An Introduction to Foucault

Plans for a discussion of Keir Starmer's immigration speech got canned by my having to trek around the West Midlands rail network to get home. And so, to make sure you don't leave this place without at least something here's a short but useful video on Foucault from the Acid Horizon comrades. Useful for anyone who can't see what the fuss is about.

Keir Starmer and House of Lords Reform

Labour are set on abolishing the House of Lords if it wins the next election, says Keir Starmer. At a speech of assembled Lords and Ladies, he said the Tories' habit of packing the Lords with cronies, failed MPs and beloved donors was undermining confidence. Instead, the second chamber should be fully elected but carry on its function of scrutinising and amending legislation. It would not become a rival centre of power to the Commons. Its size and nuts and bolt details (term limits? Electoral system? What to do with the bishops?) are to be determined, as are the fates of newly appointed Labour members - the latest tranche of which are due to take up their seats in early December. Pretty unambiguous and said at a time when Starmer is under no pressure to sugar coat his intentions.

The Tories don't like it. It would, apparently, undermine the Union. Quite how, they don't say. And it would clash with elected politicians in the Commons and the devolved governments. Again, not necessarily the case given its competencies are unlikely to exceed those the Lords currently enjoys. I.e. The most it could do is delay the government's plans and lay down some annoying amendments. Unsurprisingly, the Tories have an interest to declare. When Dave justified the constituency boundary readjustment way, way back in the Coalition years, weeding out 50 or so MPs was about reducing the cost of politics. Funnily, this never applied to the Lords. Since 2010, the growth trajectory has been upwards. There are now 786 sitting members and where, coincidentally, the Tories are the largest party. Removing this unelected hindrance on the desires of a Labour government should be something any Labour leader would seek to do.

Yet, we're back at a familiar contradiction. Keir Starmer is authoritarian and, among other things, Starmerism is an authoritarian political project. But, as per the enthusiasm for trade unions, where does the desire for more democracy fit in? Like a hand in a glove, as it happens. The Fabian tradition, which is core to Starmerism is not a dictatorial politics, but rather an elite managerialist politics adapted to liberal democratic conditions. Electorates are asked to choose between a cadre of elites every four or five years to run government, and they get on with the business of politics while the little people return to spectator status at best, but most usually indifference. Opening up another set of elections would not fundamentally change this. After all, devolution hasn't (whereas Corbynism would have).

It's also part and parcel of Starmer's strategy to restore the legitimacy of state institutions. And in this, offering democratic reforms are a sequel to the limited modernisation of the UK constitution carried out by Tony Blair. On top of referenda on devolution, Lords reform was carried out as well. Hereditary peers were expelled from the Lords in 1999, apart from a bridging group of 92 to tide the place over while reforms were implemented. There was promise of more to come, but it never did - finally getting killed by the Tories, despite having agreed to an elected chamber with the Liberal Democrats. Blair's motivation was to restore faith in the state by using limited reform as a means of bedding down the politics of (New) Labour and, in Scotland's case, addressing the alienation from Westminster that had grown worse under the previous 18 years of Tory rule.

For Starmer, Lords reform can't be divorced from his bigger package of measures. He knows there's no clamour for it in the real world, but it's a quick and relatively cost-free means of telegraphing his intentions as a change-minded politician, albeit one more interested in overhauling the form of UK democracy than deepening its substance.

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Briefing Bregret

If there has been consistency between the last four Prime Ministers, it's been a desire to get Brexit done and put distance between the UK and the European Union. It was only a couple of months ago that Liz Truss couldn't decide whether Emmanuel Macron, the president of a nation that's been in alliance with the UK for 120 years, was friend or foe. And today, The Tories are set on delivering Britain to Brussels on a platter. Well, not quite. But the report in the Sunday Times has upset a lot of people. Apparently, Rishi Sunak is looking at developing a "Swiss-style" relationship with the EU. This would mean the removal of tariffs and checks but also, horror of horrors, could allow some influence for the European Court of Justice, contributions to EU coffers, and compromises on the freedom of movement. Some people are not pleased if the right wing froth on Twitter is anything to go by.

This comes with caveats. The report speaks of Britain's relationship with the EU evolving in this direction over the next decade, albeit with Sunak looking to cut deals sooner rather than later to knock the irksome corners of Boris Johnson's Brexit deal. Neither are the EU especially keen to repeat the Swiss arrangement any time soon, but it should be remembered the UK is an order of magnitude more significant (economically speaking) than Switzerland and that Brexit's impact has been felt across Europe as well. There are plenty of businesses on the continent who'd like to see the relaxing of trade barriers. But the politics of this for Sunak are difficult. He might have been a true Brexiteer, but his stronger grip on political realities tends him toward ameliorating the UK's strained relationship with the EU. He can't be anything but aware that the growing consensus among the "sensible" elements of his class that the damage done has to be mitigated.

