“But surely you don’t want Jones back?”
Frank Lee
Such was the response to any of those who questioned what was happening to the animal revolution which had expropriated the farmer (Jones) and set up the animal republic with its own green flag complete with the design symbols of hoof and horn.
As with most revolutions, however, this one could not deliver on its promises; after the initial euphoria of Jones’ overthrow, the charismatic stage of the animal insurrection became transformed into an inevitable period of consolidation and legal-rational authority, with the pigs, who were the new rulers, now firmly in control. This is to be expected since,
…most importantly of all, emotionalist revolution is followed by traditionalist routine …The followers of the warrior of faith, once they have achieved tend to generate with particular ease into a thoroughly commonplace class of office holders.” [1]
This short novella of Orwell’s was taken as a skit on the Russian Revolution but was applicable to all revolutions. Apparently, revolutions promise everything but often fail to deliver anything – Cf Ukraine after the 2014 Maidan.
Such radical upheavals are generally followed by a partial or even total restoration. Such was the case with the transformation of Cromwell to Charles II, Trotsky to Stalin, Danton to Talleyrand, Mao Zedong to Chou en Lai.
Strange to say that in the contemporary UK the ancien regime is not being challenged by a radical force from below, although many like to imagine this – but is a struggle between two contending establishment forces. HM’s Government and HM’s loyal opposition. It has always been thus, and this petrified political structure has never been seriously challenged apart perhaps from the general strike in 1926 and, more remotely, the miners’ strike in 1984.
I would contend that the Conservative and Labour parties and their media backers are essentially class-based with the working classes pretty much excluded – particularly from the Labour party. In this respect there are comparisons to be made with the US Democrats and Republicans.
These Ex-reformist parties in the anglosphere are now, having been cleansed of any residual idealism (although necessarily engaged in rhetorical playing to the gallery) have been tamed and now provide the natural political environment of the urban petit-bourgeois who espouse the prescriptions of post-modernist identity politics, neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism.
In the UK the Conservative party has always been associated with the rentier, financial classes both rural and urban, as well as in addition to business interests and the military/security complex.
The contemporary Labour party is an inner-city cosmopolitan class alliance composed in the main of professionals in the media, high-tech industry, education, health and the legal and state bureaucracy at various levels, mainly based in the big urban conurbations, particularly London and the South East.
This stratum is fanatically pro-EU and not particularly fussy about the methods whereby their love-object is protected and realised. The class-hatred of the ‘other’ leave voters is barely concealed and often overt.
It should be understood that the middle-class is the key grouping in the political structures of contemporary society. Often referred to as the intelligentsia (or what passes for one) this particular formation has occupied a pivotal position in the social class hierarchies.
The haute bourgeois and working-class both have a fixed relationship to the economy, and this is exactly what the middle-class lacks. Thus.
There are two courses of action which the unattached intellectuals have actually taken as ways out of the middle-of-the-road position: first, what amounts to a largely voluntary affiliation with one or the other of the various antagonistic classes; secondly, scrutiny of their own social moorings and the quest for the fulfilment of their mission as the predestined advocate of the intellectual interests as a whole…
…The ability to attach themselves to classes to which they originally did not belong was possible for the intellectuals because they could adapt themselves to any viewpoint and because they and they alone were in a position to choose their class affiliation, whilst those who were immediately bound by class affiliations were only in rare exceptions able to transcend their class outlooks. [2]
Suffice it to say that the middle-class has moved en masse in what amounts to a reactionary accommodation with the monied rentier interests. In what the American social theorist, Christopher Lasch, had once called the ‘Revolt of the Elites’. This being a repudiation of the post-war settlement in effect from the mid-40s to the mid-70s.
Socialism appears to have vanished entirely from their intellectual/ideological landscape being regarded as hopelessly fuddy-duddy and passé in the contemporary political and social dispensation.
This movement has been manifest since the end of the cold war – circa 1990 – and what amounts to an abject surrender of the centre-left of Clinton and Blair to the most reactionary political forces now in control of the deep-state, military and security complex and Transnational Corporations.
As for the losers in this brave new world, those who live in the unfashionable venues of the midlands and north of England and the Rust-belt in the US, well they can simply stew in their own juice. Hey, – in the words of Freddie Mercury ‘no time for losers’ – in this era.
Party manifestos are yet to make an appearance, but since they are never broadly read and bear no relation to what the main parties propose in detail and are able to carry out in terms of their implementation, they can be safely ignored.
As far as the Tories are concerned the details of the UK ‘withdrawal’ from the EU are still to be worked out. But short term we can expect nothing other than more of the same, i.e, fudge, and a great deal of Corbyn bashing.
The Labour party leadership has mooted some of its policy proposals regarding anti-austerity policies, abolition of student tuition fees, modest nationalisation of some of the privatised industries. Laudable enough, but … firstly student tuition fees.
If my memory serves me well wasn’t this what Nicholas Clegg of the Liberal Democrats promised in the run-up to the 2010 election only to revoke this promise in 2012. Making promises you have no ability or intention to keep is not a long-term or manageable policy.
As far as Labour’s other untested policies the question arises will they pass muster in a neoliberal environment such as the EU? This seems somewhat problematic. For a start, social-democracy is in a situation wherein Europe it has virtually disappeared, or is disappearing, seems lost on Labour who seem to think they are going to buck this trend?
There have been enough failures to demonstrate the collapse of the social democratic ascendency in Germany and France, Spain and Greece, which shows no sign of recovery. As one critic has pointed out.
As Tsipras and Syriza had made it abundantly clear the party’s intent was not to exit the Eurozone or the euro regime. They … and the majority of Greek people consistently indicated in polls that they did not want to leave the Eurozone either. They like Syriza wanted to end the austerity but stay in Europe and keep the Euro. Neither understood that the root of the austerity lay in the neoliberal euro regime which they wanted to keep.” [3]
This is more or less the situation which Labour will face if it joins the EU. However, Labour has been outflanked by history in the sense that
…Tsipras and the Greek electorate wanted to return to a social-democratic Europe that was already history, buried by a neo-liberal transformation throughout Europe in preceding decades, and especially since 1999. A Europe fundamentally incompatible with social-democratic programmes and policies.
As neoliberal forces, led by financial elites throughout the region, were rolling back social-democracy and social democratic parties everywhere, Syriza was proposing a resurrection and unification of social democratic institutions – economic and political – and a return to social-democratic programmes.” [4]
As for the Remain and Reform option, this is an oxymoron and shown to be such. This would require what would be tantamount to a euro-wide revolution, which seems unlikely. The social-democratic dispensation which Labour’s supporters claim they want can only be achieved firstly at national level. But Labour doggedly denies this as if belief can override objective reality.
