The proponents of Brexit, having seen its total failure, and the collapse of support for it, even amongst those that voted for it, have found another straw to grasp, following the election of Trump, his attacks on the EU, and, more significantly, his seeming alliance with Russia. Given the role of Putin and Trump, in facilitating the vote for Brexit in the first place, that the Brexiters, now, seek to revive their fortunes by claiming a special role for Brexit Britain, by acting as a bridge between the EU and Trump, as they encourage war with Russia, is ironic, as well as moronic. Putin and Trump facilitated Brexit, both with funding and other means, including the links to organisations such as “Spiked”, which, in turn, are linked to Blue Labour, and its guru, Lord Glasman,
Brexit is in tatters, and only the politicians that propounded it now believe, or pretend to believe, otherwise. Around 80%, even of those that voted Leave, now believe that it has made Britain poorer. Okay, as with Trump, who, now, says that his tariffs, rather than making Americans richer, are going to make them poorer for some indefinite period, the proponents of Brexit, now, claim that they always said that, even if it was economically damaging, it would be worth it in order to obtain “sovereignty”.
Except, of course, not only has it, indeed, made Britain poorer, and so, inevitably, made the poorest, in Britain, the greatest victims of it, but it has, also, failed to bring any increase in sovereignty either. Rather it has done the opposite. Of course, Trump's tariffs, his own version of Brexit style protectionism, are, also, making the poorest, in the US, the worst victims of it, too, just as the attendant measures being adopted of cutting welfare, and those sections of the state apparatus, like the Department of Education and so on, also most badly, and immediately affect the poorest in the US. Now, Britain's Mini Trump, wannabe, Starmer, is doing the same, here, attacking pensioners, and the sick and disabled.
Yes, Britain, like any other “sovereign” state can, superficially, and abstractly, plough its own furrow, make its own laws and so on, but the reality is completely different. Any state, particularly the smaller and weaker ones, are subject to simply being invaded, as seen with the Zionist state's invasion of Gaza and the West Bank, and genocide against Palestinians, but, also, its invasion of Lebanon, Syria etc., and also seen in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the US's invasion of numerous countries over the years, and, now, its threats against Greenland, Canada, Panama and so on.
As Marx pointed out to the idealists and bourgeois moralists of his day,
“The bourgeois economists have merely in view that production proceeds more smoothly with modern police than, e.g., under club-law. They forget, however, that club-law too is law, and that the law of the stronger, only in a different form, still survives even in their “constitutional State.””
(A Contribution To The Critique of Political Economy)
But, also, every state's ability to plough its own furrow is constrained by its requirement to exist in the real world of other states, and relations with them. Cuba might have thought it was free to plough its own furrow and accept missiles from the USSR, in 1962, but the US's blockade, and threat to start WWIII, soon disabused it of the idea, and the continued actions of the US, to isolate Cuba, has constrained it, economically, to the present day. Likewise, there is no point referring to the abstract right of Ukraine to join NATO, and so on, when, the concrete reality is that any such action would provoke a response from its huge neighbour, and, indeed, nearly 20 years ago, that neighbour openly stated that it would provoke such a response. As Lenin frequently said, “the truth is always concrete”.
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