This loan shark says, make them pay, beat them until they pay everything, but don't beat them so hard that they can't keep paying.  That loan shark says, if you don't make an example of this one, the others won't respect you.  Beat them to death.  And it is between these two poles that the bankers, ratings agencies, and EU leaders oscillate.  

Earlier this week, Greek workers walked out on an impromptu general strike.  This was a moment of acute pressure applied to the 'technocratic' regime led by Lucas Papademos, as it struggled to agree austerity measures to satisfy Eurozone leaders, thus qualifying for bailouts that would satisfy the bankers and bond markets.  For a moment, it looked as if the government wouldn't reach agreement.  Eventually, the deputy minister for labour resigned in protest, and a package was agreed, in which the minimum wage was cut by 22% and a further 150,000 public sector jobs were cut.  Achieving this was a fraught affair, but it hardly concluded the matter.  Strikes and protests continued.  The bond markets didn't relent for a second in their punishing assault on Greek government debt, and lenders instantly conveyed their doubts.  More ministers resigned, this time from the extreme right LAOS.  The PASOK deputy foreign minister also departed, along with the minister for labour.  Papademos has been forced to announce a cabinet re-shuffle.  But so far, he and his subordinates have stuck with the EU's austerity demands loyally and doggedly, regardless of the immediate consequences.  And you would have thought that the EU's finance ministers would welcome this.  You would be wrong.

The Eurozone leaders reacted to the deal, to this complete capitulation signed on behalf of Greece by its unelected government, by dismissing the agreement and demanding more.  The actual amount of additional cuts they demanded is fairly piddling compared to the agreed total and, you would think, hardly worth scuppering an agreement for.  But the contempt conveyed by this gesture is jaw-dropping.  It goes without saying that they don't care if a fifth of Greek workers, and just under half of young Greek workers, are unemployed.  Knowing that the government is widely seen as a slave of external powers, European bankers, EU leaders, the ECB, and the IMF, they demanded further prostration from the Greek government and ruling class.  Knowing that the struggle against cuts in Greece is now suffused in the popular imagination with the national resistance to Mussolini's invading forces beginning in 1940, they opted to underline the sense of national humiliation.  Knowing that the left-of-PASOK parties could win any election called in the near future, they demanded the bourgeois parties add petrol to their own immolation.  Knowing that there is a volatile, violent mood, that the tempo of working class struggle is escalating, that strikes will continue over the weekend when the package is put to a vote, that more defections are on their way, and that the government may not survive for long, they smacked it down for following orders.  Knowing, aside from anything else, that the police federation is angrily claiming that it is not willing to keep a lid on popular anger, and that the head of the civil servants union is predicting a "social uprising", they've raised their two fingers and said 'bring it on'.

Of course, as I said, this wasn't necessarily a good idea on their terms.  The demand for more cuts has been like the proverbial straw, provoking aghast outrage from people who had otherwise signed up to the austerity agenda.  The government is falling to pieces.  The Torygraph thinks the EU is trying to drive Greece out of the Eurozone.  No.  The government will probably have enough supporters to force the deal through parliament, with the participation of the two major parties.  What the EU leaders stated very clearly when they rebuffed Papademos was that they expected Greece to comply, that in the future its treasury and ministerial budgets would be overseen by the EU, that the sell-off of assets would be accelerated, and that there would be renewed drive to enforce tax collection from people who cannot afford to pay in order to facilitate the ongoing transfer of wealth to the bankers.  What's happening, I suspect, is that the EU is keeping the screws turning until the very last minute, until they know that the Greek government will give just about anything to avoid a 'disorderly default'.  Yes, they've just made things harder for the government, and the class, that they expect to impose this on Greece.  But you have to understand it from their perspective. Greece, so they keep telling anyone who will listen, caused this crisis.  It could bring down the Eurozone.  They are very unhappy with the Greeks.  And so, unsurprisingly, they want the Greek ruling class to suffer a bit for its continued membership of the EU.  Meanwhile, Greece's neoliberal 'technocrats' insist on staying the course - yes, things are hard, says the arch-privatizer and former finance minister Stefanos Manos, but we need to do this, and in fact we need to do even more.  People just don't get it, but they must be made to.  This has been the dispensation in Greece, to greater or lesser degrees, since it belatedly embarked on its neoliberal turn in the 1990s.

