India’s demonetisation scheme causing mass hardship

Kranti Kumara 

The Indian government’s “shock and awe” scheme to demonetise more than 85 percent of the country’s currency has severely disrupted economic life across India and continues to inflict great hardship on the working class and rural toilers more than two months after its sudden imposition.

Conceding that demonetisation has forced farmers to accept ultra-low prices from wholesalers, depressed consumer demand, and led cash-short employers to lay off workers, both the World Bank and IMF have sharply scaled back their 2017 economic growth projections for India.

In a report issued this week, the IMF said that it now expects the Indian economy will grow by 6.6 percent in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2017—a full one percent less than its previous forecast—and by 7.2 percent in 2017-18 or 0.4 percent less. Indian political leaders have repeatedly said the country needs 8 percent annual growth if the economy is to be able to absorb the ten million youth who join the labour force each year.

However, a sample survey that the All India Manufacturer’s Organization (AIMO) conducted of 73,000 of its more than 300,000 members indicates the adverse impact of demonetisation may be larger, indeed much larger, than is being anticipated by the IMF or, for that matter, the Indian government.

According to the AIMO survey, during the first 34 days following Prime Minster Narendra Modi’s November 8 demonetisation announcement, micro and small industries (that is family-owned firms employing no more than a handful of workers) slashed employment by 35 percent and suffered a 50 percent fall in revenue.

While the micro and small industry sector was hardest hit, the AIMO survey found that medium and large enterprises also experienced sharp revenue drops, ranging from 20 to 50 percent, and slashed jobs wholesale. The medium and large manufacturers surveyed had reduced employment by 5 percent. Those that specialize in infrastructure projects, such as road-building, had laid off a third of their employees on average.

The AIMO is projecting that the slump will continue in the coming weeks and forecasts that by March the job losses in the micro and small industry sector will rise to 60 percent, while tripling in the medium and large manufacturing sector to reach 15 percent.

The authors of the AIMO study were themselves stunned by their findings. “While [the] AIMO understands,” they wrote, “certain immediate repercussions of such a bold step (demonetisation) by the government, it did not anticipate or was prepared for such a jolt to industries even after one month.”

In December, AIMO leaders made repeated attempts to meet with Commerce Minister Nirmal Sitharam and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, but they were given the cold shoulder. This prompted AIMO President K.E. Raghuram to exclaim, “It is high-time the Indian government …. wakes up. By March 2017, large numbers of small and medium units might close down. Small and micro industries cannot bear the losses, not even for more than a month.”

According to the Ministry of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises, such enterprises provide employment to 81 million Indians including large numbers of financially vulnerable self-employed artisans.

The social dislocation caused by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s demonetisation scheme is further indicated by the sharp spike in destitute rural workers seeking to exercise their right to temporary employment under the central government’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREGA) program.

Adopted in 2005 by the Congress Party-led, Stalinist-supported, United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in order to provide political cover for its pursuit of pro-investor reforms and a “global strategic partnership” with Washington, the NREGA guarantees 100 days of poorly paid, manual labor per annum to every rural household.

According to an analysis published by the Indian Express, from last July through November three million workers sought NREGA employment daily. Then in December, the first full month after demonetisation, the daily average spiked to 5 million. And by the end of the first week of this year, the daily average had swelled to 8.4 million, well over two-and-a-half-times the pre-demonetisation average.

The average daily wage paid under the NREGA, according to the government’s own figures for the current 2016-17 fiscal year, is just 161 Rupees (about US $2.40).

Modi and his Hindu supremacist BJP have claimed that the sudden demonetisation of India’s 500 and 1000 Rupee notes was a “surgical strike” against “black money”—that is assets that were illegally obtained and/or held outside the scrutiny of the tax authorities.

This is a fraud. The vast majority of India’s “black money” is in the form of real estate, gold, foreign currency, and overseas bank accounts, not Indian currency, and it is in the hands of India’s corporate bosses, real estate developers, other rich and super-rich, and corrupt politicians, not the workers and toilers who are bearing the burden of demonetisation.

Preliminary figures show that a very large portion of the demonetised notes have been deposited in the country’s banks, which strongly suggests that the government’s own estimates of the amount being held as “black money” were highly inflated.

Be that as it may, the real purpose of the government’s demonetisation scheme is to shore up India’s ailing banks and government finances at the expense of working people.

By compelling the population to exchange their cancelled old bills for valid new ones through the banking system, the government is hoping to give the banks, which are hobbled by unpaid business loans, a desperately needed cash-injection. The longer-term aim is to dramatically raise the proportion of everyday financial transactions made through the banking system, so as to make them a potential source of revenue for the banks and bring them within the purview of the tax system.

Not surprisingly, Modi’s pro-investor government has proven callously indifferent to the massive social dislocation caused by its demonetisation scheme. In a speech at the end of last month Modi claimed that he had “saved the country” by taking a stand against “black money” and “terrorism,” and said any hardship would soon pass. In his New Year’s address, he took a somewhat different tack. He claimed that the “pain” Indians have borne in fighting corruption “will be an example for generations,” urged the banks which have “had a huge influx of wealth” to prioritize the middle class and poor, and announced that a handful of “relief measures” would be included in next month’s budget, especially for farmers who desperately need cash so that they can proceed with planting.

A few days later, President Pranab Mukherjee, who was himself a finance minister under the UPA and supports demonetisation, said he feared the poor cannot “wait.” In an address to India’s governors and lieutenant governors, Mukherjee praised Modi’s New Year’s address for providing “some relief,” but signaled his concern that it will prove woefully inadequate in preventing social unrest. Declared Mukherjee, “We all will have to be extra careful to alleviate the suffering of the poor … They need to get succour here and now.”

For its part, the rightwing Indian Express published an editorial titled, “Heed the President: Government should listen to his warnings about a looming crisis in rural India.”

Thus far the opposition parties have proven incapable of capitalizing on popular anger over demonetisation and more generally the Modi government’s ultra-rightwing, pro-big business agenda, which includes aligning India ever more completely with Washington’s war drive against China. This is because the entire opposition, from the Congress Party through the Stalinist Communist Party of Indian (Marxist) or CPM, have themselves assisted in the implementation of this agenda. For two decades, from 1989 to 2008, the CPM sustained in office a succession of rightwing governments, most of them Congress-led, which did much of the heavy-lifting in the drive to make India a cheap labor haven for global capital and a satrap for Washington.

