Bl**dy Tories

[la_marquise]

Today's veto has really depressed me. Not the detail, but because of the triumphalist Little Englandism that it has brought crawling out of the woodwork. We need Europe to secure our long-term future. This isn't about 'sovereignty', it's about kow-towing to Big Capital and it's needs. The US won't support us even if we wanted it to (and opinions vary on that). I am sick and tired of the triumph of prejudice.
Off into the Word Mines to carve out some more Red Fantasy. A bas les aristos!

Comments

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

We need Europe to secure our long-term future

See, this is what I think. England's behavior is really bizarre to me. I mean, I understand (if not exactly appreciate, if you know what I mean) that the problem here is big business capitalism, but because I persist in actually believing people are more important than profit, Britain's choices remain utterly bizarre in my mind.

But then, I also think that in the long run the only way humanity has got much chance is under a global federal government system of some sort, and I see the EU, for all its flaws, as a wonderful potential starting point for that. Similarly with the federations of smaller nations who are actually trying to do something about climate change, etc, because frankly, if we do not all hang together, we shall most surely hang separately, as the good man said.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Yes, exactly. But the Tories are in hock to the Euro-Sceptic right, who fear 'loss of sovereignty' and interference, who beleive that without Europe we would mysteriously once again have an Empire or a big manufacturing base or similar, and who are, basically xenophobes. And there are a lot them out there, fuelled by sensationalist tabloid journalism that perpetually present Europe as 'destroying' Britishness, 'invading' and 'drowning' British culture and so forth. Plus Cameron's allies in the business community are anti, as any moves towards greater fiscal regulation of any kind threatens their ability to make money any way they like, and their freedom to exploit and overwork (and underpay) their work force. It's shameful: a cabal of racisms, xenophobes, imperialists and the worst kind of selfish capitalists.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Look deeper: the sensationalist tabloids run this line of propaganda because they're owned by right-wing billionaires (or near-billionaires) like Rupert Murdoch, Conrad Black (before his fall), and Andrew Desmond. There's a vulgar bigoted Atlanticist strain to this ideology that likes to imagine it's following in the tradition of Winston Churchill but in reality is in hock to the same malign influences as the US Republican Party.[*] But anyway: the great deregulation that's swept the USA since Reagan's election in 1980 is something that they'd love to implement in other markets, and by hiving the UK off from the rather more strongly regulated EU they can give themselves a happy capitalist playground.

I'm going to leave your last sentence standing because it sums it all up: a cabal of racisms, xenophobes, imperialists and the worst kind of selfish capitalists.

[*] Churchill at least had a non-hypocritical reason for being an Americanophile: his maternal family.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Oh, that too. (I omitted it because I can never remember Desmond's name. Which is stupid, but I have a blind-spot about it.) But yes, the Big Media are part of the means by which Big Capital promotes its own interests over those of the masses.

[lagilman]

But in reality is in hock to the same malign influences as the US Republican Party.[*] But anyway: the great deregulation that's swept the USA since Reagan's election in 1980 is something that they'd love to implement in other markets


yeah, cause that's all worked SO WELL for us. *headdesks*

I have never, ever understood isolationist politics, and I certainly don't understand the theory behind isolationist financial politics. Last time that worked was, oh....1840? Maybe?

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

No, me either. I can only speculate that they view things in an incredibly narrow lens of their own and their friends' immediate self-interest. And are deeply prejudiced against and afraid of anything and anyone not exactly like themselves.

[lagilman]

let me rephrase - I understand why THEY do it... I just don't understand IT.

I can be just as narrow-minded, selfish and terrified as anyone else. But I don't see where locking the door of my stateroom will keep the damn ship from running into an iceberg and sinking.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

No, I don't get that bit, either. Unless they think that they'll be okay because *their* stateroom floats?

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Unless they think that they'll be okay because *their* stateroom floats?

I think that nails it.

It's odd how virtually every nation that raises the immigration ramparts -- like the UK or the USA -- has a hail-friend loophole waiting for anyone who can afford to plop down a cheque for £1M or so and declare themselves to be an "investor".

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Can we have a nice polite revolution now? Please?

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

That would nice, wouldn't it?

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

If wishes had wings, as the saying goes, then pigs would fly.

