Opinion

Two million people are living in an area of 365 square km, with only 5 percent portable, piped water and eight hours of electricity a day. This is merely the tip of the iceberg of just how bad living conditions are in Gaza today.

Around half of the population live below the poverty line (53 percent), youth unemployment is almost 70 percent and around three-fifths of households are severely or moderately food insecure (62 percent). The United Nations warned in 2012 that Gaza would be uninhabitable by 2020 unless basic services and conditions are improved.

To say 2020 was dramatic would be an understatement. The world situation has been completely transformed by the Covid-19 pandemic and the inadequacy of governmental and state responses. As we head into 2021 it feels like we are entering uncharted territory. To make specific predictions would be unwise. But the Covid-19 crisis raises fundamental questions about the nature of capitalism and how the left should organise.

I t has often been observed that the US vice-president is just a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. Constitutionally the post holds little power. Indeed one incumbent, John Nance Garner is reported to have described it as “not worth a bucket of warm spit”. Given the age and obvious infirmity of Biden, there is a very real possibility that Kamala Harris will be more than merely a ceremonial VP. Much has been made of the fact that she is the first woman and the first Asian-American to be elected to the post.

Politics in Britain at the end of the eighteenth century was described as the “Old Corruption”. The state was, at every level, in the hands of the great landowners and their allies. It was used to serve their interests, to protect their wealth and privilege, and they ruthlessly pillaged it to further enrich themselves. Place and position were wholly at their disposal. What made all this possible was the enormous scale of social and economic inequality. This Old Corruption came under sustained assault from a number of directions in the course of the nineteenth century.