Cyprus reunification talks seek to curb Russian influence in Mediterranean

John Vassilopoulos

Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and his Turkish Cypriot counterpart Mustafa Akinci began formal talks in Geneva last week aimed at reunifying the island. Also present were United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

A request to attend by Russia, which has strong economic links to Cyprus and naval access to its ports, was not taken up.

Cyprus is located in the Eastern Mediterranean to the south of Turkey and is home to about 800,000 Greek Cypriots and 220,000 Turkish Cypriots. It has been split along ethnic lines since 1974 after Turkey invaded in response to a coup instigated by the Greek military junta, which sought political union with Cyprus (enosis).

Since the end of hostilities and the forced displacement that took place, a 180 kilometre-long ceasefire “Green Line” buffer has divided the island into a northern area inhabited by Turkish Cypriots and patrolled by 30,000 Turkish troops while Greek Cypriots live in the south alongside 1,000 Greek troops.

The Greek Cypriot state is recognised internationally but the Turkish Cypriot state only has formal diplomatic ties with Turkey. Greece, Turkey and the UK, as the former colonial power, comprise the so-called “guarantor powers” of Cyprus. The UK still maintains its geo-strategic military bases in Akrotiri and Dhekelia, which have been key staging posts in the US- UK-led bombing campaigns in Iraq and Syria.

The current talks are taking place a decade after a previous UN-brokered settlement plan to coincide with Cyprus’s accession to the EU in 2004 failed, following a “no” vote in a referendum by the Greek Cypriot south.

A key stumbling block has always been the issue of security. According to UN special adviser on Cyprus, Espen Barth Eide, who chaired the talks, “The Greek side maintains that they would prefer an end to the system of guarantees and an end to foreign troops in Cyprus, whereas the Turkish position has always been that a system of guarantees should be continued at least in order to see that this new federal structure works because they feel a certain responsibility for the Turkish-Cypriot community.”

Another obstacle is the extent of territory that the Turkish Cypriot side would have to cede as part of the settlement in order to allow displaced Greek Cypriots to return to their former homes. Both sides have exchanged territorial maps outlining their proposals, but as yet there is no agreement. Johnson said that the UK is prepared to cede up to half of the territory occupied by its two bases—around 3 percent of the island—in order to ease negotiations.

The first round of talks ended in stalemate last Thursday after Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias demanded the fast and full withdrawal of Turkish troops, declaring, “A just solution [to division] means, first of all, eliminating what caused it, namely the occupation and presence of occupation forces.”

In response, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, “It is out of the question for Turkish soldiers to pull out completely. … If something like this is being considered, then both sides should pull their troops out of there.” Erdogan added, “We have told Cyprus and Greece clearly that they should not expect a solution without Turkey as guarantor. We are going to be there forever.”

However, Eide warned that “Larger political developments in the neighbourhood remind us that one should not lose any time”—a reference to Russia’s increasing influence in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean, which is cutting across US plans to dominate the region. This is most pronounced in the recent Russian-brokered ceasefire in Syria, which undermined US-led plans to oust Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. Eide’s statement was a warning of the implications of Russia’s increased economic presence.

At the end of last year, Russian state-owned energy company Rosneft signed a deal with Italian energy giant Eni to buy a 30 percent stake in the Zohr natural gas field off the Egyptian coast for $1.6 billion. Egypt’s Zohr field contains 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas—the largest in the eastern Mediterranean, almost double the size of Israel’s Leviathan field and around three times the size of Cyprus’s Aphrodite field.

Russia also has built up a huge commercial relationship with Cyprus. In 2012, it offered to help the country with a multibillion-euro bank bailout, leading to the German daily Die Welt accusing Cyprus of playing a “double game with Russia and the EU.”

Today, the island, which has the lowest non-offshore taxes in the European Union (EU) and the lowest non-offshore corporate taxes in the world, has become the top destination for direct investment out of Russia and the largest source of foreign investment into Russia. In 2015, the two countries signed a military cooperation agreement which allows Russian naval ships to dock in Cypriot ports in emergencies—a move strongly criticised by the US and EU.

In this context, a settlement to the Cyprus problem to the advantage of the US and EU is seen in Western ruling circles as a decisive counterweight to Russian influence in the region. Washington has been pushing hard for a settlement, with the State Department’s Victoria Nuland visiting the island last year. According to one report, Nuland’s visit was preceded by “hints from senior Cyprus officials that the US has been pressuring Anastasiades to accept Turkish military occupation of northern Cyprus under a NATO flag.”

Geopolitical tensions over Cyprus erupted this week when Russia’s Ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, reacted angrily to a Politico.eu article that blamed Russia for the ongoing stalemate.

The article cited a source “close to” Anastasiades, who said, “The government is aware of Russian activities and monitoring the situation.” Continuing its anti-Russian agenda, the article declared, “The concern comes amid reports of the Kremlin intervening in US and European elections with cyber-attacks, ‘fake news’ propaganda and support for populist and anti-establishment movements.”

Addressing what is at stake for the EU and US in reaching a settlement, the article stated there is “the possibility that a united Cyprus could be pressured into joining NATO, the potential for Turkey and maybe the EU to import new gas supplies along a [currently stalled] pipeline from Cyprus and Israel, and the diplomatic success reunification would deliver to both the EU and the US. As long as Cyprus remains divided by a UN buffer zone, Turkey and the Anastasiades government don’t recognize each other. As a result, Turkey hampers NATO efforts to cooperate with the EU, Greek and Turkish relations in NATO remain tense, and Turkey remains reliant on gas deliveries from Russia’s Gazprom. The EU and Turkey are Gazprom’s top two customers.”

Chizhov responded, “Anti-Russian hysteria is becoming contagious. Overzealous fighters of the (dis)information front are working day and night trying to implicate Russia in all sorts of problems, including those that are the direct result of short-sighted and arrogant policies of others.”

There can be no viable solution to the division of Cyprus under capitalism. Any settlement reached as a result of the Cyprus talks will not lessen tensions in the region but heighten them by providing another potential flashpoint in the US-led drive to war against Russia. A peaceful solution can only be achieved based on the island’s working people overcoming all religious and ethnic barriers in the struggle for a socialist Cyprus as part of the United Socialist States of Europe.

