Marx, then, examines what Proudhon claims are the “economic” reasons for gold and silver achieving the status of money, prior to other commodities, as a result of their value being “constituted” first. All of these reasons, given by Proudhon, amount to nothing more than vague restatements, using other words for the assumption he needed to validate.
“These economic reasons are: the “visible tendency to become dominant,” the “marked preferences” even in the “patriarchal period,” and other circumlocutions about the actual fact – which increase the difficulty, since they multiply the fact by multiplying the incidents which M. Proudhon brings in to explain the fact.” (p 78)
And Marx quotes another reason given by Proudhon, which shows the way he gets things back to front.
“Money is born of sovereign consecration: the sovereigns take possession of gold and silver and affix their seal to them.” (p 78)
Marx notes,
“Thus, the whim of sovereigns is for M. Proudhon the highest reason in political economy.” (p 78)
There is a lesson, here, from Marx to the Stalinists and statists, including today's economic nationalists, proponents of MMT etc. He says,
“Truly, one must be destitute of all historical knowledge not to know that it is the sovereigns who in all ages have been subject to economic conditions, but they have never dictated laws to them. Legislation, whether political or civil, never does more than proclaim, express in words, the will of economic relations.
Was it the sovereign who took possession of gold and silver to make them the universal agents of exchange by affixing his seal to them? Or was it not, rather, these universal agents of exchange which took possession of the sovereign and forced him to affix his seal to them and thus give them a political consecration?
The impress which was and is still given to money is not that of its value but of its weight. The stability and authenticity M. Proudhon speaks of apply only to the standard of the money; and this standard indicates how much metallic matter there is in a coined piece of silver.” ( 78-9)
It is not possible, however, to know the value of an ounce of silver, simply from its weight. To know its value, I must know how much universal labour it represents, and to know its exchange-value, I must know in what proportion this value stands to that of other commodities such as wool, linen, wine etc. A jumper might bear the label “pure wool”, but this cannot tell me its value, without knowing the value of wool and so on, Marx says. Similarly, a coin thrown into circulation, by a sovereign, - be it an absolute monarch or a bourgeois-democratic state, or workers' state – cannot have its value determined simply by an impress upon it.
Marx quotes Proudhon's example of Philip I, and responds,
“It has been proved times without number that, if a prince takes into his head to debase the currency, it is he who loses. What he gains once at the first issue he loses every time the falsified coinage returns to him in the form of taxes, etc. But Philip and his successors were able to protect themselves more or less against this loss, for, once the debased coinage was put into circulation, they hastened to order a general re-minting of money on the old footing.” (p 79-80)
Keir Starmer, despite 70% of Labour voters, and 80% of Labour members wanting to scrap Brexit and re-join the EU, not only refuses to commit to it, but even refuses to propose re-joining the Single Market. He continues to propose the ridiculous cakeist concept of a Labour Brexit, in which he will negotiate a better deal for Britain with the EU than it had as a member, or that other EU member states have. Sheer fantasy, and jingoist, British exceptionalism. The Liberals, who should be harvesting Labour votes, if not also Labour members, by the bucketful, in those conditions, have also adopted a tailist, cowardly approach, in which they continue to murmur about rejoining the EU at some future point, but claiming that its unrealistic right now. Quite the opposite, its unrealistic not to put rejoin on the agenda, to be pursued immediately by the next government.
Unrealistic for all the reasons previously set out, in relation to the fantasy of Britain somehow negotiating a closer deal with the EU. What does a closer deal mean? Britain is already bound to have to abide by EU Single market rules and regulations, if it wants to export goods and services into the EU, its closest, and by far largest market for those goods and services. As I wrote recently, Starmer's comment about not wanting to diverge from those rules and regulations is meaningless, because, as the Brexitories of Johnson's government and Truss's government soon found out, Britain can't diverge from them, whether it wants to or not, and still trade with the EU.
Britain can have a closer arrangement, in so far as re-joining some of the EU's institutions such as with the Horizon programme, but, again, all that means is a recognition of reality that Britain is massively damaged, by not being inside those programmes and institutions. It has already abandoned some of its own national programmes, set up as alternatives, and, as with its global health insurance card, set up as an alternative to the EHIC, they are useless, because no one, in other countries, recognises it, or accepts it. These all amount to costly, useless, bureaucratic national duplications of programmes and institutions that Britain, inside the EU, had automatic access to. So, if Britain is basically bound by the rules and regulation of the Single Market, and is having to seek membership of these other EU institutions and programmes, it is not demanding rejoining the EU itself that is unrealistic!
The only thing that Starmer can point to is the requirement to commit to free movement of labour, as a condition of membership of the Single Market, but for workers, for the vast majority of Labour, and most Liberal and Green voters, free movement is something we desperately want back, not something to be feared. Starmer and the Liberals hack at the racism of the Tories immigration policies and attitudes, but, at base, the reason that Starmer, and, it appears, the Liberal leadership baulk at proposing rejoin is that they are pandering to those same racist sentiments amongst a section of reactionary voters.
In the 1990's, as the Tories were torn apart by the divisions between their reactionary, petty-bourgeois, nationalist/Eurosceptic wing, and their conservative social-democratic wing, what strengthened the position of the former, besides the fact of the growing social weight of the petty-bourgeoisie, was that it was also able to take political shape in the form of UKIP. UKIP was never going to win any significant number of parliamentary seats, let alone form a government, its electoral successes, as with the BNP, during that period, were confined to the fact that a fanatical core of voters, had an exaggerated effect on the results, in small polls, such as those for local councils, and for the European Parliament. But, what it did do was to act as a whip on the Tory Party. It knew that an increasing number of its core vote could find an alternative, enough to prevent the Tories being able to form secure majorities. Something similar happened in the US, and elsewhere.
What Starmer, and, it appears, the Liberal leadership are relying on is that there is no equivalent to their internationalist Left, providing an equivalent whip. In the 2019, local and Euro elections, it was clear that the Liberals, Greens and others performed that function, in relation to a Labour Party that was drifting towards its own Brexit position, under Corbyn's leadership. Even 60% of Labour members, voted for these other anti-Brexit parties, in those elections, let alone Labour voters. It set in the rot that led to Labour's defeat at the 2019 General Election. But, the position of Starmer, and of the Liberal leadership, seems to be that those voters, desperate to ditch the Tories, will hold their nose and vote Labour or Liberal, for that purpose, despite the fact that they are basically adapting to and appeasing that increasingly small minority of racists and bigots that continue to support Brexit, despite the obvious disaster it has turned out to be. The field would appear to be open to some progressive, pro-EU party that would put the question of immediately rejoining the EU on the agenda.