On the other hand, the Brexit fundamentalists are concentrated on his side of the Commons. Sunak already has a legitimacy issue in that he studiously sidestepped an open contest in front of the membership. And while he has kept some of his would-be enemies close, such as Suella Braverman and Steve Baker, I doubt this would be enough to becalm the backbenches worried that the "achievement" of Brexit could vanish. With a rebellious mood abroad over some aspects of Jeremy Hunt's budget, it might encourage the awkwards to get a little bit awkward. In the medium term, there's concern for the Tories' right flank as well. Some of the more racist elements of Tory support have defected to the continuity Brexit Party, trading these days as Reform UK. And what do you know, Nigel Farage has piped up again with the threat to "crush" the Tories should the government take the Swiss road. Hard to see how he can without EU elections to ponce off, but grifters are gonna grift.

Being seen to renege on Brexit, however, is potentially dangerous to the Tories' shrinking coalition. A lot depends on the attitude the press are going to take. The problem with Truss's budget is she blew up the economy for the benefit of a few hedge funds and everyone, including most of the capitalist class, have paid the price with an unstable pound, skittish money markets and surging inflation. Are they going to play along with the "sensible" consensus, or use it as they have done with Braverman, Dominic Raab, and Gavin Williamson to try and push the government around?

Sunak is walking a tightrope. To his right are the gnashing teeth of Tory irreconcilables and the Brexit ultras. And to his left lies an increasingly confident and combative-sounding Labour Party. The polls continue to have the Tories in doom territory, and the Prime Minister's flat footedness, as per the Swiss briefing here, mean more trips are likely before the final fall.

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The Bourgeois Politics of Brexit

As forecast on many occasions, Brexit is unravelling. It was and is dysfunctional for British capital as a whole, apart from a few outliers, and is depressing GDP growth on mainland Britain as Boris Johnson's deal multiplies paper work and closes off markets on the continent. Polling supports the view that Brexit is turning out to be a failure, with a branding it as such by 56% to 32%. Even the government can't deny reality any longer, with the Sunday Times reporting how Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are considering a closer, "Swiss-style" relationship with the European Union. Putting this to one side, within establishment circles there is something of a gap. On the one hand, popular support for Leave has been explained as a plebeian revolt against immigration and wokery by white working class people. A bullshit argument if there ever was one, but precious little has been said about the persistence of Brexit and Leaveism among Tory MPs themselves. It's treated like an irrational affectation by centrist and EU-leaning elites.

This "explanation" from a couple of months back from Matthew Syed illustrates the thinking perfectly. Brexit is a cult, and it has the Conservative Party in a vice-like grip. He argues that to understand Tory behaviour of the last six years, only one perspective makes sense: group psychology. Drawing on the work of Leon Festinger who was interested in the sustenance of group delusions, he infiltrated a UFO cult to observe what would happen when its predictions - that members would get whisked away by flying saucers on such-and-such a date - didn't happen. When the aliens stood them up, the cult guru rescheduled their appearance to the future and doubled down on their beliefs. Syed's contention is that believing in Brexit shares these characteristics. Pointing out data demonstrating that Britain is poorer, weaker, and more diminished is like talking to a wall. They're not interested, with its adherents lashing out at the "remainer" Treasury and "woke" financial markets for the country's predicament this last month. More reasonable Brexiteers might point out that Sunak did offer Tory members an alternative, and what we see now is thanks to Truss's idiocy. Which is only partly true.

The only way out for Syed is a change of government. The Tories need to relinquish power. That this is being touted openly across the Conservative press is remarkable and a sign of how dire their circumstances are. In a paean to Tory MP Charles Walker who famously denounced the collapse of government discipline and said the first duty of the Tory party is to the country, Syed writes,

I almost felt like hugging him as I heard those words, for it hinted at the Tory party that so many of us once admired. A party of pragmatism, of moderation, of realism. We need that party back for the health of our democracy. So, please, call an election, take a break and find yourselves again. Do so now, and you’ll be back. Cling on to the bitter end, changing leaders, jumping through hoops, gazing at navels, and you may never be forgiven.