United States ends “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” policy for Cuban migrants

Alexander Fangmann

On January 12, President Barack Obama announced that, effective immediately, the US government would end the so-called “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” policy, as well as the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program. In a joint statement detailing the changes in migration policy, the Cuban government agreed to accept Cuban nationals deported or returned by the US.

Through these programs, Cubans were extended preferential immigration status and a continued incentive to leave the country, which contributed to a “brain drain” of trained professionals and provided Washington and right-wing Cuban exiles the fodder for propaganda about state repression in Cuba fueling a constant stream of refugees.

Cubans will now be treated just as brutally as all other migrants and refugees to the United States, subject to an inhuman regime of incarceration and deportation built up by the Obama administration and soon to be administered by the even more virulently anti-immigrant Donald Trump.

Under the previous policy, Cubans who made it to dry land in US territory were permitted to enter the country and take advantage of the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, which allowed Cubans to claim permanent US residency after one year in the country. Cubans who were interdicted at sea by the US Coast Guard, on the other hand, were returned to Cuba.

The policy was introduced by Bill Clinton in 1994 to restrict Cuban immigration in the wake of the so-called balsero (rafter) crisis, which saw tens of thousands of Cubans leave the island during the economic collapse following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Prior to this, Cubans making it either to the US or into the hands of the Coast Guard were allowed entry and a fast-track to residency and citizenship. In exchange for getting the Cuban government to accept its returned nationals, the US opened up an immigration lottery program giving 20,000 residency visas a year to Cubans.

The much newer but related program, the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, was put in place in 2006 by George W. Bush. It allowed doctors, nurses and other medical professionals to present themselves at any US embassy or consulate and receive a fast-track to US residency and citizenship. It was largely intended to undermine the Cuban economy and health care system by depriving it of personnel that are among the most expensive to train, and was taken advantage of by over 7,000 professionals. Much of the anger directed at the Obama administration by right-wing exiles in Miami is over the termination of this program.

A great deal of Cuba’s export earnings are derived from its medical professionals, with over 40,000 deployed around the world. Until recently, over 30,000 were in Venezuela providing medical care and training, for which the Cuban government received subsidized oil. Doctors and other professionals working abroad were paid more than their counterparts on the island itself—although still low by international standards—about $180 per month instead of about $23 per month.

While the sending of skilled Cuban doctors to impoverished countries served to boost the country’s image on the world stage, the program also provided a source of earnings for medical services. This was particularly the case in Venezuela, where the employment of doctors in the government’s medical programs for the poor was compensated with cheap oil. Groups like the Cuban American National Foundation hysterically denounced this program as a form of “slavery” or “indentured servitude.”

The end of these preferential immigration programs is the logical outcome of the resumption of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba. Indeed, since the announcement of a rapprochement in December 2014, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of Cuban immigrants and refugees reaching the United States. Since 2012, around 118,000 Cubans have entered the US, with over 55,000 reaching the country in 2016 alone.

The sudden shift in policy has stranded thousands of Cuban migrants who were making their way to the US borders, particularly through Central America and Mexico, many with the aim of reuniting with family members residing in the US.

The restriction of Cuban immigration is of a piece with Obama’s anti-immigrant policies that have earned him the moniker of “deporter-in-chief” in immigrant communities. Obama’s statement ominously notes, “By taking this step, we are treating Cuban migrants the same way we treat migrants from other countries.” In other words, Cubans will now be subject to the same monstrous policies as other immigrants and refugees, which have seen around three million deported since 2008 and hundreds of thousands per year incarcerated in a vast network of over 200 detention centers.

Although Cubans will formally be able to apply for humanitarian asylum, as is the case with refugees from other countries, this is notoriously hard to prove. Additionally, once detained by immigration authorities, immigrants—even children—are routinely denied adequate legal representation.

Obama has created a system that can be seamlessly taken over by Donald Trump, who has promised to vastly expand the scale of deportations. In fact, though Trump has criticized Obama’s normalization of relations with Cuba, it is precisely because of its anti-immigrant stance that Trump is unlikely to reverse this latest measure by his predecessor.

For decades, US immigration policy provided preferential treatment to Cuban immigrants as part of Washington’s protracted campaign to undermine the Cuban government and as a means by both major parties to curry favor with the right-wing Cuban lobby in Miami. This policy grated particularly upon immigrants from Central America and Haiti, who have been summarily sent back to countries where they face real threats of persecution.

Nonetheless, there is nothing progressive in the Obama administration’s decision to now subject Cubans to the same terrible conditions facing other immigrants and refugees. The policy of the working class must be to uphold the rights of workers to live where they choose.

Unanimous US Supreme Court insists on broad immunity for police

Tom Carter

On January 9, the US Supreme Court issued a unanimous summary ruling reversing a decision by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and upholding qualified immunity for a police officer who shot and killed Samuel Pauly in an attempt to investigate a traffic incident near Santa Fe, New Mexico in October 2011.

Prior to the shooting, Samuel’s brother Daniel was involved in a non-violent road-rage incident in which he stopped his car and confronted two women who he claimed had been tailgating him. Daniel subsequently drove home, where he lived with Samuel. Samuel was at home playing video games and had not been involved in the confrontation. Meanwhile, the occupants of the other vehicle called the police, who were able to locate the house where the brothers lived.

At that point, no crime had been committed and there was no legal justification to arrest anyone or to enter or search any house. While the frequency of “road-rage” incidents is not a healthy sign, they do constitute a fairly common occurrence in American social life.

According to Daniel, when two police officers arrived at the brothers’ house they failed to identify themselves. Not realizing that it was the police, and believing that they were being burglarized, the brothers armed themselves with weapons. The brothers warned, “We have guns!” The encounter escalated and there was an exchange of gunfire in which no one was struck. Then a third officer arrived and, without warning, shot Samuel dead.

The phrase “qualified immunity” refers to a judge-made doctrine that has no basis in the text of the US Constitution, notwithstanding the claims by various Supreme Court justices to be handing down the Constitution’s “original” meaning. In recent decades, this doctrine has quietly been built up to huge proportions within the judicial system, largely without significant media commentary or public discussion. It now plays an important role in blocking civil rights cases and encouraging the ongoing epidemic of police brutality.

According to this authoritarian and anti-democratic doctrine, a judge can unilaterally decide a case in favor of a police officer—even if the officer’s conduct violated the Constitution—if the judge determines that the police officer acted “reasonably” in light of previous Supreme Court decisions. If qualified immunity is awarded to the police officer, the case can be thrown out of court, never going before a jury, and costs can be imposed against the victim or the victim’s survivors.