Even so, the EU's rulers have probably over-played their hand by acting in such a provocative way.  The disintegration of the government, the warning noises from the police, the further shift to the left, and the signs of industrial escalation, are indicative that they may have gone too far.  Amid the second general strike in a single week, both called on very short notice and with considerable success, the chances of this government surviving to implement any package it can agree are shrinking fast.

I went to visit the Occupy London site at St Paul's today.  I went with the specific intention of getting people to talk to me about what their goals were, what the strategy was, and how they viewed the politics of the occupation.  To this end, I went round nabbing people for interviews, and eventually ended up talking to someone at the media tent.  Before delving into the politics of Occupy London, I want to describe what's involved in sustaining such an activity for those who aren't able to be there.

***

First of all, Paternoster Square, the original target of the occupation, is still sealed off by police.  The cops, though, have relaxed their position since Saturday  Apparently, they've been told to 'dress down', which means adopting a less confrontational approach.  So, a conurbation of dozens of tents has gathered around St Paul's cathedral.  Out front are tents and banners.  Along the side are a free food stand, a small generator powering 'media tech', a media centre where you can usually find someone to answer questions, an information point, a first aid area, a 'surplus' tent where people can donate useful goods, a place where people wash dishes, a space where people make signs, and a regular garbage collection service.  Since the police removed the toilet facilities on the pretext of 'cleaning' them, and did not replace them, the occupiers have had to send out teams to visit local businesses and work out arrangements with them.  All of this infrastructure is run by the occupiers.  It is actually a Herculean labour.  Some of the people working on the occupation are donating an hour here or there after work or between shifts, while some are there full-time.  There are constantly people milling around performing basic tasks, while others engage with the police or members of the public.  It's not unknown for well-heeled City workers to stop and vent their displeasure, before being drawn into very public debates.

Despite the emphasis on avoiding 'leadership' in the traditional sense, there is an elaborate division of labour involving working groups on every area of the work that needs to be done to keep the thing going.  These report back to the general assembly, which tends to be held at between 12-1pm and then again at 7pm each day.  I won't labour the details of process.  The principles of consensual ratification and decision-making are familiar enough by now.  Essentially, when asked to vote on a proposal, you can vote 'yes', 'no', or 'block'.  Only if someone 'blocks' a decision does a majority not result in a motion being passed.  This means that if someone has serious objections, their ideas or interests have to be taken into account somehow.  Of course, this is intended to frustrate the emergence of any kind of centralised leadership.  "We don't need another Scargill, or another Swampy, I was told.  We don't need another leader they can cut down."  At the moment, the swarm is prevailing over the vanguard.  Naturally, I'm sceptical of all this, but it's only fair to say that everyone I spoke to said it had worked quite well.  At any rate, the occupation is digging itself in somewhat and it seems to be well enough organised for present purposes.  

***

But where can Occupy London go?  I wanted to dip my toe in the water of the politics of the occupation, so I asked about the heterogenous political elements present, and what people thought was the dominant tendency.  There is an idea, which I heard a few times, that "this is not about left and right".  One person I spoke to said explicitly that it was not just a left-wing event, and explained that there were many present who wouldn't call themselves left-wing.  Strangely, this insistence sits alongside a set of classic left-wing ideological articulations.  Catherine at the media centre said that "these old ideas of political divisions are not necessarily relevant," before going on to add, "because this is about the 99%, this is about the have-nots, versus the have-yachts."

This emphasis on popular unity versus the extremely rich was a recurring theme.  Another person said that he didn't object to anyone earning £50,000 a year.  It was the top 1% concentrating the wealth among themselves; and even within that 1%, increasingly steep wealth gradations.  Worse than that, it's these people who "have an enormous amount of leverage over decision-making in government ... things are happening without consent, in democratic or so-called democratic countries."  One example given was the secret loans by the Federal Reserve to banks amounting to $1.1 trillion in 2008 which - whether justified on economic grounds or not - was conducted in an extremely undemocratic and secretive manner.  So it's the immense political power of centralised capital, especially financial capital, that is motivating this.

