Corporate interest (which is everything from the military/industrial complex to banking to the multinational news entities) has conspired to remove from national governments much of their actual power to really do anything.
Why do so many feel alienated from politics?
I mean, those silly little country things get in the way, and we’re making money over here, Bilbo! The nations may retain their statutes, but, in effect, are prevented from fully exercising their powers because corporate interest insists that things are done in ways, they find amenable, and if they’re not, they’ll leave that country, and what will that do to your economy? Or they’ll instigate a spurious press attack and turn the population against your party. It’s akin to a mafia style protection racket.
An election therefore sees parties competing for our votes, promising either fanciful nonsense, or markedly less ambitious agendas that may, nevertheless, be just about within their gift. And the thing about an honest but modest agenda is that it isn’t sexy, so people aren’t inspired to vote for it. They may not fall for the fanciful nonsense, but they don’t vote for the boring and limited. Often this means they simply don’t vote. And corporate interest emerges from the election hoo-ha still free to pursue its own agenda, whoever is sitting in the legislature.
Is this inescapable and inevitable?
It is, however, certainly the case that corporate interest has been more successful in some territories than in others. There are territories where corporate interest may be pushing the government about quite it a bit, but it doesn’t always succeed in getting its way. You might suppose the US to be their big success, but the US is not the territory they’ve most successfully subverted because the US does have that pesky constitution thing, and it is, occasionally, asserted (although corporate interest is certainly doing ok over there).
No.
The UK is their big success.
And the clincher here, again, is Brexit.
The UK’s condition is merely collateral damage
Now, I am in no way pulling back from my assessment of Brexit as the product of Russian efforts to destabilise Europe preparatory to invasion, and nor am I saying that there is a conspiracy between corporate interest and Russian dreams of empire. It’s simply a matter of their immediate interests, even if to different ends, happily coinciding over these islands.
Russia sought to destabilise Europe preparatory to invasion, and saw Brexit as a key strategy in that direction, and so Russia did it all it could to promote it (we know of some of what it did, and do not need the unredacted Russia Report to so assert, although one suspects that an unredacted Russia Report would provide even more evidence of their interference), and the EU has had some success countering corporate interest, so removing the UK from the EU’s protection gave corporate interest a territory to rape, and also a base of operations from where they could operate pretty much as a law unto themselves, pretty much tax-free.
The status quo
There are two dominant political parties in the UK, one of which is clearly an enthusiastic collaborator with both Russia and corporate interest, and neither have much impact. They react. They can hardly plan anything. HS2 made that clear.
Smaller parties are free to make far more grandiose promises precisely because they’re never getting near power, not in a First Past The Post system, although two parties, the Lib Dems and the SNP, do have to be a little wary as they could, possibly, end up in the position of being kingmakers. Indeed, the Lib Dems were once, and their price for crowning the Tories would have been the end of First Past The Post, which is a key strategy for corporate interest in keeping the UK compliant, but they botched that spectacularly, and then their head guy got a job at Facebook.
So, if all this is true, why vote at all?
Well, because one of the parties is an enthusiastic collaborator. The other has been slapped into submission.
However, the abused are often ready to fight, given half a chance.
You can’t fight with no weapons and all the resources of these giants mustered against you. If you stand, they swat you. Done.
The forecasts for the election appear pretty torrid, but let’s say we do get a massive Labour majority and the Lib Dems in opposition, with the Tories reduced to an exhausted rump, and ripe for Farage to pick.
The Labour Party – the party now, the card carriers, not the leadership – are not like Tory Party members. They’re more diverse, they like change (to the degree that rather than having to spur them on, it can be necessary to reel them in), they are not in awe to their leaders (ok, there might have been something a little messianic going on with Corbyn supporters for a moment, but that’s academic now), and they recognise the dangers of corporate interest and Putin (I grant some are confused re Putin, possibly some hangover of loyalty to the USSR that fails to notice that the USSR was never a socialist utopia, and, anyway, it’s gone, and Russia today is a failed state held together by gangsters employing fascist tactics).
Does installing Starmer in number 10 make all the bad things melt away, convince Murdoch to dissolve News Corp and retreat to a hermitage, make Putin see the error of his ways, have rainbows appear, and prompt woodland creatures to emerge, singing happy songs and doing all the housework?
No.
But it would give us an opportunity, an opportunity that, should Starmer decline to take it (because he proves to be too cautious, or perhaps is revealed to be too gotten at) would see him replaced.
Leaderships are eminently replaceable.
There is yet leverage for us
Despite everything, there are yet means of resisting corporate power. There is a weakness to them – they’re there to make money. Lots of people is lots of money. There comes a point where courting the super-rich who have everything will make you less money than courting the regular Joes/Jos who have less money, but need to spend it on things, when there’s a lot of them.
Lots of people working in concert to a common end are powerful.
The EU started as the great strategy to end war between European states, and is now the great defence against corporate interest, a corporate interest that, it must be remembered, has an interest in there being wars. The EU is a very big lever for us to work to our interests, such as, not being sent to war, or forcing corporations to pay tax.
No one is promising you a magic bullet (well, Farage is, it’s what he does. That’s utopians for you). You are being offered levers. A Labour government presents us with levers, and it will not be entirely down to the leadership of the party as to whether we get to pull those levers.
And should corporate interest, with its public schoolboy, ex banker run private companies masquerading as political parties, get its way, this could be the last time those levers are within your grasp…
