25 Years Of New Middle Women

Moin Qazi

We live in a world in which women living in poverty face gross inequalities and injustice from birth to death. From poor education to poor nutrition to vulnerable and low pay employment, the sequence of discrimination is very hard, but all too common. They face significant constraints in maximizing their

 But there are also silvery strands in this dark discourse. Given an opportunity to fight hunger and poverty, a poor woman turns out to be a better fighter than a poor man. It has been our experience that poor women have the intense drive to move up; they are hardworking, concerned about their human dignity, concerned about their children’s present and future, and willing to make personal sacrifices for the well-being of their children’

Over the years several strategies have been used to empower women .One of them relies on community groups whose members   can be trained and equipped to use their collective strength and wisdom to tackle their problems. 

In India, community groups have been set up in villages and slums to tackle specific problems. They are known as self-help groups. typical Indian SHG consists of 10-20 poor women from similar socio-economic backgrounds who meet once a month to pool savings and discuss issues of mutual importance.   One of the key objectives of SHGs is to provide financial access to entrepreneurial women through a mechanism in which women cross guarantee each other’s debts.

Moreover, SHGs are also an instrument for the empowerment of poor and marginalized sectors. They have proved to be an effective instrument for changing oppressive relationships in the home (gender- and tradition-related) and in society. This is especially true for those relationships arising from caste, class and political power, which have made it difficult for poor people to build a sustainable base for their livelihoods and to grow holistically.

It needs great emotional intensity to break through age old barriers .This can possible only through groups who share the same emotional values and are driven by   strong impulses of mutual goals. One of the primary objectives is of course to avail loans which the women access by cross guaranteeing each other’s liability. These loans are part of a financial philosophy called microfinance. Members take loans for a variety of reasons: to buy medicine, start a business, purchase animals, pay school fees, buy clothing, buy food during the lean season, invest in agriculture..

Women view the cooperative as their window to the outside world and as a place where they can discuss their problems with each other, indicating that the groups have had a profound impact on many women. The members consider the unity and solidarity among the women in the group to be one of the most important benefits of membership. Women have become more self-confident in their activities. Previously, when government officials or the bankers interacted with the village women in the absence of their husbands, they generally responded with statements like:”I don’t know”, “My husband has gone out”, “What can I say”, “Let him come” or “He only knows”.

The process for the banks relationship with a self help group   ip involves an initiatory period, during which a group deposits savings with the bank for a designated period, usually a minimum of six months, after which it can access a bank loan. The SHG then “on-lends” the loan amount to its members. Depending on the policies of the partner bank, SHGs are able to borrow between 2 and 4 times their savings, and terms can include both short-term and long-term loans. The group makes a financial spread by charging members a higher interest rate than it pays to the bank. This “profit” is distributed to members, or is added to member savings and used for lending or investment. SHG members may choose to distribute dividends, but SHGs generally do not “cash out” (distribute all savings and earnings) on a periodic basis. Groups can have loan terms as long as 60 months. Some SHGs allow voluntary withdrawal of savings, but many do not as these funds are used as a guarantee for bank loans.

When I first initiated this loan programme in Cjharurkhati vilage in Chandrapur district as a banker almost two and half decades back, I remember there was a woman by name Nirmala Wansnghe who started out with a mud hut. When I came back after six years on a personal holiday, she had a three-room house with a cement floor, and the goats were stabled in the hut in which she had stayed before. When her group of women first came for loans, they sat hunched, looking down into their laps. They would take the small pile of pastel and white notes they got as part of a loan and fold it into a hairpin behind their ears. They were looking so frightened because, they said, they were afraid they couldn’t pay it back. One of them was so dazed that she wanted to know the name of the person who had recommended her for the loan. Some of them even suggested taking only a part of the loan. For the remaining they said they would consult their husbands and then come back.

Bebibai Kotrange was abandoned by her husband for no fault of her. Life seemed to have drawn a curtain on her life. The odds were badly stacked against her. The Bank’s timely assistance regenerated her skills and her fingers have been honed by training to produce beautiful garments. She now exudes a quiet confidence as she presides at group meetings. There was a lime when she had retreated into   depression, after the sudden disappearance of her husband. “I had to lower my eyes, seek refuge in its cocoon. I felt suffocated”. It was the SHG, which helped her emerge from the catatonic trance.

Granted, there are problems: a husband confiscates the cash and uses it to buy a bottle of homebrew, a woman buys a goat that then dies, a borrower uses a loan not to invest but to pay for a doctor’s visit for a child, and so on. In those cases, the borrower’s family is indeed worse off, but I think those are unusual. Socially responsible finance , delivered responsibly, enables poor women to accomplish a number of useful purposes for her family.

Social innovation is taking place at multiple levels. But as with most trumpeted development initiatives the present programmes are also struggling to turn rhetoric into tangible success. One inspiring step has a tendency to raise the sense of possibility in others — say, the youth who dream of being active change agents. A lot of good programs got their start when one individual looked at a familiar landscape in a fresh way. But several of these programmes are difficult to scale up. We know what to do if we just can summon the political will.

Corruption In Bangladesh: Perceptions vs. Reality

Taj Hashmi

Corruption became so integral to Bangladesh that consecutively for five years (2001-2005) it remained the most corrupt country in the world. However, we hear things have changed for the better. On the one hand, the country has become self-sufficient in food; on the other, it’s no longer the most corrupt nation on earth, officially! Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s human development index has also risen – it’s higher than India’s and some other countries’ in the Third World. The country has already become a lower middle-income country. So far so good! However, these indexes don’t always tell us the whole truth about the states of governance, corruption, poverty, inequality, and most importantly, frequent violations of human rights across the country.

Officially, as per Transparency International’s (TI’s) Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), Bangladesh in 2016 was the 15th most corrupt country in the world, 2nd most corrupt in South Asia. In view of the unprecedented level of corruption in Bangladesh, and the alarming rise in the number of organized violations of human rights of ordinary people, politicians, intellectuals, journalists, women, and members of minority communities, it’s time to assert that: a) there’s a wide gap between perceptions and ground reality of corruption in the country; b) the bulk of the population – due to popular belief and pragmatic reasons – believe in the efficacy of corruption; and c) corruption and human rights violations are positively correlated to each other.

Now, to support my main hypothesis, that Bangladesh is still among the top two-three most corrupt countries in the world, I cite an interesting story (“Snapshot of reality”) that came out in this daily on Friday, January 27, 2017. This helps us understand two things: first, the average Bangladeshi no longer believes in the age-old maxim, “Honesty is the best policy”; and second, corruption and violence go hand in hand.

