2 Responses

1. Bob Lamont says:

   February 26 2022 at 9:53 am

   Excellent
2. simon gray says:

   February 26 2022 at 1:18 pm

   National Governments used to have a responsibility over security. That didn’t just mean military security over national boundaries. It also included security of food, energy, industrial policy, infrastructure and other areas. Government wasn’t solely about the ability of corporations and individuals gaming the system for personal gain. Government was about how best to allow the population as a whole to prosper and to provide the necessary security for the nation not based only on a narrow capitalist measure of profit. Capitalism has evolved to a point where it assumes that everyone agrees with capitalist ideology and that all states will behave in a way that maximises profit and capitalist efficiency and that no state will take any action that jeopardises the capitalists profit. Capitalism has imagined away hostility from other states. Clearly that is a mistake. Russia, China, Iran and the dependency on middle eastern oil all represent potentially hostile States that will effect the security of other western nations but for capitalists this fact is imagined away. Nations need to accept that profit maximisation is an inherently bad policy in a world where there are hostile States and economic warfare can be used as a policy of Government.

   It is time that it becomes accepted by our Government that in order to have security we as a nation need to put more energy and thought into security beyond just buying weapons. There needs to be an Energy Policy that makes us less dependent on others and if that “costs” more then we should be prepared to pay more. There is no reason however that it need necessarily cost more if the provision of that security is internally paid for from existing national resources. Similarly with food supplies. That doesn’t mean as a nation we necessarily become self sufficient but that the level of risk is thought about beyond our current obsession with private enterprise maximising profits. Industrial policy should be directed towards providing decent work, pay and conditions to the local population rather than simply exporting jobs overseas so that a small group of corporate share holders can maximise their incomes whilst at the same time getting the benefits of our state supported subsidies be that law, policing, tax breaks or whatever they may be as a corporate freebie. The capitalist free market, small state ideology that governs the Tory Party is inherently a bad way of governing and a bad way of securing prosperity for the nation as a whole. The only ones who benefit are those who can buy influence to ensure that only they prosper.
   The tools are available to make this happen and we should use them.