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By Rugoz
#15041788
Beren wrote:Sure, they would just idly stand by and wait until it collapses spontaneously as usual. :lol:


You still haven't clarified what "they" would actually do and why. Because Corbyn wants to nationalize public utilities like "rail companies, energy supply networks, water systems and mail delivery"? All those are majority-owned by the government where I live, does that make Switzerland (of all places) socialist? It's not radical by any measure, so even if "they" could coordinate to topple him, "they" wouldn't do it for that. What else?
User avatar
By Beren
#15041791
Rugoz wrote:You still haven't clarified what "they" would actually do and why. Because Corbyn wants to nationalize public utilities like "rail companies, energy supply networks, water systems and mail delivery"? All those are majority-owned by the government where I live, does that make Switzerland (of all places) socialist? It's not radical by any measure, so even if "they" could coordinate to topple him, "they" wouldn't do it for that. What else?

Why do you think they want to leave the EU so much? Because they don't mind if Britain becomes more like Switzerland or continental in general? Then they get Corbyn at the end of the process, do you really believe they'd just tolerate that?
User avatar
By Rugoz
#15041792
Beren wrote:Why do you think they want to leave the EU so much? Because they don't mind if Britain becomes more like Switzerland or continental in general? Then they get Corbyn at the end of the process, do you really believe they'd just tolerate that?


I cannot comment on the motivations of "them" unless I know who "they"'re supposed to be. :roll:
User avatar
By Beren
#15041793
Rugoz wrote:I cannot comment on the motivations of "them" unless I know who "they"'re supposed to be. :roll:

They're supposed to be the people behind Brexit, basically. I can't exactly name them, but maybe it tells a lot about them that Dominic Cummings is whom they employ as political mastermind. With him and Johnson in No 10 they actually own the British government.
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By Steve_American
#15041849
Atlantis wrote:The de-industrialization of the UK economy is closely linked to Brexit. It has produced the discontent in the de-industrialized regions that made people vote for Brexit. Another interesting aspect, highlighted in the below article. is that the British state has become disengaged from industry since most of it has either been off-shored or is foreign owned.

Brexit is a necessary crisis – it reveals Britain’s true place in the world

Quoted by Atlantis,
A determined ignorance of the dynamics of global capitalism is bringing about a long-overdue audit of British realities

Who backs Brexit? Agriculture is against it; industry is against it; services are against it. None of them, needless to say, support a no-deal Brexit. Yet the Conservative party, which favoured European union for economic reasons over many decades, has become not only Eurosceptic – it is set on a course regarded by every reputable capitalist state and the great majority of capitalist enterprises as deeply foolish.

If any prime minister in the past had shown such a determined ignorance of the dynamics of global capitalism, the massed ranks of British capital would have stepped in to force a change of direction. Yet today, while the CBI and the Financial Times call for the softest possible Brexit, the Tory party is no longer listening.

Why not? One answer is that the Tories now represent the interests of a small section of capitalists who actually fund the party. An extreme version of this argument was floated by the prime minister’s sister, Rachel, and the former chancellor Philip Hammond – both of whom suggested that hard Brexit is being driven by a corrupt relationship between the prime minister and his hedge-fund donors, who have shorted the pound and the whole economy. This is very unlikely to be correct, but it may point to a more disconcerting truth.

The fact is that the capitalists who do support Brexit tend to be very loosely tied to the British economy. This is true of hedge funds, of course – but also true for manufacturers such as Sir James Dyson, who no longer produces in the UK. The owners of several Brexiter newspapers are foreign, or tax resident abroad – as is the pro-Brexit billionaire Sir James Ratcliffe of Ineos.

But the real story is something much bigger. What is interesting is not so much the connections between capital and the Tory party but their increasing disconnection. Today much of the capital in Britain is not British and not linked to the Conservative party – where for most of the 20th century things looked very different. Once, great capitalists with national, imperial and global interests sat in the Commons and the Lords as Liberals or Conservatives. Between the wars, the Conservatives emerged as the one party of capital, led by great British manufacturers such as Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain. The Commons and the Lords were soon fuller than ever of Tory businessmen, from the owner of Meccano toys to that of Lyons Corner Houses.

