Elections, taxing the rich and climate change. This is what I have been thinking about. And about the elections in Brazil and Germany. The era of Donald Trump, and the Andy Burnham bounce. Let me explain.

My starting point is that people vote their real lives. Charismatic leaders matter some. So do good policies and good political adverts. But not that much. 

Because when it comes down it, people look around them, at what has happened to their lives, to their neighbour’s lives, to the lives of people they love. And if their lives are in trouble, they vote against the people in charge. 

Inequality

That’s why Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) could come back in 2022 and beat Jair Bolsonaro, and then Bolsonaro’s son Flavio could come back this year and beat Lula. 

It’s why in the United States Trump could be beaten and humiliated in 2020, when the Democrats all thought he was gone for ever, and yet he could come back and win in 2024.

Partly this happens because when the economy isn’t working, people know it. You can tell us all you want that the economic indicators are looking good and inflation is down and the stock market is soaring. 

But when we go food shopping, pay the rent, read the heating bill, we know.

But it’s more than this. It’s the texture of our lives. Living with great inequality puts pressure on all our relationships, at work and at home, and it shreds some of those relationships. There’s stress in the air we breathe.

Material

Even the bullies know this. Even as we take our problems and our anger out on each other, we know things are going wrong. It’s very hard for people to watch their grown children in trouble. 

And we can now also see that when the far right come back a second time, they come back angrier and more cruel.

Economic hardship doesn’t make everyone vote for the far right. Many of us are loyal from way back, so we would never vote Republican in the United States or Conservative in Britain, for example. 

Many of us are repelled by the far right because we’re Black or Muslim or trans. So what many of us do if our lives get worse is we don’t vote. Then, more in sorrow than in anger, we let the racist, sexist brutal, right sneak through.

To stop the far right we need governments that actually make people’s material lives seriously better. 

Spend

That can’t be done without taxing the rich. I don’t want to argue here about whether that means an income tax or a wealth tax or a capital gains tax, whether we tax the one per cent or the five per cent or the 20 per cent. Those are important questions. But here I want to make a simple point. 

We have to tax the rich enough that our governments can spend enough to change the lives of the rest of us.

Take Britain, where I live. Burnham, the prime minister, sounds and looks better than Labour leaders have for a long time. He looks like he knows us.

The policy on Palestine is much better. Not perfect, just better. He’s doing other things that don’t cost money. And Nigel Farage, the leader of the far right Reform UK, is in trouble for other reasons.

But if Burnham does not spend more on ordinary people, we will turn away from him. Not this year. Maybe not even next year. But we will. 

Bleeds

Burnham is clear. He is committed to staying within fiscal rules. And if their economy gets into trouble, he will cut spending at the same time as our need rises. I say their economy, because our economy, the one we live in, is already in trouble.

The National Health Service (NHS) is in deep trouble too. I know because I’m old and so I know a lot of people who need the service badly. But I have friends and family working in the NHS too. When it’s brilliant, it’s still brilliant. But they don’t have enough money.

A 50 percent increase in the NHS budget would hire more staff, raise wages, train more new staff, provide more beds, shrink waiting lists and give young people going mental from stress someone skilled to talk to. That would make a difference to real lives.

The same thing but more so is true in the United States. The political party that introduces Medicare for All there will dominate for a generation. And that would be cheaper than the current system which bleeds money into profits and insurance companies.

Catastrophic

But absent that, we can elect all the left governments we want and the far right will come roaring back. 

In Britain that may be Reform UK, it may be a changed Conservative Party, it may be something worse. 

So we progressives who believe in peace and justice are going to have to hold our nerve. It’s empty boasting to say that our time will surely come. But the time when we are needed will arrive.

Lastly, climate change. We can’t halt catastrophic change if we don’t build enough renewable energy and grids to replace all fossil fuels. 

Rich

We have waited a generation for the market and the corporations to do that. They haven’t, and they won’t. This is true all over the world, not just in Britain or the United States.

Only elected, committed governments will build 100 percent renewable power. Only such a government will have the money and the political support of the majority. 

If environmentalists say that everyone will need to sacrifice, they simply will not be elected. But we can build a movement of the majority by saying a green new deal will bring jobs, improve our lives and save the planet – and the rich will pay for it. 

That’s not quite right. Saying it isn’t enough. Everyone is fed up with being lied to. We have to actually do it. In the long run, that’s the deepest reason to argue for making the rich pay their fair share of everything now. 

This Author

Jonathan Neale is a writer and climate activist and the author of Fight Like Fire: Green New Deals and Global Climate Jobs, which you can download for free here. He blogs at AnneBonnyPirate.