Resolutions are put on the agenda for Labour's conference tentatively calling for a commitment to rejoining the Single Market, and so on, but Starmer's increasingly police state apparatus in the party, with the use of former MI6 spies, and so on, to sniff out and eradicate even the potential for having to deal with awkward questions, let alone a conference debate, is likely to prevent it getting to the conference floor. Liberal activists also raised the question on the conference floor, but with no great effect. So far, the Greens have also failed to make hay amidst all of this cowardice, and tailism by Labour and the Liberals, to stand up and be counted, and commit to rejoining the EU at the earliest opportunity. So, far, the real action has come from small groups of progressive, internationalist individuals, such as those that organised the Rejoin March, last Saturday, that drew in thousands of supporters, despite the fact that the British mainstream media have done everything possible to avoid even reporting on its existence. Some will also gather at Labour Conference, in Liverpool, organised by Labour Social.
The problem with much of the discussion about Brexit, and re-joining is that it continues to be framed within the nationalistic agenda. It starts from the question about whether Brexit has been good or bad for “Britain”. But the concept Britain, just as with the concept “Ukraine”, is entirely abstract, and misses the fact that nations are comprised of classes with different class interests. Nationalism, and the idea that there is some overriding “national interest”, is the ideology of the bourgeoisie, because, of course, what this “national interest”, really means, in practice, is the interests of the nation state as the state of the ruling class! Suppose that Brexit was in the interests of “Britain”, i.e. of the British ruling class – it isn't, but just suppose – would that mean that international socialists would, then, not have to oppose it? Of course not.
Brexit, of course, was thought to be in the interests of a considerable portion of the British population, the 15 million or so voters of the petty-bourgeoisie, the self-employed, small shopkeepers and so on, for whom any chance to avoid the greater competition of large-scale capital, the requirement to abide by civilised standards for workers, consumers and the environment are simply obstacles in the way of them making their profits. Many of them, still, no doubt, think the same way still, which explains the reservoir of support for those ideas, still, in the Tory Party. But, the fact is that even if Brexit were not the disaster, economically and in other ways, for Britain, and particularly for its workers that it is, international socialists would still oppose it. To take an extreme, example, suppose “Britain” could regain its former imperial glory, and re-establish dominion over large parts of the globe, obtaining protected markets for its goods and services, and cheap sources of food and materials. Such a Britain might, then, even pass on some of this largesse to its workers. Would socialists, then, be in favour of such colonialism, or fail to oppose it? Of course not.
As socialists, our main concern is not whether Brexit is good or bad for “Britain”, or even for “British” workers, but whether it is an impediment to, or facilitator of, socialism itself. The Stalinists and social-democrats continue to view it in national terms, because their vision of Socialism itself is national, i.e. national socialism, often to be handed to workers from on high by the state, despite the fact its a capitalist state. Brexit has been a disaster for the “British” economy, and for “British” workers, but that is not why socialists oppose it, and seek to reverse it at the earliest opportunity. The reason is that it acts to divide workers in Britain from their comrades across the EU; it acts to constrain their ability to fight as a class for their interests, as a whole, and without that ability, they will, ultimately fail.
The question of whether British workers might obtain more or less scraps from the table of British capitalists, as a result of Brexit or some other such decision is irrelevant, just as with the question of whether they might be better or worse off as a result of the victory or defeat of their own ruling class and state in a war with some other state. In the end, all of these amount to fobbing off workers with sops, whilst the fundamental basis of their problems – capitalism – remains, and is, indeed, strengthened, against them, because they have failed to demarcate and pursue their own class interests as against those of their own ruling class. At times, workers are able, like, now, with the existence of labour shortages, to raise their wages, but, that only leads to the ruling class introducing labour-saving machines, causing unemployment to rise, so that they can reduce wages once more, and so boost their profits. The victory of one capitalist state, in a war, might enable it to appease its own workers at the expense of the workers of the defeating capitalist state, but the nature of capitalism, means that, the ensuing peace will be only a temporary interlude until the next war.
For workers, the only sustainable future is to overthrow capitalism and build Socialism, but Socialism can only be built on an international basis. The starting point of that is to smash down the national borders between nation states, so that workers can begin to struggle, as a global class for their joint interests. The EU, whilst by no means what socialists would advocate, as it stands, is, at least, a starting point for such a struggle, the first step on that journey. Its why Socialists must demand,
The ruling class's problem with Corbyn's Labour Party was not that it was socialist, or even radically more progressive than the governments of Attlee, Wilson or Callaghan. It wasn't. The problem was that the conditions existing in 2017, were different to those existing in 1945, 1964, or 1974. In those earlier periods, as described previously, real, socialised capital required an extension of those social-democratic measures, of planning and regulation on a larger scale, of creation of larger single markets, like the EU, and even of similar planning and regulation on a global scale such as with GATT/WTO, IMF, World Bank and so on.
Germany's system of co-determination, in which workers sit on company boards, shows that even that social-democratic agenda is not alien to the interests of large-scale capital. And, because the ruling class obtained its revenues, wealth and power from the interest/dividends paid out of those expanding profits, such development was entirely consistent with its interests. Those developments were required for long-term investment/capital accumulation, and profits were reinvested into that capital accumulation, producing increased profits and revenues in the form of dividends/interest.
But, that condition changed from the 1980's onwards, as the ruling class came, increasingly, to rely, not on those revenues, but on the speculative capital gains on its assets, as the secular falling trend of interest rates from around 1982, pushed up asset prices, and, after 1987, that was maintained by central banks' policy of liquidity injections (Greenspan Put). The two things are ultimately incompatible, as Marx describes, in Capital III. Asset prices are determined by two things, the revenue produced by the asset, and the rate of interest – i.e. asset prices are determined by the capitalisation of their revenue. If interest rates fall, asset prices rise, and vice versa. (As I write this, US 2 Year Bond Yields have just hit 5.20%, taking it back to around the figure just before the 2008 global financial crash.)
