The racist, Blue Labour Government is creating division in society, by inciting hatred of immigrants to distract from its own failed policies, and its defence of the real parasites and causes of workers' problems, in Britain – the ruling-class. Just as with the failure of Brexit, rather than acknowledging that failure, it has simply doubled down on its lies, and increased the ferocity of its own reactionary nationalism and jingoism, as seen in the disgraceful statement put out by its Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmoud, in parliament on Monday. The vileness of its racist politics is indicated by the fact that its position is now welcomed and supported by Stephen Yaxley Lennon, aka, Tommy Robinson.
But, of course, the initial welcome and support from the likes of Yaxley-Lennon, will be only a staging post. Already, Farage has said that it is not enough, as the ratchet to the Far Right along which Blue Labour is now firmly tied, means that the calls to withdraw from the ECHR, will intensify. The godfather of Blue Labour, Maurice Glasman, has openly stated, on Newsnight, that he does not want Labour to be a progressive party, and raised the question of withdrawal from the ECHR, as being a necessary requirement if Blue Labour's anti-migrant policies are to be implemented.
Like all the other racists, Blue Labour has conflated refugees and asylum seekers with illegal migrants. Its position now calls for refugees and asylum seekers to be sent back, once the conditions that led to them becoming refugees, in their own country, have ended. But, logically, on that basis, the only Ukrainian refugees and asylum seekers, should have been ethnic Russians, fleeing the persecution they faced from the ultra-nationalist regime of Zelensky, and its neo-Nazi components of the Azov Battalion, and Right Sector. For ethic Ukrainians, there was no reason for them not to have simply moved into western and central Ukraine, other than that the reason many of them fled was to avoid being conscripted.
Blue Labour is scapegoating migrants, in order to divert attention from the real cause of the problems British workers, of whatever ethnicity, face, in relation to the cost of living, lack of housing, a collapsing NHS, education and social care system, crumbling infrastructure in roads, buildings, railways, telecommunications and so on. The proximate cause of all those problems is the lack of investment in them over a long period of time, and specifically in all of the period of austerity introduced after 2010. Rachel Reeves' budget will double down on all of that austerity, once more, just as Mahmoud has doubled down on the racist targeting of migrants, in order to divert attention from it.
The less proximate reason for all of those problems is Brexit. It is Brexit that has caused a significant drop in British economic growth, and a consequent loss of tax revenues for the government. It is costing the government £40 billion, each year, in lost tax revenues, as a result of the fall in economic growth. But, Blue Labour's hands are so steeped in the blood of Brexit, which it has now backed for the last six years, since Starmer became Leader, that it, also, cannot reverse that policy either, or even effectively draw attention to the damage it has caused, without simultaneously damning its own backing of Brexit for the last six years.
Of course, the reason it has not, and does not, do that is more complex. In part, it is because it has falsely concluded that opposition to Brexit cost Labour the election in 2019, and that, to win, it has to appease all of that reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalist section of the electorate. But, the facts are clear that in 2017, when Labour most vociferously opposed Brexit, Corbyn's Labour won 40% of the vote, increasing its seats by the most since 1945. It was the drift back towards Brexitism in 2019 that caused Labour to lose that support.
Another factor in that was the attacks on Starmer by the agents of Blue Labour, who had been shocked at the size of Labour's vote in 2017, when they thought they could mostly sit back and see him fail. After 2017, supported by money from Zionists, and channelled through various tax havens, they successfully and fraudulently equated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, and launched their wrecking operation of Labour's electoral chances, ready to remove Corbyn, and the Left. That, also, left Blue Labour beholden to the Zionist state, a debt repaid in its support for the genocide, but that, also, tied Blue Labour to Trump, a connection which, itself, went back at least to Trump's support for Brexit, and the cultivation of elements such as Spiked Online, itself with close connections to Glasman.