The story is about physical attacks on an honest Assistant Commissioner of the Customs Department by some rowdy dishonest people, in his office at Chittagong. Recently, some corrupt clearing and forwarding (C&F) agents (brokers) attacked the Officer, confined him to his office for hours, pelted stones at him, ransacked his office, and removed his nameplate off the door . They attacked the Officer because of his honesty; he refused to accept any bribe or “speed money” in exchange of giving them any undue benefits.

Does one incident establish rampant corruption in Bangladesh? “No” could be the answer had the Revenue Department and law-enforcers taken stern actions against the corrupt, rowdy brokers instead of punishing the victim by transferring him to a training academy! Recently, a senior Cabinet Minister justified government officials’ taking “speed money” from people, in exchange of giving them service. As if public servants aren’t paid to do their job with taxpayers’ money!

As the story goes, the Customs Officer, who never indulged in corruption, told the writer a story about his own people’s acceptance of corruption as something normative: “When I visit my village, people want me to donate money for various purposes like construction or renovation of mosques …. As I don’t have any other source of income, I cannot contribute much and sometimes become a laughingstock. People, including my relatives, get very annoyed. They say, ‘Come on! You are in the administration. You can make a lot of money.’ Learning that I despise bribes, some even say, ‘What are you? A fool?’” According to one C&F union leader, the officer who never takes bribe, “had to face this situation because of the reality of our society is different”.

Lack of transparent and accountable governance, and the prevalence of impunity for well-connected people shroud be the real extent of corruption in Bangladesh. Corruption is not all about taking or giving bribe, it’s about what individuals, organizations, and governments often ignore or condone by turning a blind eye to the corrupt practices by their cronies, friends, and political supporters. Politically well-connected criminals just get mild slaps on the wrist for mega scandals. They get away with plundering billions of taka through the share market, government’s development projects (bridges, flyovers, roads and railway tracks), nationalized and private banks, and even by grabbing thousands of acres of land to build mega shopping malls and residential areas. They are too many, and too well-connected and powerful to name!

In the recent past, one minister only lost his job for his intent to resort to corruption through a mega development project; and another minister just became a “minister without portfolio” – got a slap on the wrist – due to his PS’s involvement in carrying a hefty amount of cash in his car in the wee hours of the night. Recently, one ruling party MP – widely known as a drug baron – just paid the equivalent of one million dollars as fine for making more than $100 million through illicit drug trafficking. Conversely, we see people from the wrong side of the aisle (not belonging to the ruling party) get arrested, allegedly for resorting to corruption. These case studies – with unproductive innuendoes – are very tiny tips of the big iceberg!

Recently, I met a cross section of people in Bangladesh, newspaper editors, journalists, a prestigious Western news agency’s bureau chief in Bangladesh, retired government servants, including diplomats, NBR members, generals, police officers, judges, university teachers, prominent human rights activists, bankers, businessmen and industrialists, and last but not least, private car drivers, rickshaw pullers, and CNG drivers. They all seem to agree on one point: “corruption and violations of human rights in the country have gone up tremendously”. I think underestimating the extent of corruption, human rights violation, and poverty in Bangladesh – where drivers, rickshaw pullers, garment factory workers, and domestic servants, among others, live well below the poverty line ( at $2 per capita per day) – also amounts to resorting to corruption.

Three of my interviewees – a retired Additional IG of Police, a retired district judge, and a Western news agency’s bureau chief – gave a horrific picture of the institutionalization of corruption – which they insisted prevailed with the full knowledge of ministers, lawmakers, high civil and military officers, intellectuals, and the ordinary people. They told me about the fixed or negotiable rates of bribe candidates for entry-level and executive positions in the government have to pay to the recruiting officials and members of the selection committees. The “market rates” of bribe for jobs vary (in Taka): police constable – 8/10 lakh; clerk – 10 lakh; sipahi in the Army – 6 lakh; sipahi in the BGB – 5 lakh; and lower court clerks – 8 lakh. One of my interviewees told me that bribing for jobs is also normative in the private sector, especially for positions of medical representatives or sales officers in pharmaceutical companies.

The moment one draws a parallel between corruption and organized violations of human rights by law-enforcers, criminals, and political goons, one has no reason to believe corruption has really gone down in the country. All sections of the society – especially the rich and powerful – simultaneously resort to corruption and play the hideous hide-and-seek game to deny their crime. Lastly, people’s adherence to religious rituals only, with almost no respect for the morals or ethical teachings of the religion, and their drawing a line between sin and crime are problematic. In sum, corruption of public morals is at the roots of all corruption in Bangladesh.

Muslim Ban Blocked: Federal Judge Issues Nationwide Injunction Against Trump Order

Jon Queally

A federal judge in Washington state issued a nationwide injunction late Friday against President Donald Trump’s controversial executive order on immigration—widely denounced as a travel ban targeting Muslims and refugees from war-torn states—that stirred airport protests across the U.S. last weekend and dozens of lawsuits and legal challenges throughout the week.

In Seattle, U.S. District Judge James Robart ruled in favor of a challenge brought by state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who sued the Trump administration earlier this week to invalidate key provisions of the executive order that barred entry to individuals from seven Muslim-majority nations.

AG Ferguson obtains Restraining Order immediately halting Trump immigration Executive Order nationwide.

— WA Attorney General (@AGOWA) February 3, 2017

“The Constitution prevailed today,” Ferguson said in remarks to reporters on the federal courthouse steps after Judge Robart’s ruling. “No one is above the law — not even the president.”

Though the injunction only comes in the form of a “temporary restraining order” until the court can fully vet the state’s challenge, the news was received with applause from those challenging the ban. According to a statement from the AG’s office: “The Temporary Restraining Order will remain in place until [Robart] considers the Attorney General’s lawsuit challenging key provisions of the President’s order as illegal and unconstitutional. If Ferguson prevails, the Executive Order would be permanently invalidated nationwide.”

In his ruling, Robart stated the temporary restraining order was warranted after the state successfully proved its argument that Trump’s order was causing “immediate and irreparable injury”; that it would do more harm to keep it place than to halt it; and that the state had additionaly proven its substantial likelihood of success in challenging the constitutionality of the travel ban.

“The executive order adversely affects the states’ residents in areas of employment, education, business, family relations and freedom to travel,” Robart stated in his written ruling. “These harms are significant and ongoing.”

Though the White House immediately vowed to appeal the decision, and sought an immediate stay against Robart’s restraining order, legal experts and opponents of the travel restrictions immediately praised the decision as an important legal victory and stinging rebuke of Trump’s position.

