 Hello, hello, hello. And welcome to another coordinating call of DM25, the Movement for Europe featuring progressive ideas you won't hear anywhere else. I'm Meroen Khalili and today we're talking about our manifesto, our foundational document that draws the world that we want and has inspired hundreds of thousands of members and supporters to join us. It's now five years old though. The world has changed a lot in five years. So today we'll be kicking off the discussion about what do we get right? How has the manifesto held up? And how can we go about renewing it? We will be taking any questions or comments. So if you've got something that's on your mind, don't keep it in, put it in the chat. Then on YouTube, we're live streaming and perhaps we'll put it to the panel here between the interventions. Let's kick off with Yanis and then Srećko, over to you. Thank you, Meroen. Well, the manifesto takes me back. Actually, it's six years. So even five, we missed the five year anniversary without marketing due to COVID-19, but that's fine, I think. It was the right thing to do, to suspend everything during this pandemic, at least regarding the manifesto. Okay, a few words in lieu of an introduction regarding the origins of the manifesto. When another madman called Srećko Horvat said to me back in Berlin, sometime towards the end of 2015, that we should create a pan-European movement. I had the idea, not to do it, but as something that would be good to have. And he said, okay, let's do it. And I thought, yeah, right. Two idiots in a cafe in Berlin are going to start a pan-European movement. Anyway, this idea in the end entered our minds like a virus and continued to replicate. And within a few weeks, it was going to happen. I mean, we were going to try to do it in any case. So how do you start? You start by, I think, a manifesto and inviting people to comment on it and say, is this something that they want to be part of? So to cut a long story short, after lots of discussions with Srećko and others, and some others, I sat down and I wrote the first draft. And then I emailed it to everyone I knew that might be interested in participating in DM. We didn't even have a name for DM then. And back came rims and rims of electronic pages of comments. So this backwards and forwards, how long did last in Srećko? I think it was some like two or three months until we settled on a document which could not be voted on because we didn't have members. The whole point was to get together in the Volkswagen on the basis of that document and create the membership, create the movement so that we could then have votes. So that's the story of how it began physically speaking, so to speak, or procedurally. Regarding its contents, let me remind comrades as well as viewers that that was a time when hope had been ignited across Europe on the basis of progressive responses to the great financial crisis of 2008, which then became the Euro crisis of 2010. Capitalism was shaken to its foundations globally with Occupy Wall Street, Occupy the city, the Indignandos in Spain, the Aragonectis Mani in Athens, various movements all over the world. And in the European Union in particular, we had the very visible rise of an anti-democratic establishment. The response by the Troika, the creation of the Troika and the manner in which they demonstrated and they sought to demonstrate the end of European democracy. Because what was spectacular back then with that so-called Troika visits in Athens, in Dublin, in Lisbon, in Rome, whenever those people went, they went in a ritual manner. It was a process of intentional ritual humiliation of elected governments and parliaments. So we had, following the global crisis in 2008, the Euro crisis in 2010, we had a very clear policy by the powers that had been in Europe to demonstrate their contempt for democracy. It was an anti-democratic reactionary institutional intervention, okay? And the election of our government here in Greece in 2015 gave hope to a lot of people, not only on the left, that this anti-democratic cabal might have found a worthy opponent. That created the circumstance of what I call, and others call the spring, the Greek spring of 2015, which inspired those people across the world, Latin America as well. I used to get messages from Latin America enthusiastic one saying that what you started in Greece is going to infect us in the nicest possible way. And of course that was crushed a few months later with the overthrowing of the people by our very government, by Tsipras and Caesar. We all know the story, but the reason why I'm mentioning all that is because it's important to remember that when our government was crushed by the Troika, there were right wingers in Germany. There were right wingers in Britain. There were right wingers in France, in Spain, in Italy, in Portugal, in Ireland, who were coming to us leftists and were saying enough is enough, we can't take this anymore. This kind of anti-democratic ritualistic turn of the establishment. That was the moment that gave rise to DM-25. The manifesto expresses that anger across Europe and across social classes and across even traditional political, party political boundaries, the anger against the anti-democratic turn of the European establishment. And we decided we're going to write and manifesto that rides the surf, rides the wave of this pan-European discontent towards the establishment. And the idea was to take this wave and ride it all the way to the European Parliament elections 2019. That was the purpose and the raison d'etre of the manifesto. It was a very unnecessary manifesto. It captured a crucial historical moment, the anti-democratic, explicitly anti-democratic turn of the