The meaning of Britain's political crisis.

The mechanics of Britain's blossoming political crisis are becoming more obvious. Lord Ashcroft, who funds the candidates in Tory marginals, doesn't think the Tories will win the next election. Pundits have decided that the next government will be another coalition. UKIP snaps at the heels of both Labour and the Tories. The Scottish referendum won't lie down and die. With whatever shade of government we get, there is an enormous crisis over Europe built into the first two years of the new Parliament. And we cannot forget the farce of the 700 plus House of Lords that represents nothing but itself and individual member's and parties' corruption. Finally there is the most vital consideration of all, the deep contempt, derision and alienation felt by millions for all MPs and for Parliament itself. 

This is a ruling class political crisis. But its mechanics do not tell anything like the whole story. As it is a ruling class crisis, it effects all of the society that they dominate. All classes, all sectors are touched, even violently perturbed, by its impact. The British economy, dominated by an overblown global-facing finance industry, will feel the tremors undermining Britain's much vaunted political stability. Scottish independence is not now off the agenda for 30 years. It has instead been firmly located on the political agenda for the next 10. As we examine all the main aspects of politics, economics and the wider society then we see that the Britsh ruling classes' political convulsions and decay mark everything and change everything for all classes in society.

The British labour and trade union movement experienced a deep crisis of direction in the late 1970s and 80's. It was an expression, albeit partial, of the political crisis of the working class at that point (which was itself a product of a new period of heightened class struggle after WW2.) In the event the labour movement bureaucracy was able to defeat, just about, the emerging class-struggle based left wing of the movement. And then Thatcher did the rest. Today it is absurd to imagine that Blair and now Miliband's Labour Party would be the fulcrum of such a key battle (although inevitably even the modern Labour Party would feel some impact should such a battle arise.) The Labour Party therefore is also part of this story. But what has brought about the weakness of Britain's main political institutions today? What has caused the British ruling classes' current political crisis? 

The political collapse in Britain is a result of the general crisis of political representation. This may be a common observation in the debate inside those political agencies that purport to argue for a working class position - but it is actually true of the whole of society. As parliament has expanded, as PM's question time has become more raucous, the actual power of Parliament and its leading parties, and their leaders, has diminished, under peacetime conditions, to a greater degree than at any time since the late 17th century. Globalisation, represented in Britain most exquisitely by the satiric title of 'The City of London' but underpinned by the slogan of all the mainstream parties that 'Britain is open for business', has torn away even the shreds of parliamentary power that was left after WW2. Political power, at least that part traditionally based on the popular vote and Parliament, has little current function in Britain. Of course the ruling class rules. Of course its networks and corporate alliances manage most of our world. But not much is left for elected politicians. 

It is true that Labour does not represent working class people. But In the wider scheme of things that is only a part of a greater totality which could be described (in large areas of the so called democratic west) as traditional 'demcratic' politics not representing society as a whole. Western democracy is failing. And so it becomes a show. Its participants become actors. The media platform is where the show is performed. On all decisive matters and now many subordinate issues, there are, in reality, huge arcs of agreement between main parties - if it is only the agreement that nothing can be done. Certainly nothing of the slightest strategic importance is decided, or mostly even debated, in Parliament.

There are partial reactions to this state of affairs all over the place, between and within different classes. UKIP is one. 'Let's do something! Anything to assert ourselves!' they cry. But these convulsive reactions to our dying democracies are, with the rare exception of the new left formations that are emerging directly from anti-austerity class struggle as with Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, full of dangerous baloney. They get nowhere near the main issue. They signal a ferocious step backwards to a place that never was.

When Parliament was reorganised as the instrument for a new ruling class in England at the end of the 17th century, secure in its compromise with the aristocracy and its new constitutional monarchy and its 'freedom' to trade, it was absolutely necessary for its real debates and for the decisions it had to make on the real and decisive issues, to express the united will of the whole new ruling class. The repeal of the Corn Laws; Imperial preference; working class franchise; all these matters were decisive for the whole of society and had to be organised politically through Parliament and by the ruling class. Latterly, the emergence of the working class, the Russian revolution, anti colonial struggles and women's suffrage meant that Parliament had to become the cockpit regulating key class relations in society. As it was in 1945 to 48 when it gave reform 'or they will give us revolution!' (Quinton Hogg 1943.) 