Catherine went on: "We're talking about the super-rich who meet in their little clubs and get to divvy up the world according to what suits them."  The apparent rejection of left-right divisions is congruent with a rejection of traditional party politics, "where you just have clientelism and self-serving elites and people who are just trying to make sure they've got a bigger slice of the pie."  This is perhaps one reason why you won't find left-wing stalls or newspaper sellers there - not necessarily because they've been banned, but because at the moment it's hard to know how they would be received: as welcome support, or as interlopers?  Yet, it doesn't come with a suspicion of trade unionism, as is the case in some continental occupations.  The outreach team is building up relations with trade unions and I understand that a delegation of the occupiers will visit a picket line at Blackfriars' station.  Trade unionists visited to speak to the occupation, and deliver leaflets about the 30th November strike, and were extremely well received.  The occupiers' first statement included support for the general strike and the students' action on 9th November.  Moreover, the demands of Occupy London are of a sort that anyone on the Left could embrace; few on the Right could. There is, naturally, a section of the Right that will share the occupiers' hostility to the banks and monopoly capital, but they will agree on nothing else.  My feeling is that the aspiration toward a popular bloc of the 99% against the uber rich is eventually going to prove chimerical.  But people will find that out in due course.

***

The next thing I wanted to know about was strategy.  I suppose this comes up partly because of the way the early demands juxtapose concrete proposals for meliorative reforms with declarative statements on the need to move beyond the present system - with no mediating steps between the two.  Given that the entrenched power of the top 1% is considerable, and that the friction they can muster to prevent the passage even of moderate reforms is not negligible, I just wanted to know what thoughts people were having about how to navigate toward that systemic alternative.  Generally, the answer is that it's too early to say what the long-term strategy will be: that's what we're here to find out.  "We're on day three," Catherine reminded me. "The whole point of consensus decision-making is that we don't know what the answer is, and that we have to come to that answer through a process which is inclusive, which is democratic".  The main goal at this point has been to "get the discussion started", another said.  There is a tremendous amount of confidence that the answers will emerge organically in the situation.  We're just getting step one finished; we'll work out steps two and three as we go.

This is related to the political indeterminacy of the movement thus far.  "What we have agreed," I was told, "is that the current system is not working and that it needs changed.  And we have some suggestions for that, which include that idea that we need regulators that are truly independent from the institutions which they regulate, that we need government that works for people not the corporations, and that we put people before profit."  I would say that this combines the social democratic impulse, with an anti-capitalist impulse.  Of course, the 'system' is not named: it could be capitalism, or it could be neoliberalism.  And many of the demands are certainly compatible with capitalism continuing to exist.  Objectively, though, the demand that the "world’s resources must go towards caring for people and the planet, not the military, corporate profits or the rich" is one that can only be realised outside of capitalist social relations.  So, it's a reformism radicalising in the direction of an anti-systemic stance.  The main thing for the occupiers is that whatever the precise manner in which that indeterminacy is resolved, they are creating a sort of working polis in which it can happen democratically.

Okay, I'm working very hard to dampen expectations about tomorrow's vote in parliament. So in that spirit, let's look briefly at why the government could lose, then explain why it won't. So far, the signs are that Labour, and all of the smaller parties, will oppose the rise in fees. It also looks as if twelve Tories, and maybe three others, are ready to either abstain or vote against, or don't know. If all twelve were to vote against the government, then we would need thirteen Liberal rebels to defeat the tuition fees policy. Now, there's a number of Liberals whom we can be fairly sure will oppose the government. Simon Hughes has now said he may be among them, but will "definitely" either abstain or vote against. In one light, it doesn't seem altogether implausible that just over a fifth of Liberal MPs will stick to their pre-election promises, and therefore the prospect of the government being defeated hoves tantalisingly into view.

However. Bear in mind that the number of Tory rebels will not be a dozen. Bear in mind also that any Liberal or Tory who votes against the government is effectively voting against the coalition. Because if the coalition can't agree and pass policies when it has a parliamentary majority, what is the point of it? To defeat the government at this early stage could be to force the issue of ongoing Liberal participation and lead to an early election. And how many Liberals will want to do that, and face the electorate at this miserable nadir? The line from party bosses in both the blue and yellow camps will be to hold the line, wait for the heat to die down, and watch the polls get better. They'll say the economy will turn around in the next five years, people will start to feel wealthier, and the coalition will get the credit for taking the tough decisions. They'll say the vote on AV is on its way, and if AV is passed then coalition politics becomes a permanent reality in Britain - thus potentially making the Liberals kingmakers, even if they are reduced to 10% of the vote. But if the coalition is defeated now, the bosses will say, there will be an election and the wipe-out will not spare the rebels. And I bet you the majority of undecideds in the Liberal camp, all the potential rebels and even abstainers, will be whipped into line by that prospect.

