Let Piddington Go

I wrote a while ago that the logic of nationalism leads to a break-up of the nation state.  In the last few days that has been born out.

On the one hand, we have the nationalists in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, demanding that the British nation state be broken up, reversing the main progressive development of the 18th/19th century, largely now driven by the reality imposed by the reactionary English nationalism that led to Brexit.  In England itself, that same failure of Brexit leads to a similar drive towards regionalism, provincialism and parochialism, as seen in the attempts to create regional and metropolitan fiefdoms in the guise of elected mayors.

The ultimate idiocy of that has now come in the form of the referendum in Piddington, again driven by the inevitable failure of Brexit to "bring back control", leading the reactionary bigots, and racists to put forward such a solution rather than have refugees housed in their midst.  The well-healed of the area, of course take the same attitude to many other issues, wanting all the benefits of their rural idylls, without any of the attendant infrastructure.

Well, we should let them go, as they claim to want.  The sooner the better.  Let them then have to pay for their own infrastructure, energy supplies, water supplies, waste services, NHS and so on.  And, of course, they would have no rights to employment outside their borders, or even right to cross that border.  Brexit proved a disaster within weeks, and continues to be so.  The proponents of a Passport to Piddington, would not even get that project off the ground.

Racist, Blue Labour Government Causes Division In Society

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.

Bad Enoch Implodes

The Conservative Party conference, this week, was the backdrop to the implosion of its leader Bad Enoch. The two former main parties – Conservative and Labour – have entered themselves into an ugly competition with Reform, and, boy, are they all ugly!

The conditions for the implosion of Bad Enoch stem from that, as the Conservatives have already seen their reactionary, petty-bourgeois, Tory wing be simply metamorphosed into Reform. The word is that, following the conference, as Bad Enoch loses the protection against a leadership challenge, the letters are ready to go in, and she will be replaced by “honest” Bob Jenrick, who has used the conference platform, to show that he is ugly enough to compete with the racists of Reform, following his comments about the lack of any white faces to be seen on a recent trip to Handsworth, in Birmingham. But, the word, also, is that when he takes over as leader, he will merge what remains of the Tories with Reform.

And, it is a question of what remains, because Reform has already picked up large numbers of Tory activists, councillors and so on, as well as some of their donors, whilst, at the same time, the party has lost significant numbers from its opposite wing to the Liberals, and in Scotland to the SNP. The implosion this week, as Bad Enoch sought to simply say whatever outlandish, racist thing she could think of, such as the pledge, plucked out of the air, to repatriate 150,000 UK residents a year, is simply a desperate attempt to compete with the ugliness of Jenrick inside the party and Farage outside. It also seeks to outdo the ugly, racist politics of Starmer and Blue Labour, as they also responded to Farage's NF-like comments on repatriation. Indeed, Jenrick's comments, only mirror the comments of Starmer a few weeks ago that, also, used the imagery of the original Enoch, in his “Rivers of Blood” speech.

The Conservative Party is dead and buried. Labour looks to be next. Starmer has survived for now, but Blue Labour has lost credibility, along with lots of its voter base to the Greens, and Liberals. The Deputy Leader contest has been turned into a typical, meaningless, stage-managed farce. Its only saviour, at the moment, is the usual failure of the Left to organise itself, and this from people who for decades claimed to have studied the tactical and strategic genius of the likes of Lenin and Trotsky! But, despite them, history will move on, and if the current regime inside Labour continues into the Spring, it will be destroyed in the elections, forcing the unions to act in one way or another.

Of Course They Are Racists!

Nigel Farage is a racist. His Reform company is comprised of racists and bigots. Its political programme, determined by Farage, as CEO of that company, is racist and founded on bigotry. Its programme, and its supporters appeal to racists and bigots. In pronouncement after pronouncement, Farage and the other company executives of his Reform company, simply translate into English the racist ravings of Trump. When Trump rants about Sadiq Khan, as London Mayor, and says, he is trying to impose Sharia Law, that is racist pure and simple.

Trump declares of immigrants in the US, “They're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs”, in another of his insane rants, its echoed in Britain, by the claim “They're eating the carp, they're eating the swans”, Its not even subtle. They have no originality.

Yet, Starmer can't bring himself to say what is obviously true, and neither can large sections of the Left.

Starmer can't label Trump's various moronic statements as racist and bigoted, for the simple reason that Starmer, is pursuing the same ultra-nationalist, xenophobic agenda, in support of his continued Brexitism, as he scrabbles after the votes of those remaining racists, jingoists and bigots that having voted for Brexit, still haven't either died or realised they were lied to by the likes of Trump, Farage, Boris Johnson et al. Excluded from the EU, and possibility of cost-free higher economic growth that membership would bring, Starmer has had to suck up to Trump, disappearing up his arse on several high profile occasions. So, of course, even when Trump, having used him and the King like dish rags, then tosses them aside, the next day, in another rant about London and Europe, they do not have the backbone to call him out. And, if you can't call Trump a racist and a bigot, it makes it hard to call Farage and those around him racists either, when they simply repeat in English the racist drivel poured out by their global mentor.

But, with Starmer its worse than that, because its not just Farage that is parroting the racist nonsense from Trump. Starmer is too, in line with his own adoption of reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalism since 2019. Along with it, of course, goes the same Bonapartism demonstrated by Trump, the way for which was paved by the increasing Bonapartism of the Biden regime, as it sought to quell dissent to its backing of genocide in Gaza. When an inoffensive Australian Broadcasting Company journalist questioned Trump before his visit to Britain, Trump threatened him, and sure enough, at the press conference in Britain, that same journalist was denied entry by the British government.

Starmer's Bonapartist regime has also blocked Owen Jones from its conference.

As well as a journalist from Novara Media.

The rant by John Mann, and by Luke Akehurst, as well as the trumped up claims of “anti-semitism” against the NM journalist, all have their own Trumpist characteristics. All have a similar root, the indefensible promotion of genocide in Gaza, and an attempt to escape being called to account for it. As Owen Jones noted in his questioning of the hapless Gareth Snell, the refusal to say what is obvious, and admit that what is happening in Gaza is genocide, and other war crimes, means that they are now, not even able to talk about war crimes being committed by Putin's vile regime in Ukraine, either!

Starmer said that Farage's policy of repatriation of migrants who already have settled status in Britain is racist. It is. As James O'Brien has set out, even the Sun, 11 years ago, described the policies being pursued by Farage, as “racism, pure and simple”.

But, Starmer will not, and cannot call Farage a racist, will not, and cannot say that the Reform company are appealing to racists and bigots, because, as I set out previously, Starmer and Blue Labour are doing exactly the same thing, just as they are, like Farage, sucking up to Trump, in a frantic attempt to save their own doomed Brexit agenda. No wonder, Burnham gained media space, when he not only attacked Starmer, but did so by openly proclaiming a desire to rejoin the EU, which is now, and always has been, for the last century, the only rational course for British capital to take.

In my previous post I pointed out that Starmer having said that Farage's policy of repatriation was racist, would, undoubtedly adopt the same position, if he thought it would win him votes. Within days, Blue Labour announced that they would extend the time that migrants had to be resident in Britain before being able to claim settled status, and, consequently, that before that time, they could be told to leave. They have, now, also, said that those granted asylum in Britain, would no longer have the right to bring their families with them, meaning that their families can be raped, tortured, murdered and used as hostages by the regimes from which they had themselves escaped. This is a vile, racist government whose policies are dictated by the ever more extreme policies of Reform, with which they are in competition for the racist vote. As Kevin Maguire noted, Starmer would not have dared to haveannounced his latest racist policies during his speech.