The revenue produced by assets, such as shares or bonds, is a function of the profits produced by the companies that issue the shares and bonds. That is why, as described earlier, if those profits can be increased, simply by reducing the costs of businesses, to realise those profits, by reducing trade frictions and so on, or by, in the same way, increasing the turnover of capital, so that any given amount of capital employs more labour, so that the annual rate of surplus value, and annual rate of profit rises, this is nirvana for the ruling class. Without any additional investment of capital, it gets bigger profits, and so the potential for companies to pay out more in dividends or coupon interest. The creation of the EU Single Market, and other similar blocs across the globe, together with the whole process of globalisation, from the 1980's, fed into that.
The increased mass of money profits fed into a greater mass of revenues from interest/dividends, even as the rate of interest fell, because the supply of money-capital resulting from this increased mass of profit, exceeded the demand for that money-capital, to finance capital accumulation, in a period of long-wave stagnation/intensive accumulation.
The lower interest rates created higher asset prices, including higher land and property prices. The latter created the conditions, with falling deposit interest rates, for some of those with savings, looking to retirement, to become buy-to-let landlords, because the total return from rents, plus capital gains, way exceeded the paltry interest on savings deposits they could obtain. More, and more of those revenues – dividends/interest and rents – simply fed back into the demand for existing shares, bonds and property, creating an upward spiral of asset prices, which, as seen on every occasion after 1987, central banks kept inflated, whenever a fall in those prices occurred, by injecting even more liquidity into the system. As I described many years ago, the result of that was also to suck liquidity out of the real economy, as no one wanted to get left behind, and that acted like the sucking of oxygen, in a firestorm, to depress liquidity in the real economy, having a considerable depressing impact on growth.
Asset price bubbles inflate when money is sucked in from the real economy (red) to the fictitious economy (Green), and stays there, simply forming an ever increasing monetary demand for (mostly) existing assets, i.e. monetary demand or those assets rises continually, but supply of those assets does not, causing their prices to rise.
But, that too was required, precisely because, having become dependent, not on revenues, but on continued capital gains, the ruling class is now threatened by any significant rise in economic growth. Economic growth causes the demand for capital to rise, at a time when many of those previous cost free sources of higher money profits have gone. The creation of the EU, and other such single markets, is in the past, and for Britain, has been disastrously reversed by Brexit. The process of globalisation has not only run its course, but also been put in reverse by a combination of US trade wars, as part of the growing division of the globe into armed imperialist camps, staring at each other from behind nuclear barricades, but also as a result of the lockdowns, breakdown of global supply chains, and move away from Just In Time, stock control, to Just In Case.
Its not only because bourgeois ideologists like Larry Summers first response is to see a cut in workers wages, as the means to boost profits, and so relieve the pressure on rising prices that they advocate a recession, as the means to reduce inflation. It is the understanding that economic growth also leads to this increased demand for money-capital, at a time when the supply of that money-capital, from rising profits, is limited, in a way it has not been for forty years, for the reasons described above. But, herein lies a further contradiction, because, now, to increase the mass of profits, requires economic growth! It requires real capital accumulation, and the employment of additional labour. For forty years, an increased proportion of profits went into dividends, even as the rising share prices meant the dividend yield fell. As Andy Haldane pointed out, where, in the 1970's, dividends accounted for around 10% of profits, today, the figure is around 70%.
For Summers, and the representatives of the ruling class of speculators, the option of the last 40 years, in which profits could be increased by holding down wages, has also gone. The Bank of England expected a big reduction in real wages, as prices rose faster than wages, but, even in the UK, wages are now rising by 1% point, at least, more than prices, and as employment has expanded, household incomes more than that. In the US too, wages are rising faster than prices, and, there has been an even bigger rise in employment, and so of household incomes. Even as they have tried to hold back economic growth, and successfully, for the last 13 years, as they basically hibernated the long wave cycle, it simply churned away, at a slower pace, in the background, and the relative surplus population was worn away.
Economic growth, now, in a period of extensive accumulation, means higher wages, and increasingly squeezed profits, but, as each company, and each economic bloc, is forced by competition to accumulate – including, now, the need to invest in national infrastructures that are crumbling, or face even greater dislocation and falling productivity – an increasing proportion of profits must go to finance that accumulation, and not to revenues/interest/rents. There is no way out, and those rising interest rates mean falling asset prices, be it property prices, share or bond prices. A huge crash in the paper wealth of the global ruling class, much bigger than even in 2008. Its that they are still trying to avoid, but its not possible to do so.
In these conditions, even a Wilson government would pose a problem for the ruling class, because its desire to ensure a rational accumulation of capital, and economic growth, conflicts with the need of the ruling class to hold back economic growth and accumulation of capital, so as to hold back the demand for money-capital, and crash of asset prices. Its not, even, the rise in wages causing a squeeze on profits that is their real problem at this stage, any more than it was in the early 1960's. There is no crisis of overproduction of capital, at this stage, as there was in the 1970's, and an expansion of employment means also an expansion of the mass of profits. The main problem, for them, of rising household incomes, is that it leads to even higher levels of aggregate demand, and growth, and so demand for capital. It is simply that this increase in profits does not keep pace with the increase in the demand for money-capital, causing interest rates to rise, and asset prices to fall.
Corbyn, represented the same kind of social-democratic agenda as Attlee or Wilson, but, now in conditions where the success of such a strategy, as far as the economy, and real capital is concerned, conflicts with the interests of the ruling class, and its determination to maintain the prices of its assets/fictitious capital. That Corbyn was seen still to hold those economic nationalist views in relation to the EU, made matters worse. And, that applies in relation to Starmer too.
The Stalinists had abandoned their independence and subordinated themselves to the KMT and the national bourgeoisie, and yet they attempted to deny the reality.
“"While fighting in the ranks of the revolutionary Guomindang,” say Stalin’s theses, “the Communist Party must preserve its independence more than ever before.” Preserve? But to this day the Communist Party has had no such independence. Precisely its lack of independence is the source of all the evils and all the mistakes. In this fundamental question, the theses, instead of making an end once and for all to the practice of yesterday, propose to retain it “more than ever before”. But this means that they want to retain the ideological, political and organizational dependence of the proletarian party upon a petty-bourgeois party, which is inevitably converted into an instrument of the big bourgeoisie.” (p 36-7)
Of course, if you take the various sects that comprise the USC, today, they will protest that they are independent, will point to the fact that they call for this, that or the other element of independent organisation by Ukrainian (and other) workers, but, the reality is, as with, in the past, the support of the SWP for Hezbollah etc., their overall support for the war waged by the Ukrainian state, and its NATO backers, makes that as irrelevant as the Stalinists words about their independence in the KMT.