Our job will be to sustain this momentum, prove that there's no magical turnabout waiting if they just hold the line, and ultimately to make them fear us more than they fear the knuckle-crunchers and whip-crackers in the party machines.

By the way, if you haven't already worked this out by now, you should be following me on Twitter on a day like this, for regular pictures and snippets from the day's adventures. I will, of course, try to update the blog.

Spanish air traffic controllers engaged in a mass walkout this weekend after the government announced plans to partially privatise the service. The reforms would also see working conditions degraded, with longer working hours, less overtime pay, and less maternity leave. The government and the media have led a chorus of denunciation of air traffic controllers, hyping up the professional wages they receive for their work and focusing on the allegedly exorbitant salaries of a minority. The British press has simply echoed these claims. They have also tended to report the government's figures on the hours worked by controllers, without mentioning the markedly different figures given by the union, the Unión Sindical de Controladores Aéreos (USCA). It has not been mentioned either that the union has been open to negotiations on this, and that it's the government that has taken a hard line. Its partial-privatization measure was designed to sidetrack negotiations between the union and the nationalised employers, which had produced the basis for an agreement as far back as August.

But even leaving that to one side, the response to this strike is ominous for all of us. For the government, determined to crush the strike, declared a state of emergency and imposed martial law. And under martial law, the strikers could be subject to prison sentences for up to six years for sedition if they didn't return to work. Quelle surprise, the workers have felt compelled to return to work. In fact, just in case the threat of prison wasn't sufficient, the workers were actually rounded up by military escorts and marched back to work at gunpoint. This is not the first time that fascist-era legislation has been used against airport workers. But employers across the continent will be looking on in admiration and anticipation. BA, you can bet your last penny, would love to have muscle like this at its disposal. And we have to be attentive to this, because there are people in this country in prominent positions who would like to ban the right to strike for some of those groups of workers who are most likely to be on strike in the coming years - tube workers, firefighters, teachers, nurses, others at a pinch. The employers' offensive across Europe is being led by the state, and pushed through the state, and that gives it a potentially lethal edge. Don't take your eye off this.

The parliamentary vote on tuition fees is scheduled to take place on 9th December, folks. Roll up, roll up, come one, come all - that's the day to be on the streets raising hell. I spent the afternoon talking to the very pleasant and thoughtful students occupying at UEL. The sense that we can win it, that we're in it to win, not merely to protest, is palpable. We can break this government. Look at them retreating already. Lib Dems talking about 'abstaining' on a policy devised by their own government. Cable saying he will abstain for the sake of 'party unity' - as if he isn't scared of his party members finding a spine between them and chucking the Orange Book crowd out of the leadership. The government saying they will delay the introduction of changes to Housing Benefit. Look at Ed Miliband in the Evening Standard today, trying to hitch a ride on the back of the student protests.

This movement is already leading, forcing others to adapt, and leaving those who don't adapt eating the dust trails - and in its present form it's only a few weeks old. Imagine what it can do if it keeps growing, and keeps going. Imagine what it can do in coalition with the organised labour movement. And that's something to think about, by the way, if you're a public sector worker facing the sack. These students can shake things up this much in such a short space of time. They've shown that militancy, commitment, imagination and tactical flexibility can do wonders. Trade unions have operated cautiously, conservatively for some time, based on a pessimistic meta-induction from the outcome of the miners' strike, which says that the militancy never wins. But the workers have the power to bring this country to a standstill. The workers have the power to break this government if they want to. The workers have the power to put an end to a system that rewards bankers and spivs, and punishes the people that keep this country going.

