Britain is the sick man of Europe once again. You don’t need to look too close to see the blisters of years of economic torture popping and oozing down his face; the infected wounds of queerphobia and poverty festering along his torso, the concussed British psyche looping evermore fantastical nationalisms and patriotisms. Nobody walking by has it in them to save him, as he vomits bile and sewage into his coasts, rivers, reservoirs; it seems he had it coming. But what of those of us who can’t escape this dying, desperate, hostile body? How do we survive? How do we revolt against this walking carcass we find ourselves in?

I started writing this piece at the beginning of the last Tory leadership race. It promised an embittered race towards cruelty, and delivered just that. Sunak and Truss’ “War on Woke” lambasted the queer population, whilst the NHS closed Tavistock gender identity clinic, and fascists raised violent protests against drag queens reading stories to children up and down the country. They fought over how far away they could send refugees and asylum seekers (floating prisons? More Rwanda? Mars?) how much they could attack workers (immense pay cuts? Banning strikes, anyone? Have we considered skewering anyone earning less than 20k?), and how much they could ignore the climate on the hottest summer on record (an elephant, melting, in the middle of the room). 

This co-ordinated programme to radicalise the conservative party ever further right realised itself in its victor, Liz Truss. Calls to make cannabis a class A drug, Suella Braverman’s wet dreams of deportations to Rwanda (a xenophobia echoed by the opposition), the return of fracking and attacks on solar power; it was a conservative government against the people on all fronts. They’re not being pushed by any party threatening to steal their votes, any National Front, BNP, UKIP. They’re freefalling of their own accord. 

These are the desperate measures that rise to stifle resistance against the desperate times. Nobody can pay their bills. It’s not just Russia- although heightened energy dependence on the dictator next door was never going to be a wise idea. It’s an overwhelmingly deregulated, cowboy energy market that wants nothing more than to pick at pockets like carrion. The government introduced a price cap for the next two years, then reduced it to 6 months. The energy companies press a knife ever closer to our throats, and the government pays them for the trouble of not slitting it. This staggering demolition of regulation shows how overwhelmingly pathetic the state is at protecting its people, and how it fulfils its role as a facilitator of profit much easier. It’s almost as if it was always meant for the latter, and never the former. 

With Truss and Kwarteng tanking the economy with a tax cuts programme which will require £60bn in cuts (according to the IFS), then u-turning in ways that look more like a neck being snapped than a smooth 180° turn, the sick man does himself no favours, expropriating his body to the various ghouls of international capital. These ghouls are not so hard to see; Kwasi Kwarteng had secret meetings with Saudi Oil firms, and has been a paid “political advisor” at hedge fund Odey for years now, which made a killing betting on the pound crashing. However, even whilst giving capital every gift they could possibly give them, the markets gave Truss a vote of no confidence, and off she went. 

Now there’s Sunak, the near billionaire, who had a hand in the 2008 financial crash, and managed the economy into the decimated state it is now (with a little help from his predecessor/competitor). In the course of writing this piece, I’ve seen three UK prime ministers. Perhaps we’ll have a general election, perhaps the Tories will cling to power until their ratings get higher than the worst they’ve ever been to, I don’t know, the second worst they’ve ever been. But then, what’s the point of a general election, when the parties are indistinguishable?  The Labour Party finds itself sold out and with little to give beyond a vague manifesto that’s just nationalism and austerity. “Distinctively British,” “In partnership with business,” “boosting productivity…” all but tells us they want a hypercapitalist nation-state, like a diluted conservative party. It’s a husk of an opposition based around milquetoast, dilapidated patriotism. To paraphrase Julius Nyerere’s comments on the USA, the UK is now a one party state, but with typical English opulence, they have two of them. 

An opposition beyond Labour

A vacuum opens- on the left. Labour has become a non-party, abandoning the unions that fund it and the grassroots who supported it, leaving millions of disenfranchised activists, institutions, and working people being pushed towards a crisis point. But with abandonment comes opportunity; the Forde report, and the recent Al Jazeera documentary, indicated to us the shallow horrors of the Labour bureaucracy, and the extent it worked to tear apart the left from the inside tells us that the party is a deadweight on the movement. But the people are still here; the poor are growing in number, the hungry growing ever hungrier- what will be our movement? What will be our survival?