EU. But that moment was lost. We failed as a movement to capitalize on it. It fizzled out. This is all time for analysis as to why. We can be self-critical, we have been self-critical, but in the end it was an impossible task because progressives like ourselves and transnationalists were caught between the two authoritarianisms, the authoritarianism of the anti-democratic establishment, on the one hand and the authoritarianism of the nativist, xenophobic, ultra-right, that in the end was fed enormous energy by the anti-democratic establishment. What happened in the end in Europe is what we had predicted. Our prediction in the manifesto was that if we fail to democratize Europe, the European Union, then Europe will fail. And Europe will disintegrate in a variety of ways. And now we see that. We see that even though Brexit is the result of what we were predicting, we were actually predicting Brexit. But beyond Brexit, we were also predicting the fragmentation and disintegration and deconstruction of the European Union from within, even without exit. So Italy has not left the European Union, but it is as if it has left it, or at least as if it has left the idea of a union of democracies. Look at what is happening. We are back to a technical government by a banker, Goldman Sachs, former ECB guy, who in a year's time from now on, as you see me and as I'm seeing you, this is a forecast, he's going to be the president of Italy, fully and formally entrenched as a kingmaker after being the king. Now, this is what is happening to this European Union. Meanwhile, all the avenues towards a proper, every idea we had, like for instance, the European conference, the conference for the future of Europe, which was our idea of a citizen assembly to discuss the future of the European Union, democratization, unification, so on. People like Macron took these ideas and they took them straight out of the manifesto of DM25, and I mean what I'm saying. I know that Emmanuel Macron took this idea from the manifesto of DM25, and the reason why I know it is because he told me. And that's a very powerful piece of evidence. And what did they do with this idea? Humiliated, emptied of content, make sure that it was simply wrapping paper of a horror story of a continuing anti-democratic drive. We need a new manifesto and I'll shut up because I would like to come back to the question of how we put together the new manifesto and what it should have. I will simply describe the process by which the first one was created and what it signified and marked. But I think that the art failure and Europe's failure did what we proposed it was meant to do, lead to the disintegration of this thing. But it also marked a new turning point. 2015 was Europe's or the EU's anti-democratic moment or juncture. Today we're experiencing a new juncture. I call it the post-democracy moment. This is no longer anti-democratic what they're doing. It's post-democratic. And I'll just give you two examples. Actually, I've given you one, Draghi, as post-democracy, right? It's a new cartel that has taken over a major country like Italy. France is more or less ungovernable. Macron is not ruling over France. You can see what happened in the elections recently. I very much fear that Germany is going to be exactly the same. There will be no Angela Merkel to replace Angela Merkel. You're going to have decision-making behind closed doors by people you don't even know and not even a strong character like Merkel ruling Germany. But let me give you another example. Remember the Hupla about the Green Deal that Ursula von der Leyen ushered in to justify her existence? It's gone AWOL. Have you noticed that it's disappeared? It's not being discussed. Now it's the recovery fund, which is a way by which poor German taxpayers are funding Italian oligarchs and Greek oligarchs. That's what replaced the Green Deal. There's no Green Deal now. There's no money set aside for the Green transition. It's gone. It's finished. And what the only show in town, the only show in town regarding Green stuff is the European Central Bank. Have you noticed that? The debates about Green central banking that Christine Lagarde who actually spoke to me when we spoke some time ago, fairly recently, and she was so interesting. She said, you really love what we're doing. I'm trying to green the ECB. I said, well, that's very hard to do. And firstly, I don't think you can do it. And secondly, I don't think you should be allowed to do it because Green decisions, Green choices are political choices. They're not meant to be made by unelected central bankers. But because there is no Green Deal, let alone a Green New Deal, right? The only thing that I'm talking about is saying, okay, if bonds that are being deposited at the central bank in exchange for money will be penalized if they don't, if they come from companies that are not divesting from, you know, League night. But this is no way of running a Green transition. It is pathetic. So you see, this is what I'm talking about. We went from the anti-democratic moment in 2015, okay, which caused and spurred on DM25 to this post-democratic moment now, which means politically everything is dead. There's no politics happening anymore now. No politics, you know, the only thing we're talking about is whether the LBGD flag is going to be flown somewhere or not, I can put it everywhere. I'm happy to see it everywhere. But this is not politics anymore. This is post-politics. This is post-democracy, okay? And all the important decisions are left to the ECB. That's it. So here, you know, we have another important moment that should define DM's next phase, DM2.0, and should define our next manifesto. But how we go about