As James O'Brien has described, the Conservative Party has been destroyed for the simple reason that, having been captured by its reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist membership, it has put into practice all of those reactionary positions, goaded along by the likes of Farage, and, at each stage, those policies have been disastrous. They have been disastrous not just for British workers, but, also, for British capitalists, and for the ruling-class. It was, interesting, however, that Michael Gove, speaking to Owen Jones, admitted that the model of conservative social-democracy (which he calls neoliberalism) had failed. The Conservative Party has been rent asunder, as I predicted would happen, because its Tory wing (the reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist majority) have metamorphosed into Reform, with Musk/Yaxley-Lennon, now acting as a goad on them driving them even further Right. At the same time, the conservative social-democratic wing of the Conservatives, which held the ring from 1945-1990, have now been driven into the arms of the Liberals, given that Blue Labour is indistinguishable from Reform, other than in the former's lack of consistency and credibility.

But, that same process, described by O'Brien, is, now happening with Blue Labour, as, again, I predicted it would. As Starmer has careened frantically in the direction of Reform, and the adoption of these racist policies, so its core, working-class support has abandoned it, not just in terms of its members, but in terms of voters too. Had there been any credible organised socialist party as an alternative, that collapse of support would have been even more pronounced, as even the glimmer of hope that Corbyn and Sultana might get their act together, illustrated. In the absence of that, as John Curtice has set out, Blue Labour has simply lost votes to the Liberals, Greens, Plaid, SNP, and, now, that is turning into a flood that threatens to destroy Labour in the same way that the Conservatives have been destroyed.

It is necessary to speak the truth. Around 40% of the population are racists and bigots. Mostly, they are the components of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, whose numbers have grown by 50% since the 1980's, as Thatcher's Britain, deindustrialised, forcing millions out of the working-class into the ranks of the petty-bourgeoisie, living a precarious, immiserated subsistence, often dependent on rule-breaking and close proximity to the ultimate in self-reliance, the petty-criminal classes. The centres of that reaction are in the former urban areas that have now decayed. The petty-bourgeoisie, comprises around 30% of the population, but its numbers are supplemented by its immediate periphery of the long-term unemployed, former workers, and the small numbers of workers employed by the petty-bourgeoisie, who, deprived of any chance of union organisation, adopt a similar outlook to their employer. Short of returning to the kind of growth of large-scale industrial capital that existed prior to the 1980's, and so diminishing the size of that petty-bourgeoisie, and its periphery, there is no chance of building any kind of consensus with it. Attempts to do so, via some kind of popular front, will fail, and worse, will be disastrous and themselves lead to a slippery slope of accommodation, and lesser-evilism.

It is no good saying as Starmer does that if you are worried about immigration, or worried about the lack of housing public services and so on, that is not racist. True concern about poor wages, poor conditions, lack of public services and so on is not racist. But, if your first and often only, response to that concern is to blame foreigners – whether the EU, or immigrants – then, yes, that is racist, and if your whole world view is based around that perspective, then, you are a racist. Its not a secret that the reason we have poor public services is as a result of the years in which they were destroyed by Thatcher, in the 1980's, by her successors in the 90's, and by the imposition of austerity by Cameron and Osborne after 2010.

Its no secret that the reason we have a housing crisis is because Thatcher, in the 1980's, sold off council houses, and subsequent governments have continued that policy whilst building no new council houses to replace them. Its no secret that the reason we have ridiculously inflated house prices that few can now afford is a consequence of the blowing up of asset price bubbles of all kinds, since the 1980's, as Gary Stevenson, also described. This has been known and witnessed over the last 30 years, and even those that pay little attention to the news can hardly have escaped discussion of that reality. So, when, instead, someone's first response to any of those problems, is to blame immigrants, what else can be concluded other than that they are by inclination racist?

Until that truth is faced squarely, and we begin to deal with that racism on its own terms, rather than appeasing it, it will only metastasise.

Rights, Concerns and Bigotry

The sensationalist media have been agitating, in the last few days, about a statement from the government's lawyers that the rights of asylum seekers trump the concerns of local residents. The reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalists, and racists of Reform, and their entourage within the ranks of the Tories, have framed this as putting the rights of asylum seekers, who they falsely refer to as “illegal migrants”, above the rights of UK citizens, and the sensationalist media, of course, never take them up on either of these points.

First of all, asylum seekers are not illegal migrants. Seeking asylum is a perfectly legal and legitimate status. The vast majority of people who claim asylum are people who have escaped torture, risk to their lives, or persecution. Many are the victims of western created conflicts in various parts of the world, following military adventures by US and UK imperialism; many, indeed, are people who are at risk, precisely because they, in some way, assisted those western interventionists, who inevitably dumped them when they had used them!

For the minority who are not initially granted asylum, again, the vast majority win their appeal against that decision. But, even for the even smaller number who do not, that does not make them in any way illegal, as in some kind of criminal. As with anyone else, they have a right to go through a judicial process. Does this right in any way make them privileged over UK citizens? Absolutely, not. UK citizens, also, have a right to due process under the law, and in denying that right to one, those that propose such a course of action are denying it to all.

For, example, the demonstrations at the formerly disused, run down hotel in Epping, have framed their protests around the fact that one of the residents at the hotel has been accused of sexual assault against a 14 year old teenager, and an adult woman. If you only listened to the media headlines, or the claims of the protesters, who tell us that they dare not allow their children out for fear of being sexually assaulted, raped or worse, you would imagine that what the man is accused of is some serious, physical sexual assault. Yet. As the Guardian informs us, what he is actually accused of is touching the leg of the adult woman, who also, says she saw him touch the girl. In other words, the kind of thing that lecherous, MP's, and bosses have been guilty of for years.  In the interests of fairness, I should point out that he, also,  denies the charges as presented.

The accused, like every individual, has a right to a fair trial, just as his accusers, and all those in the local community that support them, have a right to have someone prosecuted and tried fairly, if an offence has been committed. Both of those rights have been upheld, so where is the cause of claims of inequity? There is none. When the racists and nationalists of Reform and the Tories, backed by the sensationalist media claim that there is inequity, what they are doing is creating that inequity, by indeed equating two things that, from the start are not equal. That is they equate from the start rights with “concerns”, or “interests”, including where those “concerns” are not based on facts or evidence, but on racist inspired bigotry.

Moreover, even if this individual is found guilty what does that have to do with the other residents in the hotel?  Absolutely nothing.

We have seen it before when irresponsible and sensationalist media whipped up moral panics over paedophiles. That resulted in some paediatricians being hounded out of their homes by mobs of ignorant, “concerned” citizens who couldn't even distinguish between the two, such is their lack of knowledge of their own English language. Of course rights trump concerns, or interests, because that is precisely the point of having rights, so as to protect individuals from being the subject of persecution by bigoted, ill-informed mobs, whoever the individuals might be, whoever the mobs might be.

After all, we all may have concerns about crime, but does that concern justify a removal of the right to a fair trial, by a jury of our peers, based on facts and evidence, and the principle of being innocent until proven guilty? Of course, not. Down that road, indeed, lies the kind of mob rule, and lynchings seen in the US, during the era of the Jim Crow laws, not to mention, of course, the anti-Semitic pogroms of the late 19th and early 20th century, across Europe. Of course, its no wonder that the racists and Bonapartists of Reform and the Tories seek to whip up the same kind of mob rule, because they do, indeed, like Trump in the US, Putin in Russia, and Netanyahu in Israel want to deny those basic rights, and instead to implement authoritarian rule from above. The result will be that many of those protesting today, will be its victims, tomorrow.