At this point a few words regarding Corbyn’s newfound popularity among Labour’s rank and file with which I find myself at odds.
Personally, I have found Corbyn’s performance both weak and politically malleable.
Firstly, comes the capitulation to the Remainer berserkers, in his own party, and to the extent that Labour is now regarded as the remainer party, and this after a political career of Euroscepticism; then came the abject and unwarranted apologies to Zionist intimidation and the ‘anti-semitic’ smear campaign.
This to the extent that he allowed the IHRA definition of anti-semitism to become Labour party policy. He doesn’t strike me as a man of principle but a man of political expediency who will cave when forced into a corner.
It doesn’t give me any pleasure to say this, but this is how things stand and they cannot be simply wished away in an atmosphere of pre-election euphoria.
Remain and Reform (R&R) enthusiasts have mocked Brexiteers in the UK government for apparently failing to come up with a viable Brexit in the two-and-a-half years since the referendum, yet none of them have presented any plan – viable or otherwise – for reforming the EU.
Many have written lengthy, apparently learned articles about the follies of Brexit, but curiously they never quite get around to telling readers exactly how the EU can be changed, if it can be changed at all. This is not due to a failure of imagination. It is because the EU cannot be reformed along socialist lines. Indeed, it is actually very hard to change the EU at all, if not actually impossible. See below.[5]
Like it or not, “Politics is made with the head, not with other parts of the body or mind …and there are ultimately two sorts of mortal sin in the political world: lack of realism and lack of responsibility.”[6]
Thus, you must choose between EU; the Maastricht Criteria; the Stability and Growth Pact; the Lisbon Treaty; the ECB; the European Commission; the Council of Ministers, and so on and so forth. Or you can have a sovereign state which chooses its own political, social and economic institutions, for better or worse you can’t have both and there is no use pretending you can.
Of course, for those on whom the EU structures bestows its considerable status and largesse everything is fine, the greatest political construction since sliced bread. This rather begs the question of why so many citizens in this quasi-utopia have rather a different view.
The ‘revolution’ is seemingly failing to live up to its hype for the many and this much is becoming self-evident throughout the European continent.
Back at Animal Farm, Squealer the chief propaganda pig of the new dispensation berates the animals for making negative comparisons between their present situation and the time when the were under the tutelage of Jones the farmer.
This was a betrayal of the principles of animalism.
‘Come, come comrade animals, you wouldn’t want Jones back would you.’
This was enough to stifle any dissent in the animal ranks. And just to make sure the lesson has been learned the sheep have been trained to bleat ‘ four legs good two legs bad’ in endless unison and repetition. But now Squealer has made a significant change to this now that the pigs have learnt to walk on two legs. From now on the sheep will chant four legs good two legs better.
The fact is that the EU is in crisis mode as a failing system and simply cannot be accepted by the PTB and their deranged army of followers who cling tenaciously to a political chimera; this much seems self-evident.
The restoration of sovereign nation-states is to be resisted at all costs. After all you wouldn’t want the bad old days of the independent nation-state, back would you. Leavers are thus to be browbeaten to accept the existing order, just as the animals were similarly browbeaten at the Jones farm.
The crucial issue of our time is – sleepers awake – not who gets elected but whether or not the next government – whatever its colour – takes us into the EU, which seems increasingly probable, and under what conditions.
Given the institutional framework of the EU involving liberalisation and freedom of movement between labour markets, freedom of movements of capital and commodities, rigid monetary policies, cutbacks in welfare systems, any attempts to implement social democratic policies will be brought to an end in short order.
Any government of whatever stripe entering this arrangement will have to implement neo-liberal policies irrespective of whether it calls itself social-democratic, left-wing or whatever other variety of political fauna.
As for the 51% who voted leave, the great Revolution Betrayed, too bad, sup it up chaps. Party politics is a racket, or didn’t you know.
Back at Animal Farm the pigs had reached and agreement with the local farming community. It was all so cordial the wine was flowing and everyone in Jones’s cottage was having a roaring time. But …
There were shoutings and bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances between the farmers and senior pigs, furious denials.
The source of the trouble appeared to be that Napoleon (the pig leader) and Mr Pilkington (the farmers representative) had each played an ace of spades simultaneously.
Twelve voices were shouted in anger, and they were all alike. No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs.
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” [7]
NOTES:-
[1] Politics as a Vocation – Max Weber – p.222
[2] Ideology and Utopia – Karl Mannheim – p.140/141
[3] The Looting of Greece – Jack Rasmus – pp.116/117
[4] (Op. cit.)
[5] Changing the EU: Mission Impossible, The Full Brexit: FOR POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY, DEMOCRACY, AND ECONOMIC RENEWAL, The Folly of “Remain and Reform”: Why the EU is Impervious to Change – Lee Jones March 2019 – see my previous article
[6] Max Weber, op.cit.
[7] Animal Farm – Orwell – p.120
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I think your position is heavily effected by your preference for Brexit. What you are pushing for is a permanent Tory government that is linked through the Super Deep State that now is the real power in the Western world. These new elites that are directed through elite organizations like the Atlantic bridge that is made up of billionaires, deep state military figures and select right wing politicians. It will be these people and organizations who will run the UK or at least England and Wales, largely from the USA perspective. It is little wonder that opinion changing media funded by US billionaires used Cambridge Analytica and sections of the British secret service and Israeli agents to undermine a true debate and to smear people like Corbyn. As the saying goes be careful what you wish for because the fire may be more damaging than the frying pan.
I’m glad that Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t read stuff like this. Governments do stuff and other people comment. The idea that commentators drive the politics, and politicians should do the stuff that commentators ‘require’ is a relic of narratives generated by ‘media studies’ in red brick universities, which understands ‘popular culture’ as being meaningful. Newspapers used to sell adverts, and then they invented ‘news’. Dogs, tails, wagging.
By your own admission, commenters are “other people” i.e. everyone who isn’t in the government i.e. “ordinary people” . So, substituting, let’s see what you say:
And we sure as hell know that ‘popular culture’ i.e. the culture of ‘ordinary people’ is meaningless! So much for the (non-government) electorate!
Hehe, good atricle and in all true.
Its not easy to manuver in any way or form when your world consist of standing knee deep in manure, wiggling isnt moving, its wiggling, debationg whats socialism contra capitalism, etc to whateverism, dont do jack shit, its stil wiggling, in an world where morons dicate what we should think.
The matra I read often is socialism=Venezuela, yeah, look how bad it is, but they never bother to say why, saction etc, isnt even mentioned, and yet they tell us with dead certantys what socialism really is, giving everything to people for free, thats the standard gibberish we get from people reading Yankike news sites incl most of the so called Alternative sites, where narravies is raped to oblivion.