During American election campaigns, it is often claimed by liberal commentators that the election of a Democratic president is necessary to ensure that the Supreme Court is not stacked with ultra-right judges. The fact that the decision in the Pauly case was unanimous highlights the role of both official parties and the judiciary as a whole in the abrogation of democratic rights and the drive towards a police state.

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to award immunity to the officers, instead opting to let a jury decide whether their conduct was appropriate. The Supreme Court reversed that decision in an unsigned eight-page opinion joined by all of the sitting justices, including Obama appointees Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. While the court normally has nine justices, the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia last year has not yet been filled.

The text of the Supreme Court’s opinion underscores the stunningly irrational character of the doctrine of qualified immunity as it is applied in practice. The Supreme Court held that the officer who killed Samuel “did not violate clearly established law” because “existing precedent” had not “placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.”

In other words, there had not been a nearly identical case decided against a police officer in the past, so the conduct of the officer in this case could not be the subject of a lawsuit. However, since the doctrine of qualified immunity prevents this case from being decided on the merits, the Supreme Court’s Kafkaesque logic ensures that the outcome will be the same in every future case.

Moreover, the Pauly case has far more sinister implications then might be apparent from the facts of this particular case. In the written opinion, the justices went out of their way to complain that the lower courts were not granting qualified immunity to police officers often enough.

The justices noted bitterly, “In the last five years, this Court has issued a number of opinions reversing federal courts in qualified immunity cases.” In other words, while the Supreme Court has been routinely granting immunity to police officers, some lower federal courts have not kept pace. The Supreme Court is signaling the lower courts that they must fall into line.

With the full support of the Obama administration, the Supreme Court over the past five years has routinely insisted on broad immunity for police officers in civil rights lawsuits based on police misconduct. In its May 2014 decision in the case of Plumhoff v. Rickard, the Supreme Court—once again unanimously—awarded immunity to three Arkansas police officers who fired 15 bullets at two unarmed people who were trying to escape in a car. Both the driver and the passenger were killed.

In November 2015, the Supreme Court granted qualified immunity in the case of a Texas trooper who climbed on an overpass and used a rifle to assassinate a motorist who was being pursued by other officers, even after his supervisor told him not to do it.

After killing his victim, the Texas trooper boasted, “How’s that for proactive?”

In its decision last week in the Pauly case, the unanimous Supreme Court emphasized the significance of the doctrine of qualified immunity, writing, “The Court has found [that] qualified immunity is important to society as a whole.”

While more than 1,050 people were killed by the police in America in 2016, the unanimous Supreme Court thinks it is “important to society” for the federal courts to ensure that more police officers enjoy immunity from legal actions that base themselves on fundamental democratic rights.

Nepal-China military exercises: Another sign of rising geo-political rivalry

W.A. Sunil 

Nepal’s joint military exercises with China, announced in December, underscore the strategic rivalry in South Asia between Beijing and New Delhi. The drill, known as Pratikar 1 and scheduled for February 10, will be the first such exercise with China. Its stated aim is to deal with “hostage situations involving international terrorist groups.”

The planned exercise is relatively minor compared to India’s long-standing military relations with Nepal and history of joint exercises. India has been the largest supplier of arms to the Nepalese army and under the 1950 Treaty between the two countries has virtual veto power over Nepal’s purchase of military hardware from other countries.

Nevertheless, India fears any loosening of its grip over Nepal. While India’s State Minister for External Affairs V. K. Singh has said that the drill “would not create any rift” in relations between India and Nepal, the Indian media and strategic commentators have expressed concerns.

New Delhi-based strategic analyst Jayadeva Ranade told Voice of America: “Any increased Chinese presence in Nepal brings China right up to [India’s] border, which is very porous.” He added: “We [India] look at Nepal as part of our strategic space, so there is a bit of a contest taking place.”

Similarly, a senior researcher at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Anuradha Rai, wrote in the Eurasia Review on January 4: “China is looking much beyond its trade relations and it is eyeing Nepal as a centre to promote its ambitions in the South Asian region…

“The situation is getting worrisome for India because from mere words in the past, Nepal has now started to develop its economic and political ties with China. In the recent past, China has also showed similar eagerness to provide an alternative to India for Nepal by providing new trade routes and developing its strategic ties. The recent development to have joint military exercises is one such measure.”

Attempting to assuage Indian concerns, Nepal’s ambassador to India, Deep Upadhyay, told the media that the drills would be “small scale.” He added: “There’s really not much in it. Whichever way you look at it, Nepal has a special relationship with India and that’s not going to change because of any such exercise.”

China’s state-owned Global Times dismissed Indian concerns, writing: “Indian officials, media and academic circles should not read too much into the two countries’ security cooperation. It will only enhance the bilateral relations. India should understand and adapt to this trend.”

These developments are taking place amid sharpening geo-political tensions in the region, exacerbated by US efforts to isolate China diplomatically and encircle it militarily. President-elect Donald Trump has already made clear that he will intensify the confrontation with Beijing that began with the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia.” The US regards India as central to its drive against China.

India, under the current government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has been rapidly developing closer military-strategic ties with the US. India is also seeking to expand its own strategic influence throughout South Asia and the broader Asia region, further heightening tensions, particularly with its longstanding rival, Pakistan, which has close relations with China.

India is planning to deploy a 90,000-strong Mountain Strike Force along its disputed northern border with China—a move that can only generate greater friction with Beijing.

Nepal, which borders both China and India, has become a major arena for growing strategic competition between New Delhi and Beijing. China has made a concerted effort to boost ties with Nepal, particularly since the ousting of King Gyanendra and the abolition of Nepalese monarchy in 2008.

Relations between India and Nepal became very strained after New Delhi’s support for protests by ethnic Madhesi parties in Nepal demanding greater autonomy, which became a de facto economic blockade of the land-locked country, including of vital energy supplies. The government led by Prime Minister K. P. Oli turned to China and signed a deal in October 2015 to import Chinese petroleum products.

Beijing took advantage of Nepal’s standoff with India to strengthen ties with offers of financial aid. Oli made a week-long official visit to China in March 2016 where he signed 10 separate deals which increased the number of transit points between the two countries, improved road and rail connectivity and provided for building a new international airport at Pokhara. In doing so, Nepal reduced its dependence on India and facilitated Nepalese exports and imports.

