The Tory Media and Trump

The Tory media, reflecting their decadence, and recognising their role of trying to act as sycophantic mouthpieces of the Tories, supplicating and embarrassing themselves at the feet of foreign potentates, in the hope that, a much weakened and dependent, Britain might be granted some scraps from the table, as Britain imposes the pain of Brexit on itself, have done all they could to make Trump's visit appear to be anything other than the embarrassment that it has been.

Emily Maitliss on Newsnight asked whether it was that Trump was getting better, or whether we were just getting used to him?  But, that suggests that Trump's visit was in some way a success.  Had she not been watching?  Trump's visit was not just a disaster for him, but also for the Tories, particularly the No Deal Brexit Tories, like Bojo and Farage, with whom he is aligned.  Trump has a simple objective in offering a big trade deal to Britain.  It is to subordinate the UK economy to the US economy, as soon as the UK loses the protection it currently enjoys as a member of the EU.  The EU is a bigger economy than the US, and all of the EU member states, including Britain, at the moment, enjoy the benefits that such a large single economy can bring.  But, once outside the EU, and its $16 trillion economy, the UK will be just a $2 trillion economy facing a US economy that is of comparable size to the EU.

Currently, due to all the benefits that the UK enjoys from the trading arrangements that the EU has been able to establish, including the EU's trading relations with the US, Britain has a $50 billion trade surplus with the US.  Trump hates any country having a surplus with the US.  His policy of America First aims to remove all such trade imbalances, as he seeks to restore the dominance of the US in global markets, despite the fact that the US has been in relative decline for the last 40 years, as it loses competitiveness to China and other Asian economies, and as other emerging economies in Latin America, and now Africa begin to take markets away from it.  Trump's global trade war, imposing swingeing tariffs on its competitors, is part of that aim to make up for the lack of US economic competitiveness by the US of US might.

In particular, what Trump needs in respect of Britain, is to open up its market for services that comprise 80% of the UK economy.  Outside the EU, the role of London as a financial services centre will come under increased threat.  CNBC, in the US, always used to describe New York as the world's financial centre, even though it was actually behind London in that regard.  But, as Britain rapidly declines in importance outside the EU, it certainly will be the ambition of the US, to achieve that goal of making New York the world's largest financial centre, and to do so, Trump wants to undermine, the UK financial services industry, and to open the doors for US financial services firms to fill their boots.

But, the other large part of the UK economy, though you might not know it, as it creaks and groans, even to meet fairly basic requirements, such as being able to provide GP appointments, in a reasonable time, is the NHS.  The NHS budget for 2018-19 was £115 billion, or about 8% of the UK economy.  a further £23 billion is spent in the UK on private healthcare, a figure that is likely to grow as the NHS proves increasingly incapable of providing even basic healthcare services, and those that can afford seek out private alternatives.  For example, I've just moved house, and had to move doctor's.  I now find that my new doctor's surgery cannot offer any pre-booked GP appointments, because they have no appointments available even up to a month in advance, leaving anyone needing an appointment having to ring every morning to see if any appointments have become available.  That inevitably leads more people to just go to A&E, which itself is in the process of collapse due to the numbers seeking to use it.

The doorway to large US healthcare companies, if the UK healthcare sector and NHS is opened up, is quite clear.  Firstly, big US healthcare companies, and health insurance companies will move in to increase the size of the private healthcare sector, as NHS patients in desperation, seek private alternatives to a  rapidly crumbling public service.  That means the better NHS staff will be drawn into this rising private healthcare sector.  That will accelerate the demise of the NHS, especially as all of the EU NHS workers, it currently depends on, go back home, as a result of Brexit.  My Irish dentist has already packed up shop, and left.  As the collapse of the NHS accelerates, even more people will be led to take out private health insurance, or simply pay to see private GP's and so on, as and when they require them,  For people who often work miles from where they can get any GP appointments at the best of times, GP services, provided by private companies online, like Babylon, will become even more attractive, and, of course, the big US healthcare, tech, and insurance companies will want to get a chunk of that growing market.  At the moment, Bernie Sanders and other US Democrats are promoting the idea of an NHS service in the US, via Medicare for all, but the irony is that as Britain declines outside the EU, and its market is opened up to huge US and other global firms, the UK is more likely to see the NHS reduced to the kind of US system of healthcare, where a much shrunk and impoverished NHS provides free at the point of use healthcare only for the very poor, or the elderly, whilst everyone else pays out for private healthcare in one form or another.  That is what Trump wants to make open to large US companies.