That's not just because many of those organising the racist protests are themselves petty criminals, and people who have been convicted of actual, serious physical sexual assaults, domestic violence and so on.  As James O'Brien points out, two-thirds of those arrested in last years Farage riots, had previously been convicted of violent domestic abuse, and the supporters of Farage openly declare their support for the convicted felon Trump, who stated the way his wealth and position had allowed him on frequent occasions to just "grab women by the pussy".

Starmer and Blue Labour, of course, are no better, precisely because they cannot put up a principled argument against the racists and authoritarians of Reform, as they have tagged along on the coattails of Reform themselves, in an attempt to curry favour with the same reactionary sections of the electorate. Hence the abysmal performance of people like Brigitte Phillipson on Sunday morning TV in trying to say why their racist position is any different from the racist position of Farage.

Responding To The Racists Tactics On Refugee Hotels

The racists of Reform, with their extra-parliamentary auxiliaries from the various neo-fascist organisations have targeted the hotels where the government has located asylum seekers who have escaped various hell-holes across the globe. Many of those hell-holes are the product of past British colonialism, as well as more recent British-US military adventures, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. Indeed, many of them are people who collaborated with British and US invading forces in those countries, and whose position was made impossible when British and US forces scuttled.

The tactic was designed to create a hostile environment, and whip up racist hysteria along the lines of what happened in 2024, and has been facilitated by the same sensationalist media that whipped up those same forces to vote for Brexit in 2016, which has also created such chaos and economic disaster that the racists of Reform try to blame on migrants.

In relation to those “migrants”, the racists always refer to them as “illegal” migrants, but there is nothing illegal about them. Those being housed in these run down hotels, many of which would have simply closed were it not for being put to this use, are refugees and asylum seekers. That is a perfectly legal status. Just look at all the old films from the Cold War era, where people escaped Eastern Europe by various means to sneak into Western Europe, and claim asylum.

The reason the government has had to resort to more of these run down hotels to put asylum seekers in is that the previous Tory government stopped processing the applications for asylum, as well as the fact that a growing austerity, since 2010, means that the state bureaucracy, in general, does not have the resources required to function. Indeed, the same austerity measures, introduced following the bailing out of the financial speculators, who lost paper wealth in the global crash of 2008, that means asylum claims do not get processed effectively is, also, the same reason that schools, hospitals, roads and other vital services have been run down, but which the racists, now, seek to blame on “migrants”.

Of course, the Tories who implemented that austerity over the last 15 years, were also the same ones that inflicted Brexit on the country, which has cost it around £40 billion a year in lost taxes as a result of the 4% reduction in GDP caused by the loss of trade with the EU as Britain's largest trading partner. That £40 billion a year would go a long way to financing many of those services that the racists that backed Brexit, now seek to blame on migrants. With the vast majority of people now seeing that they were lied to over Brexit, and now wanting to re-join the EU, the Tories in their old form have been destroyed, reduced to their central core of racists, which has emerged from its chrysalis form into the shape of Reform. They can only relate to that racist hardcore, and the more Reform grows, on that basis, the more the Tories, left in the old Conservative Party are squeezed out of existence.

Hence the attempts of the Tories to respond by making themselves appear even more hardline racists than Reform. That, of course, simply drives the Conservative element of the Tory party further into the hands of the Liberals, where many of them had found a natural home following Brexit. The Conservative Party can no more compete with Reform on that ground than can the petty-bourgeois nationalists and racists of Starmer's Blue Labour, because the hardcore racists will not believe them, and those who are gulled by the lies of the racists will always vote for the original rather than some pale imitation of it. The only thing that trying to out Reform Reform will bring for Blue Labour and the Tories is a further collapse of their own core vote as it surges towrds the Liberals, Greens, Plaid, SNP, and Your Party.

That is already apparent. At the last local elections, it became obvious that the Tory vote had simply moved en masse to Reform, whilst much of its Conservative voter base switched to the Liberals, or Greens. The claim of Reform, put to Tory voters, that a vote for the Tories was a vote for Starmer was not only vindicated but heeded by Tory voters. In 2024, Starmer's Blue Labour only managed to sustain the meagre vote it managed, by similarly claiming that a vote for more progressive parties, such as the Liberals, Greens or various independents, would be a vote for the Tories. That clearly was not true. Not only did the Liberals win large numbers of additional seats, and would have won more had their been proportional representation, but the Greens also won more seats, and, again would have won many more had their been proportional representation. Even independent candidates, such as Corbyn, won their seats, such is the extent of the distaste for Starmer's reactionary nationalist Blue Labour, and that has intensified since then.

In a number of local by-elections, Labour has lost not to Reform, but to Green candidates standing on platforms, at least on paper, to the left of Blue Labour. 

That, also, gives the lie to the Left nationalists who purvey the myth that Labour has lost support to Reform, and so needs to accommodate that reactionary agenda. If Your Party were to allow itself to be sent down that dead-end, it would quickly destroy itself. Your Party can only provide a real alternative to Blue Labour if it stands on a progressive, internationalist and socialist platform. Having nearly a million people already having signed up to it, gives it an unprecedented advantage in starting out on that basis. It must suck up all of the progressive support for the Greens, Liberals, Plaid and SNP on that basis, again, not by accommodating itself to their liberal, bourgeois agenda, but by offering a clear and principled socialist alternative.

The ideas of calling Your Party “The People's Party”, and such like, are an abysmal, popular frontist betrayal. A true alternative to Blue Labour can never be formed on the basis of such populist nonsense. The “people”, after all, also includes the 30% of the population who are petty-bourgeois, the same social forces that formed the hard core of the Tory Party, and worse, the same kinds of social layers that have always provided the foot soldiers of fascism. They are the same social forces that look to the ideas of Faragism, Trussism and so on, because their inefficient small businesses cannot function without scrapping all of the social protections that have been hard won over the last century. Nothing sustainable can come from trying to reconcile the irreconcilable, and seeking to accommodate and appease the reactionary interests and ideas of that section of society.

One suggestion that follows that same line of thinking was to call it the "New Party", with all of the Mosleyite connotations that has!  Mosley himself of course created the New Party as a supposedly "Left" alternative to Labour after he resigned as a Labour Minister.  All of the claims that it should appeal to reactionary elements by following the example of Blue Labour in brandishing its "Britishness" and patriotism are also disastrous.  I would favour the opposite, proclaiming its internationalism, and specifically the thing that won over tens of thousands to Corbyn's Labour Party, in 2015, its opposition to Brexit and Europeanism.  On that basis, I would favour either the International Labour Party, or the European Workers' Party.

In the coming months, it will become apparent that Starmer's refuge in 2024, will, now, turn against him. Everywhere, Blue Labour is losing, and it is losing because progressive voters are abandoning it to vote for other parties such as the Liberals, Greens and so on. That is even before Your Party is actually formed, and begins fighting elections. As with Blair's New Labour, which was an empty vessel, and lost all of its activists on the ground, Blue Labour, also, has no large activist base, working in local communities, campaigns, and workplaces. Your Party, especially if the trades unions give up on Starmer and affiliate to it, will have that implantation in the working-class, much as happened when the trades unions created the Labour Party itself, as they split from the Liberals. It will quickly become apparent that a vote for Blue Labour, as against a vote for Your Party, or in some seats, the Greens or Liberals, or Plaid or SNP, will be a vote for Reform. To avoid splitting the anti-Reform vote, it will be necessary for the remaining Labour voters to switch to these other progressive alternatives.