“This ruling further demonstrates that the Executive Order was not adequately thought out,” said David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, which opposed the ban. “The Order should be paused and existing vetting and visa systems, which have proved their worth, should be left in place.”

On the immediate implications, the Seattle Times reports how:

Jorge Barón, director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said he was advising people who have been stranded outside the United States because of the ban to use Robart’s ruling to try to return. But, he also cautioned it’s a very fluid situation.

“You might get on a plane and there might be a different ruling in the middle, we warn people that there’s a chance of that happening,” Barón said. “At the same time, I’d also want to make sure that people who are trying to be reunified with their families are taking advantage of this ruling.”

Given a separate ruling in Massachusetts earlier on Friday, it’s quite possible that the disparate challenges to Trump’s order could ultimately end up at the U.S. Supreme Court.

GM Canada slashes CAMI workforce in Ontario

Carl Bronski 

General Motors Canada announced last week that 625 autoworkers at its CAMI assembly plant in Ingersoll, Ontario would be laid off at the end of July as the company shifts production of the GMC Terrain to Mexico and as, according to the company, sales slow for the current Equinox model assembled at CAMI. The move reduces the labour force at the operation to less than 2,400 workers.

The announcement comes on the heels of significant reductions in the GM labour force at three American-based assembly facilities. Twelve hundred workers at Lordstown, Ohio lost their jobs last week. In addition, the company announced that 800 jobs would be cut in Lansing, Michigan with a further 1,300 job losses slated in March at its Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant.

In a statement issued by Unifor, the Canadian auto union, President Jerry Dias characterized GM’s announcement as a ‘betrayal.”

“This decision reeks of corporate greed. It is not based on sales, it is another example of how good jobs are being shifted out of Canada for cheaper labour in Mexico and Unifor will not let it happen without a fight,” proclaimed Dias.

There is no doubt that GM—which has posted profits hand-over-fist since the auto bailouts of 2009—operates as a trans-national entity that seeks to maximize its returns on the backs of its highly exploited labour force. But Dias’ talk of “betrayal” is particularly rich.

Unifor constantly refers to the auto bosses as their “partners” and has rammed one concessions deal after another down the throats of its membership for over a decade.

The announcement of layoffs exposes the bankruptcy of the claims made by Unifor and Dias that concessions would protect jobs. Dias spent the past year touting the claim that his strategy of concession bargaining would secure the Detroit Three’s “footprint” in Canada. In the face of unprecedented rank-and-file opposition to the massive concessions contracts pushed through at GM, Ford and Fiat-Chrysler this past fall, the Unifor leadership insisted that surrendering even the semblance of a defined benefit pension for new hires, cementing the hated ten-year two tier grow-in period, cutting benefits and providing a wage rise so small that it fails to keep up with inflation were all necessary to safeguard employment levels in Canada.

It was at the CAMI plant in 2013 that Unifor first agreed with GM to abolish defined-benefit pensions for new hires, setting the stage for similar concessions across-the-board when negotiations opened at the Detroit Three’s other Canadian plants in the summer of 2016. CAMI, which negotiates its contract one year after all other Canadian plants, acts as something of a stalking horse to herald future cuts to workers’ living standards. It is no surprise that the current layoffs, slated for July, come the same month that contract negotiations open for the Ingersoll workers.

GM’s announcement also casts a further shadow over the future of the company’s Oshawa facility. With no new products assigned and threatened with closure by 2019, the Oshawa plant was buttressed by overflow shipments of Equinox frames. That practice will soon end. Company officials have so far stated that the change will not affect employment levels in Oshawa.

However, the continued “re-positioning” of GM’s global auto footprint will only lead to calls for deeper concessions from Oshawa workers. Dias’ much criticized “framework agreement” signed with GM last September—an agreement that still has not provided important details on future product timetables—claimed that to keep at least a portion of Oshawa operations running, overflow work would be shipped to the plant from a Missouri facility already operating at full capacity. However, with auto sales projected to decline over the next several years, Dias’ so-called “historic” 2016 deal with GM appears ready to unravel.

Unifor has stated that the union will not accept the CAMI layoffs “without a fight.” But the fact of the matter is that union officials have already sat down with the company to begin discussions on layoff protocols and severance packages.

Dias claimed that “the CAMI announcement is a shining example of everything wrong with NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), it must be re-negotiated. It is imperative that we have trade rules that help ensure good jobs in Canada.” He also called on the federal and provincial governments to “step up” their financial support for the auto companies in Canada.

Unifor, like the United Auto Workers south of the border, promotes a nationalist-corporatist course as the solution to continuing job losses in the auto industry. But this course has produced only one reversal after another over the past three decades. For years the auto bosses have taken advantage of the 1985 split between American and Canadian autoworkers to whipsaw jobs and wages back and forth across the border, giving product to the jurisdiction that is able to offer the most miserable contracts.

The right-wing, anti-working-class character of such politics is shown by the unions’ embrace of the Trump administration’s call for the renegotiation of NAFTA, which is part of a reactionary program of economic nationalism that leads directly to trade wars and military conflict.

Unifor’s appeal to the federal and Ontario Liberal governments is no less revealing. The last major infusion of cash by government into the coffers of the auto giants was accompanied by an unprecedented assault on workers’ wages, benefits and working conditions as part of the so-called bailout of the auto industry in 2008-09.

Unifor has developed an intimate alliance with Justin Trudeau’s big business Liberals, based on contract concessions, support for a low Canadian dollar that only serves to jack up consumer prices and reduce workers’ real wages, and the continued imposition of social spending cuts and other measures to boost the insatiable profit drive of big business on the backs of the working class.

The only way workers at CAMI can fight back against the latest wave of job cuts is by appealing to autoworkers at GM facilities and at the other automakers throughout North America for support. All autoworkers confront the ever-present threat of layoffs and concessions, imposed with the full collaboration of the trade union bureaucracies that falsely claim to represent them.

Autoworkers’ interests can only be defended in a political and organizational break from Unifor and the UAW in the US. Independent action committees must be formed at CAMI and other plants to fight for the right to a decent-paying, secure job, an overturning of all concessions imposed by Unifor and the struggle for a workers’ government committed to utilizing the vast profits extracted by the auto giants through the exploitation of workers for social need, not the enrichment of a tiny minority.

Pittsburgh community college students and staff speak on hunger

Evan Winters

Food banks, also known as food pantries, are rapidly proliferating on college and university campuses across the US. The College and University Food Bank Alliance counts 434 member food banks at colleges and universities nationwide, an increase of 23 in the span of just two months.