In the end, socialism, sosical democratys, etc to constitutional republics, facism, to comunism, nothing of this is worth shit since its just narratives, witch is basically the same as air, just empty words meaning nothing but to create an confusion about reality, take Norway, it really dont matter, christian fundamentalists to rightwinged conckervatives, nothing have changed, nothing will change, because they all the moment you step into the parliament gets an pamfleth on your hand and that tells you whom rules the show, the elite, or the incestious relations they have created since most of this, left to right even lives in the same neighboor hood, and they control the MSM, where they have the full spectrum of control, and like the half starved to death billionears, yeah, the level of whining is stunning, and in the comentary fields we have their minions whom echoes what they get from the Imperial banana republic army of media witch the same class owns.
To then try to even the fields, trying to tell people what we indeed are facing, an class war, and we are loosing, and thats why I try to tell people I am case oriented, and never have bothered to label me anywhere, what others say, I dont care, because to me its obvious, we are been plundered by what can be described as the elite, by whatever mean they find usesfull, and they get what they want, total control over resources and the polticians to get them.
And the corruption of polticians is just the final straw, where they can hide this behind an wall of meaningless talk, and the polticians do the same, the never ending ninsensical blame game, its pure theater, like the insainly stupid rethoric about changing the EU from within, yeah, Norway said 2 times, NO, but that didnt help at all, instead we got into in thru the back allys, like the EEC deal, witch is, EU light, and we have taken the whole package without having anything to say because our polticians and the elites MSM simply dont talk about it, and if they do they simply refuse whatever the people attacks them with and for, like the undermining of our workers rights witch is an part of the war on Unions, and slowly we have been loosing for decades, the same goes for Imigration, witch was again hidden behind obscure rethroic about lacking people to clean the toilets, and now they use the MMT to have exponetial growth to kingdom comes and to acomplish that we need more people.
And here we stand to day.
The EU is nothing but an dictatorship, meant to be an union of comerse, but have become an union for everything, incl their servile asslikking of the Imperial banana republic and the terrorstate ISISrael.
I dont like Labour at all, because of their treason of the people, done decades ago, and now we face the consequencess of it, and to then drag in welfare costs, etc, etc, is to me again an deraliment since they are an consequence of last decades of wars whom have resulted in millions of refugees etc, and of course this have consequencess, to an housing policy mainly driven by an Central Banking mafia whom drove the intresses down ward and created this, the sole fundament of the 2008 housing crash.
And the massive debt that followed was spred out to the western world, even Belgia was forced to take on an debt that was created in the UssA. and have not even recovered since, it was simply to much and then the Gov had to comensate this with austeritys, and this came from taxing the people, as just one ex.
I dont know why we dont hang the bankers where ever we find them, if we are to do anything we should just drag em out and hang them all.
This issues as I have made short, isnt debated, are they, wars, imperialism, crashing Africa, fighting Chine and sactioning Russia, all because of been the Bitch of scums like Trump and Co.
Self inflicted wonds, that is the truth, ignorance and arrogance is what they give us back, and a MSM that never debates why we have economic issues, whom benefits from the legalising of rape and plunder, the insane level fo refugees, witch should just be thrown out, send them back, period, and then we can help them where the problems are, like Africa, where the same EU thru their instruments as ECB and their likes as IMFing the lands to slavery, the sole reason for Bolivia to be taken down was that Bolivia have shown you can indeed do something, but the proble arised because of nationalising the resources.
Yeah, why dont anyone talk about Germans and Lithium, and when the Bolivians wanted to deal with China, the week later we had an coup, one thing is to blame the Trumpsteins, but we forget the elite is borderless, and EU was as much an part of this attack as the UssA, they just slipped of the radar.
The thing is, people must start to realise the scope of propaganda and flat out lies, EU is an corrupted to their core system, where power and mooney rules, the golden rule is and have been since the dawn of man, whom have gold, is the one whom rules, and whatever they say, it always to cover their own asses and to hinder us to do something about that.
All in all, I agrees with the aritcle, and I have read the animal farm, all tho I am more like this situation we are in right now is more in the leauge of The lord of the Flies.
Indeed its getting darker and darker.
Unless we do something and right now, nothing is going to change anything I am afraid.
Status quo, is their mantra, since the elite benefits and we are loosing.
peace
Mikael – your HARD brexit will NEVER be.
Your screed is but the end of strings , that go way up into clouds held by minds you will never know, pulling your thoughts.
It is sad if you are sincere – but laughably inept if you are agitating.
Mikael can you explain why it is the hard right and USA billionaires who are pushing to break up the EU. People like Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer who through Cambridge Analytica who distorted the Brexit debate and who are creating division worldwide and especially in the USA which has no remaining credibility as being a Democracy. They are White USA Supremacists and Mercer is the top donor to the Make America Great Super PAC and to Nigel Farage’s Brexit campaign.
These guys are not about empowering the masses and don’t give a F… about the well being of the people in the UK. Have you not heard the term American Exceptionalism. This is a mirror image of “The master race” as expounded by Goebbels.
I think you are fearing a monster through seeing it in a mirror image and that monster is actually standing behind you, not confronting you.
Animal Farm applies to your far left nutters, or Trump’s fascists, not a democratically created and elected EU. Must try harder Frank when you try and write an anti-EU, pro TTIP UK-US neoliberal screwing of the people of Britain will get post-Brexit.
The EU is to democracy what Jimmy Savile was to chastity and morality.
I didn’t spot any reference to TTIP or the US in this article, was I in a different time-space continuum or are you just making inferences that suit your own standpoint
Those WILL be the consquences of Brexit if Johnson is PM, it’s not even a debatable point.
I am not denying that Johnson would be a disaster for this country, or that Corbyn is by far the best hope from a particularly uninspiring bunch,however after 62 years of watching Europe evolve I have a very bleak outlook where the priorities of the EU are concerned. In case you mistake me for an insular Little Englander, I spent 15 of the first 16 years of my life abroad, I was born in Spain and raised in Italy and Libya. The forced integration and homogenisation demanded by the EU, which has evolved into nothing more than the beurocratic arm of the American foreign legion known as NATO, has got bugger all to do with democracy and everything to do with the corporate shafting of the vast majority of the European population. I would rather spend my dotage dealing with a pack of local tyrants, against whom there is at least a remote chance of effecting some sort of change, than the obscene charade that is the so called democracy of the EU. The US is a moribund empire that is on the way out, however much willy wagging it likes to engage in, so with an luck our weird and eccentric island may just have a chance if we can work out a way of going it alone. Then we can get on with the job of rebuilding our relationships with the rest of the world, and wave the 200 years of our own monstrous empire goodbye.
