Lots of strike reports on Reuters, Al Jazeera. even the BBC, this morning seem to show a very encouraging response to the call for strike action, certainly in Spain, Portugal, Greece, and some in Italy -- and even a rising tide of various (localised) strike actions in Ireland in recent days. This is certainly a very, very, slow motion process of economic and political breakdown across Europe - but it's hard to see how the Eurozone will recover its economic dynamism any time soon - so the process will just go on, and on, with the political stasis of the last 30 years of neoliberalism slowly melting and fracturing .
Eventually this mass radicalisation might even reach the UK ! (NOT if the TUC has any say in it though). In Greece opinion polls now show the ramshackle radical Left Syriza coalition is biggest single "party" in popular terms. Looks like it'll be some considerable time yet before anything vaguelly "Syriza-like" will be a possibility in UK though. Still -- the cross party determination by main UK parties to do absolutely nothing effective to end the ever growing crisis of non-payment of taxes due from large and small companies in the UK , whilst being delightful for the capitalist class in the medium term, is just yet another longer term nail in the UK state's coffin as a viable entity (hopefully anyway). Or of course a harbinger of the complete end of the UK state's role in social welfare provision in the longer term. It really depends on us - how much we'll collectively put up with.