Military relations also developed. In the same month, General Fang Fenghui, a member of China’s Central Military Commission declared that China was “willing to expand bilateral defense and security cooperation, strengthen strategic communication and exchange at all levels between militaries of the two countries.”

Oli was ousted last July in a regime-change operation backed by New Delhi because of his increasing tilt towards Beijing. On coming to power, Maoist leader K.P. Dahal announced that his government would maintain a balance between India and China. He sent a special envoy to both India and China to explain his attitude.

However, Dahal made his first visit to India for the purpose of mending damaged relationships and, in early November, Indian President Pranab Mukherjee visited Nepal—the first by an Indian president in 18 years. After the visit and delays in implementing the deals signed with China by Oli’s government, Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed Beijing’s displeasure by cancelling his planned trip to Nepal in October.

China is working to boost its influence in Nepal, mostly with offers of financial aid. In December, Beijing pledged a grant of one billion yuan ($US146 million) for post-earthquake reconstruction and road construction to the Chinese border.

While trying to balance between India and China, the Nepalese government appears to be tilting towards New Delhi and Washington. Maoist Prime Minister Dahal “heartily congratulated” Trump on his election victory even as Trump indicated his determination to confront China diplomatically, economically through trade war measures, and militarily.

Parliamentary crisis in Poland deepens amid US troop deployment

Clara Weiss

Amid the deployment of 3,500 US troops to Eastern Poland, which marks an open escalation of the preparations for war against Russia, the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) is continuing its offensive to undermine the parliament as an institution and build up a dictatorial regime.

Last Thursday, delegates of the liberal opposition parties Civic Platform (PO) and .Nowoczesna (Modern) ended their nearly one-month long sit-in protest in the plenary home of the Polish parliament (Sejm).

Their protest had started on December 16, when tens of thousands of people protested under the leadership of the liberal opposition against a planned bill that would restrict the access of media to parliamentary sessions. Several delegates of the opposition in the Sejm supported the protests by occupying the lectern.

In response, the Marshal of the Sejm, Marek Kuchciński, who is responsible for directing and organising sessions, moved a planned session for the vote on the state budget for 2017 to another hall, with both journalists and opposition delegates banned from the session. This effectively stripped the body of the Sejm of its fundamental right to determine the state budget.

The leadership of the opposition movement, KOD (Committee for the Defence of Democracy) reacted by calling for a blockade of the Sejm, which lasted into the morning hours of December 17, when it was broken up violently by the police. Since then, about a dozen opposition delegates continued their protest in the plenary room. When they announced the end of their protest action, only 6 percent of the population indicated in polls that they would still support it.

While PiS has at least for now withdrawn the bill on limiting the media access to parliamentary sessions, the government has flat-out rejected the demand of the opposition to hold another session for voting on the state budget of 2017. Media reports also suggest that the minutes of the session held December 16 were falsified in order to make the vote look legitimate.

Jarosław Kaczyński, the head of PiS, ridiculed the opposition’s demand for the Marshal of the Sejm to be dismissed and replaced as “irrational, if not cabaret-like”. He announced that PiS will consider changing the regulations for conduct in the Sejm, so as to make both a blockade and a sit-in protest impossible in the future. He also declared that criminal charges might be pressed against the delegates involved in the sit-in protest.

Moreover, in an ominous signal of his intention to build up a dictatorial regime, Kaczyński remarked during a speech he held before the Presidential Palace that “the day will come when Poland will once and for all free itself of all that, of the sickness that we see here. And no shouts, no screams, no sirens will change that. Poland will be victorious against its enemies, against the traitors.”

The Marshal of the Sejm has moved the next regular session of the parliament to January 25 with no votes on major policy issues scheduled.

The reaction of PiS to the parliamentary crisis makes clear that the party is now determined to press ahead full speed with the buildup of an authoritarian state. After the virtual paralysis of the Constitutional Court as a functioning and independent body, the impending elimination of the Sejm as a more or less functioning body would mean the total abolition of the division of powers in Poland, effectively placing the judiciary and the legislative in the hands of the government.

This marks the temporary culmination of more than a year of the rapid dismantling of bourgeois democratic rights and institutions that began in the fall of 2015. It includes:

· The take-over of the secret services by the government right after the parliamentary elections in 2015;

· The paralysis of the Constitutional Court for about a year and then a rapid reversal of its administration in December 2016, effectively placing it under government control;

· The institution of government control over state television and radio stations in December 2015, which entailed, in only the first few weeks, the dismissal of over 60 reporters and journalists;

· A law changing the criteria for admission to the police, which ensures that both the head of the police and individual policemen can be dismissed and replaced if their political views and behaviour is deemed incorrect by the government, also in December 2015;

· The placement of the office of the state prosecutor under the supervision of Ministry of Justice in early 2016;

· A new “anti-terrorism” law from the spring of 2016 allowing for the banning of public meetings under conditions of heightened alleged terrorist alert, as well as a massive extension of domestic spying, the expulsion of foreign citizens and arrests without trial;

· The creation and arming of a parliamentary militia that heavily draws from far-right forces and will be integrated into the Polish state as part of the preparations for war with Russia and a potential domestic civil war.

In addition, PiS has extended its already close ties to the Catholic Church, culminating in the proclamation of Jesus Christ as the “King of Poland” by President Andrzej Duda and the Polish Bishops in November 2016.

Behind the aggressive moves of PiS against the Sejm lies an increasing nervousness in the Polish bourgeoisie about the prospects of a reversal of US-foreign policy under a Trump administration and the prospect of the eruption of violent class conflicts in Poland and internationally. The conclusion PiS has drawn from the breakdown of the post-war order and the increasing social crisis in Poland and Europe as a whole, is that it has to prepare with whatever means necessary for the waging of war on two fronts: abroad, chiefly and foremost against Russia, and at home against the working class.

The parliamentary crisis in Poland coincides with the arrival of thousands of US troops to the eastern part of the country in what is the first stationing of US troops in Poland since 1989, right at Russia’s doorstep.

The first 2,700 out of the 3,500 troops planned were officially welcomed in a ceremony in the town of Żagań on Saturday by the defence minister. Shortly before that, the Polish senate had approved a plan to increase defence expenditures in 2017 by 3.4 percent, after an increase of 9.3 percent in 2016.