It's worth noting Syed is a former Labour candidate, an admirer of briefcase politics, and a fan of good Tories. But still, his argument is superficially plausible. The Tory majority made a Leave judgement call because reasons and have stuck with it to the moment of destruction. But this explains nothing. For instance, why was Brexit the glue that held their voter coalition together when the Tories might easily have clung to the cuts-and-deficit dogmatism of the Dave and Osborne years? After all, wasn't it Labour's perceived weakness on the issue that won the Tories the 2015 election? Syed does nothing to explain why Brexit was the object of Tory "cultism". And that's fine, for in the bourgeois press it doesn't do to peer too closely into such things. Hence we're left with a junk psychosocial argument that says something while not saying anything.

The truth of the matter is Brexit and the Tory attitude to Europe are closely bound to issues of statecraft, class struggle, and divisions among British capital. It is not a whimsy impermeable to serious analysis, nor a matter of emotional attachments to a free-floating "ideology" these elite circles subscribe to. Consider the obsession with sovereignty, a much-invoked concept at the heart of Tory Brexit discourse. It's not enough to point out that the European Union can't be described as an anti-democratic affront to the UK state, nor that since leaving the EU British sovereignty has declined vis a vis global markets and our reduction in status from a European rule maker to rule taker. These don't matter, and understanding why requires a short descent down the Tory time tunnel.

Euroscepticism as we understand it is inseparable from Thatcherism. As is well known, the overriding (and self-defined) purpose of her governments was putting the labour movement back in its box. This involved shutting down nationalised industries and the deliberate stoking of mass unemployment, and smashing trade union power - above all, the miners - in set piece industrial disputes. This project demanded a centring of state authority. Then, as now, the state was a sprawling set of institutions with their areas of competence, lines of accountability, and degrees of autonomy. This reflected not just the expansion of the state to meet social demands and expectations placed on it, but also the (semi-) integration of the labour movement into official society, the absorption of a growing strata of professional and middle class occupations, and the management of an increasingly complex and variegated population. If the Tories were going to smash the labour movement, the writ of the executive, of the government, had to be enforced in deed and not in word inside the state. Hence, as per its confrontation with pickets Thatcher's government simply trampled over convention, regulation, and expertise in health, education, local government, and social security. In each case the aim was the same: destroy the relative independence they enjoyed from the centre, and firmly subordinate all state institutions to a rapidly centralising, authoritarian government and its habit of arbitrary intervention.

Thatcher made the state's class character more explicit. It became a machine overtly concerned with smashing working class power and eroding its institutions. Therefore any apparatus, within or without, that checked governmental power in some way had to be (and was) seen off. And this is where the antipathy toward the European Community and then the EU came from. Thatcher was a known Europe enthusiast during the 1975 EC referendum, but became progressively more hostile during her premiership. This was simply because, as barriers to governmental authority were dismantled, the European Court and the European Commission, offered limited means by which Tory schemes could be frustrated. As Thatcher put it herself in her famous Bruges speech, "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level". Sovereignty then has nothing to do with democracy, and its only relationship to freedom is allowing the British government to do as it may without oversight or blockage. As subsequent governments have only enhanced the power of the executive at the expense of other institutions, most Tories experienced the EU as an increasingly burdensome check. Their antipathy persisted because, wrapped in all kinds of nationalist nonsense, was a frustrated class instinct, and one that was finally freed when the UK finally exited the EU. It's therefore no accident the calamity of Liz Truss happened after Brexit and why many Tories cheered her ridiculous budget. This was democracy for them - the complete freedom of the British government to act as it pleased, and "it pleased" meant sustaining the prevalent balance in the relations of production.

Politics, they say, are concentrated economics. And it's not just the practical politics of waging class struggle that made Euroscepticism the common sense of the Tory party but the economics itself. As argued here several times, the Tories are committed to maintaining the global supremacy of the City of London. This comes before increasing GDP figures, deficit management and paying down public debt, dealing with unemployment and tackling the balance of payments. There are several reasons for this. Many Tories, their families, and the networks they move in have direct interests in the health of the City. Sunak as Prime Minister typifies this linkage. It is crucial for the British bourgeoisie itself. The traditionally dominant bloc in the capitalist class owe their fortunes to City-based commercial capital and the investments made via its offices. They have a vested interest in attracting more capital flows to London (i.e. more brokerage fees to be extracted, more opportunities for "wealth management", and a local high end property market to park cash in), and therefore possess an antipathy to anything that might threaten its operation. Such as state regulation of transactions, moves to close tax loopholes, checks on inward "investment" - in other words, anything that might provide a check on these markets. Indeed, the congruence between seeing the City "free" of external interference is not unrelated to the Tory preoccupation with state sovereignty. Finally, the privileged position the City occupies in the raising and disposal of capital grants the British bourgeoisie and, by extension, its state a similarly advantageous position. The empire is long gone but their empire of capital remains, and this extra clout in the international arena can (and does) afford British capital as a whole more access to global investment opportunities. I.e. It opens markets for the export of capital, as opposed to the export of goods.

