tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post8893556787515969120..comments2024-03-27T09:14:27.496+00:00Comments on All That Is Solid ...: Theresa May: Brexit Means WrexitPhilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06298147857234479278noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-58132259813240180762016-10-03T13:10:08.699+01:002016-10-03T13:10:08.699+01:00Interesting piece that I largely agree with.
Lots ...Interesting piece that I largely agree with.<br />Lots of people want to dispute the semantic details of if we've entered a new era of "post-truth" politics, but it seems evident to me that with both austerity & Brexit a particular strategy (that you outline) has been used and what marks it out is how much it is a consensual construction of the media and the government...Metatonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00175633633918800979noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-2822796538712952182016-10-03T10:12:26.336+01:002016-10-03T10:12:26.336+01:00Nonsense. The guilt resides with Cameron and his t...Nonsense. The guilt resides with Cameron and his team, as Professor Curtice so ably demonstrated. As for the rules: I disagree with your line of argument. It would be all to play for had we a competent, rational government. Sadly, we do not. We have a government that would prefer to pander to xenophobia and the mad fantasies of Boris, the fantastic Dr Fox et al. When what we should be considering is the EEA.<br /><br />http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/02/rise-anglosphere-how-right-dreamed-new-conservative-world-orderPaul Ewarthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00057355765883155749noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-39408800745721529522016-10-03T10:07:21.614+01:002016-10-03T10:07:21.614+01:00'If politics is war by less violent, constitut...'If politics is war by less violent, constitutional means': good to see you channelling your inner Foucault......Paul Ewarthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00057355765883155749noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-80526044798604448032016-10-03T09:15:23.801+01:002016-10-03T09:15:23.801+01:00"For one, as the default party of British bus..."For one, as the default party of British business the Tories show scant awareness of capitalist economics. To demonstrate, there is some evidence British car exports to the continent have taken a hit post-referendum."<br /><br />Except they are not, and never have been the default party of British business. In the 19th century, the Tory party represented the interests of the old landed aristocracy and the associated financial oligarchy AGAINST the interests of Business. Some in search of working-class votes, like Disraeli, are described by Marx in "The Communist Manifesto" as "reactionary socialists". It was the Liberals that were the representatives of business, and as Marx and Engels describe, they pulled the working-class behind them, in opposition to those old vested interests.<br /><br />In the twentieth century, as voting workers became more significant, the Labour Party more or less just took over where the Liberals left off, but with a superficial "socialist" gloss, which all social democracy presents. But, it is social democracy that represents the interests of business, of the dominant forms of big, socialised capital.<br /><br />The Tories continue to be the representatives of the interests not of business - which is why the Tories could carry out policies destructive of business form the 1980's onwards - but of the owners of money-capital, of shareholders, bondholders and other financial assets, whose prices have rocketed as a result of Tory policies, even as business itself has continued to be undermined. To the extent that the Tories represent any business interest, it is only of those remnants of the past, of the interests of the private owners of the small to medium businesses, whose interests were often hostile to those of big business, and of structures like the EU.<br /><br />The consequence of the Tories approach of representing the interests of the owners of loanable money-capital, fictitious capital, shares, bonds etc. is not just the blowing up of extremely dangerous financial bubbles in all of those assets, but the consequent draining of money-capital from productive investment into such speculation. As that led to a continual reduction in yields on those assets from the late 1980's, so the representatives of that fictitious capital on company boards, diverted increasing proportions of profits into the payment of dividends, rather than into capital accumulation. <br /><br />As Andy Haldane at the Bank of England has said, in the 1970's, only 10% of profits went to pay dividends in the 1970's, whereas today that figure is more like 70%. The global economy for the last thirty years has become transfixed with the drive to continually inflate asset prices, whether they be share, bonds, or property, as the owners of those assets have become transfixed in gambling on their future nominal rise.<br /><br />It has been to accommodate such a mesmerised obsession that conservatives have geared their policies over the last thirty years, including those conservatives like Blair and Brown, who dominated social-democratic parties during that period.<br /><br />It led to a series of crashes, each becoming more severe, the latest being in 2008. But as I have set out in my book <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00MNHZCLU?*Version*=1&*entries*=0" rel="nofollow">Marx and Engels' Theories of Crisis</a> instead of remedying the basis of those crisis, more of the same medicine has been applied, which means that any time soon, an even bigger financial crisis will strike, and given the financial conditions, it is unlikely that the old Monetarist intervention policies will be possible this time.<br /><br />It will mean the period during which those conservative anti-business policies could be applied in the interest of the money-lenders will have come to an end.Boffyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08157650969929097569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-24419930750201720062016-10-03T07:49:22.460+01:002016-10-03T07:49:22.460+01:00There's a good piece by Vernon Bogdonor in tod...There's a good piece by Vernon Bogdonor in today's Guardian. <br /><br />https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/02/article-50-trade-eu-deals-globalisation<br /><br />"May has swallowed the Leave line that Britain can negotiate its own exit that retains all the benefits of the EU with none of the responsibilities..."<br /><br />I doubt it - rather, I think May is presenting the inevitable as a choice. She has realised how grim, and frankly impossible, it will be to negotiate a special trade deal against a hostile EU parliament, and the ability of veto by any one of 36 national parliaments, and is cutting her losses. <br /><br />The UK is hurtling head on to WTO rules in two years precisely because she knows it has not got a hope in hell of getting anything else. This will be the reality discussed in board rooms, and quietly between officials and businessmen in off-record meetings. They will be preparing now, while the public believe what they read in the newspapers. <br /><br />As Bogdanor points out, there is a misperception of Article 50, which is to regulate withdrawl, not new trading arrangements. This means the status of EU citizens, not tariffs on goods and services. <br /><br />Paradoxically, immigration will float down by itself as the nation enters economic tumult. So May will be able to dress it up as a win, in the end, even if the win is for the top one per cent and the south of England. <br /><br />David Cameron, et al, will surely be seen as the Guilty Men, in all this, but certainly Corbyn and the Lexit brigade will merit a sizeable footnote - it was for want of two per cent, a two pre cent that a dynamic Labour campaign might have swung - that the UK will lurch into US-style hyper-capitalism, eviscerating what remains of post-industrial communities and workers rights. It may seem strange, but future generations of Leftists may look back on these as halcyon days. Speedynoreply@blogger.com