Both the increase in defence expenditures and the deployment of US troops put Poland, which has suffered tremendously from the past two world wars, at the forefront of a possible military conflict of the US with Russia. Nevertheless, no public debate is taking place on the question of war in Poland, with the liberal opposition welcoming and endorsing both the US troop deployment and the massive increase in defence expenditures.

It is in this context that the political prostration of the liberal opposition in the face of the buildup of an authoritarian police state by PiS needs to be understood.

Remarkably, the elimination of the Sejm as a constitutive political body in Poland has been taken basically as an all but established fact by the liberal opposition media.

In the lead article of the current issue of the liberal Polityka, the well-known commentator Rafał Kalukin provided a fairly critical summary of the evolution of the Sejm since 1989 and argued that “the main trump of the opposition has become the ability to block changes in the constitution.” Of course, this “ability” disappears with the elimination of both the Sejm and the Constitutional Court as bodies of influence.

Kalukin concludes his article with a gloomy rhetorical question, basically indicating that nothing can be done about the rise of authoritarian regimes and right-wing politics internationally: “Perhaps the [good] weather for democratic liberals and other legalists is conclusively ending and the world is entering a new epoch?”

The political impotence of the liberal opposition is rooted in its class position. It speaks for a section of the bourgeoisie and the upper-middle class that has tactical disagreements with PiS about the orientation of foreign policy—favouring closer collaboration with German imperialism and the EU. The liberal opposition also fears that the government’s policies will destabilise the country and decrease its significance on the international stage. However, just like PiS, it fears more than anything a mobilisation of the working class against the threat of dictatorship and war and the capitalist system from which they emerge.

US escalates Russia tensions on eve of Trump inauguration

Bill Van Auken

Over 300 US combat Marines arrived in Norway Monday as part of an increasingly provocative US-NATO buildup on Russia’s borders in the immediate run-up to Friday’s inauguration of Donald Trump as president.

The deployment, carried out under the pretext of training US Marines for combat in Arctic conditions, represents a radical break with nearly 70 years of Norway foreswearing the deployment of foreign troops on its soil in order to maintain peaceful relations with first the Soviet Union and then the Russian Federation.

As in Eastern Europe, Washington is maintaining the pretense that the deployment does not violate NATO’s pledge to Moscow in the run-up to the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the USSR that it would not permanently deploy “significant” combat forces near Russia’s borders. It accomplishes this by establishing a system of rotation in which the 330 Marines deployed Monday will be replaced by a different unit of the same size within six months.

The Marines will be joined in March by British troops for what has been dubbed “Joint Viking” exercises with the Norwegian military. The clear aim is to escalate military pressure from NATO’s northernmost border with Russia.

The deployment in Norway, which Marine Maj. Gen. Niel Nelson described as a demonstration by Washington to its allies of “our willingness to support and defend them and NATO,” is part of a far larger buildup against Russia, which over the weekend saw the deployment of some 4,000 troops, backed by tanks, artillery and armored cars, in Poland. These forces are to be stationed across seven Eastern European countries, including the former Soviet Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all of which share borders with Russia.

This larger deployment, which was set to take effect at the end of January, was speeded up with the apparent aim of having the troops in place before Friday’s inauguration as part of a bid to cut across Trump’s avowed intentions to make “some good deals with Russia.”

The stationing of US Marines on Norwegian territory has been prepared by a drastic realignment of Norwegian foreign and military policy under the right-wing government of President Erna Solberg.

Before joining NATO in 1949, Norway entered a so-called base agreement with Moscow pledging that it would not bring foreign troops to its military bases unless it faced an imminent threat or was attacked. Until now, the country has allowed the US and NATO to stockpile arms and ammunition in tunnels dug under the Norwegian mountains. In advance of the Marine deployment, these stockpiles have reportedly been beefed up with the latest weaponry.

In addition to allowing in the US Marines, the Norwegian government is deploying hundreds of additional troops to the Finnmark region bordering Russia in the country’s far north. “We do not consider Russia a direct threat to Norway today,” Norwegian Defense Ministry spokesman Audum Halvorsen told the British daily The Independent. “But we pay close attention to Russian military activity in the High North.”

In addition, the Norwegian government has reversed its earlier abstention from the bid by the US and NATO to establish a ballistic missile defense system surrounding Russia. Solberg’s government has indicated that it will now participate, including with the deployment of advanced radar systems near the Russian border and on Norwegian frigates close to the home base of Russia’s strategic submarines in the Murmansk region.

Moscow considers the anti-missile system part of a US attempt to create conditions in which it could limit any Russian response to a US nuclear strike.

With little more than two days until Trump takes office, the Obama administration continues to supplement the military provocations on Russia’s borders with a barrage of propaganda painting Moscow as a threat and an aggressor.

Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the United Nations and the standard-bearer for the Obama administration’s hypocritical policy of “human rights” imperialism, delivered what she described as her last speech in office to the Atlantic Council, a US-based think tank and unofficial arm of NATO, in which she described Russia as a “major threat” and “core threat” to the United States.

While heaping on the usual denunciations of Russia for “aggression” in Ukraine, “war crimes” in Syria, “hacking” and having “interfered in our presidential election,” Power insisted that Moscow’s alleged crimes went beyond “any particular actions” and were the product of a “broader strategy” of “weakening the rules-based order” imposed by Washington in the aftermath of World War II.

For his part, Joe Biden made his last foreign trip as US vice president to Ukraine in order to further escalate the war threats against Russia. Speaking in Kiev Tuesday, Biden affirmed that “the international community must continue to stand as one against Russian aggression and coercion.”

He praised the Obama administration for having “trained your national guard, conventional military forces, as well as special forces; helped you increase your readiness and make your force interoperable with NATO.”

Placing the entire blame for the conflict in eastern Ukraine on Moscow, he insisted that sanctions against Russia must remain in place. Toward the conclusion of his remarks, he warned, “This next year is going to be a very, very telling year—a very telling year.”

And finally, Obama spokesman Josh Earnest told a White House press conference that it appeared that Vladimir Putin was using the “talking points” of the “incoming administration.” The remark came in response to a speech in which Putin charged the incumbent administration with attempting to “delegitimize” the Trump presidency with false allegations.

Earnest went on to describe Trump as “deeply misguided” in criticizing the US intelligence agencies and, in particular, CIA Director John Brennan, who on Monday criticized Trump for lacking a “full appreciation of Russian capabilities, Russia’s intentions.”