The latest polls show that Your Party is already set to overtake and replace Blue Labour as the main workers' party.

Blue Labour has been sucked down the rabbit hole of reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalism. It may still be possible to save it, but only if the trades unions act, in the next few weeks, to oust Starmer, and set it on a different track. As a start, they should be demanding that instead of Blue Labour responding to the racist attacks on refugees and migrants, by adopting an even more reactionary and racist stance itself, that it begins to stand up to the racists. Part of the problem was the fact that the Tories stopped processing asylum claims, and its now been revealed that Jenrick had himself signed up a load of these run down hotels to house them, before the Tories lost the election in 2024. The simple answer to the tactic of taking legal action by racist councils is for the government to simply give a blanket approval of asylum to everyone currently seeking it. That would mean that all of those asylum seekers would be able to take up employment, and find their own accommodation, as well as contributing to the production of goods and services, and paying taxes etc. It would immediately remove all of the objections put forward by the racists.

Brexit Britain's Bridge To Nowhere - Part 27 of 27

The reason that even a small absolute rise in interest rates caused asset prices to crash in 2008 was that the trashing of currencies by continually increasing liquidity – The Greenspan Put – after 1987, had artificially lowered yields, with no increase in surplus value, sufficient to compensate. Yields fell so low that, even the tiniest rise in interest rates, represented a huge proportional rise, and a corresponding huge fall in asset prices, as a result of capitalisation. The delusion of conservative social-democracy that wealth could be created out of thin air, simply by inflating asset prices had run out of road. That attempts, after 2010, have again resulted in the surreal conditions of negative yields, simply underlines the point that this model can no longer work. Even negative yields, financial austerity to limit economic growth, and even the physical lockdown of economies, not to mention Brexit and Trump and Biden's trade wars have not stopped the underlying laws of capital from poking through, and causing the demand for labour and capital to rise, and global interest rates to rise.

The conservative social-democratic centre could not hold. The two immediate alternatives were on the Right and Left. Hence the growth of a petty-bourgeois, populist Right, which had grown along with the growth of the petty-bourgeoisie itself after 1980. From being the foot-soldiers of conservative parties like that in Britain, the Republicans in France and the US, they either seized control of those parties, or split to form alternatives to them such as UKIP, and so on. They asserted all of those traditional petty-bourgeois nationalist ideas that were already dead by the late 19th century, and even more delusional today, but for which they were able to mobilise electoral support, in conditions where conservative social-democracy, had so clearly failed, with the GFC and its aftermath, and where the ruling-class, as it had done in the 1970's, shrank away from the alternative of progressive social-democracy, for fear of unleashing the forces of the industrial proletariat. The fact, that any such turn to progressive social democracy, of returning to the idea of the need to accumulate real industrial capital, to produce the surplus value required to fund their own revenues (interest/dividends, rents, taxes) would also, cause interest rates to rise even more sharply, and so asset prices to crash even more spectacularly than in 2008, was a further obstacle to such an alternative. Hence, the determination to defeat Syriza, Podemos, Sanders and Corbyn by any means.

But, in doing so, the ruling class, in trying to cling to conservative-social democracy has only dug itself into a bigger hole, just as it did, in printing money tokens to try to keep asset prices inflated. Rather than consolidating the centre, it has simply strengthened the petty-bourgeois Right nationalists, whose interests are imminently antagonistic to their own. In France, the result was to strengthen the forces of Le Pen, in Germany of the AfD, in the US of Trump, in Britain of Farage. And, now, we see the logic of that play out, as Trump and his petty-bourgeois nationalist regime causes interest rates to rise, and asset prices to crash, anyway.  The same happened with the rise in UK rates under Truss, and now with the government of Starmer/Reeves.

So, why would the ruling class in any way see Brexit Britain, which has been headed down that same route for the last 40 years, as in any way a bridge, other than a bridge to nowhere, a step only into the abyss? The only glimmer of rationality for the ruling class, resides in the attempts of the EU to cling to social-democracy, and those same petty-bourgeois forces are also fracturing even that, with the consequence of Brexit Britain being not to act as a bridge, but as a conduit, and support for them.

Back To Part 26

Brexit Britain's Bridge To Nowhere - Part 26 of 27

The main accumulation of real industrial capital, in the period 1980 to 2000 occurred, not in the developed economies, but in the newly industrialising economies of Asia, Latin America and so on, and, when global interest rates rose, it was they that were hit in their currencies, whereas it was the astronomically inflated financial markets that crashed, in the developed economies. Moreover, as I have set out elsewhere, the actions of central banks, by inflating the currency supply and credit, to raise asset prices, caused yields on those assets to fall correspondingly, but those yields, as Marx describes, as well as the policy rates of central banks, bear no necessary resemblance to the real rate of interest in the market. Marx notes,

“For instance, if we wish to compare the English interest rate with the Indian, we should not take the interest rate of the Bank of England, but rather, e.g., that charged by lenders of small machinery to small producers in domestic industry.”

(Capital III, Chapter 36.)

What was seen was that, although there was, in the period after 1980, a 50% rise in the size of the petty-bourgeoisie, the ability to obtain bank finance by it shrank. Whilst large capitals issued bonds totalling billions of Dollars, the funds from which they used to buy back shares, or make direct transfers to shareholders, and so on, rather than invest in capital accumulation, the petty-bourgeoisie was reduced to using personal credit, mortgaging their homes and so on to obtain the money-capital required. Meanwhile, banks, as well as using the liquidity provided by central banks to buy up government and corporate bonds, where they did make loans, they did so, not to finance real capital accumulation, but almost exclusively to finance property speculation.

A few years ago, Michael Roberts provided the following information.

“as of August 2013, loans outstanding to UK residents from banks were £2.4tn (160% of GDP). Of this, 34% went to financial institutions, 42.7% went to households, secured on dwellings, and another 10.1% went to real estate and construction. Manufacturing received just 1.4% of the total! UK banking’s principal activity is just leveraging up existing property assets. I identified the same point in work done for the pamphlet for the Fire Brigades Union on the need for public ownership of the banks and found that the big five banks in the UK hold £6trn in assets. This is equivalent to the amount that more than 60 million British people produce in four years. Yet the banks have earmarked just £200bn of this to investment in industry in the UK, a measly 3% of the total.”

The rates of interest paid by the petty-bourgeoisie to finance real, capital accumulation, even on a dwarfish scale, when they could obtain any such finance, far exceeded the yields on financial assets, particularly when the measures of QE and so on, resulted in the surreal conditions of negative yields on $20 trillion of global bonds, just prior to the recent rise in global interest rates, in 2022. What is more, during that same period, we saw the massive growth of pay day lenders charging interest rates of 4000% p.a., as well as a growth of all sorts of other such businesses, including pawnshops, and so on. That is without considering all of the unregistered loan sharks. In an era of increasing online gambling, large amounts of these loans went straight to finance gambling addictions and desperation.

Consequently, as I have set out, elsewhere, the rate of interest required to bring about any considerable reduction in economic growth, so called R*, is much higher than the rate of interest required to bring about a crash in asset prices, or R**. In the current period, as labour shortages have begun to bring about first a rise in household incomes, as more workers are employed, on longer hours, and begin to, also, then, cause hourly wages themselves to rise, a process seen in the period of the 1950's, and early 60's, that is even more the case. Household, current consumption is mostly financed by wages, and so higher interest rates do not impact that. In fact, to the extent that banks have to pay higher savings rates, households benefit from the additional interest paid to them. Higher interest rates causing mortgage rates to rise, impact house buyers, but the effect of that, is also to cause house prices to fall, at the same time that rising interest rates cause all asset prices to fall, via the process of capitalisation. If anything, in the medium to longer-term, higher interest rates, causing house prices and land prices to fall, makes an expansion of housebuilding, and consequent economic activity possible.