“In order to justify a false policy, one is forced to call dependence independence, and to demand the preservation of what ought to be buried for all time.” (p 37)
In China, it had the benefit of a rapidly growing workers' mass movement, powerful growth of trades unions, based on rapid capital accumulation, in the towns and cities, and many of those workers looked to the Communist Party as their party, rather than the social-democrats, given the success of the revolution in Russia. Similarly, a revolutionary agrarian movement saw the peasants recognising that the Bolsheviks had given land to Russian peasants. Everything was in favour of a strong development of the Chinese Communist Party, but the Stalinist threw it away, by subordinating themselves to the KMT, and they did the same thing, a decade later, in Spain. In China, Trotsky said, if in the conditions that existed, the Communist Party was to continue to be subordinated in that way, it would be better not to have such a party at all.
“It is better not to constitute any Communist party at all than to discredit it so cruelly at the time of a revolution, that is, just at the time when the Party is being joined to the working masses with bonds of blood and when great traditions are being created that are destined to live for decades.” (p 37-8)
And, given the debilitating consequences of Maoism, and Guevarism, in later decades, that proved to be the case. Together with the discredit brought by Stalinism and the infection of the workers' movement with petty-bourgeois nationalist ideas, they have brought, it has set back the cause of Socialism more than a century.
The Stalinists, rather than examining their mistakes in China, attacked the Trotskyists, who had correctly predicted the course of events. A theme adopted was that the Trotskyists did not understand the tempo of events, in China. Opportunists frequently raise these kinds of objection to the Marxists, claiming that they are trying to impose some given, previous analysis and model that does not take into consideration the specific conditions and characteristics in the particular country, at the time. The POUMists raised this objection in Spain, and Pivert did so in France. Yet, as Trotsky responds, in all these cases, it was the opportunists that applied the same model of the Popular Front, and, on each occasion, with the same disastrous results.
In April, 1927, the Chinese bourgeoisie showed what it thought of the Stalinists ideas about the tempo of events, and launched its coup, via Chiang Kai Shek, and the KMT.
“The Communist Party, the proletariat, as well as the Left Guomindang people, showed themselves completely unprepared for this blow. Why? Because the leadership counted upon a slower tempo, because it remained hopelessly behindhand, because it was infected with chvostism.” (p 38)
In the 1950's, 60's and 70's, the main parties, in developed economies, were coalitions dominated by the ideas of conservative social-democracy. That is they recognised the dominance and determining role of large-scale socialised capital, and pursued policies consistent with its needs and development, but they could not distinguish that from the interests of the shareholders in those companies, whose interests were, in fact, antagonistic to it. The Tories, in Britain, largely retained all of the measures introduced by the 1945 Labour Government, including the welfare state, and most of the nationalised industries. During this period of what has been called Buttskellism, as the party of government alternated, between Labour and Tory, the data shows that 90% of the programme of the outgoing government, was simply adopted by the incoming government. The same was seen in other countries, with only questions of nuance arising from different electoral systems.
Whilst Atlee's Labour government failed, and led to the election of Churchill, in 1951, and Wilson's 1964/6 – 1970 governments failed, leading to the election of Heath, and again, Wilson/Callaghan's 1974 -1979 governments failed, leading to the election of Thatcher, the incoming Tory governments were still in this mould of social-democracy. It could just as easily be said that the Tory governments that replaced them, during these periods, failed. They only failed in their own narrow party political ambitions. What persisted was the underlying social-democratic state and agenda. Even Thatcher's shift of emphasis, in the early 1980's, an adoption of Austrian School economics, as she was guided by Hayek, was really still within that framework, the shift of emphasis being driven by the inability of Keynesianism to deal with the new, changed economic conditions, as the long wave moved from the boom phase to the crisis phase.
Even, then, Thatcher's position was fragile inside the Tory Party. But, she reflected those changed material conditions, and presaged what was to come. She won out, just as Volcker's strategy of high interest rates won out, solely because, in response to the crisis of overproduction of capital, in the 1970's, capital had engaged in a technological revolution, in the form of the development of microchips, which created a large relative surplus population that undermined the position of workers, and gave the upper hand to capital. They used that to boost profits.
But, Thatcher, also, was a proponent of all those same social-democratic measures required to boost the profits and expansion of large-scale socialised capital, at that time. She was the one that championed the European Single Market, for example. Only later, as the social weight of the petty-bourgeoisie increased, and it was able to capture control of the Tory Party, did that change, and, then, not decisively.
By the end of the 1980's, as Thatcher became increasingly the representative of that petty-bourgeois wing of the Tory Party, a petty-bourgeoisie that she came from, herself, as the daughter of a small shopkeeper, did the, still dominant, social-democratic wing of the Tory Party turn on her, and remove her. Major attempted to restore that social-democratic hegemony, but under constant bombardment. The interests of that petty-bourgeoisie are incompatible with the interests of the ruling-class, and of its state. When Major fell, a series of Eurosceptic Tory leaders were installed, but none could move the party forward, leading, again, to the return of the social-democratic wing, in the form of Cameron, who based himself on the model of Blair, who had won the 1997 election by a landslide. Blair's victory was really an indication of the condition of the Tories, and, in every subsequent election, Labour's vote declined.
Blair-Brown failed, and opened the door to Cameron. Cameron, who had based himself on the model of Blair, pursued all of those same social-democratic ideas. Right up until a few months before the 2010 election, Cameron was promising to meet all of Labour's spending programme, for example. Only at the last minute, looking defeat in the eye, and having seen the success of the Tea Party in shoring up the Republican core vote (i.e. the vote of its petty-bourgeois supporters) did he shift tack, opportunistically.
But, that itself, showed a change of conditions. The Tea Party, and its inheritor Trumpism, grew, because the petty-bourgeoisie had grown, and the old conservative social-democratic agenda, which had come to rely on inflating asset prices, and debt, was no longer sustainable, as the long wave cycle shifted from the period of stagnation, to that of prosperity, of rising demand for labour and capital, and consequently a secular upward trend for interest rates, and consequent fall in asset prices.
The Tea Party gave an alternative to that petty-bourgeoisie, in the US, and the consequence of that is that the Republicans have, now, become a petty-bourgeois, Trumpist Party, reactionary, and alien to the interests of the US ruling-class, and its state. The same was happening in Britain, and across Europe as those old conservative, social-democratic policies could no longer work, just as, in the late 1970's, the ideas of Keynesianism were no longer viable. The petty-bourgeois, nationalist, Euro-sceptics had a majority of Tory members, and voters, and outside the party, acting as a whip on it, was UKIP, and the BNP.