As I understand it, the results for the Unite general secretary election were as follows:

Len McCluskey - 101,000
Jerry Hicks - 52,000
Les Bayliss - 46,000
Gail Cartmail - 39,000

This is, on the whole, a quite satisfactory result. I think it was understood from the nominations that McCluskey would succeed by a wide margin, and he does represent of the union bureaucracy that wants to resist the cuts, so this is a good outcome in Britain's biggest trade union - albeit with what looks like a low turnout. Better still is the fact that the socialist Jerry Hicks, wholly based in the rank and file, came a good second and beat the right-winger Les Bayliss. That's a good sized minority vote for the most uncompromising militancy. It's far better than I expected Jerry Hicks to do - not because I underestimate his qualities, but because of the difficulties any candidate outside the union bureaucracy would have in building a campaign. To defeat Les Bayliss, who does come from the bureaucracy, and was supported by former Amicus leader Derek Simpson, is not bad at all. If I had to guess, I'd say Bayliss' 46,000 votes came from some of the more conservative layers of craft workers from the old AEEU, one of the components that made up Amicus, now itself one half of Unite. Bear in mind that the AEEU once had the old reactionary Sir Ken Jackson - Tony Blair's "favourite union leader" - as its general secretary. Still, there's a clear majority here for a left-wing agenda of resistance to the cuts, which is a good omen.

The strike may be off, but negotiations are still ongoing. The commissioner has reneged on his commitment to negotiate on the basis of 13 hour night shifts and 11 hour days, instead insisting on 12 hour day shifts and 12 hour nights (click the 'firefighters' tab at the bottom for background). Brian Coleman has tried to use the strike as itself an excuse to introduce cuts, saying that the strike proved that the fire service could work perfectly well without the 27 fire appliances that were removed from service so that Assetco could use them during strike days. He's now instructing the fire authority to look into getting rid of those appliances and, apparently, 500 jobs with them. So, management is recalcitrant, despite the olive branch from the FBU leadership earlier this month. Today, firefighters showed that they aren't cowed, and they aren't backing down. After a packed rally in central London, hundreds of firefighters took to the streets and blockaded Downing Street. They didn't get to occupy, sadly, but I would take this as a sign that any loss of momentum caused by calling off the strike over bonfire night weekend has not dampened the confidence of the firefighters' combativity. Socialist Worker's report is here.

Students and lecturers have carried off a 52,000-strong demo against the cuts on a weekday, more than double the expected turnout. They've had a sit-down protest in parliament square, seen off riot cops, who apparently waded into the crowd only to be forced to wade back out again, and an estimated thousand have even occupied Tory HQ in Millbank. Socialist Worker has been carrying rolling live coverage all day, so I recommend you check in and check it out. If you ask me, that's the beginning of the fightback. It reminds me a bit of the anticapitalist demos in London at the turn of 2000s, in terms of its militancy, and the fact that it happened in the middle of the week - but it's actually much bigger than any of those protests was. I've been speaking at universities across the country, and have been told a few times that the student left is starting to rebuild itself. Of course, that's an easy impression to get when you're talking at Goldsmiths (currently in occupation), which has always had a sizeable left, but universities that haven't seen left-wing activism for yonks are said to be seeing a revival. And not a moment too soon, because if the Tories get their way then higher education is finished for millions of working class people. In fact, there are quite a few universities that won't even be around in a few years if the cuts aren't stopped.

The FBU leadership has called off its strike tomorrow. Mistakenly, I think. As the details have emerged, it's clear that management has actually moved a bit, delaying section 188 until January, and agreeing to better shift patterns as the basis for negotiations. Independent arbitration will be used. Of course it isn't legally binding on either party, but it's a backdown from the previous hard man posture that the pairing of Dobson and Coleman had adopted. However, as Socialist Worker argues, this just means the FBU could have won more. Ceding such a potent bargaining weapon - the withdrawal of labour at a time when it is in greatest public demand - looks like a serious error of judgment. The firefighters whom I know, and those whom I've seen arguing online, were initially very dejected by what they were hearing. There were fears of a repeat of the horrible sell-out of 2002. This was made worse when Brian Coleman, the despicable fire authority chief, was heard on LBC falsely claiming that the section 188 had not been put off, the deadline was still in place, and no concessions had been made. The fact that he would behave like this, lying through his teeth and knowing that firefighters are listening in to find out what the score is, tells you everything you need to know about the man. But the initial demoralisation is giving way to a cooler assessment. This dispute is going to go on for a while, but the fact that it is management who had to back off first is a sign that the union has the ability to win in the end.