talking about this manifesto and what it should be in it, that's another chapter. Thanks, Yanis. Srećko. Yeah, hello. Hi, everyone. And thanks, Yanis, for reminding us of the very origin of DM's manifesto. You're completely right that after five years and a bit more because it existed even before DM existed, that the time has come to rewrite our manifesto. And you mentioned one important point, which is that our members didn't vote for the first manifesto, but they will be able to vote for the rewriting and not just vote for it, but actually help us rewrite the new manifesto of DM. I think the first reason why it has to be rewritten is the very name. It is in the very name of the M25. And I think that's the D, which stands for democracy because at the time, five years ago, when we were advocating more democracy in the European Union, many even liberals still believed that there is such a thing as democracy in the European Union. But I think people today take it as a fact that there is actually no democracy in the European Union not to speak about other parts of the world. So what I personally think, and I think many of you will share it, is that besides just speaking about democracy, which is definitely not anymore any kind of signifier which can attract people or mobilize them and so on. Not suggesting we should change our name, but I was suggesting that we should shift our focus and become much more radical. Much more radical in the sense of anti-capitalism. So not just as we did in our program to conceive a program that would be post-capitalist, but effectively to be anti-capitalist. Why is this important? I think first of all, because the situation changed. The M25, of course, at the very beginning was very influenced, influenced me personally as well. I went to Greece when the Okinawa referendum was happening and many others as well. Our inspiration at the beginning was the so-called Greek spring and what the so-called Troika did to Greece at that time. But what we could have seen in the meantime is that there were many examples which were similar and that the current crisis might be even more dangerous than the previous crisis. So if in the previous crisis we had the financial crisis, as Yanis said, which then became the euro crisis and then particularly in Greece, it was very hard. And also in other countries of the so-called periphery of the European Union, what we have today is on the one hand the pandemic. It's on the other hand, the normalization of climate crisis. So I'm talking now from the Mediterranean, from the Adriatic Sea, where we are currently facing really big hot waves, which will be continuous for weeks, probably almost reaching 40 degrees. So you can already see around the world effects of climate crisis, food shortages, water shortages, electricity shortages also in some countries, which are leading also to starvation, migration, climate refugees. You can see the normalization of militarization. It's sufficient to look at front-takes and in which way they are continuing to outsource the refugee crisis and so on. But all of this together, this explosive mix together with the pandemic is obviously leading to a new financial crisis. It is obviously leading to a post-modern version of the 1920s, you know, exactly what happened, not exactly because I think no historical parallel is sufficient today, but similar to what happened after the First World War. You know, hyperinflation, Spanish flu, impotence, political impotence, which was then leading to fascism. And I think what we have today is precisely this. So any kind of green wave, which will not at the same time be anti-capitalist is not exactly green, it's just a wave. And I think that's what we have to take into consideration also with the coming German elections, which will definitely be very important for the rest of the European Union, which is also very important for the M25 and in which way we will have a role in the German elections, but also later, because I think our role in the situation where we have a climate movement, where we have the children's movement, well, who are not children anymore and we're much smarter than the adults and so on, is to constantly remind activists, supporters and our own members about the necessity of criticizing capitalism itself, namely extraction, expansion and exploitation, which is further destroying our planet. So I think what we have to do with the new manifesto is to rewrite it in a manner which would be much more radical, which would go beyond just advocating more democracy. It reminds me on Ursula von der Leyen and the European Commission, who are very concerned, very concerned when journalists or dissidents are being arrested, but at the same time, they are not concerned that one of the most courageous publishers, Julian Assange, is still in Belmarsh prison and will spend his 50th birthday in a few weeks in Belmarsh prison. So I'm pretty fed up with the very concernedism to put it like that of the European Commission and the European establishment. I think we cannot be just concerned or very concerned about democracy. We have to fight for it and we have to fight for it with all means. Thanks, Richko. Who would like to go next? 11 of us here. Any comments? I know Eric, would you like to get in, Eric? Would you like to go? Sure. Sure, I can do, yeah. I completely agree with everything everybody's saying. I don't know about the children's movement. I had a flash of the children's crusade. So let's go for the medievalism on us. That wasn't a very good children's movement and particularly well. And that just makes me think about this rising radicalization that you see in society in general, right? And that's one thing and