The disaster for Trump, and his UK Brexiteer allies arising from his visit, is that he was not supposed to let on that that is the ambition!  As with the Brexit fantasy as a whole, the Brexiteers have wanted to present it as though, Britain outside the EU would have a world to gain, rather than the reality that a small UK economy, no longer protected by the EU, would be ripped apart by the wolves and hyenas of global capitalism, each scrapping over which part of the carcass they can claim for themselves.  But, of course, Trump is a moron, he has no idea about what the words coming out of his mouth, at any one time, actually mean.  That is why he is seen to be lying all the time, and why he continually has to change what he has said one minute to the next.  The decadent Tory media would have us believe that Trump, however bad you might think his politics, is the great communicator.  This is the man for whom we can attribute new forms of grammar, and linguistics, such as his use of the word "bigly".  No Trump is not media savvy, or a great communicator, any more than he is a great deal maker or businessman.  He is a moron, who has gone bust four times, and who has ripped up several deals already negotiated simply out of pique, because they were negotiated by his bette noir Obama, whilst having failed to negotiate anything, let alone anything better in their place.  The fact that this moron, was able to be the head of corporations he inherited, and to become President of the United States speaks volumes about the nature of capitalism, and the power of money within it, including in the way that capitalist democracy itself operates.  Of course, the Tory media don't want to admit what we all know that Trump is a moron and an inveterate liar, because if they were to admit that, they would be in the process admitting just what a corrupt and bankrupt system capitalism, and capitalist democracy itself represents. 

Trump, as with his Ambassador earlier, was not supposed to let on that outside the EU, the US will press for a trade deal with the UK that will be wholly in the interests of the US, and against the interests of Britain.  By opening his mouth Trump has exposed the reality not just of the US's intentions, which thereby damages US interests, but has also exposed the true intentions of the Brextremists, who see Brexit as a perfect means of smashing apart the social-democratic developments achieved over the last century, and returning the UK economy to an eighteenth century model based upon red in tooth and claw free market competition, dominated by a myriad of small companies, with no rights for workers, consumers or the environment, with things like the NHS ripped apart, and subject to those same free market conditions.  Socialists would not have created a welfare state in the first place.  Our preference is always for workers self-government, for workers themselves via their own organisations, the trades unions, and friendly societies to create our own collective social insurance to provide compassionately and effectively for our needs, as opposed to that provided by the capitalist welfare state.  But, as Marx pointed out in his polemic on Political Indifferentism,  that does not mean that we are in favour of a boycott of those welfare services, now they have been created, or that we are indifferent to their destruction, and replacement by something worse.  It simply means we continue to strive for something superior to what the capitalist welfare state currently provides, something that is actually under our ownership and control.

Indeed, the same argument applies with the EU itself.  The EU is an inadequate, bureaucratic attempt to resolve the problems that the fetters of the nation state creates.  Socialists would not have created the EU as it exists.  We would have created a Socialist United States of Europe.  Even progressive social democrats would want something better than the current EU, dominated as it is by the ideas of conservative social-democracy.  But, the fact of pointing out its inadequacy does not mean that we are politically indifferent in respect of defending it as against a reversion to something worse!  That is why socialists vehemently oppose Brexit.

On the same Newsnight, Emily Maitliss also attacked Corbyn for his refusal to go to the Royal shindig offered up, at taxpayers expense, to try to flatter the child-like Trump, who had brought his entire family along with him, to be like Christopher Robin and Alice, going to tea at Buckingham Palace.  Of course, there is a weakness in Corbyn's position, and that of other political leaders, who failed to take such a principled stance against other global despots such as President Xi, of China.  But, Maitliss resorted to such whataboutery, on successive occasions, as at each point of her questioning, which again seemed to suggest that she had not been paying attention to what had been happening, or what had been said to her, when Dawn Butler, quite easily rebutted the points put to her.

So, Butler pointed out that Corbyn had asked to see Trump, but had pointed out that if the purpose of such a meeting is a business meeting where criticism of Trump's position was to be raised, then the State banquet, designed to allow the already bloated Trump to puff himself up even more, was not the place to do it.  Maitliss first fell back on the response that Corbyn had not said in public, at the protest rally, that he had asked to meet Trump.  What that had to do with anything was not clear, but was in any case, as Butler pointed out not true, because Corbyn at the rally had said that he had written to Trump asking for a separate meeting away from all the pomp.  Then this was described as having backfired on Corbyn, because Trump had then refused to meet him, and claimed not to know who he was!  But, only a decadent and sychophantic Toiry media could arrive at that conclusion.  Trump's ignorance of Corbyn only emphasis the degree of his general ignorance, if anyone was in any doubt about it to begin with.  Trump's refusal to meet with Corbyn, because of his "criticism", proves the point of why not attending the Royal shindig was entirely vindicated, if the purpose was to convey criticism of Trump's vile politics.  Trump's refusal to meet Corbyn shows that he is frit of such a meeting, because he only wants to meet those who will fawn over him, a rather grotesque feature that the Tory media exhibits in abundance.

