1. The very fine writer Tariq Ali recently published a blog on Boris's departure. (Read 'Adieu Boris, Adieu.') Both funny and revelatory, Tariq went through the Prime Ministers from WW2 to Boris. He pointed out that Boris's lies and pretences were relatively minimal in relation to the secret, guilty acts that PMs had previously carried out.
Tariq's views of the character and role of the present ruling classes, including Prime Ministers, were not so accurate. Tariq was at pains to explain the distinct difference of Boris's political and economic plans compared with Trump's approach, with its signal, dominated party and its wildly right-wing ambitions. He does go through the declining changes of the British ruling classes and the break-away politics and economics via the UK's State, with its less and less international influence. But there are key aspects in respect of the UK ruling classes and their role in general that are increasingly significant in the direction of Trump and the similar Western and Eastern modern despots.
2. The increasing reality demonstrates the intense capitalist platform of the future of the UK but it is full of danger. For decades there has been minimal investment in the UK. The central part of the UK's wealth continues to be banking. The UK's main banking and other resources are held in a part of the world's offshore that amounts to $32 trillion. The UK itself holds £854 billion offshore and, as of the 24th of April 2022, the UK continues to top every other offshore tax haven. (See CITY AM.) But the UK is increasingly declining in relation to other financial nations that are emerging across the globe. The 2008 banking collapse both cut the UK based banks to smithereens and, at the same time the UK is reducing its wealth and strength in respect to all other capitalist activity including their offshore sector.
The offshore, anti-tax, de-facto crime remains the key lever of the UK's vital capitalism - except more desperate after 2008. The UK's historic solid rock is seriously splintering. There are several new reasons for the increasingly rapid decline. Investment has longly continued as the lowest of all the main countries in the West. Beside the crisis of Covid, the UK faces the increasing revolt of West Indian and other nations that are determined to de-couple from their UK histories and the colonial shame involved, which directly cuts into offshore advantages. The UK is also internally removing from European markets for the time being and UK labour is largely working in local sales, marketing and building. As a result, in the absence of any real international production in the UK, the most drastic economic conditions apply, comparing badly with all of the rest of the West.
3. The consequences of the UK's ruling classes over half a century is their very limited outlook, which is constantly narrowing. And now, most significantly, a huge social wave from other classes in the UK (not really touched in Tariq's comments) has boiled up. It includes immense strikes led by organised union workers, collective demands for massive food needs, large scale strikes against heating costs, possible windfall taxes and even the probability of rationing. All this is beginning to challenge the narrow capitalism of UK society.
4. The initial use of Brexit as a racist social movement, led by Farage and UKIP, which went onto a far right definition of the initial referendum, was entirely incorporated by Boris and his new Tory Party, albeit underlined in Farage's terms. But by 2020 Brexit support had emerged into a more radical, democratic basis for the result of the referendum. By then the racist arguments had dropped in the polls to third or fourth place. But it was Boris and his minions that continued to open the racist argument again - for two reasons. First, the crucial win leading to racism in a Tory election, despite the previous decade of Tory impoverishment and secondly, to absorb this previous racist movement, now to be focussed on an imperial leader with a completely independent axis for his prepared UK politics to come. The content of Boris's apparent politics, like Trump, was not in his key requirement. His politics were used to assemble his dominance based on populist trends.
5. Now we pass Boris (and the would-be Thatchers and Boris's) but not abandoning his plans. What is really happening now is the beginning of a massive class war, which is going to change everything.
The most globally dominant UK ruling class is deciding that it can dig in more of a new 'offshore' wealth; a future increasing away from the half-baked and often uninterested development, instead regarding society in the UK as entirely a means, which has only one substantial project, that is Banking 2. This is the (new) core of the forms of digital money now set to go by the Bank of England. The new goal passes by all the would-be digital monies already across the world, up to now, and which previously keep collapsing. The Bank of England, through the Financial Policy Committee will "create a wide range of 'Stakecoins' "which will initiate and overtake the new independent digit wealth - for all across our global UK!
This is the central creation of a much wider financial scheme than previously launched; the sort that has brought Hull and other ports to allow their 'independence' i.e. non taxable, constantly moving shipping, with costs decided by private response. The surrounds of the new financial Stakecoins sweeps away from the previous necessity of building public, day to day investment for development and trade. Instead we face a 'free' Singapore topped by the new Stakecoin castles. It is the already dying globalisation now narrowed into instant wealth at all costs.
6. In this rare and desperate context the class struggle arising in the UK has several dimensions. The first direct aspects are showing themselves in the organised unions refusing pay cuts. Coupled with huge collectives for free food, direct action to stop heat costs and combinations of local movements gathering to show public opposition over police failures, the failures of women's rights and the new racism, wide ideas are surfacing. A wealth tax proposal has arisen. Rationing of a modern time is surfacing. The redistribution of wealth is becoming a hard call. Self organisation sharing resources is changing parts of the country.
Surrounding the UK is the rising breaking away from English domination by the Scots, the Northern Irish (with both current acting parties that have agreed to offer democratic independence) and an irritated link by the Welsh when it comes to Tory provocation. These deep cracks in UK politics are now increasingly raw. The opportunities for large parts of the UK are obviously no longer rising and the new prospective financial diamonds are barely going to scratch even the highlights of London. The strain and weakness of the UK has never been more obvious. The breakdown of the UK has never felt more realistic.
Brian Heron
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