Indeed you “Must try harder Frank” when you keep atacking those “far left nutters” i.e. attack the only weapon we have.
Rather talk about Jack Jones
Holly shit – the groaniad throwing in the towel?
Peter Orborne almost suggesting tories should vote Labour!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/18/boris-johnson-lying-media
The world turned!
Well the Graun does have to get the approval of the deep state before publishing.
One “Farmer Jones” figure that the Remoaniacs are fond of using against Brexit is of course, The Donald.
“Surely you don’t want The Donald to come and chlorinate your chickens, steal your NHS and give it to American corporations, and ravish your maidens?” (Definitely not that last one….after all, we have Randy for that…).
Speculation is inevitable.
What bargaining chips does Britain have?
Which countries are we likely to make trade deals with?
Corbyn is depicted as a no-hoper, or in the context of Franks analysis a failed revolutionary so who exactly is going to deliver a form Brexit the left hope for?
Johnson?
Sturgeon is not exactly pro-Brexit.
The Greens and Plaid Cymru are both remain
Obviously not Swinson.
Yet these are the choices – so isn’t time a few more people nailed their colours to the flag and spelt out who we should vote for on 12th December, and how this vote will translate into a form of Brexit that makes sense.
Mike I guess you haven’t noticed that billionaire Robert Mercer who paid for the Cambridge Analytica psyops during the Brexit campaign also happens to be Trumps largest donor through the USA White Supremicist “Make America Number 1 Super PAC”, and to Nigel Farage. Steve Bannon also moved his fascist campaign to Europe too.
How delightful & great relief, Frank: even before the end of the first paragraph, I realised you weren’t referring to our clueless old, but still precocious, Owen 🙂
Excellent Frank: meet the new Jones: Same as the old Jones.
According to the WEF ideologues: there were three phases of ‘trade-in-goods’ globalisation – roughly corresponding to the industrial revolutions. This expansion was led by finance capitalism – the old ‘grey’ Jones. Latterly, and still contemporary, signs of long-term systematic and irreversible damage began to emerge in the life-value ground – succinctly described by John McMurtry as “whatever you need to draw your next breath”. This was detailed in the Cancer Stage of Capitalism as ‘money multiplier cancer’ which McMurtry describes as the ’cause of causes’ and ultimate root pathology and etiology of all social and ecological ill health.
This private Transnational Money Multiplier Sequence or System (TMMS) is centred on the City of London – typified by the OTC derivatives trade and the Euromarkets. These are the largest finance capital markets – and source of overfinancialisation and globalisation. Which, to all intents and purposes, are the same thing. This bond servitude and debt enslavement undertakes the transfer of all public wealth to private profit: at the expense of the life-ground of value …as such this self maximising TMMS is ‘life-blind’. This can be summed up as:
”Money-sequence growth throughputs that produce no life-necessity and run down non-renewable resources, multiply wastes and incapacitate life and life-support systems” [CSC: p42]
https://bsahely.com/2018/02/14/the-primary-axiom-of-value-universal-human-economy/
Finance capitalism was/is in crisis and needed to adapt to a more socially inclusive and environmentally friendly green finance capitalism …introduced at WEF Davos in January this year as ‘Globalisation 4.0 – Shaping a Global Architecture in the Age of the the Fourth Industrial Revolution’. The ‘house was on fire’. The old ‘grey’ Jones got a new suit of pseudo-green.
A proposal still needs a legal-rational, moral and ethical-value framework to legitimate it. And give it authoritative power and popular support. For this they needed to manufacture consent – as detailed exhaustive investigation by Cory Morningstar.
http://www.theartofannihilation.com/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-political-economy-of-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/
In the end: consent did not even have to be manufactured. We will see the actual policy on Thursday. Unlike Frank: I think they will be vitally important. For the most part: the biggest humanitarian and ecological disaster yet to befall us – green finance capitalism’s global architecture of the recovery of the life-value ground – is a non-event in the electorates eyes. They will vote it in under-the-radar as an unexamined attachment to other policies. I have seen no lively debate of the GND extinction protocols anywhere else. Which I could perhaps be a little more sanguine about if we were less Spectacularly glib and gleeful about voting in the next wave of green finance capitalism under the guise of a Corbyn government.
Meet the Old Jones: same as the New Jones …in his shiny new green debt bondage suit. Our indifference and complacency will cost untold numbers of lives – including potentially our own. Farmer Jones is a happy man.
One of the things this argument fails to address is why manifestos never include thoughts on coalition deals. The Libdems 2010 manifesto was a theoretical construct for majority government which noone believed they would achieve. By holding the balance of power, they had to compromise to join a coalition. Voters seem to think that that is evil: they need to grow up, but political parties also need to know what their voters saw as non-negotiable and what was tradable. Libdems collapse came courtesy of students feeling betrayed. Not to mention the far right press engaging in poison pen politicide for 36 months….not one of those journalists ever had a mandate, they had an oligarch with instructions….and security service bloggers churning out hate speech ad nauseam BTL….
I originally posted a version of this as a reply to one of the posts in the last Brexit / Corbyn article of a couple of days ago. It seems equally relevant to post it here.
Corbyn is unfortunately trapped in the web the system creates for any one who tries to defy the system. While being of the system. He is forced into a trap that means he can not push to hard or he will lose any power he does hold. But if he does not stand strong over things he is supposed to champion he is week and loses power any way. In such situations it is difficult to gain traction. The imprisonment of Julian Assange is a disgrace and the world needs people who will call all of what is bad out. In fairness to Corbyn he has been out there doing this but has been starved of oxygen by the media. It is time to over throw the power the system holds. This is no longer the time for appeasements to gain power. This is the time to shine a light in to the darkness. As for the Brexit thing it is like hagels dialectic principle. If it can not be resolved it is because the whole thing is wrong and it is time for synthesis. To seek to move into a greater understanding. This then becomes not about leaving or staying within the EU but about transcendence. We are at a pinnacle to a higher truth it is important that we remain focused on this and refuse to allow ourselves to be sucked into supporting the problem and remaining within the prison of what is now. I will also add that the same problems we will face out of the EU are equally the ones that face people in the other member countries and in or out the same problems are what need to be addressed. It is not being part of the EU that is the issue it is the ability to change the power base that controls the way things are.
I doubt if Johnson would be committed to ‘broadband communism’ as pearl clutches in the right wing media refer to it.
Corbyn may not be perfect and its certainly true to say large parts of Labour’s history do not bear scrutiny but at this point in time the alternative is Swinson, Farage, Johnson, or the tingers (if they haven’t already formed further splinter groups).