*scans the sky, hopefully*

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I'm out there with you.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I think there are two vectors that both drive the right in the same direction. One is the loony Atlanticists who actually believe in the Special Relationship (and also carry a lot of imperialist, xenophobic and racist baggage). The other is the somewhat more rational fear that the City is all that is left of the economy (plus arms trading!) and that if the City were properly regulated there would be no productive (for some value of productive) economy at all. In the last analysis New Labour and the LDs fall into that camp as much as the Tories. The rhetoric would be different but probably not the substance. Nobody can imagine, or dare to articulate, a vision for the British economy that's not based on the dodgiest kind of financial services. To be honest, I'm not sure what it would look like either but that vision has to be found and acted on.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I agree. Plus, far too many of those in politics have vested interests in that sector.
We've survived financial meltdowns before. It's hard. But it's not impossible.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

What does worry me is that when the UK economy melted down before there were still other productive sectors besides the City, even though their interests always been subordinated to the City by government (see Cain and Hopkins "British Imperialism 1688-2000" for a brilliant analysis of so called 'gentlemanly capitalism'). What's left now? The traditional, and even most of the newer, manufacturing and extractive industries have been pretty much gutted. The IT industry is dominated by multinationals who have outsourced most of the jobs to south and east Asia. What has really shocked me when I have visited the north of England in the last 20 years is that there isn't much there anymore beyond tourism and government. What used to be the Workshop of the World has been turned into Clogland; a post industrial theme park. It really scares me and what scares me just as much is that current shadow ministers who I knew back in the day as intelligent and committed people seem completely lost for alternatives. It goes without saying that those Labour bigwigs who were complete bastards when young haven't got any better.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

It won't be easy. Being a mediaevalist, I look back to the 14th century, in which plague and the onset of the mini ice-age undermined more or less everything. We'll need to reinvent ourselves. But we can do it. Letting the financial sector get away with murder out of fear of no alternatives cannot be wise.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I guess it only took about 350 years, three civil wars and another plague to get the economy back into shape then.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Yes. It's big stuff. And I worry about my friends' children, my nephews and niece and all the others to whom we're handing this poisoned chalice.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

The traditional, and even most of the newer, manufacturing and extractive industries have been pretty much gutted.

Hello? Planet reality calling ...?

Actually, we manufacture and export more stuff now than we did in the 1970s, though it doesn't seem that way. We're one of the biggest car manufacturers in Europe, although the factories are all foreign-owned. Space industry turns over £6 billion a year. We're a colossus in the computer games sector and we make and export tons of specialized stuff. We're a major industrial force in wind turbines. And so on.

...

However, while manufacturing has dropped overall to around 20% of the economy (bet you thought it had fallen further), employment in manufacturing is down around 90% over the past three decades, largely due to efficiency improvements. And the smokestack industries -- coal, steel -- that ran on inefficient pre war plant (often pre WW1, not WW2) is a small highly efficient specialized rump of its former stature. It really doesn't take that many people to supervise and operate a heavily automated car factory with industrial robots.

(And meanwhile, the narrative that our future lies in financial services and all that iron-bending stuff is obsolete gets embedded in our national consciousness so that it gets hard to convince kids to make stuff instead of studying "business". And the pound is maintained as a strong currency because it's useful for arbitrage despite it crippling our export sector. And Thatcher's heirs still hate everyone who lives north of Nottingham.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Further north than Watford Gap services, if you ask me (person from Coventry, here. Remember Coventry: used to be a prosperous place, gutted by 5 decades of neglect by all parties?). They make an exception for the pretty bits of Northants -- so</> pretty, darling, and room for the children's ponies -- but kick Northampton in the teeth. And everywhere else is completely off their radar.
Home rule for Mercia, says I.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Folks hereabouts are in favour of Scottish independence.

I think a better idea would be to expel the City of London and Westminster from the United kingdom.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

You are, of course, right not to get caught up in the detail; and yet the thing that particularly, personally depresses me is hearing Sarkozy say that Europe won't give in to Cameron on failing to regulate the financial sector which got us into this mess in the first place - I'm agreeing with Sarkozy, how much further can I sink?

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Well, right now, he's making less of an ass of himself than Cameron.
But in the absence of Berlusconi, Europe is a bit short of a Comedy Corrupt Leader.

Thought you might find this interesting

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

http://www.ianwelsh.net/perhaps-the-only-thing-cameron-will-ever-do-that-i-agree-with/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IanWelsh+(Ian+Welsh)

refusing to sign on board for European control of member state’s fiscal policies. Such control in the current context (forced austerity) is a recipe for outright, extended depression. Cameron may be throwing Britain into depression all on his own, but not signing away control to Germany (and be clear, in this context, European means German) was the right thing to do, even if he did it for what appear to be all the wrong reasons.