“Particularly to call into question the integrity of somebody like John Brennan, somebody who has served at the CIA for three decades, somebody who has served the country in dangerous locations around the world to try to keep us safe. I'm offended by it,” Earnest said.

The bitter internecine struggles within the ruling establishment in the run-up to Trump’s inauguration express deep divisions over strategic aims. While the US intelligence agencies and the Obama administration are demanding a continuation and intensification of the military buildup against Russia, employing neo-McCarthyite rhetoric to counter any opposition, the incoming Trump administration has indicated its intention to shift toward a more direct confrontation with China. Both policies threaten humanity with the prospect of nuclear war.

Chelsea Manning sentence commuted after seven years of brutal imprisonment

Patrick Martin

President Obama commuted the 35-year prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the military intelligence analyst who made public evidence of US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, allowing Manning to go free on May 17, after completing over seven years in prison.

Army Pfc Bradley Manning was arrested by the Army in 2010 after he turned over military and State Department files to WikiLeaks. Manning had copied hundreds of thousands of internal Army “incident logs” describing US soldiers’ experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, which proved that civilian deaths were far higher than reported. This material included the video of an American helicopter attack on civilians in Baghdad in which 16 people were gunned down, including two Reuters journalists. WikiLeaks published the video on the Internet with the title “Collateral Murder.”

Manning also provided WikiLeaks with some 250,000 diplomatic cables from American embassies around the world, which exposed official US lying, efforts to subvert governments, and dossiers on the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, showing most of them had no significant role in terrorist operations.

Manning always maintained that her goal was to inform the American public about the criminal actions being carried out by US military forces in their name. She pleaded guilty to 20 of 22 charges in August 2013 and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. After the trial, Manning announced that she was transgendered and took the name Chelsea Manning. She said she was seeking hormone therapy and requesting gender reassignment surgery, which the Army has repeatedly denied.

The prosecution and horrific treatment of Manning is itself a crime, for which the US military and the Obama administration are responsible. The commutation of her sentence raises the obvious issue of why the media and the entire political establishment, including the Obama administration, continue to witch-hunt and persecute Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, and Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower now in forced exile in Russia.

While Manning has spent seven years in prison for her courageous anti-war action, not a single person has been arrested, charged or jailed for any of the crimes documented in the material published by WikiLeaks, let alone any of the higher-ranking war criminals, right up to George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Manning’s treatment since her arrest, in both military detention cells and in Leavenworth Prison, has been nothing short of torture. After her initial arrest, Manning was held in solitary confinement for nearly a year and a half, 23 hours a day, and for much of that time stripped naked as a “security” measure.

Her 35-year sentence is 10 times the longest previous punishment imposed on any federal employee, military or civilian, for leaking classified information. It is in line with the Obama administration’s crackdown on whistleblowers, including the prosecution of more individuals under the Espionage Act than all previous administrations combined.

After conviction and sentencing, Manning was sent to the men’s prison where she was repeatedly targeted for brutal treatment because of her actions as a whistleblower and her status as transgendered. Manning has been experiencing extreme psychological and mental stress because of the Army’s continued refusal to provide for surgery to complete her transition to female, and she attempted suicide on two occasions in 2016.

Last Friday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest sent a signal of the possible commutation, telling a press briefing that there was a sharp distinction between the cases of Chelsea Manning and Snowden (more than 1 million people have signed a petition seeking a full pardon for the former NSA contractor, who exposed massive illegal spying by the US agency in 2013, and is now in exile in Russia).

Earnest said that since Manning had been convicted and sentenced in a legal proceeding, and had formally petitioned for clemency, she could be considered for clemency. There had been no judicial process for Snowden, who “should return to the United States and face the serious crimes that with which he’s been charged,” he said.

There are likely several considerations in Obama’s decision to commute Manning’s sentence, none of them having to do with humanitarian feelings about her torture in prison and suicide attempts. First and foremost, the commutation will be used for cynical political purposes to boost the standing of the Democratic Party—and refurbish Obama’s image—among young people, the LGBT community, and those opposed to the ongoing US wars in the Middle East.

The commutation will be used for that purpose by liberal and pseudo-left apologists for Obama, although the action only puts an end to one of the many crimes of which the Obama administration is guilty, and only after it has gone on for more than seven years. Moreover, by commuting Manning’s sentence rather than granting a full pardon, the precedent of her conviction remains on the books, as well as the savage sentence of a nearly lifetime term.

There was undoubtedly also concern in the military over the likelihood of Manning’s death, either by suicide or brutal mistreatment at Leavenworth, and the public scandal that would result. There has also been disquiet in the ranks over the double standard as it applies to high-ranking officers, like General David Petraeus, in contrast to privates like Manning. Petraeus received a slap on the wrist for deliberately conveying top secret information to his mistress and biographer, while rank-and-file soldiers have received sentences of several years in prison for less severe breaches of security rules.

It is noteworthy that in the same document that announced the commutation of Manning’s sentence, Obama issued a full pardon to General James Cartwright, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who pleaded guilty last October to lying to federal agents investigating a leak about the US cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear program.

The language of the commutation appears to rule out any future legal proceeding against Manning in either civilian or military courts, since it covers all 20 charges for which she was convicted and sentenced. Neither incoming President Donald Trump nor the Republican-controlled Congress has the legal power to overturn the commutation.

Congressional Republicans and some Democrats denounced the commutation as a reward for a “traitor,” essentially declaring that Manning should have been kept in prison until 2045, when she would be 57 years old.

Obama made one other politically controversial act of executive clemency, commuting the sentence of 74-year-old Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar Lopez Rivera, who has been in prison since 1981, more than 35 years. Lopez was a member of the Armed Forces of National Liberation, a nationalist group, influenced by Maoism, which carried out a series of bombings in US cities in the 1970s and 1980s. Six people were killed in these bombings, but Lopez was not directly linked to any of the deaths, and all those convicted of actual murders have been paroled or otherwise released.

Lopez refused a conditional commutation from President Bill Clinton in 2001, serving another 16 years in prison because he would not renounce the struggle for Puerto Rican independence. His attorney indicated that he would accept the commutation from Obama.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May pledges hard Brexit, threatens trade war

Chris Marsden

In a speech at Lancaster House Tuesday, UK Prime Minister Theresa May all but threatened economic warfare against Europe if the UK is not granted unlimited access to European markets after it exits the European Union.

