FOREIGN POLICY

• Assist the Palestinians in gaining justice for Israel’s genocidal actions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and help them rebuild their country.

• Ban all exports to Israel and support the BDS movement, classify them as a terrorist state, proscribe the IDF as a terrorist organisation, and seek to hold the Netanyahu government accountable and aid their capture and trial at the International Criminal Court. We would also press for a Truth & Reconciliation Commission to examine all injustices since 1948.

• We believe Israel will never support a two-state solution in good faith (especially as Benjamin Netanyahu frequently boasts about how he has impeded one), and its genocidal actions have forfeited any right it ever claimed to hold to exist. No state has the right to exist - especially not ones that starve children to death and bury them alive with bulldozers in order to steal their land - but all peoples do. Therefore, we propose:

  • A one-state solution whereby a new state of Palestine would be established and Israel would be dissolved.

  • A generous reparations package for surviving Palestinians, including a Truth & Reconciliation Commission to investigate all injustices since 1948.

  • Israeli citizens given the choice of:

    • Remaining in a new state of Palestine with a secular democracy and equal rights for everybody (including the practice of religion) which should be enforced by the United Nations, or;

    • Returning to their ancestral country of origin if they had emigrated to the area Israel occupied, or;

    • A new life in the United States. Given how fanatically pro-Israel it has been, it is only right the US offers Israelis a new home. The USA currently accommodates the Mormons, with Utah being (for all intents and purposes) a Mormon state, so there is no reason they could not do the same for emigrating Israelis as well.

• If Israel decides to be serious about a two-state solution in the future, it should be based upon the original 1948 borders (as part of Israel’s penance for their crimes against humanity, the option of the 1967 borders should be removed from discussion as that would be rewarding them for stealing land, arguments about its inherent settler-colonial nature aside) and the complete and enforced demolition of all illegal Jewish settlements (to be supervised by the UN).

• Arrest Tony Blair for war crimes and open a case against him at the International Criminal Court.

• We do not support rejoining the European Union. We cannot break from neoliberalism by rejoining an institution that bakes neoliberalism into its treaties, deliberately impedes governments from acting on behalf of their citizens’ interests by forcing them to give up their monetary and fiscal sovereignty, and frequently breaks its own rules in order to keep the Euro alive.

  • We reject its requirements to surrender the ability to nationalise key industries and to issue government debt to the corporate sector because they don’t want central banks directly funding their governments. These are unacceptable restrictions on democratic government and public accountability.

  • Brexit is not responsible for the current state of the UK. The blame for that should be placed squarely at the door of poor domestic policy choices made by even poorer politicians who were utterly unfit to govern.

  • The nation-state has more power than Europhiles are aware of. If Iceland can impose capital controls and jail its corrupt bankers, and Switzerland can reject a trade deal with the EU because it took away too much sovereignty, then there is no reason the UK cannot thrive outside of the EU straitjacket either.

  • Rejoining would mean Austerity 2.0 as we would not be allowed to implement the investment plan that the UK desperately needs. It would also mean being forced to adopt the Euro and join the Schengen no-borders agreement. That will do nothing other than take us back to pre-2016 and rehash the same arguments all over again. Nobody wants to redo that era again, everyone was fed up with it, and it would be a pointless waste of time. Brexit can be made to work with good domestic policy that gives us the good parts of membership but without the bad, because there is nothing the EU gave us that we couldn’t vote to give ourselves.

• Lobby for new world trade rules that don’t force developing countries to borrow in dollars. They should be able to trade with their own currencies and borrowing in dollars saddles them with debt that requires them to divert their resources away from the well-being of their citizens and towards exports.

• The UN shouldn’t have vetoes for permanent members of the Security Council. It makes no sense that the setup is still based around the victors of World War II, considering (e.g.) the economic rise of China and India, and the rehabilitation of Germany. The veto has been abused to defend national interests ahead of international consensus (e.g. a majority of states have voted to recognise a Palestinian state for years but are always vetoed by the United States). This abuse of power needs to be stopped. Either the 5 permanent members should be able to use their veto to block another veto, or decisions should be taken on a majority/supermajority basis, and/or new permanent members added (e.g. India, Germany, Japan, Brazil, South Africa) to reflect 21st-century power dynamics, ideally balancing Western vs Eastern, and Global North vs Global South interests. We would also support giving the UN General Assembly binding decision-making powers.

• Press for structural reform of the World Health Organisation around the transparency of funding sources (it should not be receiving money from people/companies with pharmaceutical industry ties) and industry partnerships, its treatment-first approach instead of prevention, and to end revolving-door appointments to prevent regulatory capture.

• Support an International Labour Organisation court to rule on labour rights violations with enforceable penalties, with workers groups allowed to trigger investigations, and push for it to become a global labour watchdog with investigatory and sanction powers akin to the UN Human Rights Council.