I get the ideological arguments for coming out of the EU but without a left leaning party willing to confront Britain’s self-serving establishment we are mostly talking about theoretical rather than actual gains.
As we all know the City of London is a government within a government and the political class was long ago co-opted to serve their needs, the most powerful in the UK and beyond.
Seems a bit unfair to expect any left wing politician to have a broom big enough to sweep away this mountain of shit, especially when half your own party are trying to stab you in the back.
Harry, I am not sure if your post is a response to mine, but if so, I don’t want you to think that I am being negative about Corbyn of himself. I believe he is probably the best hope we have within the present system. If enough EU countries had similar people to Corbyn in power then at least there may be some hope for the whole of Europe to transcend in some small way. That in itself would be a big step forward and a paradigm shift that we so badly need to transcend in some small way beyond where we are now. This may be would also transcend any need to leave the EU. As it could then potentially be changed from within. I do see limitations within the current system whether in or out of the EU. But if Corbyn could potentially act as catalyst for some change. It would go some way in improving peoples lives. What I find most depressing is how people who surely would find life a little more fair under a Corbyn government. Jeer and condemn it out of hand as if it is so radical and extreme. When it is after all what people should expect from the state. At least with Corbyn we would see the country attempting to be run for the majority rather then for the few who gain at the expense of the rest.
‘It is not being part of the EU that is the issue it is the ability to change the power base that controls the way things are.’ – the million dollar question, Kathy.
Can we do it, how do we do it when Britain’s democracy (post Thatcher) has come to resemble the kind of one-party system that prevails in the USA – there you can vote for a man, a woman, a person of colour to be president, but not anyone who is not broadly sympathetic to the kind of cryptofascism linked to neoconservative ideology.
We might argue that in Britain Corbyn and in America Gabbard may be less compliant but both are up against dark and deep rooted forces.
These forces are ubiquitous both within and outside the EU and while many of us may be sympathetic to the theory of Brexit there are still doubts that leaving the EU without a deal will translate into measurable benefits amongst the increasing numbers who have been marginalised.
Ahh yes Harry. In there lies the rub.As you say. The million dollar question as always is how do we. A seed of a dream is better then no dream but it is still a dream. But and this I think is key. It is the germ of an idea that transcendence can happen. This system is worn out. So there is hope. Brexit will not bring about the utopia as it is for the elites, by the elites and not for the people. But it shows that the people are ready and desperate for change. The energy is rising.
Hordes of the billionaires orks came over the hill waving their pens. The lonely chess player considered his move as pens slashed and the blackest of ink thrown in his eyes. He blinked. Coward the hordes cried.
So the article (yet another pushing for a HARD brexit) just 2 days ago not enough?
There are some ‘socialists’ who would decry the postwar Labour manifesto to not be ‘socialist’.
The only ‘bleating’ that i hear from ‘socialists’ is that their ‘socialism’ exists nowhere in Europe!
Yes – let us wait till the manifesto comes shall we?
1945 – Churchill out, Atlee in.
2019 – mini ‘Winnie’ OUT, mini Atlee IN.
Having lost the referendum, the Brussels Groupies sought to sabotage and delegitimise the result, first by the use of emotive and contentious language, “falling off a cliff”, “crashing out” and the like, and obfuscating the issue by inventing new categories of “Hard Brexit” (ie implementing the referendum result and leaving the EU), and “Soft Brexit” (ie ignoring the referendum result and remaining in the EU.)
Some people think we live in a democracy.
Some people think that voting in elections or referendums matters.
Some people think Tweedledum is significantly different from Tweedledummer.
Some people think that Labour and a Corbyn government would make a difference.
Some people believe in angels, fairies, leprechauns, and Father Christmas.
The EU has already ignored and cancelled 5 referendums which it lost.
It replaced an Italian government that was not to its liking and provided a banker of its choosing to rule the country instead.
The Italian budget was scrapped and tossed in the waste paper bin.
It vetoed Spanish cabinet appointments that were not to its liking and substituted them with its own placemen.
It ordered the Irish government to privatise water in the face of universal opposition.
It constantly interferes in the domestic affairs of Poland, Hungary, and other countries.
It has imposed stringent and vicious austerity throughout the continent, with 50% or more youth employment, and the collapse of health and public services.
It supports the endless crimes and atrocities of the Zionist Regime, the aggressive confrontation and vilification of both Russia and China, and CIA orchestrated coups in Ukraine, Venezuela, Bolivia, and elsewhere.
We have already seen what to expect from Corbyn.
His abject surrender to the Smear Campaigns and Hate Campaigns of the Zionist Mafia.
His abject surrender to the Blairite Backstabbers and the Brussels Groupies.
Corbyn is a decent man whose natural instincts are towards conciliation (or appeasement if you prefer it.)
And he has been under tremendous, vicious pressure from the utter filth who make up at least 80% of the PLP.
But this is nothing compared to what he would be up against should he actually win the election.
He would need a combination of complete ruthlessness and low cunning to achieve anything at all, and these qualities are absent.
Mark: “He would need a combination of complete ruthlessness and low cunning to achieve anything at all, and these qualities are absent.”
Hence Stalin’s comment on Ivan the Terrible, to its great director Eisenstein: You might have shown why Ivan needed to be so cruel.
As Kenny Rogers said, “If you’re gonna play the game, boy, you gotta learn to play it right.”
These people are owed nothing.
Jezza should have told the Zionist Mafia, if you’re going to tell lies and smears about us, we’re going to tell the truth about you.
You have to get down in the gutter with them.
That’s what Trump does. Go after him and he’ll come straight back at you.
Could not agree more. The scum-bags who run this system will never follow their own high-minded rules, so why should we? You’ve got to fight fire with fire–nothing else works.
Can you support that with examples? I doubt it, but even if you could, in what way would that be relevant to this article?
Nice try, but it doesn’t really work.
Are you really comparing Jezza with Clement Attlee? Come off it.
He has some good qualities. But in the same league as Clement Attlee?
I am reminded of this incident:
oops, link didn’t post: this incident, or moment in a debate, rather:
‘Can you support that with examples? ‘
Yes…
“I would contend that the Conservative and Labour parties and their media backers are essentially class-based with the working classes pretty much excluded – particularly from the Labour party.”
Frank Lee , in this article.
Satisfied? I’m sure there are many such admissions by Frank & his stablemates.
Sorry to Spike your and others efforts to persue a ‘hard brexit’ which was the worm in the brexit apple. Was always denied as a possibility even by the likes of Nigel – but it was and remains their only plan A.
The referendum result so religiously referred to is so solid that the brexiteers are unwilling to let the 51% say “hell yes that ia exactly what we wanted and want, now get in with it” in a confirmatory referendum.
Spiked that little canard for you as well.