May’s aggressive posture is bound up with efforts to forge an economic and political alliance with the incoming administration of Donald Trump in the United States. Only May’s readiness to act as a bludgeon on behalf of Washington against the EU, and particularly against Germany, can account for the combative stand she is taking prior to triggering Brexit by invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.

May’s Lancaster House speech is a marker for gauging the extent of the breakdown in inter-imperialist relations both within Europe and between Europe and America. It came one day after an interview given by Trump jointly to Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times and the German Bild newspaper in which the US president-elect stated that Brexit “is going to end up being a great thing.” The EU was “basically a vehicle for Germany,” he added.

Speaking on Tuesday, the same day as May’s aggressive speech, British Chancellor Philip Hammond told the Die Welt Economic Summit in Germany that if Britain’s demands were not met, “[W]e will have to change our model to regain competitiveness. And you can be sure we will do whatever we have to do.”

Britain’s Daily Telegraph editorialised Tuesday that “the UK can go it alone and succeed” if it makes “a promise” of Hammond’s threat to make Britain “a magnet for international business by emulating Donald Trump’s expected deep cuts in US corporation tax and junking European regulation.”

The Spectator reported that Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has been working with the “Trump team” on the outlines of a US/UK trade deal to be “pencilled in before the UK leaves the EU...”

Feeling the wind in her sails, May began her speech with platitudes stressing Britain’s desire for friendly and mutually beneficial trading relations with the UK’s “best friend and neighbour.” Though “many fear” that Brexit “might herald the beginning of a greater unravelling of the EU,” she added, “it would not be in the best interests of Britain.”

Nevertheless, she said, the UK was leaving the EU, the Single Market and the Customs Union in order to strike free trade agreements with other countries, including vital markets such as China. There could not be continued membership of the Single Market, as urged by powerful sections of UK business, because this would mean accepting free movement of EU labour.

May went on to detail the extraordinary demands the UK would be making. They included a free trade agreement with the EU that would not cut across signing trade agreements with other countries. Referencing a comment by President Obama on the eve of the Brexit vote warning of potential damage to Britain’s economic relations with the US, May boasted, “President-elect Trump has said Britain is not ‘at the back of the queue’ for a trade deal with the United States, the world’s biggest economy, but front of the line.”

She added that the UK would not remain a member of the EU Customs Union but would still want “tariff-free trade with Europe.”

To back up her demands, May stressed the UK’s military/security role in Europe. She declared, “Britain and France are Europe’s only two nuclear powers. We are the only two European countries with permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council, with servicemen and women based in European countries including Estonia, Poland and Romania.”

Then came threats of economic retaliation. Noting that “there are some voices calling for a punitive deal that punishes Britain and discourages other countries from taking the same path,” May warned that this “would be an act of calamitous self-harm for the countries of Europe.”

Excluded from access to the Single Market, the British government “would be free to change the basis of Britain’s economic model.” It could set the “competitive tax rates” and “embrace the policies that would attract the world’s best companies and biggest investors to Britain.”

For the EU, it would mean “new barriers to trade with one of the biggest economies in the world,” threatening half a trillion pounds of European investments, £290 billion in EU exports to Britain and even “a loss of access for European firms to the financial services of the City of London.”

May and Hammond’s economic model for post-Brexit Britain is, in reality, not dependent on whether or not the EU grants concessions. The government has stated its intention to lower corporation tax to 17 percent by 2020 as part of its plan to “complete the Thatcher revolution” through wholesale deregulation, tax cuts, privatisations and the elimination of what remains of the welfare state. This is a perspective for escalating trade war, combined with an ever sharper turn towards militarism.

The focus for such an economic offensive might initially be Europe, but May claims that on this basis the UK will “embrace the world.” This is delusional. Trump has expressed consistent hostility to China, the country cited by May as the main prize in the turn “out of Europe and into the world.” Even as she spoke, China’s President Xi Jinping was warning the World Economic Forum in Davos, in response to Trump’s threats, that “no one would emerge as a winner in a global trade war.”

Neither is the UK itself free from an eruption of national tensions. One of May’s 12 pledges was to “Strengthen the Union,” but it was made under conditions where First Minister Nicola Sturgeon of the Scottish National Party (SNP) has repeatedly threatened a second independence referendum, citing the threat to Scottish business interests posed by Brexit.

Immediately after May’s speech, the Scottish parliament passed an SNP motion stating that “in the event that the UK government opts to leave the Single Market, alternative approaches within the UK should be sought that would enable Scotland to retain its place within the Single Market and the devolution of necessary powers to the Scottish Parliament.”

Moreover, May had to appeal for a “spirit of unity” in upcoming Northern Ireland Assembly elections that will pit the pro-EU Sinn Fein against the pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party, and she felt obliged to promise to maintain the Common Travel Area with the Republic of Ireland to counter warnings of a “hard border” between north and south.

May’s speech was above all a declaration of class war, as working people will be made to pay for Hammond’s pledge to “do whatever is needed” to restore competitiveness.

She peppered her speech with rhetoric about building “a fairer Britain” for “everyone who lives and works in this country.” But only in order to promise to “control immigration”—blaming migrants for every social ill inflicted on the working class by her government and previous ones.

The Tories’ real attitude to working people is expressed in demands raised this week by 50 MPs for banning strikes that affect essential services and are deemed not “reasonable and proportionate.” If the government has not yet resorted to such measures, it is only because they can rely on the trade union bureaucracy to police and betray workers’ struggles, as demonstrated by the decision that same day by the Aslef drivers’ union to suspend a planned three-day strike against Southern Rail.

May pledged a “smooth, orderly Brexit,” even as she warned the media and opposition parties that demands to know “details of our negotiating strategy” would mean not “acting in the national interest.”

With the Supreme Court expected to rule this month that the triggering of Article 50 must be debated in parliament, May promised a parliamentary vote and on the eventual Brexit deal, to be struck by 2019, while warning her opponents not to block the implementation of the referendum result. This led to a pledge on Sky News from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn that “We have said all along that we will not block Article 50.”

He focused the rest of his remarks on expressing concerns over European “market access” and stressing that there was “a case for regulation of the labour market”—a demand posed by Corbyn’s trade union backers exclusively in terms of combating the impact of migrant labour on wages.