it's incredibly important to have that radicalization in the sense of shifting people's political attention to the roots of causes and of issues and of challenges in our society because we don't have that much time left compared to other sort of historical periods that there is a very imminent survival challenge that we're all facing. Some of us more than others. And radicalization is one thing and it's important in and of itself but so is the sort of, not the guiding that sounds extremely patronizing but creating a kind of vehicle and receptacle and some kind of tool for that radicalization to take root and to be guided in a sort of direction that would lead to the sort of results that people want. And I say that because with this sort of rise of, with people becoming more sensitized to the kind of situation that we find ourselves in socially, politically or mentally, there is a rise also in a kind of political hypocrisy that arises to the challenge of offering people what they think they want. So, we spoke at length about the green parties across Europe and the world and the kind of programs that they're offering. Social Democrats, the left in general, they're all split between either political actors, either individuals or groups as political actors who are either clueless about what it is that they need to do and they just fill in the gap of their cluelessness with empty rhetoric that kind of sounds good but is vacant. They use that rhetoric to cover the fact that they are unwilling to do what it takes because they're in the pockets of people who stand to lose from the kind of change that people want and people need. So, what I'm saying is that it's really important to have this kind of radicalization but DM needs to also create the kind of infrastructure that can make the most of that radicalization because it can be extremely dangerous if invested in the wrong actors because then it could lead to even further political apathy as people inevitably get frustrated and disappointed by the failures of the people that they trusted. And I speak here also from personal experience of somebody who voted for Syriza. All people turn apathetic in general because they don't see any hope in any of the existing political actors. So, DM really needs to rise to that challenge and not just offer sort of ideas but really offer some kind of structure, some kind of tool that is at people's disposal to be used to leverage political power. And to do that, we need to persuade people that they need this tool, that they cannot afford to trust the current political actors. I think a lot of work needs to be done in us framing our project in those terms, not just electorally, but as a movement in general. That's one thing. The other thing, I mean, because we've all been so involved in DM from the very beginning, we've seen so many things happen when we started applying all those beautiful ideas from 2016 and starting to build a movement around them. There's so many things that worked, so many things that didn't. But apart from what I said, I'd like to also talk about another thing which has sort of instructed a lot of the work that we have been doing in the past year and a half. And that is that we, when DM was created, it was very much anchored politically, intellectually, in its narrative and its analysis at the European level. It was a child of the times that Zeitgeist was very much the reaction of the European establishment to the Greek attempt at renegotiating the debt and what that signified about what kind of European Union we lived in. So of course, a lot of our analysis and a lot of our focus was directed at the European level. However, there is a traditional issue with the European level and that is that the vast majority of people just don't give a damn about it, they don't care. It's not a frame through which they think about politics even though they should. And there needs to be a balance between us saying the things we need to say. If we're serious about the level of change that we're advocating for, then we always need to talk about the European level because that's the only level at which we can have the leverage for that kind of change. So we need to insist on that. But we need to do, and we have been doing in the last year or two, a lot of work to really root and anchor DM25 much more in the various national and local contexts in which the movement finds itself. DM25 needs to be a movement in Italy that Italians can relate to and in Spain that Spanish people can relate to while at the same time we're relating to one transnational unity. That's the beauty of our project. But we did a lot of work at creating something at the European level that everybody can identify with and we attracted a lot of people to that but not as much in rooting it and grounding it and customizing it if you like to the various political particularities let's say of the different countries or towns or regions where DM is active so that we attract people who don't think through the European concept, who don't really relate with the European project but understand politics only through the lens through which they're used to understanding politics which is national, local and so on. So I think that's another thing that we have been working on with the country calls that we've been doing with the people's gatherings with the different questionnaires that we've designed specifically for each country where we're asking people to tell us what DM should represent and be an ambassador for in their countries based on their particular challenges and issues. And that's really I think where a lot more of our work needs to go into so that we can become a movement that doesn't just