When I was an ignorant young thing I was a very right wing libertarian. Let people compete, let the devil take the hindmost, I said.

At the time it didn't occur to me that women and children, the old and the sick, would be the hindmost and the devil did indeed take them.

I reversed the normal rule and became more and more left wing as time went on. It was clear years ago that capitalism was killing the planet.

For a while I thought that socialism was the answer - because it wasn't what we had, which was predatory capitalism.

No more. It's no good hankering after a politics which essentially died in 1989.

What we need to do, as fast as possible, is throw out the old two dimensional politics of Left and Right.

Honestly its day is done: socialism in 1989 when the Soviet Union collapsed and all the little socialist groupuscules in London went bankrupt because the money from Moscow (or Beijing) stopped coming. Including the Morning Star which was a good paper.

Capitalism keeps having near-death experiences and bouncing back: we haven't recovered from 2007/8 yet because the system was simply propped back up. Another crash is on its way, possibly as a result of covid19.

We need a brand new politics that keeps the benefits of real capitalism while also making sure that people live better lives, not constantly scrabbling for essentials like poor Americans.

We'll have to call it something different though.

And meanwhile, what are you doing to stop Trump from stealing the election?