The interests in the City might be broadly the same, but those who own and manage funds and capital flows aren't necessarily of like mind. All want to expand the City, increase transactions, attract more capital, and keep the British position as global leaders in commercial and finance. But how to go about it? One side, arguably the largest section of the City (as well as the ruling class as a whole), were broadly aligned with the EU project. Having been integrated into the wider European economy for 40 years, the pooling of sovereignty with the UK's traditional rivals offered plenty of opportunities as part of the world's largest economic bloc. The opt outs negotiated by successive governments from certain EU rules enabled the City to enjoy considerable autonomy while remaining within the formal umbrella of its regulatory regime. And, as part of said bloc, the EU's collective muscle would leave the City well placed as a direct beneficiary of trade deals negotiated with the rest of the world. A minority among the City and the capitalist class generally disagreed. For some, it was the swashbuckling view that without the EU "getting in the way" that even more advantageous deals could be pursued by facing outwards. As the sub-Saharan African and East Asian states are on long-term growth trajectories, the EU is in relative decline. A more agile Britain (i.e. the City) could take advantage of this by casting off from the EU. A component of this community of opinion was dark money, whose interests were tied up in laundering money through the capital. Sometimes proceeds of crime, but usually the corrupt acquisitions of heads of state and their families. The Tory support of the Russian oligarchy is a case in point. Outside of the EU, and with a government desperate to cultivate favours with regimes the world over, regulatory oversight of this financial sludge would be weak to non-existent and this section of British commercial capital would benefit handsomely.

As we know, Vote Leave and Leave.EU, who not at all coincidentally had money from murky overseas sources tied up in their enterprises, won. The section of the Tory party who agreed with the Leave prospectus for prosperity outside the EU perfectly understood that this was for them, and not the millions who voted for Brexit. It was only when Liz Truss carried Brexit and the sovereignty it afforded to its logical conclusion, when all but a few Tory-aligned hedge funds were hit by the Truss/Kwarteng car crash that a key section of elite Brexit supporters, again personified by Sunak's briefcase tendency, that perhaps the hard Brexit pursued by Boris Johnson needs unpicking. The wider economy has taken a hit and has added to the pre-existing inflation problem, but more importantly the City itself has been severely degraded thanks to the double whammy of EU capital diverting to its own commercial and finance markets, and the war in Ukraine and associated sanctions has (temporarily) stemmed corrupt Russian capital flows. To salvage something from the wreckage, a closer relationship with the EU is now an obvious necessity.

Ultimately, explaining Brexit and why sections of business and the state are wedded to the project means understanding class politics and divisions within ruling class politics. It does not explain how Brexit won the referendum and, subsequently, won the politics, but it helps us understand the character it has assumed, why euroscepticism was primarily an elite pursuit among the ruling class's preferred party and, because of how it's linked to coalition of interests, why some of these want to double down on Brexit. Values and identities and dogmatic attachments to ideas are fine things to have, but they all pale against power and filthy lucre.

Capitalism: The Great Devourer

Highly recommend you give this episode of Politics Theory Other a listen. Alex interviews Nancy Fraser about her latest book, Cannibal Capitalism. An important intervention and reinstatement of how capitalism consumes everything it comes into contact with.

Politics Theory Other · Why capitalism is not 'an economy' w/ Nancy Fraser

Stewarding the Depleted State

The Tory budget's been, and over the next few days a whole lot of household cash will go. Economically speaking, just like the first round of austerity (which never really went away), Jeremy Hunt's prescription for fixing the crisis of the Tories' own making will only compound stagnation, cause more business failure, and drag the economy further down the post-Covid, post-Brexit spiral. His protestations that growth is at the heart of everything the government does are just words. In what was probably the best performance of her career, in reply to the statement Rachel Reeves had little trouble eviscerating Hunt and his miserable prospectus.

