Vote for One World!

By Trevor Phillips

Imagine for a moment that Thursday night's TV debate between the three main UK party leaders had contained an unexpected element: the trio were joined by the leader of a new global political party seeking to represent the powerless, ordinary citizens of the world, the 'One World Party'.

The party aims to create lasting worthwhile jobs, secure justice and human dignity for all, promote development to take the world's poor out of poverty, protect the environment, end the arms trade and aggressive war, bring about the emancipation of all women and minorities from discrimination and provide adequate social protection for the elderly and the vulnerable.

Here is an extract from the speech by its leader:

"Dear UK citizens, our circumstances are largely driven by global forces: international finance and competition influence where investment and jobs go; poverty caused by unfair trade or climate change creates desperation and pressures for migration. We can only improve our own circumstances if we also tackle the problems facing others. As Benjamin Franklin said 'we must hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately'.

"My government would therefore seek an international agreement to generate over $100 billion in new and additional public finance from 2013 to help developing countries curb emissions and adapt to climate change. We will also act swiftly to prevent the EU from supporting Economic Partnership Agreements which would lock 750 million of the world's poorest farmers and producers into direct competition with rich nations.

"We will immediately bring your sons and daughters home from Afghanistan, where their finest efforts and sad suffering have only propped up a corrupt regime and created resentment across the Muslim world – recruiting young men to commit atrocities. It has maintained the opium trade which wrecks the lives of many of our young people. I will press the United Nations Development Fund to launch a programme to employ two million poor Afghans in agriculture, housing and education. The UK's contribution will come from reductions in our military budget. Returning staff will be offered counselling and financially supported retraining for shortage trades and careers. Funds will also be directed to drug user rehabilitation and job training.

"We will retain the nationalised banks and take democratic control of others to create a National Development Bank to finance UK economic recovery and the redesign of our economy for the future. We will reverse the deregulation of public transport and begin to introduce an integrated public transport system which serves urban and rural dwellers alike. Railways will be nationalised and properly integrated. In three locations: London, Norfolk and Liverpool, we will introduce five-year experimental projects providing free public transport, funded from national and local budgets including funds previously allocated to road building.

"We shall abandon the Trident nuclear weapons programme and put all the UK's illegal nuclear weapons beyond use. Our recent enemies have used rucksack bombs on buses and nuclear weapons are now redundant. Some of the £90 billion savings will be earmarked for the conversion of the Barrow-in Furness Trident workshops and the Faslane navy base into regional youth apprenticeship training centres for the skills needed for renewable energy technology. Former shipyard and military workers will be offered work in a Skills Transfer Project and a Socially Useful Products Development Scheme, for which your ideas are invited.

"I apologise for the brevity of my presentation. Many of our ideas come from excellent websites such as Oxfam, Drop the Debt and the New Economics Foundation.

"Finally, we shall introduce a Robin Hood tax on speculative investment. This will raise many billions of pounds to finance our economic recovery and fund jobs and services. There is already resistance to this but at this moment members of the One World Party are currently occupying stock exchanges in New York, Mumbai and Paris. I am proud to say that amongst the protesters in Mumbai are my daughter and my husband."