There are food banks at prestigious public universities, including University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of Pittsburgh, University of Oregon, Georgia Tech, and University of Minnesota. What’s more, there are food banks at selective private universities, including Cornell University, Georgetown University, University of Southern California, and George Washington University, all of which charge roughly $50,000 per year in tuition alone, with total annual cost of attendance at roughly $70,000 per year.

2016 brought additional hardship to part-time students along with unemployed workers in Pennsylvania and 21 other states that implemented changes to eligibility rules for the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps. The federal government cut SNAP benefits for an estimated 500,000 to one million childless adults between 18 and 49 who have been unemployed for over three months. Students enrolled in higher education more than half their time are generally ineligible for SNAP unless they work at least 20 hours a week, care for dependent children, or meet a handful of other exemptions. The change in the work requirement does apply for part-time students.

In response to high unemployment levels in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, many states were allowed to temporarily waive requirements that SNAP beneficiaries work at least 20 hours per week to receive benefits after 90 days. 22 states implemented the cut in 2016, with 22 others doing so in 2015. The justification given for these cuts is a drop in the quasi-fictional official unemployment rate, which does not count workers who have given up looking for work. The US labor force participation rate, the fraction of the working-age population that is employed, remains at lows not seen since the late 1970s, when women entered the workforce en masse.

The draconian SNAP work requirement was itself a product of the 1996 welfare reform law, which then-President Bill Clinton boasted would “end welfare as we know it.” The Democrats are fully complicit in these cuts. At the federal level the question was not seriously raised by either congressional Democrats, then-President Obama or any of the Democratic presidential candidates. At the state level, the cuts were ruthlessly implemented in states with Democratic as well as Republican-controlled administrations.

Sign advertising the food bank

WSWS reporters spoke with food pantry volunteers and community college students at Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The food pantry, named the CCAC Allegheny Campus Foodbox Project, began this year to provide nutritional assistance to students on roughly a monthly basis.

A CCAC staff member, who asked not to be identified, explained her reasons for helping start the food bank during the mid-December holiday season. “I wrote a small grant to get the initiative started. We partnered with the honors class, and this is our third food pantry.”

She spoke of the stigma surrounding hunger. As a result of reluctance to discuss the issue, student hunger is almost certainly under-reported. The proliferation of food banks, however, is a clear indication of the growing need.

CCAC staff and student coordinators of the food bank

“People don’t want to talk about it; maybe a small circle of friends know. But I put a box of snacks on the table in the cafeteria yesterday, and before I could get them to my office, it was gone. So it helps if they see something that’s easy to pick up. We try to give them things that they can eat right now and they don’t have to worry about shelf life.

“Students have a lot of pride, and that’s why we chose this location, because there is a culinary program in the basement. There’s a bus stop on the corner. If you’ve got a car, you can at least stop temporarily to go load up your food, and nobody is really seeing you carrying bags of groceries through the student union. We try to be mindful of people’s pride.

“When someone thanks us four or five times as they’re walking out the door, we know they really need it. One person said, ‘I’m just trying to fill in gaps from what I already have.’”

She went on to emphasize the need for students in the greater Pittsburgh area. “At South Campus [several miles away], a student stole some food because they were hungry.

“I only got a small grant. We’re trying to get a bigger grant now so we can carry this through to next year.”

Michelle, a CCAC student, explained her reasons for volunteering at the food bank. “Everybody needs to eat, and not everybody can afford to go to the store as frequently as they might need to, especially students.”

Abby, a culinary student at CCAC, gave her thoughts on hunger among students. “I feel that it’s becoming more of an issue in today’s society because the cost of school is so high. People often can’t feed themselves or their families. Some of the students have families, or are single parents, and that makes it even harder.

“I was working 35 hours a week part-time, but I hurt my thumb, cut it with a knife at school, and had to quit my job. I didn’t get workman’s comp because I was hurt at school. I live off loans, about $1,000 a month, and I live with my boyfriend.”

CCAC students Joe and Elle have volunteered at food banks

Elle, a student at CCAC, spoke on hunger in the working class more broadly. “In high school, I volunteered at the Food Bank of Greater Pittsburgh. I definitely think it’s important. I think that hunger is definitely a problem that needs to be solved, because there are people who go to sleep hungry all the time. There are people who don’t have money for food, and that’s a problem.

“I think it’s a huge issue. There are a lot of homeless people. That’s horrible. Especially homeless veterans, that’s tragic. I feel something needs to be done. I’m not sure what, but something definitely needs to be done.”

Joe, who studies graphic communication at CCAC, added, “I heard there were more foreclosed houses than there are people who can actually use them. I used to volunteer in high school as well at a food bank in Homestead. I saw people all the time down there who both took from food banks and volunteered at food banks. It definitely helps out a lot of homeless people.”

Elle continued, “It’s expensive to live and be able to afford everything you need as a human being. The minimum wage is not enough. Fifteen dollars an hour is not enough. Something needs to change. It’s just a question of what and how we can do it.”

Bangladesh government continues repression of apparel workers

Sarath Kumara

Bangladesh’s Awami League government and employers have intensified their crackdown on apparel workers following mass walkouts over wages in December involving tens of thousands of workers.

In recent weeks, the international media, including the New York Times, and giant international retailers have voiced concerns about the situation in Bangladesh. Their disquiet is not out of sympathy for garment workers who labour in harsh conditions for poverty wages. They fear the eruption of industrial and political struggles that will impact on investor profits.

In 1983–84, the Bangladesh’s garment industry earned $US31.6 million or 3.9 percent of the country’s total exports. Last year it earned $28.1 billion or 82 percent of exports. Around 4.5 million workers, 80 percent of them women, are employed in over 4,500 sweatshops throughout the country. The industry is not only lucrative for Bangladesh big business. It is a major source of profit for giant retail corporations in the US and Europe, such as Wal-Mart and Marks & Spencer.

Commenting on the garment industry at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina cynically declared: “We are highly committed to ensuring compliance with regard to labour rights, workplace safety and environmental standards in the industry.” As Hasina made these remarks, her government was stepping up its repression against garment workers.

On December 11, a group of workers at Windy Apparels factory in Ashulia walked out on strike and were quickly joined by about 150,000 workers from more than two dozen factories. The strike continued for 10 days over 16 demands, including a wage increase to 16,000 taka ($US200) a month, up from the current below poverty-level 5,300 taka.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) responded by locking out workers at 55 factories. An estimated 1,600 workers were sacked, although some reports claimed the number was much higher, at over 3,500.