Enough people have written about the economics, but what ultimately matters is the politics. The 10.1% increase in the state pension from April demonstrates Hunt has resisted those suicidal Tory voices seemingly bent on breaking the triple lock. And the uprating of benefits, something of a reluctant measure forced on the government by Boris Johnson's past promises and, more importantly, a change in political climate, does at least allow Hunt and Rishi Sunak to cosplay as compassionate conservatives. Even if their delayed introduction means no help now, sees pensions and social security depreciate in real terms, and subjects Universal Credit recipients to even more conditionality checks. Meanwhile, as Hunt announced an increase in the energy price cap from April the Tories went out their way to protect their real people. No, not the mass base they've long successfully suckered, but the likes of the oil companies. Despite expanding the pitiful levy on fossil fuel profits Sunak introduced early in the year, the tax breaks for investing in exploration remain. No closure of the non dom tax scheme, no proper taxation of unearned income (dividends and rents), no cap on bankers' bonuses, and, incredibly, a tax cut on bank profits.

Particularly insidious are the Tories' cuts to the public sector. Current spending will be maintained, which means real term cuts across the board - with the exception of more money for the NHS and a bit more for education. But most of what is going to happen is getting stored up for after the next general election. How unlike the Tories to put party politics before everything else. With George Osborne brought in to advise Hunt and Sunak, the ruse has his cynical fingerprints all over it. Services don't get cratered this side of the election and so any anger and opposition cuts would stoke are put on the never never. Meanwhile, the Tories can retreat to a pre-2010 austerity comfort zone, which would undoubtedly get marketed as "compassionate cuts". This wouldn't win them the election - only complete disaster can now knock Labour off course. Allied to their grotesque anti-immigration posturing, it'd be enough to cohere the base so something remains from the ashes of the coming defeat. Labour then cop the flak for "fiscally responsible" cuts and the Tories return, reinvented, at the general election after. Why not carry on as if the party's long-term decline isn't a thing?

Hunt's budget offered no political surprises. The state's capacity to do things is in crisis after 12 years of cuts and neglect. The break down in basic functions, first a consequence of Tory policy, looks increasingly like a matter of deliberate policy as the Tories work to wind in the horizon of political possibility. This statement sits entirely inside this do-nothing logic, where doing nothing means ratcheting up the misery and condemning everyone to substandard services. A declining party stewarding a depleted state. The Tories have worked toward this scenario, and this is how they would prefer things to stay.

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Starmerism and Trade Unionism

Having spent a leadership campaign making promises and then reneging on them, it's understandable that some labour movement people don't always believe what Keir Starmer says. To get around this, there's a good rule to apply. With Labour enjoying huge poll leads and it's being virtually certain of winning the next general election, what Starmer says now is what he's likely to do. There's an absence of pressure and need to compromise. When he talks about getting tough with Just Stop Oil protesters and attacks the Tories' draconian anti-immigration policies for not being efficient enough, no one has a problem believing this is what he wants to do. His authoritarian politics have been telegraphed enough times.

Yet there are a couple other things Starmer and the shadow cabinet keep going on about when they don't have to. One of them is the repurposed Green New Deal, and the other is the most significant extension of trade union rights since the 1970s. This, outlined by Andy McDonald before he quit the front bench last Autumn, got re-emphasised in Starmer's statement of intent published on the eve of the 2021 conference. Since then, Starmer has repeatedly referenced workers' rights from day one, and it got the retread treatment this weekend as Angela Rayner unveiled Labour's new deal for working people. This is not the place for a deep dive into the pledges, but more the seeming incongruity between Starmer's authoritarianism and his enthusiasm for trade unionism. Surely they are at cross purposes?

It could be read as a sop to the trade unions. Compensation for the abandonment of Corbynism's pro-worker, pro-working class agenda. And some comrades could be forgiven for thinking once the trade union reddies are banked that this charter will go the way of the Warwick I and Warwick II agreements during the Blair and Brown years. New Labour conceded worker-friendly policies in return for cash to ease the party's money woes, but were never implemented. Such scepticism is understandable and has precedent, but I don't believe either are the case. Rather, this pro-trade union position is entirely compatible with Starmer's politics. It's not a quirk or hold over from leftier times, but integral to his politics.

For one, it's been noted here enough that central to Starmer's authoritarianism is Fabian technocracy, that politics is not a question of interests or ideas, but the right managers. A position shared by most of the parliamentary party. And there are many schools of managerialism and how to handle industrial relations. Because we've got so used to neoliberal politics framing workplace matters, successive governments - even in moments of class peace - have barely concealed their treatment of workers as the enemy within. An industrial dispute is not something to be resolved, but toughed out and broken. Employees are to be starved back to work with nothing conceded. Strike action is always the result of troublesome militants. No matter how awful and bullying management is, disputes are the faults of the workers.