Funnily I posted a informative and linked response to the previous article earlier today addressing the bollocks that the EU can not change or evolve.
Spiked that there. Should i repost it here?
Now we have a tired old allegorical tale of Communism – not quite putin- nazi trope but Corbyn- Stalin. Can’t wait for CJ Hopkins to Spike that!
Must be uncomfortable sitting on so many spikes getting regularly SPIKED.
…. er that will do for now come back if you want more later.
You really fail to understand the EU and its current position. As I said elsewhere: it is crumbling, it cannot last. (enter the Parrot.)
You have to view the EU in its real context-the Empire of which it was an integral part is in retreat. Swift retreat to its ancient bases. That Empire is the US led former British Empire, which has dominated the world, in one form or another since Waterloo.
Talking of which: as Macron, a right wing Gaullist, is proclaiming from the rooftops of Paris, sees the EU as a revival of the Europe that Bonaparte wrought, a Europe united as a bloc, and disassociated from the US/UK. A land empire once again, of which Germany, and its eastern european outposts and allies is the heart, both in terms of industry and population and France the intellectual and diplomatic head.
He wants to replace NATO with an EU army led by France.
As to what he sees the EU as being in social terms, could he have been more clear? Every weekend for the past 53 he has been showing the world that he sees the role of the state as an instrument to repress the working people and dissent in any form. Like Napoleon he upholds the tradition of Thermidor.
In other words the EU while not wedded to the US Empire, as its putative rival is not anti-imperialist either. That can be seen from its increasing affinity with Israel whose role it sees as an ally/base as it struggles, against the declining US and the rising eurasia, to control the middle east. Israel being cast as the eastern outpost of an empire stretching across North Africa and Egypt.
Shades of Bonaparte under the pyramids again.
After all as Macron and the EU have also made clear any anti-american noises that might be misinterpreted as anti-imperialism on their part should not be understood as indications that the ‘mission civilisatrice’ has been abandoned. Au contraire- Africa is to be a target of EU expansion and exploitation in which France’s carefully preserved financial and diplomatic ties will be to the fore.
In the competition between the declining US and rising China a united, Bonapartist empire at the west end of the Eurasian landmass will be in a powerful position. But those who live in it will not, it will be a pre-condition of the EU’s ability to exert power that it becomes a highly militarised state with a population which follows orders-Hitler realised that, so does Macron.
In the meantime the US will be busy trying to re-establish its complete hegemony over its own hemisphere. It seems to have Canada already tied up- the old left, with its nationalist tendencies and its inherited contempt for the US has been buried. From Washington’s point of view the ‘Layton’ phenomenon which killed the socialist traditions of the CCF was a victory just as significant as that against Morales in Bolivia. Both, like the project in Venezuela, are about propping up the US Empire with monopoly control over minerals, hydrocarbons in particular.
France’s expansion into sub-saharan Africa is a no go. I know they’re investing and allowing some, rather minor, tariff free trade of foodstuffs from some countries but Africa got seriously burned before and it travels its own path with some Chinese investment. Other than that, I agree with your thoughts on global division of spoils.
I gave you a thumbs up. Nevertheless, I find rumours of the demise of both the USA and the EU to be rather exaggerated.
‘Personally, I have found Corbyn’s performance both weak and politically malleable’ Haven’t heard anyone else suggest that JC MP is unprincipled or weak – but he’s now the leader of a party infested with rats and snakes he has management issues that anyone else would struggle with. It’s a cheap comment – there is no savior.
It may be cheap, but it’s also true, unfortunately.
Talking of rats and snakes, where are Blair, Mandelson and Cambell? They’ve been quiet lately. Too damned quiet. What are they plotting?
I would point out that I did not write the piece on the impossibility of Reform and Remain. The Gentleman in question was Lee Jones.
Those f@@@@@ing Joneses!
Except Lance Corporal Jones…
‘Personally, I have found Corbyn’s performance both weak and politically malleable’
Perhaps, just perhaps, Corbyn is biding his time until he is safely ensconced at number 10.
Then swollen,psychotic, heads will roll.
Oh what a delicious fantasy that suggest! Corby so meek till he gets there and then …BLAM! Out comes the machine gun and Blair and Hodge and all those venal phoney Zionist moralists get garrotted in a scene of apocalyptic carnage. I’d buy that movie!
Deport the pricks to Greenland where they can watch the glaciers melt.
Perhaps after the Glorious Revolution, the ruling class can be strongly encouraged to personally colonize the Falkland Islands.
Don’t think it works like that. I dunno how exactly it works, but I imagine “interviews” (talkings to) by the head of the civil service, the head of the Secret Service, and the head of the Security Service, not necessarily in that order. Then before the poor guy has time to recover, the governor of the bank of England is wheeled in.
An hour or so later, a trembling new PM is led to a darkened room, calling for a stiff whisky (“and leave the bottle!…”), sends for his new Chancellor of the Exchequer, and they quickly begin striking things off the manifesto, and adding a little item about increasing the Secret budget, and bunging in a few million for the police, just for good measure.
( Just like in the States, they show the new president the Zapruder film over and over, at least according to Bill Hicks… )
A personal favorite! I do miss Bill Hicks so …
yo, Seamus, you mean AlexJones, right ? 🙂
“It’s just a ride” bro. 😉
I fear you are right Mike, but perhaps, just perhaps, JC, being a vegetarian and a cyclist, will see through their BULLSHIT and tell them to FUCK OFF!
“The crucial issue of our time is ..whether or not the next government – whatever its colour – takes us into the EU, which seems increasingly probable, and under what conditions.”
Am I missing something here? The UK is a member of the EU. Unfortunately it joined and has never left it.
The question, as I mentioned not long ago, when another variation on this theme was being performed, is whether the EU will allow a socialist government-and I think that when Frank sees the manifesto he will recognise that it is full of policies which the EU will define as unacceptably socialist- to implement its policies, to discharge its mandate.
And that is when the real issue, which is whether the electorate can be permitted to choose not to persist in neo-liberal policies and subject their society to the depradations of austerity, ’30s style,..when that issue will arise.
I understand that it is really great sport trawling through the history of the Labour Party and discovering that, despite more than a century of promising it has yet to implement socialism. This will be disturbing, even incomprehensible, news to our Martian readers.
How much fun it is to join in the hunt of the Corbyn I will leave others to judge, suffice it to say that those who join in are in very bad, though among intellectuals very fashionable, company.
It is an unfortunate coincidence that the only people who want to turn this election into a struggle over Brexit are those dead set against allowing it to become an election about neo-liberalism and rejecting Thatcherism. Or doesn’t Frank realise that the people who voted for Brexit were voting against the fruits of neo-liberalism. In much the same way millions of those voting to Remain were doing so because they, in my view mistakenly, saw in the EU a tradition of rejection of the marketplace, they saw the ghosts of Common Markets past with their social subsidies and apparent interest in equality.