Back To Part 25

Forward To Part 27

Brexit Britain's Bridge To Nowhere - Part 25 of 27

Of course, its not just the UK and US Company Law that gives this indefensible right to shareholders. Whilst, the more developed forms of social-democracy in Germany, and elsewhere, introduced the concepts of co-determination, which were integral to the EU's Draft Fifth Company Law Directive, and the Bullock Committee Report on Industrial Democracy in Britain, they all continued to give shareholders those rights, simply in a more corporatist form, with worker directors on boards, who would always be in a minority, and always simply act as a cover. Moreover, by the 1980's, with progressive social-democracy in retreat, and conservative social-democracy ascendant, even these mild proposals of further industrial democracy were scrapped.

Boards of Directors, dominated by shareholders, have, as Haldane notes, simply increased the proportion of profits going to dividends, and other such transfers to shareholders, as rising share prices, with no accompanying, proportional rise in surplus value/profits, caused dividend yields to fall. Dividends and cash transfers to shareholders were not the only means of asset-stripping real industrial capital. Profits were used to buy back shares, thereby, pushing share prices higher still.

Haldane noted that, where, in 1945, the average shareholder held shares in any given company for an average six years, in 2015, that was just six months. That average itself, covers a huge variation, and is misleading, because vast amounts of shares change hands in seconds, as a result of modern electronic trading. The Directors, appointed by those shareholders to protect the shareholders interest, not the company interest, themselves are usually tied to the shareholders, by the provision not only of astronomical salaries, but also, preferential share ownership via share option schemes, and so on. These Directors, themselves, usually have a very short duration at any one company, being given golden handshakes when they leave. Directors have also issued corporate bonds, to borrow money-capital, to be used, not for investment, but simply to buy back shares, to boost share prices. That additional supply of corporate bonds would have reduced bond prices, and raised bond yields, other than for the fact that those bonds were bought up by commercial banks, increasingly with liquidity provided to them by central banks.

And, as noted earlier, it was not just share and bond prices that were inflated. The liquidity poured into property markets, massively inflating property prices, encouraging ordinary workers to feel obliged to engage in such gambling, themselves, for fear of missing out. Up until the 1980's, the average house price was equal to around 2-3 times average household income. That was largely because banks and building societies would only give mortgages to that amount. But, of course, at that time, the majority of households were, themselves, multi-occupied, consisting mostly of a couple and their children, some of whom, were also old enough to work. The majority of single people lived at home, with their parents, into their twenties, until they married. The number of single member households was less than 20%.

But, in the 1980's, house prices, along with other asset prices soared in an inflationary spiral, fuelled by the increased liquidity pumped into the system by central banks, both in the form of money tokens, but also in the form of credit, as credit restrictions were lifted. I have, elsewhere given the data in relation to US GDP growth as against the rise in the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and NASDAQ, between 1980-2000, which illustrates the point made earlier about the use of borrowing and liquidity to finance real capital accumulation, as against its use to finance unproductive consumption, and speculation on asset prices. US GDP rose by 848% between 1950 and 1980, from $294 billion to $2,788 billion. Between 1980 and 2000, it rose from $2,788 billion to $9,951 billion, a rise of 257%. Between 2000 and 2012, it rose to $15,094 billion, a rise of 51.68%. I have chosen these dates because they are the closest I can get to periods of the Long Wave, i.e. 1949 – 74 (uptrend), 1974-1999 (downtrend), 1999 – (uptrend).

The Dow Jones Index rose from 200 in 1950, to 824 in 1980, to 11,723 in 2000, and to 13,593 in 2012. In terms of annual compound growth this is then, 4.83%, 14.2%, and 1.24%. In other words, between 1980 and 2000, the Dow Jones Index rose by three times as much on an annualised basis, as it did in the high growth post war boom period from 1950 to 1980. For the S&P 500. it rose from 16.93 to 107.94, to 1469.25, to 1379.32 over the same period. That is compound annual rates of 6.37, 13.95 and - 0.53 respectively. Put another way, in the period of post-war growth, US GDP rose by 848%, between 1950-1980, whilst the Dow rose by only 312% and S&P 537%. Whereas, between 1980-2000, US GDP rose by only 256%, whereas the DOW rose by more than 1300%, and the S&P by just under 1300%!

Back To Part 24

Forward To Part 26

Brexit Britain's Bridge To Nowhere - Part 24 of 27

In 1987, the financial crisis was ended when the one time gold bug, proponent of sound money, and devotee of Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan, trashed the Dollar, and pumped billions of paper Dollars into circulation, setting in place the Greenspan Put, the epitome of the conservative social-democratic (neoliberal) model, and delusion that wealth could be created from thin air via asset price inflation. 

Having crashed by 25% in a day, and more over the duration of the crisis, a year later, the financial markets ended 50% higher! But, this delusion did not change the underlying reality. The Federal Reserve, and other central banks, increasing liquidity, (devaluing the currency), which then flowed into the purchase of fictitious-capital (shares, bonds and derivatives), as well as into other assets such as land, and existing property, spreading into art, vinyl records, wine, and later into things that were not even use-values, such as crypto-currencies, and so had no value at all, did not add one single machine to US productive capacity, or the ability of that real industrial capital to produce more surplus value. It simply inflated asset prices, and, thereby, reduced the yields on those assets.

Because the owners of fictitious-capital, i.e. the global ruling class, exercise control over real industrial capital, enshrined in company law, they were able to respond to falling dividend yields by increasing the proportion of profits that went to dividends. Hence Haldane's observation that dividend yields went from 10% of profits, in the 1970's, to 70%, by 2015. As I have set out, elsewhere, this same process spread through the economy.

In the early post-war period, the cost of land accounted for just 10% of the price of a new house. But, asset price speculation that drove up the market prices of existing houses, by the 2000's, meant that, builders could make surplus profits, by selling new houses at those existing inflated market prices. As with all such surplus profits, they are the source of the rent extracted by the landowner. Consequently, capitalised rents (price of land) soared, so that, as with dividends as a share of profits, land, today, accounts for 70% of the price of a new house, inflating the cost of production and prices of new houses, thereby restricting both demand and supply.

It was one reason that housebuilders sought to disguise the rise in those prices, by selling houses cheaper, but as leasehold rather than freehold. Governments, although they have feigned concern, as a moral panic erupted over leasehold, facilitated such developments, as they sought to continually goose housing demand, as prices soared, by introducing all sorts of scams such as rent-to buy, shared ownership, Help To Buy, and so on, because the fundamental model of conservative-social democracy was this delusion that wealth could be created out of thin air from continual asset price inflation. It is the same delusion perpetrated in a different manner by Modern Monetary Theory, and essentially no different to the ideas of John Law, and the Pereire Brothers.

What the ruling-class has done, over the last 30 years, and the last 20 years to an even greater extent, is essentially to asset-strip real industrial capital, by using inflated asset prices as the source of its wealth, a part of which it periodically liquidates – what financial advisors fallaciously call “taking profits” - when the ability to take even more of actual profits as dividends, became no longer feasible. As Haldane, noted, in that 2015 Newsnight, interview, reported by the BBC,

“that left far less cash available for growth-boosting investment and that firms risked "eating themselves".