Moreover, in 2024, when Blue Labour won its parliamentary majority, it did not do so by winning over the votes of petty-bourgeois, nationalist Brexit voters. It won very few of them. A continuation of Brexit, however, was baked in for Blue Labour, because of these previous debts to its sponsors, ideological and financial and organisational, even after the large majority of the electorate, itself abandoned Brexit, so that it became an electoral liability. Blue Labour pursued Brexit, and could only do so by seeking to tie Britain closer to Trump's America.
It won only be default, as the reactionary, petty-bourgeois vote split between Tories and Reform. That period is over, as Reform has simply taken the place of the Tory wing of the Conservatives. It is not a fundamental change in politics, or of a shift in class based voting, merely a relabelling, like changing the packaging of a Marathon to a Snickers. Despite the superficiality of the bourgeois media reporting, that claims that some qualitative change bringing about the end of class based voting has occurred, no such change has happened. The Conservative Party always got its core vote from the petty-bourgeoisie, but it always had to serve the interests of the bourgeois ruling-class. All that has happened, much as when the Liberal Party split, with its working-class core creating the Labour Party, is that a strengthened petty-bourgeoisie has asserted its own reactionary interests, and split to the Right.
The Tories are dead, reborn as Reform. Nor has the class basis of voting changed on the other side. Just as the Liberals were replaced by a newly created Labour Party, at the start of the 20th century, so it only reflected that a strengthened working-class, now sought to assert its own interests, albeit by a continuation of the same social-democratic ideology it had pursued within the Liberals, and which is inherent to the main organs of that class, the trades unions, based on bargaining within, but, thereby, remaining within, the existing bourgeois system. That class basis of ideology, and voting has not changed, but as Labour has abandoned even that social-democratic ideology, in favour of a quixotic chase after reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist windmills, so its class base has increasingly deserted it in favour of other, superficially, more social-democratic alternatives be it the Greens, Liberals, Plaid, SNP or Your Party.
Already we see the fruits of Blue Labour's further ratchet of the racist screw. The racists and “patriots” also conflate the terms refugee and illegal immigrant, but, also, they conflate illegal immigrant with the term immigrant itself, by which they, also, mostly, mean anyone with a darker skin. Whether Mahmoud actually believed any of what she was shovelling in her statement or not, about illegal immigration stoking racist abuse against people like her, or whether it is just a consequence of knowing that spouting such nonsense is required to keep her job, the truth is that her own racist scapegoating of migrants, as it always has and does, only acts to validate the lies of the racists and stokes even greater division in society, greater hostility of anyone with a darker skin whether they are a migrant, or have lived in this country for several generations! The proof of that was seen the day of the Brexit vote, when racists immediately began openly attacking anyone that looked foreign, and demanding they went home!! Its not migration legal or illegal causing division, but the racist demagogy of politicians like Mahmoud.
The racists like Yaxley-Lennon, Farage and so on will not simply acquiesce in Blue Labour's adoption of their own racist language and politics, but, will inevitably shift their own positions even further right, as has already happened. Farage has even invited Mahmoud to join Reform.
The racists of Reform know that they are not going to lose any votes by adopting an even more hard-line racist stance. The truth is that they are pretty much at the limit of their vote, as has happened in the past, because their vote is limited to that petty-bourgeois mass and its periphery, which amounts to around 30-40% of the electorate. Moreover, as has happened elsewhere, and as Trotsky analysed in relation to the rise of the Nazis in Germany, in the 1930's, having reached that limit, its coalition begins to fragment as a result of the inherently amorphous nature of the petty-bourgeoisie, and its own internal contradictory interests.
But, if the Conservatives try to follow, they do risk losing more of their voters to the Liberals, having already shed their Tory vote to Reform. Its notable, therefore, that whilst Farage responded by simply turning the racist screw further to the Right, Bad Enoch responded by, instead, focusing on the other fascination of the reactionaries, welfare benefits and their recipients. As with Trump in the US, the attacks on migrants can only go so far, for a reactionary petty-bourgeois party, which still cannot address the real issues, which would attack the wealth and power of the bourgeois ruling class. The contradiction of that for Trump, means that his own petty-bourgeois, MAGA base is fracturing, because that petty-bourgeoisie of the self-employed, and small businesses, are themselves impoverished, many of them rely on various benefits too. They all are impacted by higher prices, which have resulted from Trump's attempts to keep asset prices inflated, and by his imposition of consumption taxes (tariffs) on many of the staple items of these households. Not surprisingly, Trump, as his base disintegrates, has been led to rapidly reverse many of those tariffs on food imports.