This does not appear to be Starmer's view. There has always been a patrician or "enlightened" management view that holds workplaces are partnerships between employer and employee, and one gets the best from workers by being friendly, supportive, relatively open, and clear about what an organisation/enterprise is trying to achieve. This is industrial relations as human resources, where the carrot always precedes the stick. Therefore, when a workforce comes into dispute it's a failure of management. They're in charge, they're responsible, and they have allowed a manageable situation to become unmanageable. Therefore, trade unionism is a means of structuring employer/employee dialogue, as well as providing basic protections against unscrupulous and unfit bosses. It's something good managers should welcome.

This might be how Starmer sees trade unionism as a workplace justice issue, but it's more politically significant than that. As mentioned here many times, in as far as a "Starmerism" exists, it's a politics for fixing the depleted state. If the state can't do basic things like sorting out passports in a timely fashion or resource enough ambulances, a crisis of legitimacy is not far away. Starmer wants to restore faith in the state and its institutions - an essential prerequisite for Fabian (and bourgeois) politics. But this also means preventing state overreach in other ways. As the Tories are set on reducing state capacity further, the Starmerist approach to trade unions have to be seen in this context. I.e. Repairing state legitimacy lies in re-establishing its "neutrality" in industrial matters. It represents the public interest versus the vested, producer interests of workers and bosses and therefore should not take sides but provide frameworks for dispute resolution. Therefore, the cowardice Labour is regularly chided over for refusing to show solidarity with workers in dispute, even when their cause is popular, is not so much a "fear" of the electoral consequences of solidarity. It has much more to do with its managerialist politics, and how Starmer wants to reposition an rebuild the state. This is in contrast to the Tory approach who go out of their way to oppose every strike and are therefore politicising disputes, making the state appear less than neutral and demonstrating its class character. Not useful for any project aimed at winning and keeping the consent of the many.

This suggest two further objectives. This empowerment of workers afforded by day one collective rights and state neutrality is suggestive of Starmerism moving in the direction of tripartism. That is abandoning the confrontational approach to industrial relations and creating partnership structures between the labour movement, business, and the state. These can only get buy in if the constituent organisations, presumably the TUC and CBI, believe government is an honest broker. Rather than the laissez-faire of the last 40-odd years, this is a way of providing purpose and giving the appearance of everyone having a stake in a common endeavour. 21st century modernisation, Starmer style, has been swotting up on the 1950s. And the second issue is by giving trade unions a position around the table, it introduces new pressures on them to discipline their members and keep demands inside the parameters of partnership. The theory being corporatist management generates industrial peace, and with it higher productivity, a prosperous economy, a happier work force, and a re-legitimised state guided by far sighted, well meaning (Labourist) managers.

I could be completely wrong, of course, but given Starmer's authoritarian politics, his concern with state modernisation, but his evident enthusiasm for extending the rights of trade unions to organise workers, this is how they fit in with his project. Evidently, this would reset the terms of class struggle in this country and raise a host of opportunities and challenges, but it's certainly a way out of the mess the Tories have left that recuperates the rising tide of trade union struggle into a politics of state legitimation and a programme for stabilising British capitalism.

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Murdering Twitter

The brilliance of billionaires is not something I've ever held with. Their backstories are usually one of generously-provided start up capital, usually from the bank of well-to-do mum and dad, luck and timing mistaken for business acumen, and more often than not big state contracts and plenty of fictitious capital. This week, for example, we've seen the aptly-named Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto currency-derived billions simply vanish - a whole lot of money that, it turned out, didn't really exist. Similarly, the same can be said for Elon Musk. Reputed to be worth over $200bn, he still had to scrape together IOUs from banks, the Gulf's absolutist sheikdoms and various odds and sods, including Bankman-Fried, to finance his $44bn purchase of Twitter. And what has Musk done with his new plaything? He's completely trashed the platform's commercial value, and made himself look like an utter fool.

Unlike Meta and Google who have a strong business model based around the harvesting of data and using this to sell advertising, since its inception Twitter has proven much more difficult to monetise. If one's Twitter feed is cluttered with too many adverts, the platform's utility declines. And given the proliferation of apps through which Twitter can be viewed, it's a lot more difficult to bring in the commercial megabucks its peers enjoy. In 2020-21 it achieved an all-time revenue high of $5bn, but still posted a net loss of $221m. Reversing this appears to be Musk's priority to the exclusion of all else, and so within a week of his taking over he fired practically all the executive team and made approximately half of Twitter's staff redundant - leaving the company open to legal action outside the United States for violating local redundancy laws. Contrary to his cool techbro image, Musk also ordered the remaining staff back to the offices, a demand that has gone down as well as the fail whale did with old-time Twitter users. And Musk decided to "innovate". Claiming the mantle of man of the people, Musk said he was now charging verified accounts - the famous blue ticks - $8/month for the privilege of the badge. It has proved to be a disaster.