Corporate short-termism - a focus on immediate gains rather than long-term prospects - was a rising problem for companies and pre-dated the financial crisis, he said.

Mr Haldane believes that one possible major cause of this short-termism is the nature of UK company law, which gives most decision making power to shareholders.”

Back To Part 23

Forward To Part 25

Starmer Is Worse Than Enoch Powell

Over the last week, there was outrage amongst Labour members and supporters about Keir Starmer's latest racist outburst, which deliberately channelled the language of Enoch Powell's “Rivers of Blood” speech, in the 1960's. 

Media discussion following Starmer's latest descent into the gutter, not surprisingly compared it to Powell's speech. The reality is that Starmer is worse than Powell. Powell was an old style British colonialist, much as with Churchill, and, for such colonialists, the ideas of white supremacy, racism, “the white man's burden”, and so on, were integral to their world view, and ideology. Powell like Churchill, was a bourgeois nationalist.

But, none of that is true of Starmer. He began as a socialist, a self-proclaimed Marxist, or even Trotskyist, though as Marx remarked in relation to such similar claims by the Guesdists, if this is Marxism or Trotskyism, then I am no Marxist, nor Trotskyist. The reality is that Starmer's Marxism and Trotskyism, long since abandoned anyway, had little to do with the genuine article, and was, like much of that trend, since WWII, simply a version of petty-bourgeois socialism, moralism, and petty-bourgeois nationalism. But, even on that insubstantial foundation, Starmer knows racism when he sees it, and knows that it is based on a lie, and the pernicious role it plays. He has simply picked it up, and used it for his own short-term political advantage. As with his whole approach, he has shown that he has no principles and that, much as with Trump, what he says today, will be denied tomorrow, requiring him to lie repeatedly, a characteristic he seems to display with alacrity.

At least with Powell and Churchill, they represented bourgeois nationalism, and so their inherent racism and colonialism, merged into their support for modern day imperialism. In that respect, they were more akin to Mussolini or Hitler, and, indeed, Churchill, as with most of the British ruling class, and establishment, openly approved of the role of Mussolini in the 1920's, and of Hitler in the 1930's, and squashing an uppity working-class, in addition to their support for virulent anti-Semitism. Like Hitler and Mussolini, Churchill, in particular, as an imperialist, understood the need to appeal to, and mobilise the masses of the petty-bourgeoisie, as foot soldiers against the workers, only, then, to turn on them, in the interests of large-scale industrial capital.

But, Starmer is not a bourgeois nationalist. He is probably nothing other than a careerist, whose beliefs extend no further than what he thinks the next popular wave might be to get a few more easy votes.

But, precisely that makes him worse than Powell, because, as with Trump, its impossible to place any limits on the depravity he might sink to, in order to chase those votes. When Corbyn was Labour Leader, the fact that some British Jews felt threatened was entirely misplaced, but in some cases, could be understood given the level of media fear-mongering being whipped up, and given the role of various Zionist organisations, in making the most ridiculous claims about a Corbyn government bringing back the gas chambers!

That was a part of a deliberate campaign by opponents of the Left, to weaponize anti-Semitism, and to use it against Corbyn, and the Left. Former leaders of Zionist groups inside the Labour Party, like David Mencer, made hyperbolic comments about needing to leave Britain out of fear. Of course, Mencer himself, now acts as propagandist and apologist for the Zionist regime in Israel, and its ongoing war crimes and genocide against Palestinians. Not a fanciful future genocide, but a very real one, taking place with the active support of Britain, and its Blue Labour government, with Starmer, himself, having said publicly that the Zionist regime had a right to commit war crimes, war crimes his government continues to facilitate with its supply of arms.

Starmer and his Blue Labour government are not bourgeois nationalists, but worse. They are reactionary petty-bourgeois, nationalists, seeking to appeal to that reactionary populist mass, not to actively mobilise it against a revolutionary proletariat, as Mussolini and Hitler did, but simply to secure parliamentary votes. Hitler and Mussolini, having gained power, sought to advance the interests of large-scale, imperialist capital, by the way which seemed most obvious at the time, by engaging in imperialist war, to create a large European state, to compete against US imperialism on the one hand, and the USSR on the other. Take away the superficial political features of those regimes, their lack of democracy and brutality, and the underlying historical reality is that they were “progressive”, in the same way that Trotsky described, in relation to the actions of Germany in WWI, in trying to create such a unified European state, albeit under German tutelage. The historic task they undertook, was progressive, even if the means of achieving it was brutal, and not one that socialists could ever support. But, then, historically progressive changes have often been brought about by brutal means that socialists would not endorse. Capitalism itself is a prime example.  As Trotsky describes, in The Program of Peace, the historic task of creating a single European state, based upon the existing imperialist stage of capital, is one that is progressive, and that socialists would, themselves, seek to bring about, as a requirement of socialism.  We would not propose doing so by creating totalitarian regimes, or by undertaking imperialist wars!!!

The fact that Starmer's “Marxism” and “Trotskyism” was never really anything of the sort, but simply a form of reactionary, petty-bourgeois moralism, and petty-bourgeois nationalism, means that his transition into his current right-wing, populism is a simple transition, and one seen before. The example of Pilsudski is an obvious one. So, it is no surprise, given what has been seen in the performance of Starmer and Blue Labour that many people in Britain, today, do feel genuinely threatened, in a way that is far more grounded in reality than were the fears of British Jews whipped up by the likes of David Mencer, or The Jewish Chronicle and so on, in relation to Corbyn. Its not some hyperbole being whipped up by others that is the basis of those fears, but the outright, vile, racist actions and language of Starmer and his government that is the source of their fears.

Starmer's vile language in his speech was no accident, the allusions to the theme of Powell's speech no coincidence, and that is born out not just by their other statements, but also by their actions, their constant scapegoating of migrants, and so on. And, those expecting that this is all some ploy, should have learned by now that that was never the case. Those expecting that whilst chirruping all of the petty-bourgeois, racist and nationalist crap, and support for Brexit, Starmer was going to do a deal with the EU that led to entry by the back door should realise by now that nothing of the sort is planned. The provisional agreement with Trump shows the direction of travel, and the EU can offer nothing concrete in the coming talks, because when Trump demands access to British markets for chlorinated chicken, hormone treated beef and so on that will rule out any access for Britain to EU markets, any potential even for phyto-sanitary agreements and so on. Even the vaunted scheme for free movement of young people is likely to be frustrated, precisely because, it will inevitably lead to court cases by other British citizens, rightfully claiming age discrimination against them, and demanding, legitimately, the return of their own right to free movement within the EU.

Even in its own terms, Starmer's approach has failed. His head long rush to the right, his adoption of the most crass, racist and jingoistic sloganeering has not won votes of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie and lumpen elements, and has acted to drive Labour's core working-class vote into the hands of the Liberals, Greens, and has thereby, divided and dissipated it. Only ruin can result from a continuation of that road. Starmer must go, the failed experiment with Blue Labour, which should never have started, must be brought to an end. It is time for the labour movement to take back control of the Labour Party, before its too late.

Starmer's Vile, Racist Government

Starmer's Blue Labour Government truly is a vile, obnoxious, racist grotesque. It has nothing to do with social-democracy, nor even with the kind of Labourite governments of the past. Indeed, it has nothing to do with the ideas, values and interests of the vast majority of Labour Party members, and voters of today, which indicates why it won so few votes at the election, why even that support has dissipated, and it is about to get wiped out in the Spring local elections, and why this formation itself cannot survive.

