to exploding inequalities and generates unsustainable social segregation.

We are six UN independent experts from many different backgrounds, current and former special rapporteurs on a range of economic, social and cultural rights. It is in this capacity that, together, we want to share this message: if human rights are to be taken seriously, the old construct of states taking a back seat to private companies must be abandoned.

New alternatives are necessary. It is time to say it loud and clear: the commodification of health, education, housing, water, sanitation and other rights-related resources and services prices out the poor and may result in violations of human rights.

States can no longer cede control as they have done. They are not absolved of their human rights obligations by delegating core goods and services to private companies and the market on terms that they know will effectively undermine the rights and livelihoods of many people. It is equally crucial that multilateral organisations, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, stop imposing financialised models and the privatisation of public services on countries.

This is also a pivotal moment for the human rights community. We call on all those committed to human rights to address the consequences of privatisation head on. Human rights can help articulate the public goods and services we want – participatory, transparent, sustainable, accountable, non-discriminatory and serving the common good.

We are in a state of emergency. This is probably the first of a series of larger crises awaiting us, driven by the growing climate emergency. The Covid-19 crisis is expected to push another 176 million people into poverty. Each of them may see their human rights violated unless there is a drastic change of model and investment in quality public services.

Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky is the former UN independent expert on foreign debt and human rights; Koumbou Boly Barry is UN special rapporteur on the right to education; Olivier De Schutter is UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights; and former UN special rapporteur on the right to food; Leilani Farha is the former UN special rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context; Léo Heller is UN special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation; Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona is the former UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights

Austerity is a zombie ideology. 

It's time to bury it once and for all

Even the IMF believes that fiscal restraint is not the right way to deal with pandemic debt – but the UK can’t seem to move on

NOR CAN KENNEY IN ALBERTA

Customers in a Manchester pub watch Rishi Sunak announce on 9 October 2020 that he will pay two thirds of the wages of hospitality staff.

 Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA Tue 20 Oct 2020

Tom Kibasi

“There’s no money left.” That is the ominous refrain repeated in hushed tones across Whitehall and public services. It is the same idea that scarred the UK economy for much of the past decade and inflicted misery on millions. Could austerity be set to return?

At an international level, the consensus has certainly turned against austerity. Both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank now advocate for fiscal activism rather than restraint.

Yet despite this radical shift in the economic consensus – and the continuing fight against the virus – the chancellor has already attempted to cut back the levels of employment support before reversing course again. The job support scheme incentivises employers to cut jobs rather than hours; the revived furlough scheme is more targeted by geography and sector. Economic policy has consistently been on the back foot during the crisis.

Though the largesse showered on an array of private contractors for the bungled NHS test and trace system in England would suggest otherwise, budgets are again being slashed within the health service. Planned capital expenditure – always the canary in the coalmine – has already been cut back, regardless of the talk of 40 new hospitals.

So what is going on? It would appear that austerity has become a zombie ideology – dead as an idea yet still stumbling around. Rishi Sunak made this plain in his recent Conservative party conference speech, where he echoed his predecessor George Osborne, an architect of austerity. The chancellor intoned his “sacred duty” to keep debt down for the sake of future generations.

That’s because austerity was always more than a policy: it was an ideology that became a mindset. It is a way of thinking that has infected the British state, nowhere more so than the once highly regarded Treasury. It’s perhaps unsurprising that after a decade of focusing on what can’t be done, the British state has responded so woefully to the crisis.

It is true that government borrowing – and as a result, national debt – has surged during the pandemic, the result of higher expenditure and lower tax receipts. Less than halfway through this financial year, government borrowing is already £174bn – more than full-year borrowing at the peak of the financial crisis in 2009-10. The national debt has already risen to above 100% of national income, the highest level since the 1960s.

Yet history teaches us that governments can sustain much higher levels of debt than at present. At the end of the second world war, the national debt in the UK was more than twice national income. Today, it is a little more than equal to it and still much lower than that of other industrialised economies such as Japan. And these times are certainly unprecedented in the postwar era.

It is important to keep the level of debt in perspective. Conservatives are fond of comparing the national economy to a household, claiming each must “live within its means”. It’s obvious that a single household isn’t the same as an entire industrialised economy, but even taking it on its own terms, the UK’s national debt is the equivalent of a typical household having a mortgage of around £31,000 (which is median household income). There is scant evidence that this is an unsustainable level, especially given its maturity structure that much of the UK’s debt isn’t due to be repaid until far into the future.

Now more than ever, it is vital that government spending is used to prevent normally viable firms from going bust, to avoid the scourge of mass unemployment and its lasting scars, and to support the public sector at a time when its importance has been thrown into sharp relief. The public and the capital markets all recognise that it is the right thing to do.

Cutting back on expenditure now will not only impose misery on millions but will also mean a longer and slower recovery. Britain has made that costly mistake once in the past decade: the recovery after the financial crisis was the slowest return to pre-recession output since the second world war. We know that austerity is an economic mistake as well as a social disaster. It is vital that government keeps spending.

• Tom Kibasi is a writer and researcher on politics and economics