The idea, now presented by the Brexiters, and petty-bourgeois nationalists of Blue Labour, that, as the world heads for WWIII, and all of these contradictions intensify, Brexit Britain can act as some bridge between the interests of an EU, still clinging to the ideas of conservative social-democracy, and the idiocy of the petty-bourgeois, nationalism of Trump, and his regime, is ridiculous, because, Britain has already, over the last 40 years, increasingly moved away from the relative rationality of that social-democracy, based upon the interests of large-scale, state monopoly capital, and embraced a Quixotic chase after petty-bourgeois windmills, seeking to slay the dragons of the impending future. It began under Thatcher, who was removed, and the proceedings checked, first by Major, and then, by Blair/Brown/Cameron, but, the underlying material conditions, the growth of that reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, and the consequent ideas arising from it, creating the electoral coalitions that arise from it, had its own dynamic that is playing out.
This Quixotic adventure is only capable of having any connection to the real world, because conservative social-democracy (neoliberalism) has also run out of road, manifest in the global financial crisis of 2008, and the surreal world it created, after that, in trying to perpetuate itself. That Germany has abandoned its fiscal rules, as it embarks on a program of large-scale state spending on infrastructure, as well as on arms, for which it will require a much higher level of borrowing, pushing real interest rates higher across the EU, and consequently putting the nail in the coffin of the era of astronomical asset prices, simply shows that the recent era of the model of conservative social-democracy (neo-liberalism) is over.
The alternative to that is not the kind of petty-bourgeois nationalism of Brexit and Blue Labour, which increasingly becomes dependent on, and subservient to, Trump's regime in the US, as seen by the way that Starmer disappeared up Trump's arse, even looking weak and spineless compared to the wretched Zelensky, on their recent visit of supplication to the White House, and, now, seen in his inability to stand up to Trump's tariffs, or to join with the EU, to present a common front in advancing the interests of European (which inevitably means also British) capital. Brexit's idiocy is again manifest in the effects on Northern Ireland, which the Brexiters told us was not a problem.
In trying to claim some benefit of Brexit by facing only 10% tariffs, as against the 20% on the EU, Starmer faces the problem that Northern Ireland, under the deal agreed with the EU, is treated as still being part of the EU Single Market and Customs Union, and so, will face, not the 10% tariffs of UK exports, but the 20% on EU exports. Of course, the whole narrative about Brexit Britain's supposed advantage, in that regard, is nonsense anyway. Trump's “reciprocal” tariffs were nothing of the sort, and were simply calculated on the basis of each country's trade surplus with the US. In fact, given that Britain has a trade deficit with the US, the fact that it has, still, had a 10%, across the board, tariff placed on it, means that it has been treated worse than the EU, which has a large trade surplus with the US.
Moreover, Trump has slapped the same 25% tariff on UK car exports to the US that he has done on all other countries' car exports to the US. That appears to be the basis of the spike in UK GDP in February, as manufacturers ramped up production for export to the US, ahead of the imposition of tariffs. SMMT figures show that auto exports from Britain to the U.S. jumped 38.5% from a year earlier in December, 12.4% in January and 34.6% in February. But, that will rebound in coming months. Unlike EU based car producers, however, those in the UK, like JLR, do not have the same huge domestic single market, to sell into as an alternative. For one thing, exported cars are left-hand drive, whereas cars sold into the domestic UK market are right-hand drive.
No wonder, on Starmer's propaganda visit to the JLR factory, recently, the workers could be seen behind him, ignoring him, as they got on with their work, and the cameras studiously avoided any images of those arranged in front of him. JLR has suspended shipments of its cars to the US, reminiscent of the way that, following Brexit, UK fishing communities found they could no longer sell their fish. Brexit was supposed to “bring back control”, but, already, Blue Labour has had to abandon parts of its agenda to ban new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030, just as it abandoned the bulk of its Green Agenda, even before taking office. Against that, Starmer's claim that Brexit Britain was free to chart its own course, and make its own decisions rang out clearly as entirely hollow.
Trump has also slapped 25% tariffs on UK steel and aluminium exports to the US, spelling doom for a UK steel industry that, like fishing and agriculture, was also bound to be devastated as a result of Brexit. It was already dependent upon financing from foreign capitalists, such as the Indian conglomerates of Tata, Mittal and so on. Again, so much for taking back control! Now, those foreign capitalists are recognising reality and pulling out, leaving Starmer with the choice of seeing that happen, and thousands of jobs lost, or else to adopt the “Corbynite” solution of steel nationalisation. Of course, that nationalisation will not change the material reality of the inability of a British steel industry to compete on a global scale, outside the large single market umbrella of the EU. It will simply be a drain on surplus value from those British based capitals that still are competitive, and so reduce potential capital accumulation in Britain further.
No comments:
Post a Comment