Social-democracy has, in the past, defended its use of immigration controls as being part of an overall attempt to plan and regulate the economy, in the same way that it seeks to plan and regulate investment, prices and so on. A workers' state would, of course, plan and regulate all of those things, including immigration, as part of attempting to plan and regulate the economy in general. It is one of those characteristics of social-democracy/imperialism that signifies its nature as a transitional form between capitalism and socialism that it is forced to borrow these future forms, but as Marx and Engels note, in Anti-Duhring, its use of these future forms continues to be for the benefit of capital and capitalists, not for society as a whole. It continues to use these methods of planning and regulation in order to maximise profits. This signifies the difference between social-democracy and socialism.

When social-democracy talks about immigration controls, just as when it talks about import controls, or wage and price controls, it is never about the use of such measures as part of an attempt to plan and regulate the economy on behalf of the entire society, but only to benefit the maximisation of profit, and the beneficiaries of those profits, including the ruling class owners of fictitious capital that derive their revenues of interest/dividends, rents and taxes as deductions from that profit. The use of price and wage controls, for example, are always premised on the idea of fighting inflation, but inflation is a result of the state depreciating the currency/standard of prices. Higher prices, including a higher price for labour-power, are a consequence of inflation, not the cause of it. So, when the state introduces such controls it is always, really, just a cover for them seeking to depress wages, so as to protect or boost profits.

The use of import controls, is similarly justified on the basis of protecting jobs in the domestic market, as Trump is doing, now, but the real basis of the insecurity of those jobs, under capitalism, is the operation of the capitalist system itself, and the inefficiency of the given domestic capitalist production compared to its foreign competitors. In other words, it is a result of the failure of the domestic capitalists to invest in technology sufficiently to compete. Particularly for developed economies, import controls such as tariffs are never used as a means of enabling such investment to take place, but inevitably are used to simply subsidise the inefficient production of the domestic capitalists, enabling them to stay in business, and draw their profits, without having to invest in additional capital to raise their productivity. The resulting higher prices, simply get passed on to domestic consumers, the majority of whom are workers.

Immigration controls are very similar to import controls. For the domestic capitalists, and their governments, they throw the blame for the failure of the domestic capitalist economy on to foreigners, and away from the real cause, capitalism, and the particular deficiencies of the domestic capitalists to invest. The real purpose of such immigration controls, as with import controls, is not to effectively plan and regulate the economy for the benefit of society, but to protect and maximise the ability to produce and extract profits for the domestic capitalists, at the expense of the rest of society, of which workers comprise around 70%.

Although protectionism was common, in the past, as capitalist economies were dominated by merchant and financial capital, aligned with landed property (Mercantilism), and operated on the basis of appropriation of surplus value via unequal exchange, most visibly in the colonial empires, the overturning of those relations, as industrial capital became dominant, and it swept away those old monopolies, colonial empires and protectionism, as imperialism was based upon the production of surplus value, ushered in a new era. 

After WWII, it was not just that this imperialism established multinational companies on a widening geographical basis, to industrialise economies, and, thereby, to directly exploit labour-power, but it also established transnational para-state institutions, to try to establish a level playing field for capital, wherever it settled, a level playing field, and set of international rules, which, of course, by its nature, benefited the biggest, most efficient capitalist companies, and the states that stood behind them, i.e. primarily the US.

In the post-war period, many developed economies also lacked workers, as a new long wave expansion got underway. The US, had only come into being as an industrialised economy on the back of mass immigration of workers from Europe during the 19th century, and it continued to depend on immigration, increasingly from Mexico and Latin America, to fill millions of low paid, unskilled jobs. Germany filled similar jobs with “guest workers” from Türkiye, France from its former colonies, as did Britain. In the 1950's, Britain was desperate for workers from the Caribbean, for example. There was no question of immigration controls at these times, as capital needed labour, in order to enable the continued production of surplus value.

Indeed, immigration controls are something that has only significantly come into existence since the 1960's. Until that time there was pretty much an ability for a free movement of labour across the globe. In Britain, the first attempt at significant immigration controls was the Aliens Act of 1905, and its fairly open purpose was an attempt by Anti-Semitic Tories and fascists to prevent the immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe who were seeking to escape the pogroms being conducted by the Tsarist regime in Russia. The 1793 Aliens Act, which was a much smaller affair, was introduced to, similarly, prevent French refugees coming to Britain, following the revolution, and, again, its main intention, as part of the Anti-Jacobin Wars, was to prevent French revolutionaries entering Britain, under cover.

So, when the Labour Government introduced immigration laws in the 1960's, it did so, apologetically, whilst attempting to justify the measures, with meaningless talk about them being “non-racist” immigration controls. The Blair/Brown government, of course, needed large-scale immigration in the early 2000's, as the growing economy, in a new period of long-wave expansion, faced severe skilled labour shortages, which were filled from the EU. That government, at the same time, attempted to assuage a growing racist outcry, by focussing its attention, not on immigration, but on refugees, and asylum seekers. It did so, itself, in the most outrageous way that acted to conflate the two things, and so, also fuelled the racist narrative of the likes of the BNP, UKIP and their Tory fellow travellers. But, none of that is comparable to the openly racist, dog whistle politics of Starmer's Blue Labour government, which is entirely consistent with its own jingoistic, narrow nationalist agenda.

Unlike previous Labour governments, Starmer's government wears its racist credentials proudly on its chest. Its well publicised and staged mass arrests of immigrants in the last week, were a more vicious and brutal version of the kinds of racist actions undertaken by Theresa May's government, which were attacked by Labour at that time, and occur at the same time as the similarly vicious acts of the Trump regime, in launching raids on immigrant communities in the US. This latter coordination is also, no doubt, no coincidence, as Starmer seeks to curry favour with the fascistic regime of Trump, just as he has, over recent months, sought to curry favour with the fascistic government of Meloni in Italy.

Starmer and his racist, Blue Labour government claim that they seek to close down the criminal gangs involved in people smuggling, across the Channel. Of course, no socialist, social-democrat, or even Liberal can oppose smashing the criminal gangs. But, the actions this last week had nothing to do with that. They were raids on the poor victims of those gangs, not the gangs themselves. If Starmer wanted to undermine the gangs and their criminal activity, the best way to do that is not to criminalise immigration in the first place! If anyone who wanted to come to Britain, whether as a refugee, or as an economic migrant, was free to do so, and safe channels existed for that purpose, then, there would be no basis for the gangs to exist. Nor would it be necessary to have asylum seekers being kept for months or years, at taxpayers expense in hostels whilst they waited a decision on their application. They could, instead, be working, paying taxes and contributing to society with their labour, and paying rent or mortgage to provide their own shelter and so on.

In any case, the number of migrants coming as refugees or asylum seekers in small boats across the Channel is tiny compared to the number of legal migrants coming into the country to work on visas. When Farage, Johnson, Hoey, Mann and other proponents of Brexit conned large numbers to vote for it on the basis of “controlling the borders”, by which they meant stopping immigration, they, of course, did not mention that the result would be that immigration would, in fact, increase! The difference is, of course, that previously, before Brexit, that migration was mainly of EU citizens, coming to fill vital roles, whereas, now, they have been replaced by migrants from the Indian sub-continent and elsewhere. The former had far greater rights and protections than have the latter, which is, of course, one reason that the petty-bourgeois nationalists prefer it. In undermining those workers rights, they seek to undermine all workers rights, in the interests of the small employers. All EU workers not only have greater rights, as a result of EU laws, but they have the potential to act as a single, EU labour movement to demand even greater rights and protections.

