Elections

In November 2018, 92 year old Christine Jordan, a cousin of Martin Luther King and herself a veteran civil rights campaigner, went to in the election vote for Governor of Georgia. She went to the same polling station she had voted in since 1968, but ‘this time…they threw her out…they had no record of her’. She was not alone. Tens of thousands of would-be voters were turned away. How did this happen? Greg Palast has, among other things, been investigating voter fraud in the US for the past twenty years.

Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old African-American man, was shot seven times in the back in front of his children by a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on 23 August. The bullets wounded his arm and damaged his stomach, kidney and liver. He remains paralyzed in hospital. Three days later Milwaukee Bucks, a professional team in the National Basketball Association (NBA), were inspired to collective action and decided not to play, in protest at the attack. The move came as a surprise to the rest of the league.

After four years of his bigotry, racism, climate change denial and attacks on working-class people, is it really possible that Donald Trump could be reelected in November? To answer these questions, we have to understand the extent of political polarisation taking place in the US. In 2020 alone we have seen both the hope and horror that has defined the country at the heart of neoliberal capitalism. Let’s start with the horror. In California and Oregon wildfires have destroyed an area equivalent to the size of Wales.

The BNP won a total of 13 seats, seven of them in Burnley alone. In Sunderland none of its candidates were elected but the party won over 13,000 votes.

The political landscape of Scotland was transformed on 1 May, with the election of six Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) MSPs to the Scottish Parliament. In the face of Blair and New Labour across Britain, we cannot overestimate how important it is that a party that openly talks about socialism and is consistently anti-war has won mass support. Even the most reticent bourgeois commentators agree on that.