Home Office bungling, US election, Labour sell outs: This week’s reader comments

Welcome to openDemocracy’s weekly reader comments round-up. We receive so many carefully considered messages about our work, it seems a shame to keep them to ourselves!

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These comments have been edited for clarity, accuracy and length, and aren’t necessarily a reflection of openDemocracy's editorial position.

Re: US voters want change, Biden’s exit hasn’t fixed that

The answer lies in socialist policies that assert the rights for everybody of housing, education, health, jobs, communications, also the right to a future in a warming world. Centrists won’t offer this, partly because they are timid about being elected but also because they are under the sway of the big corporations and interests to whom such policies are anathema. Overlaid on this is a media owned by capital that posits the lies of the fascists.

Both Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and Bernie Sanders in the US did offer this, but Corbyn at least was destroyed – partly by his own party. Emmanuel Macron’s treatment of the left in France after the recent election is much the same. Unless the centre, which does stand the chance of election in our faltering democracies, can adopt social democratic policies and take steps to tackle inequality and climate change and media ownership – the fascist right cannot be countered. –Malcolm Adkins

You have had the option of change. Bernie Sanders and Marianne Willamson among others, but you keep going back to the same old comfortable money grabbers. –Expendable redshirt

I can understand that US voters want change. But it seems obvious that, if elected, Donald Trump will unite the country, finish the divisive politics and end the lack of trust in US politics. He will certainly do this by introducing a dictatorship that will crush all dissent, ending the need for trust by replacing it with fear. Trump is the unity vote, but it comes with a terrible price, which his opponents are not explaining. –Tristram Hicks

Read the original article here.

Re: Government fails to monitor firms with £4bn contracts to house asylum seekers

The article on asylum housing is excellent and so welcome. It is a huge scandal that getting complaints heard or any redress for appalling housing has been so frustrating and often impossible. –Tina Wallace

Great piece. But is anyone the least bit surprised? The level of gross incompetence is appalling but is anyone ever challenged let alone held accountable? This, plus the delays on processing have allowed the topic to dominate political agendas and create a generally febrile atmosphere. Just as with the Post Office scandal, the Grenfell Tower fire and the Covid issues, we’ll probably have to wait decades for any outcome and the whole exercise of investigating is proving virtually irrelevant. The acceptance of profiteering, incompetence and corruption never ceases to amaze me. –Patricia

Read the original article here.

Re: Will Labour tackle the climate crisis?

Given the importance of the GMB union and its leadership to the finances of the Labour Party, any significant moves by Labour away from the fossil nuclear nexus will be resisted aggressively. Labour talks about a ‘just transition’ but the GMB seemingly wants no change; no change to the energy generation because of the inconvenience of retraining for its members and no change to the UK's stance on nuclear weapons – with thousands of its members employed by the nuclear sector. On the latter, of course, it has achieved success; many billions of pounds will go towards replacing nuclear weapons, while the two billion pounds needed to end the two-child cap on benefits is ‘unaffordable’. –Alasdair Macdonald

Read the original article here.

Re: The army of private sector secondees who helped Labour win

This makes for seriously depressing reading. More of the same whilst the people lose out to Big Business, the war machine and more privatisation. –Ruthie

Read the original article here.