Much as a small minority, representing the interests of the ruling class, has control of the Labour Party machine, and its dominant sections such as the PLP, and local councils, despite the overwhelming majority of members being workers, so, too, in the Tory Party, the ruling class exerted control over the machine, selection of candidates and so on, despite the majority of members, being petty-bourgeois. In both parties, the members are allowed only the role of foot soldiers at election time.
Like the façade of bourgeois-democracy itself, the internal “democracy” of the parties amounts to allowing the members to vent their emotions, and feel they have some determining role, whilst the party leaders and machine spout platitudes and soothing words, before going about their business as normal. But, the change in conditions, and growth of the petty-bourgeoisie changed things for the Tories as well as the Republicans, and other similar parties. Cameron attempted to continue as normal, even placating the petty-bourgeois base by pulling out of the European People's Party, and aligning the Tories with the Far Right Parties. But, they continued to lose voters and members to UKIP. He was driven into calling the EU Referendum, clearly believing that Remain would win, and that would undermine the petty-bourgeois opposition.
He was wrong, and all that happened was the petty-bourgeoisie was strengthened further. Normally, the consequence of that would be that the Tories would lose the next election, as the ruling class threw its weight behind the alternate conservative social-democratic party, i.e. Labour. But, Labour had elected Corbyn, who represented not that traditional conservative social-democracy, but a more progressive social-democracy. Indeed, in 2016, during the referendum, whilst Cameron and the Liberals offered only a view of the EU as simply a continuation of that same neo-liberal regime, Corbyn handed control of Labour's campaign to the Blairite, Alan Johnson, who disappeared without trace for the entire period. It was typical of Corbyn's appeasement of the Right, but also signified the weakness of his own pro-Brexitism, and economic nationalism.
But, in 2017, Corbyn's Labour did nearly fulfil that function. Having grown the party massively to around 600,000 members, and having enthused a whole new generation of new voters and activists, Labour's vote increased by the most in any election since 1945.
As I wrote recently, Bloomberg has reported that Starmer's Blue Labour has enlisted the services of Hakluyt and Co., to assist it in developing better ties to the main enemies of the British workers, in British business. As Bloomberg notes, Hakluyt is a firm established by former MI6 spies, and, as everyone who has read any of the Le Carre etc. novels knows, once a spook, always a spook. So, exactly who are Hakluyt that Starmer has jumped into bed with.
Wikipedia, which notes, that it was established 28 years ago, by former MI6 agents, and has, “recruited several former spies and journalists from the FT”, provides a list of some of its employees, including various former CEO's of global corporations, as well as former Tory Minister Andrew Mitchell. It also notes its continued close links to MI6, saying,
“Hakluyt has strong links with the British intelligence service MI6. The Evening Standard wrote in 2012 that "Spies preparing for retirement are approached discreetly in St James’s clubs and asked if they would like some lucrative freelance action to top up their pensions".
Hakluyt refused to comment when asked whether former employees of MI6 were required to cut ties with the intelligence agency when recruited to work at Hakluyt.”
According to Open Democracy, Hakluyt is just one of a series of private spying outfits with links to the secret services that have been engaged by big business, as well as by local governments, to spy on activists, be they environmentalist activists, or labour movement activists, of the type who might think that the Labour Party would be sympathetic to their interests, rather than engaging spooks and agents of the state to spy on them. It notes,
“But it seems that one company in particular enjoys access to the upper levels of government.
It also cites the Sunday Times, from 2001, which accused the company of spying on Greenpeace activists. Given the experience and exposes of the actions of under cover state agents in not only the activities of various campaigning groups, but also in the intimate private lives of individual activists, in those groups, you might think that Starmer would steer a million miles away from them, as these activities of lying to individuals, some of whom were subsequently made pregnant by those agents, makes the activities of Russell Brand look tame by comparison.
Forty years ago, when Starmer was a member of the Pabloite Socialist Alternatives, he is one of those who might have been the subject of such spying activities, or, may be not!
The connection of Halkuyt to Ollie Robbins, is, of course, consistent with Starmer's reactionary, pro-Brexit position, and his need, now, to square that both with the need to appeal to the vast majority of Labour voters, who oppose Brexit, many on a progressive, international socialist basis, and seek to rejoin the EU, not to mention the many progressive, liberal voters that Labour needs to win, as well as with the interests of big business, which opposes Brexit, and which Starmer, meanwhile, needs to get on board.
Open Democracy also give a list of meetings between Halkuyt employees and government ministers, the existence of which was only uncovered as a result of Freedom of Information requests, but with the actual purpose and details of those meetings all hidden from public view. One of the activities seems also to have been in relation to Britain's relation to China, which is significant given the growing butting of heads between the two global imperialist blocs of US/NATO and Russia/China, whether in Ukraine, the Middle East, and increasingly the Pacific.
“openDemocracy previously reported how Hakluyt met with then-minister for investment Gerry Grimstone in 2020 – during which no minutes were taken. But internal documents suggest that a government operation called Project DEFEND, which aimed to reduce the UK’s reliance on China for medical equipment, was discussed at the meeting.”
Starmer and the Blue Labour Right have repeatedly brought the enemy class forces into the affairs of the labour movement to serve their purposes in attacking the Left, which comprises the large majority of party members. Bringing in the EHCR was just one example, and now we see openly a connection to the forces of the capitalist state, in its most vicious form. Of course, connections to other organisations with open links to foreign states is not at all new, as with the connections of numerous right-wing Labour MP's with BICOM, and its relations to the Zionist state. A look at BICOM's website shows the connections of its staff to the Zionist state, within which many of them formerly worked.
Opendemocracy also relates the way the Greater London Authority used another such firm, Welund, in 2020,
“to provide intelligence about activists. Documents obtained by openDemocracy now show that the Greater London Authority (GLA) had previously hired the firm on another contract several months earlier, in 2019.
“Welund provides a curated daily dashboard with listings of planned demonstrations, events and protests,” an internal GLA email says. It adds that the firm has “consistently given warning of gatherings in London that are potentially disruptive, that [City Hall] did not have information on from other sources – including [the Metropolitan Police].”