In short most people, however they voted and however they would vote on the EU issue, agree that the UK needs to be a fairer, more equal society in which there are such things as equality of opportunity to medical and dental care, access to education, public services and non profit utilities. And that is what the Labour manifesto will offer them.
As for Frank I suspect that his motto is “Neither Johnson nor Corbyn but International Socialism when the time is right and it evidences itself.”
Poor old George Orwell, his friends do him very little service except to remind us that his real name was Blair.
Yes, about what I expected. But to cut to the chase, let’s make it brief. A vote for Labour or any of the other parties is a vote for Remain in one form or another. If you are happy with this go ahead. Welcome to the hotel California. As for the 51% who expected their referendum votes to count, well let’s say that their votes don’t matter. I’d call this betrayal by the political establishment assisted by their stage armies but perhaps I’m a bit old fashioned.
This is a familiar theme to one some of us were arguing thirty years back in the aftermath of Thatcher’s third election victory.
Back then the position adopted by the Labour and Trade Union movements was in essence one which saw the Social Europe of Delores as a lifeboat to protect the post war settlement from the reverses which were continuing under Thatcher.
The counter argument some of us were putting at the time was that the EEC (as was) could very well turn into a mirror image of the UK in terms of the economic orthodoxy driven by the Washington Consensus.
Certainly it was no accident that the EU as a Single Market, post 1992, has adopted the same orthodoxy as the UK Single Market. After all, the UK Single Market was the template which Thatcher wanted, obtained and signed up for.
The widening of membership to post Warsaw Pact Eastern Europe under Lisbon, rather than consolidating the economies of existing members was also a win for neo-liberaliem/race to the bottom rentier Capitalism under Thatcher’s establishment heir, Blair.
But this merely consolidated and formalised what had been taking place since Healey went cap in hand to the IMF in the mid 70’s. The point being that free movement of Capital, which transferred whole industries out of the UK destroying jobs and communities had been going on for a least a decade and half before Maastricht and cheaper labour had been imported into the UK from across the former empire for the best part of two decades before ever the UK became a member of the Common Market.
The idea that more jobs are lost from from free movement of labour than are lost from free movement of Capital is one which seems to dominate the debate on EU membership/Brexit, as well as distort the reality. In fact that argument hides the reality that it is the free movement of Capital rather than free movement of labour which does the most damage to an economy, local communities, and the working class to the advantage of Capitalism who gleefully accept with thanks the free ammunition notion this argument affords to play one set of workers/communities off against each other.
The other gaping problem of course is the argument that to remain and reform requires getting 28 ducks in a line when it has not proved possible for over century, despite the temporary post war concessions, to get the UK Single Market and it’s fuedalist rentier Establishment to adopt any alternative to what we label neo-liberalism.
And the problem here is this argument operates both ways. There is zero evidence to suppose that the UK Single Market – which after all was the template for the EU SM – and it’s Establishment will suddenly, ‘freed from the EU’, ditch neo-liberal rentier Capitalism any time in the far distant (never mind near) future.
In fact the evidence points to a doubling down on this unsustainable system which will likely lead to the same problems for the UK SM as exists for the EU SM. The question is what is so sacrosanct about the UK as a Sovereign Nation State? Come to that what is so sacrosanct about the Nation State per se when so many constituent regions and communities which make up that Nation State are left to for in a race to the bottom?
Certainly any exit from the EU will not only see the attempted break up of the UK but also the heaviest burden of what will inevitably follow falling on those who voted and continue to vote for leaving the EU. Point being that the Establishment have got this stiched up every which way. Leave or remain, those in the best position to survive either are those transients described here as the ‘cosmopolitan class.’
Like it or not the present reality requires a model with structures and processes based on co-operation and working together to resolve common problems/issues which no single national unit Nation State can do alone.
Returning to the failed model which brought us two world wars and a nostalgia for a return to empire is not a realistic option which one can stick the label “progressive” on.
”It is an unfortunate coincidence that the only people who want to turn this election into a struggle over Brexit are those dead set against allowing it to become an election about neo-liberalism and rejecting Thatcherism.”
Excuse me, but the Brexit issue is precisely about neo-liberalism and the rejection of Thatcherism. If anyone is dead set on avoiding this somewhat awkward political issue it would appear to be the Labour party, but this is hardly surprising since the Labour party is the de facto Remainer party. I realise this is a bit of an embarrassment and requires a variety Jesuitical reasoning, but within the confines of the EU the rejection of neo-liberalism and Thatcherism would not be possible, and this much, I would have thought, is common knowledge. The EU is a neo-liberal juggernaut and totally hostile to any sort of egalitarian system but we ought not to talk about it.
Strange business politics.
“Strange business politics.’
It’s not that strange: I’ll repeat my point very slowly and perhaps then it will sink in.
I am completely in agreement regarding the neo-liberalism of the EU. However I do not believe that the great majority of those voting Brexit did so because of their opposition to neo-liberalism. In fact most of the strongest supporters of Brexit are also fanatical neo-liberals, for whom the EU has not gone far enough or fast enough.
The masses though, who do not view Brexit in that way, voted to leave because they want a new ‘social contract.’ Or rather a renewal of what they believe to have been the agreement made in 1945- the agreement, by the ruling class, to surrender power and wealth-stolen from the people- in order to ensure that the people never again had to live under the shadow of poverty, disease, ignorance and squalid living conditions. The Welfare State, the NHS, Full Employment, free public education, outdoor relief at levels sustaining dignity and homes for all.
It is that contract, made with a nation in arms it ought to be recalled, contained in the Beveridge Report and the legislation of both coalition and Labour governments, which people see as having been broken by the ruling class during the Thatcher years and in part because of the EU. Therefore they voted to leave the EU. Millions more, Remainers, differed with them only in seeing not the EU but successive British governments as being responsible for the nation’s plight. Between the two groups of voters, split around the minor, symbolic issue of the EU, there is a vast majority which says, in effect, after Cobbett “We want great change. We want it now. But nothing that we want is really new. We want to rejoin the progress towards equality and justice which was our course until..” Some people will say Thatcher, others Callaghan , others the EU. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that change must come. And the changes outlined in what I believe will be the Labour Manifesto will satisfy the immediate demands of that great majority of the commons of England and Wales. I believe too that in Ireland and Scotland any party seeking the support of working people will have to pledge itself to similar policies.
