I am sorry to go on about defence again, but this blog is, if it is anything, a long-term train of thought, and right now, defence, the threats that are giving rise to discussion of it, and the need to fund it are issues at the forefront of my mind.
A discussion I have had in the last day brings another dimension to this. The question I am asking myself is, have we already lost this war?
That requires that I define what this war is all about, and it is my opinion that this is quite an easy question to answer. It is all about the assault on democracy that began with neoliberalism and which inevitably involved the re-emergence of fascism, all with the aim of recreating the predominant power of those with wealth inside the world economy, which predominance the rise of democracy and the power of populations as a whole had threatened.
Looked at in this way, the war being fought has never really required a declaration of hostilities. Nor has it demanded that troops be deployed. Indeed, there has rarely been a battlefront. The current belief that the war in Ukraine suggests otherwise is mistaken. This war has always been one to undermine the processes of democracy. That is it.
And that is also why it is not hard to suggest we have already lost this war. The existence of the single transferable party (comprised of Labour, the Tories, LibDems and maybe others) in the UK, whose arrival and departure from office marks no discernible difference in policy on any issue, is the clearest indication that a single political hegemony rules this country, with deviance not being allowed.
The surest indication of that is the failure of labour to address the abuses of the last Tory government. All its draconian Henry VIII powers, permitting ministers to rule by decree if they so wish, remain in place.
The powers the Tories created to eliminate dissent are all still on the statute book, and Labour gives every indication that it agrees with them all. Worse, it is overseeing their enforcement against the left whilst failing to enforce them when it comes to rallies of tractors deliberately designed to cause maximum havoc in a fashion now clearly illegal, but to which this government turns a blind eye even when it is the target of the protests, so willing is it to assist the wealthy make their demands at cost to everyone else.
The supposed right to free speech really does not exist in the UK any more, and it is not the left that has eliminated it as J D Vance would like to claim: it is the work of the far-right and their friends in Labour that has done that.
Labour's very obvious refusal to reform the electoral system is a further indication of the refusal to accept that politics should be accountable to people. Given the right-wing and genuinely unpopular nature of many of its policies now that it is in office, that lack of willingness to be held accountable may be understandable, but these actions are also entirely consistent with my thesis that the people of this country have already lost this war.
And, when talking of countries, Labour's contempt for the right to independence in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland reveals that Labour is as committed to the old ideas of empire and the oppression that goes with it as ever the Tories were.
Is it, then, the case that this war has already been lost to a far-right about which we talked but which was so insidious that it won its war through propaganda and stealth before almost anyone was ever really aware, and now all that is required is for the far right to claim outright victory - which it could do in the form of any of the Tories, Labour or Reform right now, so indistinct are the differences between them?
I leave the question open deliberately. Some might disagree with me. But I think this battle might already have been lost, with Starmer, Reeves and Streeting, backed by Blair, having sealed the victory. Now, we need to talk about how the counter-attack begins.
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The headline sentence, contradicts or is contradicted by the closing sentence.
Have we lost a battle? – ref having two parties that offer alternatives? Yes. We have lost that battle. We have not lost the war.
It is citizens that make up a country and it is citizens that can (still in the UK) change its political makeup. That can be done in a number of ways – primarily from the ground up.
My business partner has been talking to assorted politicos/ex-politicos over the last week – some of them, apparently, quite human.
Thus perhaps the problem is the “party machine” (or in the case of the Tories – the geriatric fossils that decides who leads them).
What to do? Local elections coming soon. Independents need to step forward and it should be a case of ABL, ABT, ABD (anthing but LINO, anything but Tory, anything by Deform).
Sadly, what passes for the UK media has been giving Deform an easy ride. That needs to change.
Thus the local elections are a chance to win the first of several battles.
Widespread realisation that the democratic system in the UK is rigged is the first step. Most candidates are chosen by the party insiders not the members. That’s why we get MPs who don’t rock the boat and take the money.
Corbyn’s biggest act of cowardice was to back down from open selection. We need strong local parties who choose their own candidates without the dictates of the centre.
The war is not yet lost, but it may as well be, because democrats (small D) are not fighting, nay, apparently not even aware they should be fighting. We are rapidly running out of time to defend democracy.
You are not the only voice
https://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/2025/feb/22/keir-starmer-labour-illiberal-laws-hard-right-authoritarians
I read it this morning – after I had written, and after reading Rawnsley’s waffle and Hutton’s missing the point.
“Now, we need to talk about how the counter-attack begins.”:
My despair about the visible and seemingly unstoppable rise of the far right/facism & the power of oligarchs (notably under Trump but also in UK & elsewhere), I have become even more alarmed by reading the conclusions of George Monbiot & Peter Hutchinson’s recent book “The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism “. In the chapter “No Exit” towards the end they conclude that ‘climate change’ represents only part of a much wider crisis (including the increasing impovererishment of soil and consequent crop failures in the global South) and should be renamed as ‘earth system breakdown’. I have yet to fully read the last few chapters, but a quick scan shows that they are clearly on the same page as you Richard on this.