Having been rebutted on those points by Butler, Maitliss then resorted into even more irrelevant whataboutery, bringing in the wholly extraneous issues of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, apparently in total desperation of finding some means to regain a foothold from which to coninue her assault on labour, no matter how far removed from the issue supposedly under discussion, of Trump's visit, and what his comments about the NHS, and his support for outright Brexiteers such as Bojo, and Farage signifies.  In a further, bit of Trump sycophancy, Maitliss continued in a similar vein, again suggesting she was not on top of her brief in an interview with Michael Wolff, about his latest book on Trump.  Maitliss seemed probably not to have read Wolff's book, or else totally failed to understand the point that Wolff was making about the nature of Trump as a narcissist who, although he is also an habitual liar, and misogynist, also lies about his own sexual exploits, as a means of inflating his own achievements.  Wolff in his book had illustrated that by describing how Trump had claimed that a prominent US politician had given him a blow job.  The claim was untrue, Wolff says, but just shows the way Trump lies to inflate his accomplishments.  That is apparent in every word that Trump utters, and was apparent from day one, when he refused to recognise the fact that fewer people had turned out for his inauguration than had done for Obama.  It was seen again in his visit to London where he claimed that thousands had turned out to show their love for him, and that only a handful had turned out to protest, and that any suggestion to the contrary was just "fake news".  But, Maitliss completely failed to miss the point that Wolff was making in this regard, and accused him of dragging the woman's name through the mud, by referring to the incident!

For the Brextremists in the Tory Party, Trump's visit has also been a disaster, which is why it is amazing that anyone in the Tory media can suggest that it somehow went smoothly.  Besides thef act that Trump let the cat out of the bag about why he supports Brexit, and the Brextremists, by telling all and sundry that the NHS will be up for grabs by big US health care companies after Brexit, as part of any trade deal, Trump openly campaigned for Bojo, and found time to have a meeting with Farage, his partner in the global red-brown coalition of reactionary nationalists.  Of course, its not just the Tory Brextremists who should be embarrassed by that.  So should all those other Lexiters that are part of that Red-Brown coalition of reactionary nationalists, including those from the Socialist Workers party, and its offshoots that were promoters of the protests against Trump's visit.  The truth is that Trump and Brexit are simply two aspects of the same phenomena.

Trump's outburst on the NHS led to a necessary immediate response from Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who tweeted that he would not allow the NHS to be on the table.  The Tory media tried to claim that May had also immediately rebutted Trump's statement, but she did not, simply saying that what would be part of any deal would be up to the negotiators on both sides.  But, given the terrible performance of UK negotiators over Brexit, who would have any faith that they would put up any kind of meaningful defence of the NHS, or British standards on food hygiene or anything else as they supplicated themselves in search of a few scraps from Trump's table.  The reality is that the UK did not get any concessions in the Brexit talks, for the simple reason that a $2 trillion economy is at an immediate disadvantage compared to a $16 trillion economy.  Its like the corner shop trying to negotiate a good deal with Tesco!  But, the same will apply even more when it comes to trying to negotiate with the US, or China, or India, or any other larger economy, or trading bloc. 

Another objection to Corbyn's refusal to go to the Royal shindig, and of his criticism of Trump was that, if Corbyn becomes Prime Minister, he may need to be dealing with the US in coming months.  Again this simply indicates the decadent supplicating role that Tories and the Tory media have adopted towards Trump, but which is an inevitable consequence of Brexit, and Britain's increasing irrelevance, and dependence, thereby on the world stage.  Of course, if you have no real leverage, then the only way you can seek to make your way in the world is on the basis of the kindness of strangers, and supplicating yourself to such benefactors.  However, what those Tories also fail to recognise is that, Trump himself is something of a lame duck, since he lost control of Congress, and with only a year left effectively in his term of office.  In 2020, Trump is likely to be replaced by President Bernie Sanders, or Elizabeth Warren, or Joe Biden. Then, all of those right-wing Tories and Faragists that have sucked up to Trump, will be the ones out in the cold, and given the cold shoulder, and it will be Prime Minister Corbyn who will be the one seen to have shown not only some principle in standing up to Trump's reactionary agenda, but also some political foresight about where Britain's longer-term political interests lie in who in the US it chooses to align with!