Today these historic functions have almost dwindled to nothing in Parliament. Repressive law is still relentlessly rolled out and that is a product of a desperately weakened organised labour movement. Parliament and its parties nod through wars with the odd honourable exception but never otherwise address the key issues in society. And at the margins, and always repressively, they still 'manage' outbreaks of domestic social and class struggle through their control of the police. Objectively the ruling class no longer needs Parliament (except to allow its more punitive actions some legitimacy) and the working class, in large part, no longer believes that Parliament and the main parties represented there can change anything important. 

Consider the two decisive issues of our time; the West's wars defending its industrial/military dominance in the world and, since 1978, the massive increase in social inequality. Neither of these questions are frontally addressed by Parliament. Neither of them are presented as the key issues of our time by any of the main parties. None of the mainstream parties have any serious difference on these questions with the others. Parliament and its parties are unable to decide on any aspect of ruling class behaviour in these fields (which is directed more from the Pentagon and the board rooms) and Parliament promotes nothing for the advance of the working class either. It seems that a shaky and rapidly eroding status quo is all that is available to the overwhelming majority in our society - at least from today's Parliament and its mainstream parties. This is the crisis of ruling class politics which has such an effect on both of society's major classes. 

We need some representatives who will speak for the working class and a new democracy.

Welfare crime committed by Osborne

It is significant that Osborne's latest crime against the poorest in society is being promoted by him not as a sad necessity but as a Conservative Party Conference cherry, designed to keep Tory votes and possibly win Labour votes. Why is this possible? Because just as with reducing immigrants, official Labour joined the race with the other mainstream parties to attack welfare 'scroungers.' There was no immediate response from Labour in defence of the poor, or indication that they would reverse this latest Tory drive to increase poverty and immiseration. Osborne's measures are therefore more accurately called a completely mainstream, cross-Westminster party drive to squeeze the poorest, 'until the pips squeak.' The Westminster coalition is much wider than just the government. 

But the dynamics in wider society are shifting and Osborne et al have made a mistake. In Scotland the referendum drew out thousands of those at the poorest margins of society. New social actions, in housing, in defence of hospitals etc., are breaking through, led by groups that traditionally had been excluded from participation in the national debates that have swirled around single mothers, the unemployed, criminalised youth and the millions on the minumum wage or less. The general public now know that the majority in receipt of benefits are the working poor. They are aware of food banks. They know child poverty is increasing dramatically. They watched the TV debates about Benefit Street. They heard the teachers who tell us their pupils need food when they come to school. Bashing welfare is no longer the star turn it once was. 

So the debate is turning again, albeit belatedly, in Westminster. Not against austerity as such in any of the three mainstream parties, (although it is virtually the main feature of all extra parliamentary activity.)  But rather the establishment's discussion centres on austerity's 'distribution.' Even Osborne has to bash the US multinationals over tax in his speech. And some 'experts' are publicly wondering if pensions can continue to be let off 'so lightly'. (But pension changes - in terms of the delays in the access to them, and their low levels compared with most of the rest of Europe - have already provided an additional £500 billion saving to the state over the next 20 years according to the Institute of Fiscal Affairs. Additionally pensioners remain active politically, and those beneath pension age know it was not pensioners that pulled up the ladder.)

With roughly £25 billion already cut and £25 billion to go - none of the pro-austerity options for part two of Osborne's plan or Ball's repeated commitment to no new spending and no reversing the cuts already made, are looking feasible, let alone bearable. The sense of the need for a deep alternative direction is growing. Those who require welfare are increasingly forcing themselves into the argument. We need some new politicians to give the real political life of the country some expression. 

Britain bombs Iraq.

News just in tells us that two British Tornados are off to join the cloud of warplanes above Iraq. The new Iraqi government, that the US has just bought, were told to ask for Britain's feeble support by their masters in the Pentagon. The UK's modicum of high explosive now targeted for Syria and Iraq would not normally give rise to so much as a text message request from a minor Bagdad civil servant in terms of its fire power. But it is, apparently, the UK's wisdom and historical experience in Iraq that was the clincher for Iraq's new Foreign Minister. Perhaps he means the experience of Britain's involvement in Iraq's 36 wars and armed conflicts which, starting with Britain's war against the Iraqi revolution in 1920 (where Britain used some of the stock of poison gas left over from WW1) has involved Britain many times in Iraq's destiny. Such wisdom! Such experience! 