The GLA was also implicated in the intelligence gathering of environmental protesters last summer. OpenDemocracy revealed how security officials linked to a GLA event “spied” on a group of environmental activists and blocked them from participating in a public debate.
Video footage obtained by openDemocracy shows how campaigners who wanted to ask questions at an event with London Mayor Sadiq Khan at the O2 arena were personally identified and turned away at the door.
In one clip, a plain-clothes security official at the entrance calls out the campaigners’ names as they approach, but refuses to tell them who he is working for. A second clip also shows an O2 security guard admitting he had received “intelligence” about the green campaigners.”
All of this activity, actively conspiring with the class enemies of the working-class, brings the Labour Party into disrepute. For those who think this is a recent phenomena, a simple Google search, or look on the Hakluyt website, will show the links between its employees and other Labour politicians, such as Gordon Brown. Andrew Hilland, was a political advisor to Brown, as was Simon King, and Alex Canfor-Dumas.
We need a full scale workers inquiry into these links between the Blue Labour leadership, and the forces of the secret state, who form the most potent weapon of the ruling class against the labour movement.
Commodity production and exchange does not spring into the world, fully formed, like Minerva from the head of Zeus. Its origins lie in the exchange of gifts at ceremonies and rituals between different tribes. The exchange is of products, and, as products, their value can only be individual value, i.e. the value determined by the actual labour used in their production. But, as these exchanges become more frequent, forming the basis of trade, it was not even this individual value that was the basis of the rates of exchange.
What was exchanged was accidental surpluses of products, so that exchange-values were a function of supply and demand. Its only when trade between communities expands to a degree that they begin to produce these products deliberately for the purpose of exchange that it is the value of the respective products that determines the rates of exchange. But, then, competition between suppliers reduces a range of individual values to an average market value, as the basis of exchange-value, and a range of different concrete labours must also be reduced to a standard, abstract, universal measure of labour, which takes the form of the labour used in the production of the money commodity. It is this process which separates this money commodity from the rest.
“Once the necessity for a specific agency of exchange, that is, for money, has been recognized, all that remains to be explained is why this particular function has developed upon gold and silver rather than upon any other commodity. This is a secondary question, which is explained not by the chain of production relations, but by the specific qualities inherent in gold and silver as substances. If all this has made economists for once "go outside the domains of their own science, to dabble in physics, mechanics, history and so on,” as M. Proudhon reproaches them with doing, they have merely done what they were compelled to do. The question was no longer within the domain of political economy.” (p 76-7)
In other words, once all of the complex of economic and social relations brings you to the point that money arises, the question of exactly which commodity will perform that function is secondary, and becomes a question not of political economy, but of historical development, chemistry and so on. What commodity best meets the requirement depends upon which commodities are most commonly produced and traded, and whose value is most accurately known, which have the specific qualities as use-values to be durable, divisible, portable and so on.
“To say that, of all commodities, gold and silver were the first to have their value constituted, is to say, after all that has gone before, that gold and silver were the first to attain the status of money. This is M. Proudhon's great revelation, this is the truth that none had discovered before him.” (p 77)
But, Proudhon's assumption was wrong.
“If we wished to harp on this patriarchal erudition, we would inform M. Proudhon that it was the time needed to produce objects of prime necessity, such as iron, etc., which was the first to be known. We shall spare him Adam Smith's classic bow.” (p 77)
Marx's reference is to Smith's account, inThe Wealth of Nations, Vol.I, Book 1, Chapter II, in which he describes a social division of labour in a primitive tribe arising from the fact that some individuals find they can produce bows in less labour-time than others, and so exchange bows for venison.
“But, after all that, how can M. Proudhon go on talking about the constitution of a value, since a value is never constituted by itself? It is constituted, not by the time needed to produce it by itself, but in relation to the quota of each and every other product which can be created in the same time. Thus the constitution of the value of gold and silver presupposes an already completed constitution of a number of other products.” (p 77-8)
Note that, as with Smith's bow, these values are not even yet market values of commodities, but individual values of products, i.e. still in the historical process of evolution to becoming market values of commodities. Indeed, as Marx points out, Smith made the mistake of believing that the social division of labour is the consequence of trade, whereas it is trade that is the consequence of the social division of labour that creates within the commune, driven by The Law of Value's requirement to maximise productivity, i.e. the maximum output of use values for any given amount of labour/value.
“It is then not the commodity that has attained, in gold and silver, the status of “constituted value,” it is M. Proudhon's “constituted value” that has attained, in gold and silver, the status of money.” (p 78)
Social-democracy is based upon socialised capital, and its function is to promote the interests of that capital, as the dominant form of property. That socialised capital requires the same kind of planning and regulation that applies in its own operation to the economy as a whole, and that is the function of the social-democratic state. But, the social democratic states that have been created, over the last century, as the political regime of imperialism, are also faced with a contradiction. The ruling class, more than a century ago, became a ruling class of owners not of real industrial capital, but of fictitious-capital. That was an inevitable consequence of industrial capital becoming socialised capital, i.e. the collective property of the associated producers (workers), as Marx described it, in Capital III, Chapter 27.
Except in the worker cooperatives, the workers, however, do not exercise control over their collective property. Control resides with shareholders. For most of the last century, that did not matter. Shareholders, like bondholders and other owners of interest-bearing capital, obtained their revenues as interest payments on the money they loaned. The more industrial capital expanded, and produced more profits, the more it was able to pay from these profits as interest payments. Capital accumulation, which is fundamental to real industrial capital, was also the route to higher payments of interest. Ever larger levels of fixed capital expenditure required ever larger regulated markets, and stability, which required the development of multinational economic blocs, like the EU.
In the post-war period, in Britain, both Conservative and Labour Parties were essentially social-democratic parties, as were the Republicans and Democrats, in the US, and their international equivalents, although all such parties are coalitions, reflecting a spectrum of class interests and ideologies. In the late 1980's that changed. Firstly, the crash of 1987 seriously impacted the paper wealth of the global ruling class, as it saw the prices of its shares drop by 25% in a day.
The crash itself was the product of the fact that, in the years preceding it, a surge in the rate of profit, arising from a huge moral depreciation of capital, produced by the new technological revolution, combined with a massive release of capital, in conditions of intensive accumulation, and stagnation, caused interest rates to fall, and asset prices to rise. It was compounded by the fact that, conservative governments in the US and UK, in particular, encouraged a huge rise in household debt, to offset falling wages, so as to maintain levels of consumption, and aggregate demand.
