Europe's leaders spit out the bullet

Hollande the new president of France, now styled by media barons across Europe as 'the hope of the left' proposes that new Euro funds are released to start growth. As a response to the Greek, let alone the gathering Spanish crisis, this is a very little deal indeed.

Paying for some growth, says Hollande, will create more wealth - not just shore up already existing debt. The 'creation of wealth' is presented by our new 'hope of the left' both as a general good thing in its own right, and also as a means of solving the problems of both main classes across the European continent. But Euroland has already spent more than a trillion euros defending banks since 2010. Not enough! Not enough! screams the voracious markets while opening the speculative gates onto the euro and the world stock exchanges.

And wealth is the least abstract thing in the world. When a politician mentions creating wealth the rest of us need to ask
'From who? For who?'

It is worth remembering the way that Icelandic leaders and British leaders dealt with what they saw as a potential mortal threat to capitalism in 2008. To defend the system that was cracking they repudiated all their debts - in the case of Iceland - and nationalised the biggest banks - in the case of both Iceland and Britain. What's more, in this pretty last-ditch effort to stop the capitalism's collapse, both governments had the universal support of all wings of their own political establishments. Then all of them conspired to get working class people to pay for it.

Well. That's where we are again. Hollande's tentative growth proposals are an asthmatic breath in the whirlwind. They are an almost total irrelevance; certainly for Greece and increasingly for Spain. In practice over some years if implemented they will put several billions of euros in the hands of some big construction companies. Most of them are part of multi-nationals that are already holding onto oceans of cash that they will not, and do not intend to put in anybody's service except their own. (Britain's top 100 are already holding onto £750 billion cash at the moment according to the FT.)

Capitalism is again shuddering - now at its south European edges.

But this time a new actor has entered the scene. Having paid in medical health, pensions, wages and jobs for the last bail-out the Greek working class people and, behind them, large parts of the Spanish and Italian working people, want a different deal. Yes. Repudiate the debts. Yes. Nationalise the banks; but this time on behalf of the people and not the super rich. Turn the new banks into a driving force for a different society and a different sort of economy. Planning our future economy will bring the content back into our dead beat democracies. Let's vote on something that matters. Let our both our economy and our politics serve the interests of the many and not the few.

It is unlikely that the 'new hope of the left' or his cheerleaders in Labour's front bench, has any such ambition. Almost precisely the reverse. They fear it more than the crisis.