I deeply regret that, as a life-long Labour voter, I only began to wake up to the issues discussed here following the 2008 bank crash which lead me to discover this blog. As an 83 year-old with serious & ever-increasing mobility problems, I fear there is little I can contribute beyond signing petitions and can only hope there are enough younger & active people who can somehow get together and work for this much needed counter-attack.
Thanks
And I appreciate your comments and support here.
The money which is corrupting our politics from top to bottom – has to be removed – but how.
Governments are bought and sold before they are installed, public service broadcasting also corrupted by politics – all public institutions should be transparently run – and genuinely independent.
Disinformation on social media controlled .
But how? A latter day Beveridge commission ?
Of genuinely open minded people
Yes and no.
We have for some time allowed the growth of unaccountable wealth the world over, so this means that as an adversary, capital or whatever you want to call it, can out-gun any others no matter how eloquent. We know that ‘they’ have it all sewn up. They are tumescent in their ascendency.
I was asked at breakfast the other day by my partner, how can it be that we know so little about MMT? The way the question was asked was in a sceptical way – that society does not know about it because MMT must be a load of crap. But it was her who was left shouting at the radio. I don’t shout at the TV or radio anymore because I feel that I know what is going on. And none of the tripe I hear bothers me anymore, it’s just lies and snake water. A bonus then for being aware of MMT.
Look folks – we should take heart from the fact that this is a really dirty war of ideas. And the motor of this war is corruption. CORRUPTION.
Corruption is the warm fetid and foul air that enables these outrageous ideas to float at all. How else can such ideas endure reality, reason, examination?
We are living in an enforced dreamworld created by extreme wealth. Our only means of survival is to take responsibility for managing our connection to reality. This is a new form of citizenship maybe?
Remember this: the weakness that Putin has exploited and used against the West (a weakness over money), is a weakness that can be used too to bring that system down and if not that, to make its life a lot harder. And it should be, because it denies us of so much.
That’s all I can say at this moment in time. But the corruption – we should focus on that , it should put fire in one’s belly. It’s unacceptable.
Thanks, PSR
Richard, great post and very intriguing. I am in complete agreement with you, I think we have lost the war already on democracy. Anyone who is working class and does their own research/opens their eyes will know this. So my next question leads onto what are the EU/UK actually fighting Russia for (apart from the moral point of view)? To fight against imperialism/fascism? Yes. To fight for democracy? I would say no, seen as we don’t have democracy ourselves. So I would say good luck to the EU/UK convincing their citizens to die/fight for a war that will bring no benefit to their lives.
I believe Rupert Murdoch has been the single most malign influence on the entire Anglosphere over the past 60 years. His relentless propagandising through his populist papers and TV “news” channels, all essentially for the purpose of maximising his own wealth, has been truly cancerous. I think the STP has largely come about because of political parties’ need to get favourable coverage.
Statistically, he shouldn’t be around much longer, but his empire may not change much, especially if Lachlan gets full control. The outcome of the legal wrangling over the “irrevocable” trust that he now wants to revoke will be interesting.
It’s a sad indictment of society that he who controls the press controls the politics.
PSR highlights corruption.
Well, it’s interesting to see how a government of the Labour right puts Leveson II on ice, then it turns out, in court, that certain newspapers admit that they indulged in phone hacking.
Does that mean Leveson II
will go ahead after all?
No. I would wager there is a reason for that, and it is moral, not financial.
Are we bankrupt or actually in bankruptcy? I would suggest both! It seems like, the end of the world and yes we do need a new world order. One that serves the many.
I didn’t , to this point realise there would be a war amongst ourselves, our beliefs and our systems. They are clearly going to change under this NWO. How much that changes is up to us!
Agreed
Do we consent
I fear many will
I will never consent to the new world order, it is neofeudalism and they want to reduce the world population by 20%. It is clearly stated on the WEF website, and was suggested first by that grifter and war criminal Henry Kissinger.
Yes, sorry to say, I think it’s already too late.
The kind of reforms and policies Richard proposes would work (IMO), but our institutions have become incapable of implementing them; and our economy too weak to do so unilaterally.
Not that anything else is going to work or “win”, either.
No. I won’t give in to despondency and despair. If we lose this fight, we do so fighting and with two fingers up.
Aye. It has been a long war. Labour’s position in opposition of democracy was established a long time ago when neither Blair nor Brown showed the slightest inclination to repeal or modify the anti trades union legislation of the Thatcher/Major era. Such inclinations never appeared in any manifesto.
As I write this I am sitting in my flat in Frankfurt watching the talking heads discuss the possible coalition structures of the next German government following today’s election results (to be confirmed). Setting aside Germany’s current economic problems it is both interesting and educational to watch PR in action. Yes the AfD have got 20% but a recent poll showed that 82% of the population are still anti any party having anything to do with them. My point being that PR works. It forces sensible political conversations and compromise and keeps extremism at bay. So far!