The arrival of the blue tick of verification did, at least for some Twitter users, signify a two-tier system. It awarded status to those upon whom it was conferred. However, the advantage of the system was that it verified the user. If, for example, the blue ticked Downing Street account tweeted something then it was official, not some impersonator. By introducing verification by payment, Musk at a stroke removed the only mark of trust the platform offered. For example, a blue ticked feed purporting to be Eli Lily and Company, a US pharmaceutical giant, announced it was making its insulin products free. That wiped $20bn off the firm's stock market value. Lockheed Martin was also stung by a similar prank, announcing sales to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States would be suspended pending human rights abuse investigations. Their share price dropped 5.5%. It's a wonder these firms haven't launched action against Musk for damages done around trade mark infringement. Whatever, it will certainly put off further corporate engagement with Twitter as they try and protect their brand image. And the effect it will have on advertising can only make a bad situation worse.

How to explain this colossal idiocy? It demonstrates Musk's gargantuan arrogance and belief in his own Midas touch. There are no 11 dimensional reasons why he's trashed its primary revenue stream. He's not doing a solid for the Saudis and Qataris who part-financed his purchase. He's not wrecking the site because of secret deals done with other social media platforms. It's entirely a wrong decision driven by hubris and not having anyone around him who'll say no. In short, he is to Twitter what Liz Truss was for the UK economy and the Conservative Party. After 48 hours, the paid for blue tick scheme was abandoned but that's unlikely to reverse the damage to Musk's reputation. It makes you wonder how well SpaceX would manage if it wasn't propped up by US Space Force and NASA cash.

Unfortunately, while Musk will survive his humiliation to make another spectacle of himself the future of Twitter itself is less certain. Having already loaded the company with a billion dollars worth of debt, the public failure of his revenue generating scheme and sharp decline in advertisers could well bankrupt the company. And this would be an outrage. Twitter has all kinds of problems, but like other platforms it has become essential infrastructure. It is next to impossible to follow politics in this country without Twitter. It's where stories are broken, analyses are shared, and politicians get a measure of daily accountability. It's space where it is still possible to report on news the mainstream refuse to pick up and can be kept alive. Serendipitous connections are forged with every moment, and unlike other algorithm-heavy sections of the internet there's still a good chance of finding something random and interesting. More importantly, despite efforts by sundry dictatorships Twitter is the main method of getting reports and video out of closed societies and get the information quickly disseminated. There is no other place like it, and despite its regular descent into bad faith, ad hominem, and ridiculous wars over petty slights, politics and democracy would be the poorer for it.

Musk's antics reiterate the need for removing social media from private hands. Communication is the lifeblood of the common, and only common ownership will do.

Putin's Kherson Humiliation

Seeing Ukrainians enthusiastically welcoming soldiers on the streets of Kherson would move all but the stoniest, politically blinkered hearts. The Russian withdrawal from Kherson region - long planned but rapidly executed - is testament to the resilience. skill, and sacrifices of the Ukrainian military. The Russian Ministry of Defence's removal of all its troops, though certainly not all its heavy equipment, is just about the first outright battlefield success Vladimir Putin's regime has enjoyed since the war began. But the price paid is Russia's utter humiliation on the world stage. Its military losses are staggering and the pre-war edge the Russian army had over Ukraine in properly-trained personnel and materiel has taken such a dent that Moscow is now pressing prisoners and draftees into the line, where casualties are proving particularly horrendous. And in further blows to Putin's prestige, his military is proving to be the biggest donor to Ukraine thanks to the machinery and ammunition fleeing troops are wont to leave behind. What should have been a quick, sharp policing action has become a grind that can only imperil Putin himself.

He can't say he wasn't warned. Indeed, one of the reasons why a lot of commentators were caught on the hop by his invasion, despite his weeks of posturing and fiery rhetoric, was the fact the troops assembled for the "special military operation" were too few and that Ukraine not only had a larger and better equipped army than in 2014, when Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk were claimed by the Russian Federation, it would mobilise for total war. Forget the nonsense about the United States goading Russia into war, this catastrophic misjudgement was Putin's and Putin's alone.