Around 249 workers, including 14 local union leaders, were arrested. Many workers and union officials went into hiding to escape from house raids by security forces. Union offices have been vandalised and forcibly shut down, with membership documents burned and furniture removed.

Many of those arrested were charged under the Special Powers Act, a repressive law introduced by the Awami League in 1974 to quash so-called threats to state security.

One of those arrested, brutally beaten and threatened with death by the police was Nazmul Huda, a well-known television and print journalist. Huda has been charged with violating section 57 of the Information and Communications Technology Act, which carries a minimum sentence of seven years’ jail.

On January 22, the New York Times published an article entitled, “Protests in Bangladesh Shake a Global Workshop for Apparel,” voicing concerns now being raised in US and European capitals. The newspaper interviewed Jhorna Begum, the wife of Jahangir Alam, a local trade union president in Ashulia, one of those still imprisoned by Bangladesh authorities.

Begum told the Times that police raided their home looking for her husband. After he failed to return home, she hired a lawyer to track him down and discovered that he was being detained in a dark and crowded cell where he could not even see his own hands. Begum was only able to speak to him briefly. “We live hand to mouth, waiting for the pay cheque at the end of the month,” she told the Times .

Following the death of garment union leader Aminul Islam, who was found tortured and murdered in April 2012, many garment workers are cautious about speaking to the media. Islam went missing near the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity office in Ashulia, where he worked as a senior organiser. His body was later dumped near the Ghatail police station, some 100 kilometres to the north.

Last Thursday, the New York Times published an editorial feigning concern about the ongoing repression in Bangladesh. “The brutal recent crackdown on protesting garment workers,” it declared, “is proof that clothing manufactured in Bangladesh is still exacting a terrible price from the people who make it … The truth is that the 2013 labour-law reforms did little to improve workers’ rights.”

The editorial concluded by nervously warning that the “failure by the garment industry and Ms. Hasina’s government to adhere to its principles stains an industry and threatens the economy and stability of Bangladesh.”

The Times article acknowledged that the main reason for the “shockingly low wages” in Bangladesh’s garment industry was global retail corporations “exerting pressure on suppliers to drive costs even lower.”

Forbes recently reported that a Bangladeshi garment worker earns $0.13 an hour, compared to $7,283 an hour (pre-tax) compensation for one of the 350 top chief executive officers (CEOs) in the United States. “This would roughly equate to the hourly rates of 16,000 employees from Bangladesh combined,” the US-based magazine said.

Pennsylvania State University associate professor Mark Anner told the Financial Times last month that production costs and the real value of Bangladesh workers’ wages have been declining in recent years. Since 2013, he said, the dollar price for a pair of cotton trousers has dropped 9.3 percent in real terms. The ongoing expansion of the Bangladesh garment industry was “based largely on its cost competitiveness.”

BGMEA vice president Mohammed Nasir told the Financial Times: “The buyers go to each factory and get a detailed quote for the work … then they take the cheapest deal offered for each part of the work and demand that factories meet that overall price … Factories are desperate, so they agree. It means retailers pay around $5 for a piece of denim clothing that would sell in the west for $60.”

Twenty major international apparel retailers, including H&M, C&A, Esprit, GAP, Li & Fung and others, have issued a statement warning Prime Minister Hasina that industrial unrest in Bangladesh may damage the country’s reputation as a reliable sourcing market. They called on the government to form a new wage board for the garment workers. At the same time, the giant retailers said they “do not condone illegal activities by workers, labour groups.”

The call for a new garment industry wage board is thoroughly bogus. The existing wage board failed to review workers’ pay last year, in contravention of existing labour laws, and some factories still refuse to grant a pay rise recommended by the wage board in 2013.

Concerned to defuse further unrest, the Swiss-based UNI Global Union (UNIGU) and IndustriALL Global Union (IAGU) have launched an online campaign demanding the Bangladesh government release garment union leaders detained in recent weeks. These organisations want the government to establish a corporatist partnership with the unions and non-government organisations to control and discipline workers.

Australian prime minister’s speech points to growing political crisis

Mike Head

Both Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Labor Party opposition leader Bill Shorten delivered what were billed as heartland addresses to the National Press Club in Canberra this week, laying out their visions for 2017. Each speech, in its own way, underscored a profound crisis engulfing Australia’s political establishment.

Donald Trump’s election as US president has sent shockwaves through the parliamentary elite. Not only has Trump’s campaign underlined the deep popular hostility to the major capitalist parties internationally. It has accelerated the global turn to trade war and war, with catastrophic implications for Australian capitalism, which is already reeling from the collapse of the mining boom.

The US president’s naked “America First” program is intensifying the dilemma facing the Australian ruling elite as Washington ramps up its confrontation with China, Australia’s biggest export market. Trump’s brutal anti-immigrant measures and aggressive pursuit of the profit interests of American big business are also fuelling popular opposition to the social offensive being waged by the capitalist class worldwide.

There is already widespread working class disaffection after decades of attacks on jobs and social services by successive Liberal-National Coalition and Labor governments. According to a world “2017 Trust Barometer” published last month by PR company Edelman, the “implosion of trust” in government, business and the media in Australia is among the greatest of the 28 countries surveyed.

The “trust index” in Australia is 40, below that of the US, on 47. Last year, when Turnbull’s Coalition government narrowly survived the July federal election, the proportion of Australians trusting government plunged from 45 percent to 37 percent, one of the sharpest falls recorded, comparable only to Mexico, Russia and China.

Neither Turnbull nor Shorten has any answer to the deepening crisis of Australian capitalism or the mounting geo-political tensions and drive to war, other than a deepening assault on the social position of the working class to provide tax cuts for the wealthy and boost military spending. Like Trump, both are whipping up anti-refugee xenophobia to divide workers and divert attention from their own regressive policies and records.

Turnbull’s speech gave an indication of political paralysis. It was devoid of anything new, except for a call for new coal-fired power stations. The financial media outlets immediately denounced Turnbull for not laying out any agenda to meet their demands for sweeping company tax cuts, the dismantling of welfare entitlements and a full-scale assault on workers’ wages and conditions.

Writing in Murdoch’s Australian, contributing economics editor Judith Sloan condemned the speech as “predictable, unenlightening guff” that was also “gutless.” The Australian Financial Review said Turnbull’s agenda “continues to fall short of the bold economic program needed to deal with the emerging global order.”

These comments reflect the mounting handwringing by big business over Turnbull’s failure to deliver on his promise, when he ousted Tony Abbott as prime minister in September 2015, to supply an “economic narrative” to overcome the public backlash that erupted against the government’s austerity measures in 2014–15.