I hope so
“PR works” in the context of gradualism and liberal, democratic compromises. It widens the Overton Window – perhaps mainly ‘leftwards’ but also allowing representation (but in opposition, fortunately) to some far right voices.
The problem now is that the vast majority (80% in Germany) know that they don’t want extremism; so the mainstream therefore form the government, but fail to inspire anyone to address the radical actions needed to deal with social and planetary challenges. This is true throughout the affluent world, irrespective of PR.
The majority persist with myths that take us further down the road to human extinction: the myth of progress (equated approximately to ever rising personal material consumption); the myth that ‘they’ can solve the problems for us, technologically; the myth of continual discovery of new resources, which substitute for previous, exhausted ones; the myth of a ‘free lunch’ or minimal-cost ‘green transition’ without much else changing.
All of which contribute to our persistent planetary overshoot.
The economic myths that Richard so powerfully debunks are an important subset of this array of human delusions.
We need clear voices in all areas… but the media/oligarch/corporate control of mass communications all too easily drowns them out.
I fear the Kuhnian paradigm shift will be painful and long drawn out.
How democratic do we need to be if we are to defeat neoliberalism, introduce the measures needed for climate mitigation and survival, introduce MMT, redistribute wealth, end poverty, homelessness and health inequality?
I’d suggest the only route to this utopian paradigm shift requires massive regulation, and a dictatorial drive towards degrowth and sustainability. Take one aspect – degrowth in consumerism, what will it take to stop Procter & Gamble from manufacturing 25 product lines just to wash our dishes. Regulation. But what of the benefits of a single line of premium dishwasher tablets, and a single premium washing up liquid. No need for TV advertising and marketing, no need for twenty three different production lines, surely a cheaper product because of the massive savings in the cost of production, sales, and distribution. And just think of the impact of such regulation over every other duplicated product range in your local Tesco’s. Think of the de stressing impact on the consumer, always guaranteed a premium product without having to decide which one is best value for money – ah! The derstressing benefit of limited choice!
But how doe we get there without massive market regulation, a level of state intervention unimaginable in a free market. Would people vote for such a regulatory manifesto? I doubt it, BUT, if it were imposed for the good of the people and planet, overriding their presumed lust for choice and consumerism, would that be an act of democracy or something else?
So are we even discussing the issues that underpin the paradigm shift, surely we are skirting round them, a dangerous thing when we realise we simply don’t have the time to allow this shift to emerge organically, we need to be doing this right now for the sake our grandchildren alone.
I’ll go back to Richard’s point made last week during the discussion on Defense spending, what are we actually defending in this pre paradigm period? Firstly to be a true democracy we should have embraced PR decades ago. So we in the UK alone cannot claim any moral superiority in terms of true democracy, for all the reasons, reasonably expressed, in the above exchange of ideas. So it really does come down to the fact that we are defending unsustainable wealth, on a huge scale. We are defending the ‘Free Market’, the banks and institutions that are driving unsustainabilty to the point of crisis. We are defending the imperialism of greed. We are defending subjugation of poor nations. We are defending mass ignorance, conspiracy theories, misinformation, propaganda, media lies and political lies.
But who is going to stand up and convince the masses that it isn’t democracy we’re in need of, it’s a benevolent, global dictatorship.
If that’s what you want, count me out.
Richard, how else to we get to where we need to be? I’m know we agree on MMT, wealth redistribution, ending poverty, health inequality, the housing crisis, and all the other existential threats brought on by neo-liberalism. I had hoped my tiny degrowth example would illustrate its lifestyle benefits. I want the world to flourish but not through growth, but through peaceful coexistence and celebration of the good things in life, conviviality, culture, art and music, books and films, otherwise what’s it all for? But most of all I want it for my grandchildren, and their peers. My eldest is just 14years old, in 25 years time he’ll still be under 40, what will the world be like in just such a short time without radical transformation?
But you abandoned democracy
I won’t
I still maintain the Democracy that we are asked to defend has failed us miserably. It’s a western view of politics that is simply not supported across the globe and across diverse cultures, cultures we must seek to assure that the age of imperialism and greed are firmly in the past.
The paradigm shift from Neo Liberalism, to a progressive MMT based governance will require a step change in regulation of unsustainable growth, in favour of a sustainable solution for the planet and the human race. I have not to date seen any evidence that anyone is working positively towards such a solution, because to step into a new paradigm is so ground breaking and epoch making.
You’d better find another blog to post on then.
That was the last timne you’ll do so here.
This is small stuff, but I could do with everyone’s help. At the last constituency labour party meeting our new MP mentioned MMT but saw it as an ‘experimental’ approach. We are now looking at a proper discussion of MMT later this year as an analysis of money in our economy and as opening up space for socialist investment and policies. What would be really helpful is a grasp of how the feared financial institutions would actually respond to responsible (ie non-inflationary) money creation to support Government policies (cf Truss), and how the government could deal with it. All thoughts gratefully received. (I can take the despair, it’s the hope I can’t stand)’
I would love to reply tonight – but I really have not got the time.