After the second world war, such captains of industry avoided the Commons, but the Conservative party was without question the party of capital and property, one which stood against the party of organised labour. Furthermore, the Tories represented an increasingly national capitalism, protected by import controls, and closely tied to an interventionist and technocratic state that wanted to increase exports of British designed and made goods. A company like Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) saw itself, and indeed was, a national champion. British industry, public and private, was a national enterprise.

Since the 1970s things have changed radically. Today there is no such thing as British national capitalism. London is a place where world capitalism does business – no longer one where British capitalism does the world’s business. Everywhere in the UK there are foreign-owned enterprises, many of them nationalised industries, building nuclear reactors and running train services from overseas. When the car industry speaks, it is not as British industry but as foreign enterprise in the UK. The same is true of many of the major manufacturing sectors – from civil aircraft to electrical engineering – and of infrastructure. Whatever the interests of foreign capital, they are not expressed through a national political party. Most of these foreign-owned businesses, not surprisingly, are hostile to Brexit.

Brexit is the political project of the hard right within the Conservative party, and not its capitalist backers. In fact, these forces were able to take over the party in part because it was no longer stabilised by a powerful organic connection to capital, either nationally or locally.

Brexit also speaks to the weakness of the state, which was itself once tied to the governing party – and particularly the Conservatives. The British state once had the capacity to change the United Kingdom and its relations to the rest of the world radically and quickly, as happened in the second world war, and indeed on accession to the common market.

Today the process from referendum to implementation will take, if it happens, nearly as long as the whole second world war. The modern British state has distanced itself from the productive economy and is barely able to take an expert view of the complexities of modern capitalism. This was painfully clear in the Brexit impact sectoral reports the government was forced to publish – they were internet cut-and-paste jobs.

The state can no longer undertake the radical planning and intervention that might make Brexit work. That would require not only an expert state, but one closely aligned with business. The preparations would by now be very visible at both technical and political levels. But we have none of that. Instead we have the suggestion that nothing much will happen on no deal, that mini-deals will appear. The real hope of the Brexiters is surely that the EU will cave and carry on trading with the UK as if nothing had changed. Brexit is a promise without a plan. But in the real world Brexit does mean Brexit, and no deal means no deal.

Brexit is a necessary crisis, and has provided a long overdue audit of British realities. It exposes the nature of the economy, the new relations of capitalism to politics and the weakness of the state. It brings to light, in stunning clarity, Brexiters’ deluded political understanding of the UK’s place in the world. From a new understanding, a new politics of national improvement might come; without it we will remain stuck in the delusional, revivalist politics of a banana monarchy.

This is an interesting article. It seems to say that the current Conservative Party is not led by British citizens, but rather by people who own the capital plant in the UK {but don't live there}. So, these leaders don't give a sh*t about what is good for any group of UK citizens who do live in the UK.

I have seen other articles that claim the the Labour Party has stopped representing the working class in the UK. This also happened to the Democratic Party in the US in the early to mid 90s.

So, neither major Party seems to care about what is good for a huge percentage of the actual UK citizens. This situation can't be stable. Only UK citizens can vote and someday {after they wake up and realize that neither major party gives a sh*t about how well off they are economically} the mass of voters will vote for a party that does care about the mass of UK citizens.

This where MMT will come into its own.The ONLY policy it advocates is a Job Guarantee Program that is funded by the national Gov. but mostly run by local govs. The core MMTers say that beyond that one policy all MMT does is to explain how the Gov. actually works and pays for what it does. This lens for looking shows that the national debt is not a debt, that instead it is "the accumulated assets of the people" because it is just the amount of Pounds that the Gov. has spent {in the past} and that it has not taxed back. And therefore, the so called national debt is NOT a drag on what the Gov. can do going forward. The core MMTers always emphasize that lack of money can never be a limit on Gov. spending by a nation like UK, US, NZ, Aust., Canada, Japan, etc.; that instead the limit is the real resources that the nation produces or can buy from abroad. And the Gov. can always mobilize all the idle labor of the nation.
. . . I have always known this. I saw several decades ago that the Great Depression in the US, etc., was not caused by a lack of food being grown, metal ore to mine, oil to pump, or factories to make stuff from the real resources; instead it was caused by a lack of money in the hands or pockets of the people to buy the stuff being made or food grown. That is, a lack of "effective economic demand". Economically, demand requires money to spend and a desire to buy. Starving people who have no money do not create demand. MMT shows us how to add to the demand by the Gov. using deficit spending to do it. And then, NOT taxing it all back later, but just letting the people have the resulting excess of Pounds or dollars forever.
. . . As I have said here a few times the UK/England has had a national debt since 1694 {=1694} or for over 325 years now. If no event in those 325 years {that have seen the growth of its Empire and its loss} HAS CAUSED the debt to need to be paid off, then nothing ever will.