represent the part of our societies that think in terms of the European Union but also a lot of other people who don't yet and might in the future but we need to have that intermediary step of presenting DM in the context that they're used to before sort of then plugging it into our European project and the European scale of what we're doing. I think that's quite important. Thank you, Eric. And I know that we're having a more laid back thoughtful chat this time compared to the previous debates where we had blood spattering on the camera and so on but if you out there have got something to say as well please do put it in the chat and we'll put it to the panel. Rosemary and then Lewis. Thank you. I was very interested in Eric's emphasis on how this time round we can't afford to ignore the national discussions and debates. I think that's right. It's slightly right of course because in our defeat we've allowed nationalist forces to become much more powerful and they're at a very dangerous stage, I think. I think one has to look and we have the great advantage of looking as Europeans as a pan-European movement across national boundaries to compare phenomena that I think are underlying things absolutely in common but which react in very different ways. I've been absolutely fascinated to see that France which doesn't go for a day but in a week without a demonstration somewhere not a protest somewhere. There's huge, huge activity going on. One has to congratulate the French people. I was a mighty impressed with the Géryjean movement. I still am. I'm still hoping that they all have a huge effect and yet their turnout at the elections has been terribly low. They are desperate for an alternative. They don't see anything in the political party spectrum that they can place their faith in and it's not just the political parties. The membership trade unions is terribly low. Now contrast that with the UK. In the UK we have a situation where Boris Johnson is providing over some of the worst disasters both for our economy but more importantly the saving of lives that has occurred in the UK. I know he has worldwide reputation for having got the vaccine right and we have done good things on the vaccine but in many, many other regards we have allowed tens of thousands of people to die simply because the government couldn't sanction any interest in the revival of public health processes and in the middle of that scandal Johnson goes up in the polls. Johnson has spent the time in the pandemic with Matt Hanghawk, his health sidekick destroying the remnants, the last remaining remnants of the public system that was the NHS and making sure, trying very hard to very quickly hand over a unique national database. All the GP files, health files in the UK he's been busy, he hasn't been doing nothing. He's a very busy man and so is Matt Hanghawk but they haven't been rescuing lives. They've been sending off data to oligarchs and private companies and companies like the CIA founded Palantir. They've been sending this precious data without consulting with people. Now finally, at the very last minute we're going to get a little bit of a pushback legally and from campaigning citizens but Boris Johnson in the UK only has to say, we love the NHS and everybody sits back and says, oh, it's all right. The NHS is safe in their hands. This is a totally different reaction to the politicians from the French one and yet it's in exactly the same desperate state, desperate plight. So what I think we have to do is to admit that this time round we need to work on ideology on how you follow ideologies closely and how you see where the breaking points are and how you use that to show people a little bit about what's going on. I think this could be tremendously helpful in the months ahead because as we go into the summer a lot of us in the Northern Hemisphere are thinking, well, the pandemic is pretty well over and now we can at long last get back to normal but of course with only 1% of the population in Africa vaccinated the pandemic is not over. It's not over in Asia. It's resurging throughout the world. It's going to take billions and billions and billions of pounds and the world knows how to deal with saving people's lives to pull us away from a vast civilization threat really worldwide, the economy and to the populace. And this couldn't be a better time in my opinion for us to be rewriting our manifesto because this is the beginning of a new era of challenge. Thanks Rosemary, Lewis and then Claudia. Thanks everyone. I think that another important pillar, another important goal that we need to go after with this redrafting or updating of our manifesto it's the biggest challenge that we ever faced now because of the critical times we live in and that's mobilizing people. Eric mentioned hypocrisy as the, you know, what we were facing. I think that our biggest challenge is actually cynicism and fatigue. When we launched the M25 back in 2016 we're driven, inspired and we're hopeful because of the Greek spring, the indignators on this force and enthusiasm about, you know, stepping up and changing things and bringing about change. And what has happened since then and let me remind you all that the first campaign, the first thing that we did was to fight for transparency. We started as an elemental, fundamental value and aspiration to bring about that democratization that we were talking about, right? And this is very pertinent today still because when I speak about cynicism I see how those who we inspired and who inspired us have gone down the way of fatigue. And this has been bolstered by today's headlines about this recovery fund and all that so-called next generation EU in which everything seems