When global financial markets crashed, it created panic, and it was only ended when the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, acted to cut official interest rates, and increase liquidity, thus initiating the period of what came to be called “The Greenspan Put”, whereby markets could count on the fact that, whenever asset prices fell, the central bank could be counted on to intervene, and push those prices higher again. That was a completely different condition than existed with the financial crises of 1847 or 1857, or even with that of 1929, when asset prices, having crashed, took decades to recover. The Dow Jones did not recover its pre-1929 crash level until the 1950's, for example. The consequence of this was that the ruling class, which now owns its wealth, exclusively, in the form of this fictitious-capital, increasingly, became concerned with not only preventing any fall in the value of that capital, but with seeing the kind of annual increase in its value, experienced in the 1980's, and 1990's, continue.
That was compatible with an increase in all of those social-democratic measures of planning and regulation of the economy, and extension of the borders of the state to ever greater distances, as with the expansion of the EU, because what that did, even without additional capital accumulation, was to rationalise the operation of capital, to reduce overhead costs and frictions, and, thereby, to raise profits and the rate of profit, including by raising the rate of turnover of capital. The idea of increasing the mass of profit, and rate of profit, without having to significantly, in proportion, raise the level of capital investment, was the holy grail for a ruling class of owners of fictitious-capital, because the price of their assets depends upon two things: first the amount of revenue (interest/dividends) those assets produce, and second the rate of interest. The first is a function of the mass of profit that industrial capital produces, and the second is a function of the balance of demand and supply for money-capital.
Reducing overhead expenditures does not increase the amount of surplus value produced, because that is a function of the mass of productive labour employed, and the rate of surplus value, but it does increase the amount of realised profits. Firms have to employ unproductive labour, as a necessary cost of realising their profits. The more they can reduce that expenditure, the greater their realised profits, which is why they utilise, commercial capital, for example, which carries out these functions on a larger scale, and enjoys economies of scale. The EU represented a huge benefit for large-scale capital, in reducing these overhead costs, and so facilitated a rise in the mass and rate of profit, including by speeding up the movement of goods and services, a rise in the rate of turnover of capital, and rise in the annual rate of profit.
That is why, not only the interests of real industrial capital (collectively owned by workers), and of the ruling class (owners of fictitious-capital) was damaged by Brexit, as it is with other similar measures of protectionism, and attempts to roll back globalisation. But, these measures were also part of a wider process. First, this was a means of increasing profits without the accompanying increase in capital accumulation, which meant that the slower growth of the economy continued. In particular, there was a slower growth of large-scale capital, especially as a lot of manufacturing activity shifted to other parts of the globe, where a higher rate of profit was available from employing large reserves of cheap labour that was migrating from rural areas to the towns and cities.
In developed economies, that slower growth of large scale capital, opened the door to a faster growth of small scale capital, and very small scale capital, particularly in the old urban industrial areas, where former industrial workers, faced long-term unemployment, or precarious employment, or becoming self-employed, petty-bourgeois producers themselves.
This reversed the long-term trend, identified by Marx, of the continual shrinkage of the petty-bourgeoisie, as it was forced out of business, and into the ranks of the proletariat. All of those elements of the petty-bourgeoisie that had formerly been the foot-soldiers of the Conservative Party, but subordinated to its dominant echelons that catered for the needs of big capital, and the ruling class of shareholders, now found their social weight increased mightily, and it found its reflection in an upsurge of petty-bourgeois, nationalist fervour, whose culmination was Brexit, just as a similar process unfurled in the US leading to the Tea Party, and then, Trump.
The petty-bourgeoisie has become big enough to capture conservative parties, and form an electoral coalition to win elections, but, it can never form the ruling-class, and its interests can never be those dominating the state. Hence the heightened contradiction over the last decade, or so, both in the UK and US, in particular. It adds another facet to the contradiction also facing Blue Labour that has tailed that reactionary, electoral coalition, into that dead-end.
The Chinese Stalinists had a mass workers' party, but they neutered it, by subordinating it to the KMT.
“The Communist Party signed the obligation not to criticize Sun-Yat-Sen-ism, a petty-bourgeois theory which is directed not only against imperialism, but also against the class struggle. The Communist Party did not have its own press, that is, it lacked the principal weapon of an independent party. Under such conditions, to speak of the struggle of the proletariat for hegemony means to deceive oneself and others.” (p 35-6)
Today, the “Left” is tiny, and it is not a question of it subordinating itself inside the organisations of these petty-bourgeois nationalists, in the same way. Despite the SWP's slogan that “We are all Hezbollah now”, the SWP did not join Hezbollah, in the way that the Chinese CP joined the KMT, though the SWP's creation of Respect, had many similarities. Sections of the “Left”, in Scotland, also subsumed themselves into the SNP and so on. But, in general, the subordination of this petty-bourgeois, opportunist “Left”, comes in the form of its support for broad popular frontist organisations. They do have their own sects and press, but they are so small as to be irrelevant, their caveats and attempts to demarcate themselves from the reactionaries they align with, drowned out in the overwhelming din of the reactionary, petty-bourgeois movements they submerge into, as with the USC.
The Stalinists justified submerging the Chinese CP into the KMT, on the grounds of the need to maintain a national front – "the bloc of four classes" – for the purpose of fighting for national independence, from which, according to Martynov, the national bourgeoisie could not withdraw. The Bolshevik theory said the national bourgeoisie inevitably would withdraw, if they felt their position threatened.
“To justify such a policy by the necessity for an alliance of the workers and peasants, is to reduce this alliance itself to a phrase, to a screen for the commanding role of the bourgeoisie. The dependence of the Communist Party, an inevitable result of the “bloc of the four classes”, was the main obstacle in the path of the workers’ and peasants’ movement, and therefore also of the real alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry, without which the victory of the Chinese revolution cannot even be thought of.” (p 36)
In other words, here, is the difference, again, between he revolutionary and reformist position, as also set out, by Lenin, in the Theses On The National and Colonial Questions. There, Lenin makes clear that the communists only support the revolutionary forces, and do not merge with the purely bourgeois-democratic forces, against whom they must prepare to fight. As Trotsky points out, Lenin notes the need to make temporary, tactical alliances with the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie, but, by this, he means not with the parties representing those classes, but with the masses themselves, in action.