After Brexit, the UK can {if the voters choose wisely} decide to take back control over its economy and do all the things that are necessary for the people of the UK to be prosperous again. Austerity is damaging, pointless and unnecessary. The theory that supports it is just assumed to be true. The main assumption that supports austerity {according to my reading of MMT sources} is that people will spend more money as soon as they grok that the national Gov. has decided to use "sound finance" going forward and so not deficit spend. That they will see that 10 or 20 years in the future they will not have their taxes raised to pay down the "huge" debt, and therefore they can spend more in the now. The BIG problem with this is that the mass of the people now don't have many more dollars, euros, or Pounds in their pockets now to spend. Another problem with this is that nobody thinks like this; "oh look, I'll have more money 15 years from now, so I should spend more now." Ask yourself if you have ever had such a thought?
By Atlantis
#15041885
Steve_American wrote:It seems to say that the current Conservative Party is not led by British citizens, but rather by people who own the capital plant in the UK {but don't live there}. So, these leaders don't give a sh*t about what is good for any group of UK citizens who do live in the UK.


No, what the article says is that British industrialists used to have an influence on British industrial policy via their representation in the Tory party. This assured that national politics was informed by the needs of industry, which is essential in an industrial country. Since most of manufacturing has been off-shored and much of the remaining factories are foreign-owned, the link between manufacturing and politics has been broken. This leads to policies that may damage British industries, as in the case of Brexit.

Edit: Brexit serves the international financial elite (both British and foreign) with their tax havens and not the productive industries or the working man.
User avatar
By Nonsense
#15041919
Rugoz wrote:Nah, that's too silly. Not even you believe that.


The probability is, that there won't be a CORBYN cabinet,so it's basically a hypothesis,unworthy of further consideration & it would not be a viable if it ever came about.

BLAIR-BROWN were kicked out by the electorate after adapting the 'Third Way', a euphemism for abandoning 'Socialism' in this country.


The people then abandoned Labour, a reaction to Labour abandoning them, that is\was politically toxic to that party, for which, rather than being in the political pendulum of alternating power at elections,that is no longer the case, rather, they are in an existentialist state of suspension, neither her nor there.

CORBYN's position has been destroyed by the issue of leaving europe,not only from the dishonest pledge to implement the referendum result,but,because in not doing so, it has violated the trust & any democratic credential's that may have had.

All of the above factors, including their latest conference 'policies' are anathema to any aspirational people in general, their policies are politically retarded apart from renationalising the utility companies, even the way they intend to do it both costly & stupid.
User avatar
By Nonsense
#15041956
Angela MERKEL has warned German politicians that the U.K will become a direct competitor to the E.U when it leaves the bloc.

She is said to be 'apprehensive' about the significant effects it will have on the economy of the E.U.



It came after Mrs Merkel cautioned German politicians that the UK could become a Singapore-style low tax, low tariff banking haven after it exits the EU.

“After the withdrawal of Britain, we will have an economic competitor at our own doorstep, even if we want to keep close economic, foreign and security cooperation and friendly relations,” she said last month.

MAY’s commitment to a “level playing field” after Brexit, would have kept the UK aligned to EU competition,tax rules, as well as social and environmental protections.

However,BoJo scrapped the commitment earlier this month, signalling the UK will become a direct competitor with the EU as soon as it leaves the bloc.

She warned that the U.K will become a Singapore-style low tax, low tariff banking haven after it exits the EU.

The UK has a banking sector that dwarfs the rest of the EU, and is around three times the size of either Germany’s or that of France.

“After the withdrawal of Britain, we will have an economic competitor at our own doorstep, even if we want to keep close economic, foreign and security cooperation and friendly relations,” she said last month.


All of which illuminates the 'false' prospectus of project 'Fear', that Westminster remainer MP's have been constantly bombarding people's minds with whenever they have a chance that the media allows them to get that message across.