When the racists of the BNP, UKIP, Reform, and now Blue Labour argue for immigration controls, they do so on the basis of arguments that are contradictory. They say that immigrants take “British” jobs, whilst simultaneously claiming that immigrants come to simply obtain benefits. They say that they cause shortages of houses, NHS beds, school places and so on, whilst saying that they simultaneously take “British” jobs in building, healthcare, teaching and so on. One of the most ridiculous claims is that “Britain is full up”, or that its a tiny cramped island. Ridiculous because residential property accounts for only 1% of land use in Britain. Compare that to the 2% used just for golf courses!

It is undoubtedly true that, under capitalism, the capitalists and their state, use immigration as a quick and easy way of recruiting additional labour, when labour shortages exist, rather than training additional skilled workers, or investing in technology to raise productivity. But, for the same reason, when the capitalists or their state seek to limit immigration it is never out of a concern to protect the employment or wages of domestic workers. Just as with import controls, the capitalists never use immigration controls alongside large-scale investment in training and technological development. On the contrary, it is only when, despite immigration, and other means of increasing the supply of labour, they still face labour shortages, and see wages rising, squeezing profits, that they begin to seriously engage in technological development, so as to replace labour with fixed capital. The purpose of that, again, is not for the benefit of society, but is to replace labour, increase unemployment, and so reduce wages and boost profits. Indeed, rather than such investment going along with rising employment and wages, or training of skilled workers, the opposite occurs.

The role of immigrant labour is no different than the role of domestic reserves of labour. For example, in the 1950's, a lot of the increase in labour supply came from married women being drawn into the workforce. Some chauvinists opposed that too on the basis that these married women only “worked for pin-money”, and so undermined male wages. Similarly, the children born as part of the baby-boom, began to enter the workforce from around 1960, increasing the supply of labour-power, and so acting to suppress wages. But, at a certain point of the long-wave cycle, as all of these additional workers, whether married women, former rural labourers, new young workers, or immigrants, also form additional demand for goods and services, and firms have to compete to satisfy that demand by additional capital accumulation, and employment, the effect is not to depress wages, but to raise them, as the labour supply does not rise to meet the demand for it. Only then, as capital faces a crisis of overproduction of capital, relative to labour supply, does it invest in a new technological revolution.

In the late 1970's, and early 1980's, the introduction of all of that new technology acted to replace skilled labour with unskilled labour, operating the new machines. That unskilled labour was inevitably paid lower wages. The increased productivity saw the workforce grow more than employment, so that unemployment rose, putting downward pressure on wages. It was during that period that the Thatcher government, in Britain, ended all of the various apprenticeship schemes for training skilled workers, and, likewise, in the US, Ronald Reagan faced down a strike by highly skilled Air Traffic Controllers, by sacking them all, rather than pay them a decent wage. The US has never been able to recruit sufficient skilled Air Traffic Controllers ever since.

Since Brexit, immigration into Britain has increased, not because of “illegal migration”, but because British firms have needed additional labour, and faced a big hole in obtaining it, as EU workers had left. Starmer's, reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist government has taken over the advocacy of Brexit, and so has to also accept the consequences of it in relation to the destruction caused to the economy, as it stagnates, as it faces the continued crumbling of the infrastructure of roads, buildings and so on, of which Grenfell as well as RAC concrete are symbols, as well as the crisis in finding sufficient workers to staff hospitals, care homes and so on. All of these jobs can only be filled by continued large-scale, legal migration, but to divert attention from that, Starmer's vile racist government focuses on a tiny number of poor refugees, crossing the Channel.

And, of course, a large part of those refugees are a result of the wars waged by NATO in the Middle East. The most grotesque manifestation of that is the NATO backed genocide conducted by the Zionist regime against Palestinians. Now, when Palestinians seek to escape that genocide by coming to Britain, which bears direct responsibility for it, Starmer particularly, Starmer vies with Farage and Badenoch as to who can be the most vile, in rejecting their attempts to come to Britain under the same terms as those offered to Ukrainians. Of course, the difference in attitude is clear, the Ukrainians have white skin, and blue eyes.  Ukraine is part of the NATO imperialist alliance in its global war against China/Russia, whereas the Palestinians are the victims of that global inter-imperialist conflict.

Now, in a further illustration of the vile, reactionary racist nature of this government, Starmer has said that any migrants entering the country illegally, will be banned from becoming citizens, in the future. That is racism and vindictiveness taken directly from the manual of the likes of Donald Trump, to whom they are cosying up, as well as of his British sycophants, such as Farage. No decent social-democrat, Liberal, let alone socialist can vote for such openly racist, and reactionary politicians. So, it is no wonder that, as Starmer attempts to turn Blue Labour into an equivalent of UKIP, Labour voters are abandoning the party in droves. Unfortunately, the Left has failed to either stop the collapse of the Labour Party into this petty-bourgeois, nationalism, or to provide any kind of credible alternative to it, leaving progressive voters with the choice of being drawn to the superficially more attractive Liberals, Greens, and in Wales and Scotland, Plaid and SNP.

In reality, those parties are only superficially more progressive. What is more, they lack the link to the labour movement that the Labour Party has. The fight to rebuild, and provide a truly progressive alternative, must start, not with a concern for the ballot box, but with the need to rebuild the organisations of labour from the ground up. We must ask why it is that the trades unions, for example, have allowed their party to be hijacked by a tiny bunch of petty-bourgeois, nationalists, racists, and jingoists, financed by millionaires based in tax havens, not to mention the role of Zionists, and Zionist organisations such as BICOM.

Although we can understand and sympathise with Labour voters who abandon the party at the polls to vote Green, Liberal, or even for the heterogeneous list of Independents, no way forward can come from that route. It is necessary to wage a political struggle within the labour movement to defeat the Right, Centre and Soft Left, a struggle that can only be completed within the Labour Party itself, as the current political wing of the movement. We cannot say where the dynamic of that struggle may lead. It may lead to a recognition that the current Labour Party cannot be retrieved, and, certainly, without the trades unions committing to such a goal, it will be impossible. In that case, it would be necessary to build a new Workers Party, just as the trades unions did, when they split from the Liberals at the start of the last century. The political struggle waged by Marxists, now, within that context, will shape the nature of that future party, and our goal cannot be simply a Labour Party Mark II, nor even a more left-wing social-democratic party, but must be the formation of a mass, international socialist, i.e. communist party.

Alternatively, the struggle, now, may result in the defeat of the far-right, nationalists of Blue Labour. As I have set out, elsewhere, my analysis suggests to me that the Blair-Rights will, themselves, seek to ditch Starmer, when the Spring Elections show just how low Starmer has laid the party. They will seek to merge the party with the Liberals and social-democratic wing of the Conservatives a la Change UK, to form a new centre-right, opposition to Reform/Tories. The trades union bureaucrats will be likely to go along in the hope of salvaging the electoral fortunes of Labour, and to provide a lesser-evil to Reform/Tories. They will hang themselves, via such a Popular Front, as, when they can, the politicians will ditch the connection to the unions.

The task of Marxists is to warn of that danger, and to organise, now, to prevent it. Conservative social-democracy has had its bite at the cherry, and has completely failed. It has no more answers than does the right-wing populism, and petty-bourgeois nationalism of the likes of Farage and Starmer. Only a clear Marxist programme, founded on the promotion of the interests of workers, and of the working-class as a global class can offer a way forward.