to be changing so nothing changed, you see. And already if you analyze what's happened in Spain when we were all waiting for those funds to come and save us and transform more economies into greener, more sustainable models, already over 50% of those funds are being, bits are being placed by the largest corporation especially in the energy sector, you see. And unlike the era where that Yanis lived when the then economics or finance minister of Germany offered to send 500, I think if I remember well, tax inspectors degrees to make sure that the reforms and all those things were working this time around, the establishment is not offering to send inspectors to make sure that those funds are properly applied and actually meet the metrics and goals for that change into a greener transition. So I'm afraid that besides the fatigue from our side or progressives and the rise of extremists in the right which is the opposite that has happened but things change so they don't change. And we end up calling the next generation EU, the next generation is gonna pay for the mess of not changing, the credit conversion, all of those young people who have tried to revive those hopes for change for a more solidarity for the climate change mission that we have and all that. So again, I think that mobilizing exciting people and offering them hope and a clear view of what the world and Europe in this case can look after is the biggest challenge because again, I think that we're facing cynicism that's opening the way for extremists to rise all over the place. I never imagined in my own country, Spain, that we would have 11 members of parliament that are fascists after the dictatorship that we went through. I see it with sadness how people are buying into this this magical wand of billions coming over to a country to all of us and change and save us all. So I think that that's the key thing for us. In order to contain heart, to expand our membership, to link arms with other progressives because if we're all placing the bets in on the green parties and what other somewhat, you know, conferences of this happening, then we're in big trouble, so. Thank you, Louis, Claudia. Yeah, most of the things I had in mind to tell you are already said, but one thing what was not mentioned yet is the way of communications to write the manifest, the language of manifest. How can we really touch people in their hearts with what we want to achieve for them or for all of us? This is really crucial, I think, so that we really have in mind to whom we communicate and with what word and which media we want to communicate and this is for me as I'm working in communications and press and media relations, one of the most important things because sometimes we look like a bunch of intellectual people here and we speak like those and we can't reach the people we are targeting and therefore it's really crucial that when we write a new manifesto that we think about who we want to really have as our audience and really target them by our languages. That's just my two cents on it. Thank you. Thanks, Claudia, Ivana. Thanks. Yeah, pretty much everything was already covered but I would just like maybe to make some highlights of the things that were said, but I think that are very important and perhaps especially from my point of view, meaning from somebody who is from Serbia and Serbia is not part of the EU and when we are talking about the language, this is something that sometimes I would like to have more precise that Europe is not the EU and even if we manage somehow to democratize the EU there is still this group of countries that don't belong now to the EU which is not necessarily a problem right now but we are having high hopes for the European Parliament for example to help us in establishment, establishing democratic electoral process which is totally shady right now. And I'm wondering how can we trust this EU and this establishment to democratize a country like Serbia? Also, Luis mentioned hypocrisy of the EU. I think that is one of those. Also, we are saying a lot about the climate change. Srejko mentioned electricity shortages. I'm not having electricity right now as we speak and climate change doesn't happen just like that. It comes from the pollution and in non-EU countries right now, there is absolutely no regulation which is in line with EU regulations regarding filters and whatnot. So I think that we should have the manifesto rewritten in a way that we will attract people and wake up the hope just like we had the hope when we read the manifesto for the first time but this time maybe a little bit in more practical terms and less academic and less intellectual. Also, having in mind who is our target group and I believe that those are the non-voters, those who are not voting for a while because they don't feel represented. And this is where I see our potential. As for the next steps, I think that we should open this during the summer to our members on the forum and have some questions that will help them frame what should be changed and perhaps get back to it in September in full mode. Thank you. Thanks, Ivana, and that theme of the intellectualisation of the left and the need for simple language is something we discussed, I think, in our call about halfway through April and that's on our YouTube channel as well about what is ailing progressives today. So I'm sure all of those things will be factored into the renewing of our manifesto. David. Thanks, Birgit. I couldn't agree more to be honest with what Ivana said. Actually, with the majority of what people are here have said today, just wanted to add that political will is a powerful instrument. The problem today is that the majority of leaders