Thanks Bevin, you have made it much clearer. I have never thought too much about the whole Brexit thing because I’ve always had an underlying feeling that we are – not to put too fine a point on it – fucked either way. But I always had the feeling that the vote for Brexit had the same basic reason behind it as the vote in America for Trump which happened a few months later i.e. both were the products of despair. Both represented movements to rock the boat in an attempt to shake everything up in the hope that – well, maybe something good will come out of it.
Your comments about that 1945 agreement and later developments show up something very basic: that the class war is such that one side, i.e. us, are easily duped into thinking that it’s all about finding a balance. The other side, i.e. them, have no such illusions. They are in it to win. And they want to win everything. They grudgingly gave us some very big crumbs back then. They are now coming to take it all back.
l will repeat my point very slowly and perhaps then it will sink in.
Firstly, we can do without the patronising comments – as above.
Secondly as to what you believe, I must congratulate you on your clairvoyance. Herewith
”I do not believe that the great majority of those voting Brexit did so because of their opposition to neo-liberalism. ” You do not believe fine, well I do believe, why else would they vote for Brexit other than as a belated reaction to the neo-liberal ascendancy which began with the Blair abomination began circa 1997. You see we can both speculate. But conjecture is not fact.
”In fact most of the strongest supporters of Brexit are also fanatical neo-liberals, for whom the EU has not gone far enough or fast enough.” Yes and …?
Are you inferring that at least some Brexit voters are also fanatical neo-liberals? Who did you have in mind exactly?
Not in my neck of the woods pal. Try adjacent boroughs of Kingston and Richmond both affluent Tory/Lib strongholds, and you’d be on firmer ground. I live in the London Borough of Sutton which was the only London Borough to vote to leave, and believe me they were decidedly not ‘fanatical neo-liberals.’ Just the opposite. They hated the political class with a passion and wanted them gone, out. It was overwhelmingly a working class vote against the status quo as also evident the Labour strongholds in the North and North Midlands.
”The masses though, who do not view Brexit in that way, voted to leave because they want a new ‘social contract.’ Yes, a social-contract only made possible with an exit from the smothering embrace of the EU, Eurozone or whatever you want to call it.
Sadly, however, there will be no social contract as Brexit is taken off the table. What they will get is more of the same – neoliberalism. Expect something short of a social-democratic nivarna.
Let’s make the point yet again. A social-democratic progamme is not possible inside the EU straightjacket. Discuss.
l have repeated my point very slowly and perhaps then it will sink in.
.
There is not a lot of point in continuing a discussion in which you are so intent on repeating the same debating points even though they have been dealt with-for the most part because we are in agreement that the EU is neo-liberal, that it cannot allow the Labour manifesto to be implemented and that most people vote not on the basis of theoretical affinities “I am against neo-liberalism” but according to their judgement of how things are working out for them.
Do you understand that last point, Frank? I’m suggesting that the good people of Sutton voted against neo-liberalism and all its works without troubling themselves over the question of what neo-liberalism is. And surely you will agree.
Where we disagree is over your Calvinist view that all is pre-destined, that history has been made in advance. And that, because of the original sins of the party and its leader, nothing good can come out of following Labour’s tactic and daring the EU to tell the people of the UK that they cannot do what they want, including renationalisation and setting up state owned monopolies.
Like most cynics you are, at bottom, simply a defeatist in the Calvinist tradition. Vote Labour and gird your loins for a real struggle.
It is also the case that a social democratic programme is not possible inside the straightjacket of the UK. Discuss, dealing with the points previously made rather than conveniently ignoring what does not fit the simplistic narrative.
The salient point is still being avoided.
What evidence exists and can be presented to support the assumption – because that’s all it is at present – that neo-liberalism/rentier capitalism will be rejected and jettisoned in the UK SM if the UK leaves the EU?
In the first instance the notion that the UK and it’s Establishment are and have been merely rule takers from Brussels/Strasbourg does not bear even the most perfunctory examination.
At the EU level, as with the UN, the UK Establishment has always sought to punch above its weight in shaping policy and legislation. A detailed scrutiny of much legislation coming from the EU – the Health & Safety Six Pack being a case in point as is the WTD – reveals subtle differences in wording and phrasing between EU and UK Parliamentary legislation and further subtle differences between UK Parliament legislation and UK Company written process which afford much greater leeway for the needs of neo-liberalism.
Similarly, the UK neo liberal establishment with its own placemen/women within the EU bureaucracy and hierarchy, were able to obtain total control over EU Regeneration funds from Europe and what projects it was spent on. Driving a coach and horses through the rules by setting up their own parallel community groups stuffed with local political party members whilst starving and bullying genuine grassroots groups of any funding or support.
Devolving control rather than democracy down to the lowest level. Blair’s LP were in the vanguard of this as were the Lib-Dems – many of whose local Councillors went on to become UKIP Councillors.
The two billion ‘spent’ on S.Yorkshire for example merely resulted in a sub- regional GDP less than Greece for the first decade of this century.
Ditto for support for industries. When even the US were slapping punitive tariffs on cheap Chinese stell dumped on the world market the other year it was not the neo liberal EU which forced a reluctant UK not to impose similar tariffs it was the ultra neo liberal UK Establishment which vetoed the introduction of UK tarriffs.
Further decimating our own steel industry.
The idea that leaving the EU is going to magically result in a democratic rejection of neo-liberalism in the UK by virtue of the vote of those who chose to leave is risible.
What evidence exists points the other way with many leave voters, particularly in the traditional Labour voting Northern and Midlands heartlands more than enthusiastically willing to embrace WTO rules and the kind of carpetbagger trade deals with the US Empire which will drive down standards even further in a neo-liberal direction.
Giving this approach five more years under Bloody Stupid Johnson will see an even bigger and faster fire sale than we had under Thatcher.
I reckon Bevin had it right in his initial reply.
“The idea that more jobs are lost from from free movement of labour than from free movement of Capital seems to dominate the debate on EU membership/Brexit, as well as distort the reality.”
Very well put, sir.
Agreed. Unfortunately, we have little choice at this point in time but to vote for a set of disagreeable …ts, in order to free ourselves from another set of less disagreeable (charming even), but actually slightly more evil …ts over the water.
Once we have done that, we can then set about getting rid of the first lot of disagreeable …ts and possibly bringing about, if not quite socialism, then at least a form of prosperous equality spread over as much of our country as possible.
“UK needs to be a fairer, more equal society in which there are such things as equality of opportunity to medical and dental care, access to education, public services and non profit utilities. And that is what the Labour manifesto will offer them.”
Corbyn might even implement it: Socialism says, I’m back in Britain.
TORY OR LABOUR ??
Tweedle Dum or Tweedle Dee ?
No thanks
We in Scotland are voting SNP.
Good luck with that one.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee and Tweedledummer.