Trotsky, elsewhere gives some examples of such practical alliances, such as joining with petty-bourgeois students on a demonstration, or calling on shopkeepers to support striking workers, and so on. In respect of the peasantry, in particular, it was only by the independent activity of the Communist Party that it could present its revolutionary solutions that would win the peasants away from their illusions in bourgeois-democracy.
Keir Starmer says that he does not want to diverge from EU rules. Absolutely wonderful. The trouble is that his comment is meaningless, for many reasons. Firstly, as the experience of the last few years shows, whether he wants to or not, Britain cannot diverge from EU rules if it wants to continue to trade, with the EU! That is why, large firms that do a lot of EU trade, have always conformed to those rules, whilst many smaller firms that, now, cannot afford the cost of all the paperwork required required to prove they are doing so, have had to abandon that trade, many of them going bust in the process, as they lose that large market. Secondly, saying that he doesn't want to diverge from EU rules is meaningless, unless he's going to do the obvious thing, of, then, taking Britain back into the EU, but Starrmer can't say that, because he has made himself Mr Brexit, a modern day, John Bull.
Its notable that Starmer made his comments, not openly and proudly to the British electorate, but at a meeting with other conservative social democrats in Canada. Almost immediately after the comments were made, and reported by Sky News, back in Britain, Starmer, and his Blue Labour backers began to recant them, and row them back. Its a wonder that Starmer's head does not spin off, because, he faces in opposite directions on the EU, as with everything else, with such rapidity. He is the epitome of the duplicitous, lying politician that everyone has come to hate, with good reason. That is the third reason that his comment is meaningless, because everyone has come to know that Starmer simply lies about his position so easily that no one can believe a word he says, as, an hour later, he will be saying the opposite!
No wonder, he has enlisted the services of the MI6 spooks of Hakluyt, one of whose recent employees is Olly Robbins, as he tries to square the circle of his former Remainerism, with his conversion to jingoism, and his current cakeism, which conflicts with his need to get on board the ruling class, and big business, for whom Brexit is a nightmare. The reality is that Starmer saying that Labour does not want to diverge from EU rules, is a step forward, but one he quickly took two steps back from, rather defending it, and advancing from. That is stupid, because everyone knows that Britain cannot diverge from EU rules whether a Labour or Tory government wants to or not. The Tory cakeists were destroyed when they reached their zenith in Truss's, reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalist government that the ruling class destroyed in a matter of weeks. As Mark Carney noted, they promised Singapore on Thames, and instead produced Argentina on the Channel.
If Starmer does not want to diverge from EU rules, which means, only, that he has to accept that reality anyway, the obvious thing to do is to commit Labour to beginning to get Britain back into the EU, when it wins the next election. That firm commitment, at least, would solidify Labour's core working-class vote, which overwhelmingly opposes Brexit, and wants back in to the EU, at the soonest opportunity. But, its not just Labour voters that want that, all opinion polls show that even many former, Tory Leave voters think Brexit has been a disaster and want to re-join. Certainly, a lot of the professional, middle-class Tory voters that always opposed Brexit, have been swarming to the Liberals as a rational expression of their interests, given Blue Labour's sinking into the mire of reactionary nationalism.
And, in any case, not only does Starmer's habitual lying and duplicity, over the issue, turn off potential voters, but its the worst of both worlds, because although most of us understand that his cakeist position will leave him actually trying to stay out of the EU, so as to appease a small number of racists and bigots, the vast majority of whom never have, and never will vote for Labour, in the meantime, the Tories have been quick to denounce Starmer, as having already committed to re-joining the EU, in the hope of shoring up their own support amongst those reactionary nationalists, racists and bigots that made up the core Tory/Brexit vote. If you are going to be hung for stealing a sheep, you may as well have actually stolen it. But, Starmer and Blue Labour are more concerned to appease the Brexit racists and bigots, because they think that Labour's voters have nowhere else to go, a sort of political Say's Law. But, they do, they can stay home and sit on their hands, or vote for Liberals or Greens, and the by-elections of the last two years, shows that is precisely what they are likely to do.
The current conditions mean that a political party will only be successful, ultimately, if it sets out a clear plan of action, based on reality, and not cakeist or other fantasies of how it would like the world to be, rather than how it is. The days of fobbing off voters with jam tomorrow, and aspirations, values and so on are gone. Britain has to converge with EU rules, whether Starmer, Sunak or King Canute wants to or not. That is simply reality.
In that case, being in the Single Market, so that all of the additional costs of administration involved in being outside are removed, is the only rational course of action, and that includes accepting free movement, which means that Starmer and Blue Labour have to grow a pair, and start actually arguing against all of the racists and bigots, rather than appeasing them. Most of them have never been Labour voters, but for any that are, they are not helped by accommodating their British exceptionalist delusions. You don't help an alcoholic by not telling them they are one, but by being honest with them about their problem.
But, if you are going to be inside the Single Market, then, as Blair said, several years ago, why would you accept that you have to abide by Single Market rules, and not want to have a say in formulating those rules, which means being an EU member! All of this petty-bourgeois nationalism, which runs through the labour movement like a yellow thread, in all countries, is worse in Britain, because of its former colonial and imperial power. It has engendered a debilitating British exceptionalism that makes those intoxicated by it think that the world will beat a path to Britain's door, that its only a matter of Britain deciding what it wants, and others then complying with its desire to both consume cake, and yet still hold on to it. But, Britain is a bit part actor on the world stage, now. To paraphrase the Borg, its desires are “irrelevant”, and it will be “assimilated”, its “resistance is futile”. That is the reality of imperialism.
It is far better to recognise the reality, and voluntarily integrate than to be subordinated. It is certainly in workers interests to do so, which is why Lenin and the Bolsheviks argued that we are in favour of the self-determination of workers, across borders, not the self-determination of nations. But, Starrmer and Blue Labour are trying to cling to the delusions of petty-bourgeois nationalism, and British exceptionalism for the sake of trying to win the votes of a minority of racists and bigots, and others who hanker after the days of the Empire. They have to be confronted with the truth that those days are gone, and the best prospect for British workers is standing shoulder to shoulder with workers across the EU, fighting for their common interests against capital, and on the basis of free movement.
A caller to LBC radio, who wanted Starmer to commit to free movement, but couldn't see the need to extend that to rejoining the EU, sums up that cakeist, British exceptionalism. They only wanted free movement so that they could more easily move to their villa in Spain, which as with taking European holidays has been made much harder as a result of Brexit. But, their stance epitomises the position of Starrmer.