either lack it or their will is essentially the will of the financial elite which funds them. We need people in power, essentially in governments and in parliaments who will fight for the many regardless of the pressure that's exerted on them and that's exactly what we're doing as the M25. That's what we're offering people today and that's what we've been offering people since 2016. People will fight for truth and justice no matter the cost to them. People will not commit U-turns to save their careers. People will stand by citizens everywhere from urban to rural areas because we all want good jobs, a good education, good healthcare, decent housing and public services. Isn't this what everyone wants? I mean, almost everyone that I speak with wants these things. Instead of pitting people against one another, I think what the M25 is doing is rightly pitting the 99% against the 1% or whatever however you want to call it. The oligarchs, the financiers, the unelected bureaucrats and the banks and all that because we're all being screwed by them. That's the harsh reality. It's overt abuse with silent suffering. There are millions of people out there who are unable to put food on the table. I mean, as a result of the pandemic and even before that, mental health has been plummeting. Hundreds of thousands of people have been living there, losing their jobs, living their countries in search of better futures. We all know these kinds of stories. These are very personal stories. These aren't just numbers. There are people behind them. What we need really, I think as some people have already said here is the transnational mobilization against the people who are waging this class war which is being perpetrated in our name. And the point I'm trying to make here is that we have to talk directly to the sound franchise, to those who have lost hope in the power of the political system as we have it today to change their lives for the better. Our new manifesto needs to talk directly to these people which I believe are the majority of people. We can't live as individuals subjects bereft of power. We need to come together. We've been saying this all the time to show people that the political system that we have yesterday is completely unfit for purpose. It's not fit for purpose. It's not serving the interests of people out there but it has to be transformed. And if it is transformed as we've been trying to do, it can change people's lives and we need people to be part of that process. This is so incredibly important. Just one final word. I think when we appear to live in societies that have lost hope on a massive scale which I think is the reality of today, our task in DM, our task everywhere comrades can only be to bring it back. And if you're watching it out there, you can be part of this change but we need people behind our movement. So go ahead and join us, get involved and be part of this transformation which I think is so fundamental for everyone's lives. Thank you. Thanks for that, David. And to join us, dm25.org slash join. Nobody else has their hand up. Yanis, I know you wanted to come back in. Would you like to come back in now? Sure, why not? Thanks, Samer. Okay, so how do we go about producing the new manifesto? Well, before answering this question, I have a proposal. Before answering this question, I think it's important not to overdo it, not to overemphasize the manifesto as a text. The manifesto needs to inspire, create on the one hand an emotional surge within the person who reads it and at the same time to have some elements of analysis, not a full analysis. It can't be more than a thousand words. Let me remind you that those of you who think, oh, it has to be done in a simple language and so on, that's not true. It's not true. It has to be done in a language that appeals and creates this mix of analysis and emotion. But let me remind you that the communist manifesto of 1848 was not written very simply. It was not the language that the proletariat could understand, but proletarians went to battle holding it to their hearts because they could understand a few words and the way enough for them to know that this contained a historical over that was there, theirs. Let me remind you of the Surrealist manifesto. This is a very good example of a manifesto which is in disciple. And no one can understand it, not even the people who actually wrote it. But it doesn't matter because the turn of phrase and the historical juncture in which it was written was such that it inspired the Labour Party manifesto of 2017 that turned things around for Jeremy Corbyn. Big, thick, bloody thing that no one read. No one read it. There are a few paragraphs here and there, but it did contain the message that here is a substantial document which even if you haven't read, you know that if you read it, you'll get some hope that, yes, you can affect change in the NHS, in industry, in climate, in this and the other. So that, you know, I felt the need to state that. Another couple of points I want to make regarding what both Sechko, Eric and others said. If there is no doubt, and I insinuated that in my first presentation, that we need to be more practical than we were in 2015, 2016, there's no doubt about that. Now we have a post-democracy moment and comments, I have the view, you know that because I keep going on about it. I'll have to do a lot more of it personally. I feel the need to do it, not just for them, but because I think this is the time to do it. I believe that since the first manifesto was put together and propagated, by the way, it was a very successful manifesto. It was a very successful manifesto. It brought us so many people, right? Let's not forget that this is