Cameron is not so much interested in Iraq's future as in the future of oil and his relations with the US. He has started to march to the Pentagon's war drum because the US has called. It is a political matter of the continued legitimacy of the whole western debacle in the Middle East that is at stake for the US, and Britain's involvement (or not) in the current charade remains essential for that purpose. 

The military geniuses into whose hands the west's 'fly boys' and their weaponry have been put have already ordererd up the bombing of bits of Syria as well as Iraq. And already we have seen not so much 'mission creep' as mission 'skid'. US ships have 'diverted' some tomahawks to have a high explosive pop at a new group of snarling Islamists that they have called the 'Khorasan'. This little side show was necessary because the Khorasan (that no one with knowlege in the field as ever heard of) were about to move on the US we were told. We might wonder who else will need 'tidying up' on the margins before this latest rain of death is over? 

The word from one expert from the Royal United Services Institute (Today, BBC Radio 4, Sept 27) suggests that the current IS offensive against the Syrian-Kurdish town Kobane is a reaction to the IS having to abandon set bases and concentrate in battle - preventing 'clean' and 'surgical' responses from the US and its allies. And that more rolling offensives are likely to be IS's response to attacks from the air. The US led war has already created the first tentative moves for a common front by all the Syrian jihadis against the West's intervention; a disasterous result for the Syrian people. 

As more civilians die, as more particular scores are settled by annihilation, so the Brits will find that they have been hustled into promoting another disaster for all concerned. Blaire's enthusiastic 'hurrahs' from the sideline tell it all. 

Once as tragedy; once as Farage

UKIP's head honcho believes Cameron has called Parliament back today to take the vote on bombing Iraq (rather than yesterday or last month) to draw media attention away from the UKIP party conference - which opens today, appropriately enough in Doncaster Racecourse. 

Apparently 33 percent of the population regarded Farage as 'weird', which is some solace to Labour as only 31 percent thought Miliband 'weird'. Unfortunately for both Miliband and Cameron, Farage scores highest as the politician who 'comes across most like me' in the same poll. And that is one of Mr Farage's most important qualities. Despite being a rich banker with funds in a tax haven, who does TV adverts for Paddy Hill, Farage has that chameleon quality where many utterly disgusted or disassociated with Westminster politics in England can find in him their own reflection in his 'hale fellow, well met' persona and his amusement with mainstream politics and politicians. His amusement is really cynicism. His cheery bonhomie covers his contempt even hatred for the 'common man' as he would have it, and a deep, not to say furious commitment to complete the Thatcherite revolution. 

It is obvious why such a personality (just like London's 'cheery' Boris) would sound like chalk screeching on a blackboard to Scottish voters - especially those who voted yes in the recent referendum. Their withdrawal from Westminster has a positive, humanitarian and progressive project to define their political choices. Farage appears to them as he is, a rich man taking the piss. To dispossessed and long term ex Labour voters, and even the swathes of Labour voters in northern England and the sea-side towns who have continued up to now to turn out for Labour, a vote for Farage may in reality be an exercise in their own sense of worthlessness and alienation, but it will feel like it is they who are now taking the piss out of Westminster and all of the mainstream political leaders in the British establishment. 

This is Farage's access to elements of mass and class psychology today. He acts for many as the lightning rod for feelings of invisibility, of lack of representIon, of despair. His conference policies will mean little except in their ability to increase fear of foreigners. The tax policies for middle earners will make few inroads among public sector workers who have a real fight on their hands battling austerity. His opposition to today's decision by Parliament to bomb Iraq will not attract a single anti-war activist vote. 'England for the English; hurrah! Thank God we can now say it out loud! And Farage himself, dead weird he is, like me. He'll get right up their noses.' 

Labour has no answer to any of this. It endorses the second (more brutal) half of austerity. It wants British jobs for British workers. It fancies sending messages of death to the Middle East. And Miliband may be weird, but in the wrong way. What the Scottish referendum showed is that when leaders call the people together to fight the establishment, to really move, in action, to take them on for specific and concrete and life changing aims, the sky (way beyond UKIP's dismal dance in the gutter) really is the limit. 

The West's permanent war

In what the media are beginning to call Gulf War 3, the US are leading yet another wave of western destruction in the Middle East. The one time that Labour Party leader Miliband could actually do something significant to effect peoples' lives he bottles it, and the Labour opposition will back Cameron's desire to jump on the US bandwagon, and Britain (of course) will tag along. 