Consider the last nine months. The Russians poured over the border and headed toward Kiev where their armour simply sat on the roads and was gradually worn down by determined resistance to the point they had to abandon the attack and with draw from the environs of the city. In the summer, Ukraine very loudly announced to the world that it would be undertaking a counter offensive in the south of the country to liberate Kherson region. The Ministry of Defence took it on face value and rushed troops and heavy equipment across the Dneiper. The Ukrainians then shelled and knocked out the bridges, and slammed the real counter attack into the thinly held region around Kharkhiv. The Russian lines melted and 12,000 square km of land was recaptured, along with masses of equipment and the grim findings of multiple mass graves. By October, the pressure on the southern front was too much for Russia and the withdrawal began, with all soldiers making it back to the east bank of the river within the space of 24 hours. A decrepit state can only ever field a decrepit army.

Apart from withdrawing from Kherson in a timely manner, the only other success Russia can point to presently is the fighting on the borders of Donetsk where, for the best part of two months, its has been grinding towards Bakhmut. Almost two thirds of the city are in rubble, and it's been the site of some of the most intense fighting seen in the war. Every advance by Russian forces has been countered and thrown back but, with the remorseless logic of a First World War meat grinder, hundreds of newly mobilised Russian troops are thrown into the fray day after day. Yet the price paid in blood and equipment doesn't appear to be allied to any strategic perspective. Should the town get captured, it doesn't really improve Russia's tactical position. Indeed, the Ukrainian army would, if anything, find it even easier to degrade their opponent's forces by artillery from nearby higher ground. It appears to be an operation aimed at taking the city for the sake of taking something.

That is indeed the case. This region of the front line is under control Yevgeny Prigozhin, the former caterer/restaurateur turned private military contractor. His Wagner Group (who harbour as many if not more Neo-Nazis than Ukraine's famous Azov Regiment) have fielded their own private army outside of the Ministry of Defence's chain of command. It's Wagner that have recently been allowed to recruit from prisons. The use of mercenaries on the battlefield are normally problematic. Fighting for coin rather than country marks them out as more risk averse troops, but on the face of it the modest advances made since the beginning of the Autumn compares favourably to the 'official' army's performance in the north and south of Ukraine. And this is entirely the point of the Wagner "offensive". Prigozhin, as a long time Putin crony who amassed a huge fortune from corrupt state contracts, is angling for more power. It is an instance of how, as per all authoritarian regimes and dictatorships, elites compete with one another for favour and office. What does it matter if Ukraine are chewing up hundreds of troops around Bakhmut as long as Prigozhin's star carries on rising? No amount of deaths or setbacks can stop this from being a good war, as far as he's concerned.

The question now is where does the war go next. The Russians are dug in on the south bank of the Dneiper and with crossings across the wide river out of action, a lightning fast thrust from the environs of Kherson seems unlikely. However, the two main access roads into Crimea are within range of Ukrainian artillery and so we can expect the Russian occupation there to come under pressure. Which hasn't been great since a (seeming) special forces attack severely damaged the Crimean Bridge that linked the peninsula to Russia proper. An attack further to the east to cut off Russian holdings from Donetsk would appear to be a logical choice - one so obvious even Putin's MoD should be able to anticipate it. On the other hand, there are concerns Belarus might enter the war on Russia's side, imperilling Kiev once again, and the situation in the East could do with reinforcements and added firepower to squash Wagner and prosecute an advance into Luhansk. With momentum, confidence, strategic nous and a steady stream of Western weapons, Ukraine has the initiative.

There are no good options for Putin. The recapture of Kherson underlines how unwinnable the war has become for Russia. So low are its military stocks that it's relying on Iran for drones and missiles and, incredibly, North Korea for small arms munitions. The professional army has been virtually thrown away without enough left to train the draftees, meaning hundreds are showing up on the front lines every morning who will be dead by evening. And, it was widely reported, that Russia has begged Syria to send troops and is looking at recruiting Afghan commandos abandoned by the West after the Taliban took back power. Unfortunately for Putin, his humiliation has cost tens of thousands of Russian deaths and a growing crisis of confidence in his regime. The protests that greeted the outbreak of the war have become muted under the cosh of heavy policing, but the resentment of the partial mobilisation, and the inevitable turning of grief into anger is something that no regime, let alone one as decayed as Putin's, can forestall forever. It will not be molified by crude propaganda, nor by pointless punishment bombings of Ukrainian residential blocks and power stations. In Russian history, war has had the tendency of being the midwife of revolution. Putin beware.

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Andain - Beautiful Things (Gabriel & Dresden Unplugged Mix)

No time for writing tonight, but there's always room for dancing. Enjoy this understated down tempo cut from 2003.