the time to rewrite. It does not mean that it was written in a way that could have been improved. It could not have been proved at the time. I don't think so, not significantly. But now we need a new version. We need a new version because since then, it is my considered opinion, and I know that this is a very controversial thing to say. Capitalism has died. We no longer live in capitalist times. So yes, we need to be anti-capitalist, but at the same time, we have to understand that this is like being anti-feudal towards the end of the 18th century. There were still remnants of feudalism everywhere, but already Europe and particularly England was being transformed into capitalism, into a post-feudal order. We now have a post-capitalist order, which is emerging in Europe and in the United States, but a very large extent in Europe, which is no longer capitalist from where I'm standing, it's feudal again. And it's a digital feudalism. I call it techno-feudalism, which creates new challenges for politics, for people. For instance, I have this very strong view that the proletariat is finished. I know this is not a new view, it's an old view, but I do believe very, very strongly that the proletariat will always be there in the same way that slavery was never destroyed by feudalism. There are still slaves around, but it's not the primary mode of production. Similarly, the primary mode of production now is exploitation using the symmetry of access to data and data itself. This is going to become the main means of extracting more value from the rest of society by the very, very few who are propped up, not by private profits, but by central bank state money. That is a kind of, look, the tragedy of the left is that we imagined that after capitalism we would have socialism. Now we are in a situation where we are after capitalism, but instead of socialism, we have an even more extractive and exploitative system than capitalism, which I call techno-feudalism. I think, personally, that elements of that must be in the new manifesto. That's how you are truly radical. I have some news for you. I'm going to fight tooth and nail anyone who uses the word neoliberalism is finished, it's gone. It was never a thing. It was always a disguise for extractive forms of rent seeking. We're not fighting neoliberalism. These people are neither new nor liberal, as we keep saying. These are new feudal lords using digital technologies. And we need to fight them on the streets. We need to fight them on the internet. We need to fight them everywhere. And Rosemary, you're absolutely right about the importance of bringing international dimension in. We tried to do this with DM, belatedly, after our manifesto came out, after we had started a narrative about the importance of putting the European dimension center stage by saying that, yes, but we're not displacing the national dimension to reclaim your country, which you should want to reclaim. First, we need to reclaim Europe. All those were good things, but they were afterthoughts to a very large extent. So I agree with you on this. So, okay, now I've shared with you my views on what the new manifesto must be or what it must not exclude or leave out. And now a few thoughts about process. Because now we are a movement. It's not too easy. It's in a cafe in Berlin, starting it. We have a CC. We're elected. We have DSCs. We have a consultation process and so on. But at the same time, I very much fear that no manifesto can be written. By committee. It's like writing a poem by committee. It will simply be unreadable. If you use a wiki document to write a poem, you end up with a bloody monster, right? And this has to be a poem. It has to inspire. So how do we do it? I think that we should have a multi-phase process, a multi-stage process. And here's an idea. We put out to our members an open call for brief 50 words, 50 words, no more, 50 word suggestions of things that should go into the manifesto. No more. If you write two pages about that con in the bin. 50 words. Give us your best idea of what should be in the manifesto in 50 words. I would even say 50 words. 50 words. 50 words. Give us your best idea of what should be in the manifesto in 50 words. I would even say 30, but let's be, you know, let's not be that radical. Let's say 50 words, okay? Because don't forget that the manifesto cannot be more than 950 words. So, you know, and anyone can send five such paragraphs separately in separate emails or submissions to the database. And then we can look at those. And then a very small number of us can try to put together a first draft. And then we put out that second stage. Third stage, we put this draft out, you know, bring it out there and ask for, again, 50 word comments and do this two or three times. And then in the final analysis, submit a document as the CC. And if others want to submit alternative documents, let them, and then we'll have an old member vote. How do you, what do you think about that process? Any thoughts on the process, guys? Since we're talking about how to do it now, I'm seeing thumbs up. Okay. It's not like a good proposal so far. Janice, you had any other comments? I've had enough. Enough comments and ideas for the day. Okay. Well, since we're at the top of the hour on that note, we'll end this call and the discussion though will continue as we, we start that process of renewing our manifesto. So thank you for watching. If you would like to be part of that process, DM25.org slash join is the address to, to sign up and get involved in those discussions and make those kinds of submissions and proposals about the next manifesto. Thank you for watching and see you again next. Well, not next Thursday in a fortnight.