Remarkably, Turnbull virtually said not a word about Trump’s victory or the world situation. There was no mention of Trump’s program of protectionism and militarism, which has already provoked tensions with China and the European powers. The only hint of the consequences came when Turnbull said his government was “disappointed by America’s withdrawal from the TPP”—the proposed US-led Pacific trade bloc now dumped by Trump in favour of threats of more open trade war measures against China.

Later, without referring explicitly to Trump’s plan to slash US corporate tax rates from 35 to 15 percent to boost profits and attract investment, Turnbull tried to use the global cutting of business taxes to demand support for his own scheme to cut the company tax rate from 30 to 25 percent over the next decade.

Acutely aware of the rising public animosity toward his government, Turnbull tried to present his tax plan—which would hand companies an estimated $50 billion over 10 years—as a boon for ordinary workers. Without offering any explanation, he claimed that “full-time workers on average weekly earnings would have an extra $750 in their pockets each and every year.” In reality, the spiralling global race to reduce corporate taxation will only benefit the super-wealthy, while further stripping billions of dollars from basic social spending.

Likewise, Turnbull cynically tried to dress up his pledge to promote supposed “clean coal” technology—in the interests of the coal mining giants—as a means to protect households from soaring electricity prices.

While avoiding any reference to the growing threat of war following Trump’s victory, Turnbull reiterated his government’s intentions to massively expand military spending. “No peacetime government has committed more resources to national security than mine,” he declared.

Claiming it would “create thousands of new jobs,” he described the “Defence Industry investment program”—$195 billion for warships, plans and other weapons systems over 10 years—as a “truly a historic national enterprise.”

Turnbull also echoed Trump in demonising refugees, vowing to ensure that asylum seekers would never reach Australia. “Since 2013, Operation Sovereign Borders—an initiative that began under Mr Abbott and that I reinforced—has stopped the boats and restored integrity to our borders.”

During his National Press Club address, Labor leader Shorten also emulated Trump’s drive to divert the rising social and class tensions in reactionary nationalist, protectionist and militarist directions. Shorten claimed to have heard the message of what was a “global phenomenon”: “Too many Australians think the political system is broken—and more than a few don’t trust us to fix it.”

Scapegoating overseas workers, Shorten demanded a drastic cut in work visas for them, to protect the “jobs of Australians.” Feigning concern for soaring levels of youth unemployment, he said a Labor government would ensure that one in every ten jobs on defence projects went to an Australian apprentice.

These policies, like Trump’s, will only divide workers and youth in Australia from their fellow workers around the world, and whip up xenophobic sentiments—a prelude to inciting workers to fight each other on battlefields in the interests of “their” national capitalist class.

Toward the end of his speech, Shorten, a former trade union chief, underlined the crucial role of the unions in peddling this divisive agenda. He declared: “We need to revive the co-operative spirit of the Hawke-Kelty consensus between businesses, unions, the Commonwealth and all sectors of our community.”

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, under the banner of “making Australia globally competitive,” the Labor governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating worked hand-in-glove with Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Bill Kelty and the entire union leadership to smash up workers’ conditions, eliminate tens of thousands of jobs and privatise major enterprises.

That offensive launched an endless process, intensified by every government since, of shifting wealth more and more into the hands of the privileged few. The speeches by Turnbull and Shorten point to the turmoil now wracking the political system as a result of the enormous discontent produced by this assault, and the escalating global geo-strategic tensions.

Corruption allegations undermine French presidential candidate François Fillon

Alice Laurençon

Just over a week after allegations of corruption were first published, French presidential candidate François Fillon has come under increasing pressure as more information emerges.

Last Wednesday, the satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné published allegations that Fillon, the candidate for the conservative The Republicans (LR) party, had paid his wife Penelope €600,000 over eight years for a fictitious job as his parliamentary assistant. This allegedly also included €500,000 as a “parliamentary attaché” for Marc Joulard, a deputy who replaced Fillon in the Assembly during the time that Fillon was a minister in government.

The newspaper cited statements from another attaché, Jeanne Robinson-Behre, who had worked for Joulard during the same period, in which she claimed not to recall any occasion when Penelope Fillon ever did any work for Joulard. Fillon has not denied that his wife received this sum of money, but has repeatedly declared that she had done work to justify her salary, such as meeting guests in his absence and proof-reading drafts of his speeches.

The allegations against Fillon were fuelled by a video aired on television channel France2 on Thursday. The video showed an extract from an interview with UK newspaper the Sunday Telegraph in 2007, in which Penelope Fillon stated, “I have never been actually his assistant or anything like that.”

“I don’t deal with his public relations”, she added.

In its most recent edition, Le Canard Enchaîné has stated that the amount paid to Fillon’s wife was higher than initially thought, at approximately €831,000.

It also alleged that Fillon paid €84,000 of public funds to two of his children, who he supposedly hired as legal advisers while he was senator, in 2005 and 2007. This is despite the fact that neither of his children had finished their legal studies and were therefore not qualified as lawyers, leading to further speculation over what work they supposedly did.

Although it is still unclear whether the payouts to Penelope Fillon and to Fillon’s two children were technically illegal, due to the flexibility of French laws on hiring family members and parliamentary assistants, the allegations are discrediting not only Fillon, but the entire political establishment. While demanding that the working class endure draconian austerity measures, the ruling elite is able to procure hundreds of thousands of euros of public funds for their own benefit.

Media and political circles are increasingly wary of the consequences of scandals like these in further distancing the working class from the established parties.

An editorial published yesterday in Le Monde stated: “By taking the French people as fools, by allowing them to see and hear such levels of indifference towards them, by getting rid of even the slightest show of integrity, we will end up, one way or another, by deepening their disgust with government business and by provoking their revolt—and legitimately.” With their sense of impunity and blind egotism, it continued, “the candidates responsible for this state of affairs will only have themselves to reproach. But it’ll be too late.”

The publication of this new information has provoked intense divisions within LR, whose candidate has gone from being the favourite for the presidency, to facing an electoral debacle. According to a recent survey, 76 percent of the French population said they were not convinced by Fillon’s statements about the allegations. Polls now predict that Fillon would only gain 19 to 20 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential elections, coming in behind PS-linked banker Emmanuel Macron and National Front (FN) candidate Marine Le Pen. This would eliminate him from the second round.

As the European powers scramble to respond to Donald Trump—whose administration is backing Le Pen, who has taken Trump’s election as a sign that she can win the French presidency—LR are debating how to salvage their candidacy and assert French capitalism’s interests on the world stage.

