Scary economics for globalisation

There's a new set of internet shows going round. Huge ships crash into other huge ships and boats and various harbours. These towering leviathans slowly break up and sometimes destroy parts of ports, decks, docks, heavy machinery and, as mentioned before, other boats. They do it with graceful momentum, seemingly so slow and yet utterly unstoppable, while hooting and howling from sad pipes and horns that smother the creaks and grinds of the cracking concrete or the scraping bellies of the other boats. There were no deaths or injuries in the pieces seen above. But tiny humans spread along the jetty gradually turned their walks into runs as the enormous pieces of the sea relentlessly ground down their full size and impact. This is not the beauty of the waves. It is the scuttles in the current hangover of globalisation. 

A large container ship engine is similar in size to a six story building. Well over a billion tonnes is carried internationally in containers. Between 2000 and 2017 containerised cargo trade grew three times and about one and a half time faster than the world's GDP. The number of crashes of ships is actually harder to assess. There are a lot of questions and few honest answers in this area. But the issue that is most concerning now is - will these epic behemoths smash up globalisation? 

The ships gathering in Los Angeles, unable to dock their Xmas cargo, has not only saddened the West Coast children but more significantly, created the opportunity of another Trump attack on President Biden.  The mayor of Long beach California says 

'We are facing an unprecedented cargo surge at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles due to major global pandemic productions shifts and decades old supply challenges'. 

The British Prime Minister Boris pretends that the West Coast block is simply part of the same problems that the UK now faces over fuel, food and energy supplies. In fact the LA blockage is mainly the increased demand from the US for Xmas goods and the increasing problem of old fashioned port capacity. Even that minor crisis is pushing critical political issues in the US. In the UK, these hiccups are hugely more serious, and they expose much more rapidly the potential, gradual disintegration of globalisation at its weakest point. Boris talks only lies. The UK's current connection with globalisation, unlike the problems with the LA's port, is becoming the most problematic of all of the main western nations. And now ship containers price their voyages from £2000 to £18000. And gas containers are dropping their agreed previous prices in mid passage and turning their bows to the biggest offers. 

The British Guardian newspaper now faces its Bidenic hero when he insists that the US will go to war against a Chinese intervention in Taiwan. This is a deeply serious initiative against China. Up to now, the Chinese policy is that Taiwan is Chinese. The Chinese leadership has consistently insisted on a peaceful and prolonged return of Taiwan to China. The US policy used to be supporting that approach. But Biden has turned the wheel and put possible war first. (His administration is desperately trying to dissolve Biden's statement into the previous, essential, non-developed Taiwan process.)

This is the sort of sword that slices the ultra modern capitalism's largest development - into pieces. The pillars of globalisation are not the ships (although they are becoming more and more unconstrained) they are the vast connections between the US, the EU and China. Biden has deepened what was Trump's intention to break down global capitalism into nationalistic dominations - with the single leader (and the minor copycats) determinedly on top. 

Boris's pseudo working class politics

Start; 

Beating Boris is no longer a party political issue. Starmer is the most self aggrandising, chest-thumping, soggy-wet, adenoidal-Blairite that Labour has ever swallowed. The previous election, where a minority 10 million voted for Corbyn, despite the immense attacks brought down on them, could have forced the 20 odd Labour left MPs into a new practical challenge against Boris across the country. Those MPs, and the 10 million, could have separated away from Labour's squeaks in Westminster - get locally organised against Boris's right wing directions - call on the huge minority vote and with crystal clear ways — forward for Brexit and for the key nationalisations — which would have shifted and led the UK society and another election ultra-fast. 

Now, this is fighting a cult; a cult which is trying to build up a working class base, just like Trump. Most among Britain's rulers were aware of this and hoped that Tory grandees would pull back Boris - even throw him out. The Times newspaper , etc., are wringing their hands and demanding that the ruling class does something! They don't understand the Boris miracle. But the miracle is simple. Boris has spoken, is speaking and will speak in the future — directly to the working class. It's been a long time since PMs in the UK did that. And the ones that tried, Wilson, Callaghan, partly Thatcher (via sales of council houses) — all of them eventually failed. The last Labour PM, Blair, decided to deny the existence of the working class. And it was Blair that finally dissolved Labour's link with working class people. (That's what Starmer wants to retrieve!)   

Ok. How, now, can the real fight start against Boris and his personal politics?

1. Disclosures; 2. Hard truths; 3. Clear action.

1.While Boris talks to working class voters about higher wages, he lies about the facts and he opposes higher wages where he can. First he says wages will grow because immigrants accepted lower wages. But in the last 35 years wages have been declining. And the only time there was a brief change was the early 2000s — when immigration workers were actually at the peak. Wages dropped again from 2008 to now. Boris uses one or two upticks from private companies to pretend that it is he that wants higher wages. (Most of it is the bump back from 2020.) The 6 million public workers that Boris is directly in charge of are going to get a wage cut.   

2. Wages have dropped for decades. Why? Because unions were broken by anti-union laws that are still going, with the most recent law in 2010 and more yet to come.

3. Workers need to fight together for their unions and higher wages. Boris wants big votes for the smallest wages. 

1. Boris lies about fuel and food, transport and schools. He starts by lying that most countries are worse after the Covid pandemic than his new Britain.  

2. Fuel was under-planned over the last 10 years. Food was underplayed in supermarkets and farms in the last 2 years. Transport was privatised, hugely subsidised (eg., Rail) and it doesn't work. English private school fees are 90% higher than state school spending. The gap between private school fees and state school spending has more than doubled in a decade. 

3. Boris is smashing up all sides of the lives of ordinary people. Get him gone.  

And so it goes on - in virtually all aspects of an increasingly dangerous society. 

Action is needed in the absence of the weak and weary parties in Westminster.  We need local assemblies, including councils, across the UK's nations, to decide what should happen next. We need direct action, following the active Green agenda, to make sure that can show that real changes can and should happen. Workers need to build and lead new unities, pulling down the barbwire laws, crossing the collective boundaries.