The most recent of the West's wars in the Middle East has lasted on and off, in different phases, for twenty four years. The 8 year war to overthrow the earlier western puppet Saddam Hussain (2003 - 11), itself a maelstrom of death and destruction, has directly created the conditions for the most recent eruptions. And the West's permanent war in the Middle East is now to be upped yet again as another rain of missiles, rockets and bombs stamp their deadly authority on foreign soil. 

The Middle East is a permanent target for the west because of oil (of course), because of 9/11, because the West needs to 'encourager les autres' and because the Middle East is virtually owned by Western Imperialism. The Brits, the French and the US have between them set up virtually all of the countries in the region and, over the last century, populated their ruling houses. The west needs to keep 'tinkering.' The set up they created keeps fraying, first at the edges and then falling apart. 

But the mechanism is bust. As all the western war mongering has already revealed you cannot burn, bomb and torture the missshapen Frankenstine that you have created (and continue to create) into life. Instead your interventions, piling mistake onto mistake, just create new versions of hell. 

Surely the first humanitarian 'task' for the world to achieve is to get the west out of the Middle East. The local tumult, even civil wars will continue and may even spread on such an exit.  Genuine humanitarian aid - as in the Syrian case today - will be essential. But without the direct, constant and deadly pressure of the western imperialist war machine there is at least a chance that the nations and peoples' of the Middle East will find their way to a transregional and muti-ethnic and multi-faith solution. The faint echoes of the historical goal of the first revolutionary nationalists that fought imperialism in the 19th and early 20th century for a united Arab nation in the Middle East, can stiil be heard even now. For example while the sectarian warlords of IS face the west's technological terror with their own medieval brutality even in that repository of reaction the urge for a new Caliphate, a new, wide, Arabic centred civilisation surfaces, albeit in a distorted form. Even in the dust of destruction there can be building blocks for the future, if we can stop the west's latest bout of military madness.

Miliband's ten year plan.

Miliband senior was no Stalinist so Ed didn't get his idea for a plan from dad. Commentators round the Labour Party Conference in Manchester made some sad jokes about Stalin only having 5 year plans. Was the steely Miliband twice as good? 

Stalin and his successors had a lot to answer for as a result of their undemocratic, brutal and often disastrous planning regime, but at least the memory of the revolution had given them some ambition!  Miliband's ten year plan proposed meagre outcomes and contained no planning whatsoever.

The only significant suggestions that Miliband made were that his NHS proposals (for 36000 new personnel by 2025, when the projected population rise will mean Miliband's plan will provide about the same ratio of NHS staff to patients as now) would not require any increase of the deficit. Tax loopholes would be closed (again.) Houses valued £2 million plus would attract tax (the LibDem policy) and tobacco companies would face a profit tax. (Unless they were centred in a British tax haven.)  The rest, like a Green Bank or an unspecified housing policy that would provide 'as many houses as we need' by 2025, were purest fluff, or, like the reaction to Miliband's statement that his plan was to deal with 'the biggest fall in living standards since 1871' there would be a 'bigger reform of banks' and that the 'unions and government should cooperate.' As Balls made clear yesterday, unions will need to cooperate with austerity for the foreseeable future. 

Miliband junior is no Marxist. Nevertheless you would have expected him to make an attempt at a link between the economy and his political and social projects, however empty they may be. Admittedly Miliband understood some of the lessons from the recent Scottish independence vote and proposes enfranchising 16 and 17 year olds. (One wonders if they will lose their vote again if they refuse a £3 per hour apprenticeship - also to be widely 'on offer'.) He has also honoured a new factotum aiming to bring the rest of the world up to speed with Britain's apparently enlightened LGBT policy! But nowhere in his epic peroration did he tell us Labour's 2 year, 5 year or 10 year plan to shift the wealth and power between the super rich - getting richer, and the rest of us. What will he DO about the £ billions of NHS resources now in the hands of the privateers?: what will he do about the annual £4 billion subsidy to the private railways - for an overcrowded and overpriced service?: what does his ten year plan say about wage freezes; anti union laws; foreign wars and the £40 billion cost of nukes? Nothing. They are not part of Ed's 10 year plan. They are all part of the 'business as usual' silent part of his speech. 

Miliband hopes that his £2.5 billion a year for the NHS (which will not cover the planned £20 billion deficit in 2015) and his promise that he is sticking to the EU will cover both the working class vote AND big business's interests. 'We'll do it together' he says. Do what? Plan to keep the status quo. Plan to get Miliband into number 10. But I'm afraid Ed, it's all gone much further than you planned.