The racists be it of the type of Yaxley-Lennon, or Farage or the remains of the Tory Party, will take Blue Labour's latest racist attacks on migrants as the cue to simply step up their own vile, racist demands, but, not only those racist attacks, but also their reactionary attacks on benefits recipients too, which again, they conflate with migrants, or the unemployed etc. Bad Enoch talked about the removal of the Two-Child Benefit cap as though these child benefits are only paid to the unemployed, long-term sick and so on. But, the reality is that two-thirds of those that receive these benefits, as also with Housing Benefit, are in work. They only get these benefits because the actual level of wages in Britain is itself so appallingly low, a process that has been going on since the regime of Thatcher in the 1980's.
Blue Labour's racist attacks on migrants, will inevitably lead to racist attacks on anyone who simply looks like a migrant, whether they and their families have lived here for generations or not. We have seen Blue Labour take up the demand for even settled migrants to risk being deported, and Farage and the Tories are now adopting the stance of Mosely in the 1960's, and the NF in the 1970's, of the repatriation of people from ethnic minorities, though where they would be repatriated to, remains a mystery, given that the majority of them were born here! In turn, that inevitably leads to attacks on the unemployed, sick and anyone on benefits, who the reactionaries need as their next additional scapegoat to distract from their own failures, to explain why the implementation of their previous policies, such as Brexit, have only made things worse.
All the time, whilst these reactionaries try to blame migrants, or those on benefits, for the failures of British capitalism, they signally fail to point the finger at the real parasites and scroungers, of whom the royals are only a minor, but visible representation. When the reactionaries talk about those not getting out of bed in the morning to go to work, they do not mean the royals who are paid millions each year to live the life of Riley, traipsing across the world by luxury jet and yacht, at tax payers expense. Nor do they mean the top 0.01% that owns the controlling majority of financial assets, bringing each of them in billions of pounds in interests/dividends, simply on the back of ownership of bonds and shares, or property, without needing to lift a finger. No wonder they have the time to associate with the likes of Jeffrey Epstein, and engage in the kinds of behaviour that characterised the decadence of the Roman Empire, prior to its fall.
Pointing the finger at those elements, and their role in holding back economic development, and causing the problems of working-people would, of course, be a useful act of creating division in society, a class division between the vast majority and this ruling-class. But, Blue Labour, the Tories, Farage, Bad Enoch, and also, the likes of Ed Davey will not do that. Their whole political system continues to depend on serving the needs of that ruling-class, even if they have to balance that with the need to rhetorically present themselves as champions of the petty-bourgeoisie, and even to engage in measures, such as Brexit to that end. The petty-bourgeoisie, itself, will not engage in a full on attack on the bourgeois, ruling-class, precisely because it deludes itself into thinking that it has some affinity with it, that this ruling-class is just them writ large, where they can aspire to being, at some future time, even though all the evidence shows that is an impossibility.
Only the organised working-class can consistently oppose the ruling-class and its interests, and does so based on advancing its own class interests, as a global class, based on the collective ownership of socialised capital, which, nowadays, only has a rational existence as multinational capital. The real division we should encourage in society is that division between the organised working-class, comprising around 60% of the population, and the ruling-class, which is insignificant in size, but has immense wealth and power, and control of the state. To do that we need a mass, communist workers party, and only it will be able, on that basis, to draw the rest of society behind it. It is for that reason that the existing bourgeois and reactionary petty-bourgeois parties, seek to prevent such a class based division, and instead to cultivate a division of the working-class based on ethnicity, nationality, sex, gender, religion, sexual preference and so on. We should not let them get away with it.
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