It is our labour and our consumption that make our lives, our condition. We can, always, with unity, cease our labour, change our consumption, to affect change upon our lives, upon our condition. From wildcat strikes at Amazon warehouses, to waste management strikes in Edinburgh and Coventry, to the RMT’s huge strike against railway bosses, the country is moving towards its largest mobilisation of the labour movement in years- arguably decades. 

Alongside this is the ever growing “Don’t Pay” movement, an organised movement towards a pay strike from energy bills. It needs traction- right now only 200,000 people have pledged, out of a targeted 1 million- but this is moving forward, and getting louder. It’s had limited success- as we’ve seen, the government did put a cap on bills- but it has a long way to go, and missed its 1 million aim for the 1st October. A lack of clarity is also significant from Don’t Pay- whilst simply not paying en masse may work, it could also destroy people’s credit scores, and without the backing of a strong organisation (local or national), people aren’t going to have the confidence to go through with it. Releasing information on how to complain to OFGEM about bills, for instance, could be a great help for a lot of people. 

With the launch of the “Enough is Enough” campaign, an umbrella movement of Unions, MPs, publications and campaign groups, the democratic socialist movement is giving the movement direction and definition. It comes with five clear demands (almost making a parody of the Labour Party’s pathetic five vague, weak campaign points)- raise wages, cut bills, end food poverty, good housing (certainly the input of Acorn, the tenants union), and tax the rich. It’s what the movement has needed- clarity, diction, purpose, a unified force that drives it. 

There are questions, though. A power vacuum is a huge opportunity; is this how we want to fill it? The unions, alongside Don’t Pay, have been building power for many months now. But does a centralisation of a movement exclude other, more radical elements and potentials? Will EIE stand in support of illegal wildcat strikes, or Don’t Pay’s radical tactics, or attempts at direct action? How far is it willing to go to affect transformative change? And a further question- where are the people, where is the movement, which is ready not just to critique capitalism, but abandon it, as a system which inherently creates these places of horrific crisis and intentionally places the burden upon the poor- regardless of government? 

Beyond this, how can we build power on the social issues which run parallel to those of labour and bills? With a 20,000 strong trans pride rally in July, trans people living in the UK have shown their presence and their capacity to organise. But how, whilst Vietnam illegalises conversion therapy, Germany lowers the age for gender identification to 14, Cuba passes a new progressive family code, and Scotland allows self-id, do we compare, with a conservative leadership threatening to remove the equalities act and the human rights act, both of which host the majority of legal protections trans people have? England is sick, sickening, is quickly twisting into an evermore vile and murderous environment for trans and queer people. How do we build a movement which strikes back against this reactionary violence? 

Simply showing up is necessary right now. Signing up to Don’t Pay, joining the picket lines, attending trans rallies, demos, and prides, and using these places to build, join, and agitate movements towards a place of action. Working towards dual power, that movement which allows the country to be split between a reactionary government, the fascists around it, and big businesses, and a revolutionary coalition of workers’ councils, activists, and grassroots movements, is the formation with which to create the conditions to let Britain shake. When the government holds our rights, our financial wellbeing, our survival in a chokehold, we must build a power which can hold the government hostage. As part of that, it’s time for a general strike, to show the power of the new coalition. It’s not a cure; it’s a shot of adrenaline, straight to the heart, if the people are willing. The cure is a longer journey. It’s time for organisers to radicalise this moment, and turn it from a reformist movement to a revolutionary one. 

A final note would be a warning against politics of personality. Mike Lynch, in particular, as well as other union bosses and MPs, are quickly becoming figureheads of the movement. We should be wary of these people defining whole political structures. When we put all our efforts, drive and support behind Corbyn, it left a whole movement at the whim of one man. It meant that, rather than having to attack a multifaceted movement of countless groups, organisations, people and places, attacking the movement became the simple task of bringing down one man. It meant that once they found his weaknesses (which any individual will have), they could tear him apart; and with him went the movement. Briefly.

The conservative government is collapsing, the unions are building dissent with every unmet demand, our environment is collapsing- what a time to be alive! This is a time of constant, ever spiralling revolutions; military, economic, environmental, global, biological, political- we must ride, and divert, this death driven ship. We find ourselves within a sick man! May a new body politik burst from the corpse of the old.