First of all, it is not true that this dispute between firefighters and London Fire Brigade management has anything to do with a claim for a £10,000 increase in pay. From listening to some online chatter, it would seem that at one stage, very early on in the negotiations, the union reps mentioned this claim in a negotiating meeting as a joke, in response to some of management's more absurd demands. When the LFB responded "now you're being ridiculous", FBU reps responded "well, you fucking started it". Whether that is true or apocryphal, what is for certain is that there is no claim for a £10,000 pay increase at the centre of this dispute. So when the LFB management publicise such allegations to newspapers and encourage them to claim that firefighters are making an unreasonable pay claim (by some standards - in my opinion, they would be worth every penny), that is a sleazy and dishonest tactic of class war. And it is certainly LFB management and their Westminster overseers who are behind these claims. The editor of Finance Markets confirmed as much in this editorial intervention, where he reveals that a story written up for the online magazine repeating those claims was taken from a "propaganda release" from the Fire Minister Bob Neil. There has also been an embarrassing e-mail leak suggesting that their press department has been instructed to "unleash the forces of hell" on the FBU in the run-up to 5 November strike.

Secondly, it is not true that there is anything scandalous or 'greedy' about firefighters claiming London weighting while living outside of London. Such 'weighting' applies to where you work, not where you live, and the rules are the same for everyone. So, when the LFB management leaks the full home address of every firefighter to the tabloids in order to hound firefighters this is a sleazy, dishonest tactic of class war. Thirdly, it's not acceptable for LFB management to use comments made by firefighters on Facebook groups as grounds for suspension. But that is what has been happening, and it is a sleazy and dishonest tactic of class war. Parenthetically, one firefighters' support group with over 20,000 members disappeared from the social media site after comments made on the page were used by management against members. In addition, a number of individuals who were active on the group had their accounts deleted.

The use of smears, bullying and dirty tricks by LFB management should not surprise anyone that has followed the negotiations. Let's recall how we got here. First of all, there is an important distinction that is apt to be lost in this discussion. The dispute is about shift patterns and the threat of cuts to night-time cover, but the strike was prompted by management's bullying tactics, wherein they used a section 188 notice to threaten all workers with redundancy unless they accepted the new terms. Were it not for this threat, the strike would very probably not have been called, and the outcome would be determined solely by talks. But management pulled out their ace with the section 188, their last resort of coercion, and left the union with no choice but to strike. Such moves are taking place all over the country as part of the government's cuts agenda, as tens of thousands of council workers have been threatened with the same threat of redundancy unless they accept lower pay. This is a tactic of class war. It is designed to undermine the position of organised labour, and bully workers. It is designed, in short, to weaken the bargaining power of labour and restrict the consumption of the working class. In context, it is part of a package of political measures designed to transfer wealth from the working class to the ruling class, the financialised fraction of which stands to gain most in the immediate term. It is also part of a project aimed at fundamentally restructuring the political economy of British capitalism, such that the welfare state, trade unions, and other features of society that buttress labour's position are fundamentally weakened, and the power of the City, of the CBI and of entrenched business interests is fundamentally strengthened.

So, in the last analysis, they're smearing the firefighters as part of a wider project of redistributing class power. However, there is a more immediate reason for the smears. LFB are losing. They are losing big time, so comprehensively that it's almost laughable. The incompetence of the scab replacement firm, Assetco, has become nearly legendary. Destroying vehicles, letting houses burn to the ground, calling out striking firefighters to handle situations which they are just not trained or equipped to handle, are just a few examples of their last display. Assetco workers don't want to cross the picket lines, and Police Silver command are refusing to provide escorts for them. In fact, my understanding is that Assetco have made it plain that they are not in a position to cover the city during the upcoming 47 hour strike, they simply don't have the means or adequately trained staff. LFB management are panicking and, as a result, lashing out by all available means. They are desperate, on the backfoot, and - if the FBU stick to their guns - will have to back down and reach a serious, negotiated settlement with the union. I note that the NUJ are also out on strike on 5th November. Many RMT workers refused to work in unsafe conditions during the last strike, causing a complete shut-down on the Jubilee Line. It is fairly certain that the same will happen next week. Trade unionists from across London are rallying to the fire fighters, and undoubtedly watching the outcome. Whether the Tories hold the line with the FBU and the RMT will communicate something important to other trade unionists about the state of play. This is why it is vital that firefighters are not demoralised by the constant attacks of management and tabloids, nor swayed by the appeals for timidity from the liberal media. They can win, they have every right to win, and those supporting them need them to win.

ps: relatedly, I like Latte Labour's terse, tart and angry responses to David Allen Green on 'the ethics of strike action'. See Latte Labour here and here, and Green here and here.