On Thursday, 17 prominent LR officials, including LR General Secretary Bernard Accoyer, and former candidates for the LR primary Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet and Bruno Le Maire, penned an editorial in the French newspaper Le Figaro, in which they declared their “total support” for Fillon, and denounced the allegations as “rumours, approximations and slander”.

However, other officials have called for Fillon to step down, and cede his nomination to another LR candidate. Calling the results of the November primary contest, which nominated Fillon as LR candidate, “null and void when confronted with these unpredictable developments”, the deputy for the Rhone region, George Fenech, called for the LR to organise a national council meeting in order to “find a solution.”

Sections of the LR are manoeuvring to install as presidential nominee Alain Juppé, who came in second after Fillon in the primaries. LR deputy Philippe Gosselin confirmed on Thursday that an open letter calling for the nomination of Juppé was being prepared, and was “ready to be signed by several dozens of deputies.”

With the Socialist Party (PS) also deeply divided over last Sunday’s nomination of Benoît Hamon as presidential candidate, the French ruling elite is faced with the possibility of the collapse of the two major parties of bourgeois rule for the last half century.

Broad sections of the French and European ruling elite are concerned that Le Pen could benefit from the breakdown of these two parties, and widespread popular disgust with the entire political establishment in France. Le Pen is resolutely hostile to the European Union (EU), and in the wake of the Brexit vote in the UK and Donald Trump’s hostile stance towards the EU, an FN presidency would profoundly change the EU, threatening its very survival.

London’s Haringey Labour council launches £2 billion privatisation

Thomas Scripps

Labour councillors in the impoverished London borough of Haringey are pushing forward with plans to place £2 billion of public property into private hands.

To be finalised in April, the scheme will place the whole of Haringey’s public finances at risk, see thousands of council tenants thrown out of their homes and increase already unaffordable house prices in the borough. These events are a reflection of London’s ongoing process of social cleansing, in connection with the wholesale destruction of social and genuinely affordable housing to make way for high-value developments.

Haringey’s privatisation marks a new stage, whereby UK local authorities themselves—and all of the services they provide—are placed under private direction. Above all, the situation in Haringey is a vital political lesson in the pro-capitalist character of the Labour Party.

The driving force behind the privatisation programme is the leader of Haringey Council, Labour councillor Claire Kober. She intends to establish a “Haringey Development Vehicle” (HDV), a private company half owned by the Council and half by a private developer. The Council will put up land to secure its share, which the developer will match with equity. The Council’s assets will be transferred to the HDV on long leases for a 20-year period.

To decide which developer Haringey Council would partner with, Kober was flown to a high-flying property fair at Cannes in France to discuss with various bidders. A shortlist was drawn up which includes Lendlease; Morgan Sindall with Affinity Sutton and Circle; Pinnacle with Starwood Capital and Catalyst.

Two of these corporations—Lendlease and Starwood—are represented by a lobbying group that has wined and dined Kober and her heads of housing no less than 13 times. A spokesman for the Council, when asked if the HDV had been discussed at these lunches, responded: “It is impossible to account for all of the conversations that took place at these events which involved a large number of people who are not from Haringey including London borough leaders and GLA representatives.”

The immensely rich surroundings in which Kober and her administration made their decisions could not be further divorced from the life experience of Haringey’s working class residents. The borough has the fourth-highest landlord eviction and overcrowding rates in London, the second-highest rate of families housed in temporary accommodation, above average homelessness rates for the capital and one of the highest rates of out-of-work benefits recipients—according to the London Poverty Profile of 2015.

There has not been the slightest democratic pretense at giving voice to the interests of working class people. In fact, most residents of Haringey’s Council housing estates slated for destruction under the HDV are entirely unaware of what is being planned. This is something Haringey Council’s own consultants admit, but intend to do nothing about.

What information has been gained from the Council regarding the HDV has provoked an overwhelmingly hostile response. A number of demonstrations have been held protesting the plans. The Haringey Defend Council Housing organisation has described it as an “absolutely terrible policy”, continuing, “The whole plan is about increasing house prices. It’s morally wrong. They [the Labour Council] should stop doing the Tories’ dirty work.”

In response, Kober falsely claimed in the Guardian, “Whatever you want to call what we’re doing, it’s not privatisation.” According to Kober, HDV is a route to 5,000 new homes and thousands of new jobs in the next 20 years. She said in the same article, “A council like Haringey could never borrow the money or recruit the talent to build on this land at the scale and pace that’s needed. So, rather than sell it to private developers and hope for the best, we’re bringing in the investment and skills from a private partner while retaining a 50% control...”

This is a miserable cover-up. There are no plans to build social housing under the HDV, only so-called “affordable” housing. As is well known, “affordable” prices are defined as up to 80 percent of the market rate. This is already unaffordably high for many Haringey residents and will be driven yet higher by the new HDV builds which—if previously approved redevelopments are an indication—will be tailored to the very rich. These previous projects include the sale of Hornsey Town Hall to Far East Consortium International Ltd (FEC), despite the opposition of over 99 percent of locals consulted. The building was renovated into a luxury hotel with just four affordable units.

As for Kober’s suggestion that the involvement of private interests is harmless—and even beneficial—this is indicative of the programme of the Labour Party, which supports big business.

The door has been opened to private, for-profit involvement in local authority affairs on an unprecedented scale. Haringey Council, under the HDV, will be as responsible for providing a profitable return to the private developer as it is for providing for its residents. Given that the leaders of Haringey Council are closely intertwined with big business, it is clear which of these commitments will be given priority. This is a process taking place throughout the public sector in Britain and internationally. 

The motivations of big business in this area are made clear by recent analysis from Bilfinger GVA, which showed that the fastest rate of economic growth is happening outside of central London. According to their research, the combination of major regeneration projects and access to affordable office space is driving up demand in boroughs like Haringey. In other words, London’s outer boroughs are considered the capital’s next big investment bubble. Private developers are rushing to bulldoze obstacles like social housing in order to secure themselves a slice of the profits.

As the example of Haringey shows, among their most valued accomplices in this effort is the Labour Party. Clearly aware of the serious popular fallout they can expect from their actions, lower-tier Haringey Labour councillors have criticised the course of action taken by Kober and the Council’s leadership.

Whatever their arguments or the course of the debate, these councillors offer only token opposition to Kober’s plan. An examination of their record since 2010 reveals they have voted again and again for massive spending cuts in the borough. Since 2010 to the beginning of 2014, Labour cut £117 million from Haringey’s budget, with many vital services reduced or terminated. A further £70 million reduction is to be imposed by 2018. More than 600 council workers’ jobs are slated to be lost by 2018

What has been imposed by the Labour council in Haringey has been enforced by Labour everywhere, with the party in control of councils in virtually every major urbanised area in London and nationally.

“Left” Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his close political ally, shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, have ordered all Labour councils to impose increasingly savage cuts to local authority budgets. Labour-run authorities across the country are enacting cuts with as much callousness and ferocity as Conservative.

Corbyn’s own Islington constituency Labour council has slashed £220 million over the past decade, with plans for a further £70 million in cuts, and has set up a council-run private company, called iCo, to charge for services.

Theresa May’s White Paper offers no plan for post-Brexit Britain

Robert Stevens

On Thursday, the Conservative government released its White Paper, supposedly setting out its plans for Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU).

The 77-page document was made public one day after parliament—by a large majority—passed a one-line Conservative government bill authorising the triggering of Article 50, the Lisbon Treaty legislation that begins the formal exit process.

The document, “United Kingdom’s exit from and new partnership with the European Union White Paper”, is not so much a plan as an empty wish list. It outlines 12 “principles” that read like chapters from a marketing manual, including “Providing certainty and clarity”, “Ensuring free trade with European markets”, “Controlling immigration” and “Delivering a smooth, orderly exit from the EU”.

The Guardian criticises the government and its document from the standpoint of that section of the ruling elite favouring EU membership and continued access to the Single Market and Customs Union. That said, the newspaper’s cynical conclusion that the White Paper “tells the country nothing and everything about the most important foreign policy decision to face Britain for decades” is certainly to the point.

As is now the established pattern, the government promises the best of all possible futures for British imperialism. After affirming, “We will not be seeking membership of the Single Market” with all that this entails, the paper states that the government “will pursue instead a new strategic partnership with the EU, including an ambitious and comprehensive Free Trade Agreement and a new customs agreement.”

A final agreement, it claims, “may take in elements of current Single Market arrangements in certain areas as it makes no sense to start again from scratch when the UK and the remaining Member States have adhered to the same rules for so many years.”

In other words, the UK will leave the Single Market while seeking to maintain access to the Single Market!

Nothing concrete is outlined in regard to the position of the City of London. The paper boasts, “The UK’s financial services sector is a hub for money, trading and investment from all over the world and is one of only two global, full service financial centres—and the only one in Europe”, before observing that what is being sought is “the freest possible trade in financial services”. But it again offers no explanation as to why the EU states should or would adopt a magnanimous attitude toward their major competitor.

The White Paper goes on to state, “To provide legal certainty over our exit from the EU, we will introduce the Great Repeal Bill to remove the European Communities Act 1972 from the statute book and convert the ‘acquis’—the body of existing EU law—into domestic law”—after previously complaining that EU law was un unwarranted intrusion into British sovereignty.

The bill avoids any concreteness as well on the issue of immigration controls, the central concern of the Tory xenophobes in Westminster and the wider party base. It states only that it is undecided how the UK will “gain control of the numbers of people coming to the UK from the EU”. Instead, in a move designed to make it easier for the Tories Article 50 bill to complete its passage through committee stage hearings in parliament next week, the document indicates, “We expect to bring forward separate bills on immigration and customs.”

The paper declares in addition that “implementing any new immigration arrangements for EU nationals and the support they receive will be complex and Parliament will have an important role in considering these matters further”. The sole purpose of this vague pledge is to draw the teeth of the opposition parties should they offer a pro forma defence of the rights of EU citizens post-Brexit.

It blames the EU for the question mark placed by Brexit regarding the fate of an estimated 2.8 million EU nationals who currently reside in the UK, asserting, “The government would have liked to resolve this issue ahead of the formal negotiations. And although many EU member states favour such an agreement, this has not proven possible.”

As things stand, the government has little reason to fear amendments being made to its plans for Brexit. Despite more than 150 pages of amendments from Labour, the Scottish National Party and Greens, not a single Tory MP—barring the soon-to-retire pro-EU Kenneth Clarke—is prepared to rebel. In short, the Tories look set to keep to a timetable of triggering Article 50 by the end of March.

The May government is triggering Brexit while boasting, backed by the Bank of England, that the economy is performing well and even headed for a boom. However, what has fuelled the growth spurt of the past few months is consumer spending. This week the Economist predicted this was set to end, noting, “There are signs that Britons’ freewheeling ways may not last much longer ...

“People now appear to have decided that with Brexit negotiations about to get under way and the attendant economic uncertainty, they should focus less on borrowing and more on repaying. On January 31st the Bank of England revealed that consumer-credit growth in December fell to £1bn from £1.9bn the month before.”

The absence of any strategic plan in the White Paper is further proof of a growing crisis of rule in Britain. Powerful sections of the ruling elite never considered they might lose the referendum, underestimating the extent of opposition in the population to the EU and the general discontent with the entire political set-up after nearly a decade of savage austerity. No contingency planning was therefore ever considered by then Prime Minister David Cameron in the event of a Brexit vote.

His successor and fellow advocate of remaining in the EU, May, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Brexit Secretary David Davis have no plan either. The Brexit wing of the Tories claimed that leaving the EU would allow the UK to go “out of Europe and into the world”—by signing new trade deals with the US, China and other major markets—while, conversely, maintaining access to the UK’s most important existing market, the EU.

This was and remains a fantasy.

As for the prospect of a “buccaneering Britain” rampaging merrily across the planet, May’s obsequious performance during her meeting with Donald Trump underscored the reality that the UK, in fact, overwhelmingly relies on securing increased US trade, along with Washington’s backing, so as to pressure the EU into making concessions.

In reality, there is no indication from Trump’s “America First” administration that the UK will get such a favourable deal, which can, in any event, only be negotiated and signed after leaving the EU. Equally, there is no reason to believe that any European leader will be prepared to treat Britain leniently.

Prior to this week’s vote on Article 50, Sir Ivan Rogers, the UK’s former EU ambassador, tellingly noted the negotiations would be held in an “extremely feisty atmosphere” and that EU Commissioners were “openly” insisting that Britain would have to pay up to €60 billion as part of the exit process in a “predictably hard line”.

Moreover, Rogers’ scenario does not factor in the hostile response of Germany and France to being threatened by May’s relationship with Trump. The major European powers, rather than preparing to back down, have concluded from the new US president’s declared intention to seek the breakup of the EU that any concession to May would only allow the UK to function as the Trojan horse for this project.