It's obvious from her words,despite her term of office approaching it's conclusion, that her fears are real & that the U.K's leaving is going to significantly affect europe's economy.

In the U.K, it is the 'uncertainty', along with E.U rules that have the potential to affect our growth, but not our competitiveness.

With the E.U, the reverse is the case, we in the U.K, with that increased competitiveness, with the lower Pound, will be an increased threat to their economy & that the E.U's rules will also work to our advantage.

However, it is a double-edged sword, because if europe slows down, it's effects, also affect the U.K growth, which is why a fair deal that is mutually beneficial, without a hint of the oft declared punishment for leaving, is essential if we are to have a 'win-win' deal & I am not certain that the 'old' guard, or the 'young blood'(new members)of the bloc have acknowledged the risk to the bloc which they are a part of.
User avatar
By ingliz
#15041966
Nonsense wrote:Singapore-style low tax, low tariff banking haven

Promoting a small Asian city-state as a model for Britain is magical thinking.


:lol:
User avatar
By Beren
#15041970
I like that Singapore pipe dream, like Britain or even England comprises Greater London only. Not that the EU ever lets such a thing thrive at its shores.
By Atlantis
#15041997
Nonsense wrote:BLAIR-BROWN were kicked out by the electorate after adapting the 'Third Way', a euphemism for abandoning 'Socialism' in this country.


Blair could have kept Labour in power indefinitely if it hadn't been for his neocon pipe-dreams that led the country into the Iraq fiasco. That's what imperialism does to people. Excessive greed will lead to the downfall of even the best and the brightest.

Even Corbyn is in favor of the 'third way' in its manifestation of continental social democracy, because there is no other way.

If Corbyn doesn't make it into No. 10, it's simply because the powers-that-be have already started their character assassination and manipulation of public opinion. Aside from its financial empire and tax havens, the British have inherited the most extensive machine of manipulating opinion in the UK and the world. Putin's troll factories are nothing by comparison.
By SolarCross
#15041998
Beren wrote:I like that Singapore pipe dream, like Britain or even England comprises Greater London only. Not that the EU ever lets such a thing thrive at its shores.

Why only Greater London? If it works why not scale it up for the whole kingdom and even the commonwealth too?

Beren wrote:Not that the EU ever lets such a thing thrive at its shores.

That sounds like fighting talk. Regardless of what the 4th Reich will do, Why do it? Weren't they supposed to be for free trade? Was that all a lie from the beginning? :hmm:
By Presvias
#15042002
SolarCross wrote:Why only Greater London? If it works why not scale it up for the whole kingdom and even the commonwealth too?


That sounds like fighting talk. Regardless of what the 4th Reich will do, Why do it? Weren't they supposed to be for free trade? Was that all a lie from the beginning? :hmm:


Rees Mogg

We could, if we wanted, accept emissions standards from India, America, and Europe. There’d be no contradiction with that,” Mr Rees-Mogg said.


“We could say, if it’s good enough in India, it’s good enough for here. There’s nothing to stop that.

“We could take it a very long way. American emission standards are fine – probably in some cases higher.


Do you really want that for you and yours?
By Atlantis
#15042004
SolarCross wrote:Why only Greater London? If it works why not scale it up for the whole kingdom and even the commonwealth too?


Singapore is a hub for financial, trade, etc. services for South East Asia. To be the hub of something, you need to be the center of something far bigger. Unless you are prepared to colonize the Galaxy, the Commonwealth cannot become a hub.
User avatar
By Beren
#15042007
SolarCross wrote:Why only Greater London? If it works why not scale it up for the whole kingdom and even the commonwealth too?

Why not scale it up for the whole world then? Why should it be an Anglo or commonwealth privilege? Let the whole solar system be a tax haven at the edge of the galaxy! Maybe the earth could be the Milky Way's Cayman Islands. :lol:

How could it work for the whole of Britain? Do you think you all could be an offshore company? :lol:

SolarCross wrote:That sounds like fighting talk. Regardless of what the 4th Reich will do, Why do it? Weren't they supposed to be for free trade? Was that all a lie from the beginning? :hmm:

How about free and fair trade? Or can you Brits only imagine living on exploiting others or siphoning off someone else's wealth? Is that the great post-Brexit plan?
User avatar
By Potemkin
#15042012
Atlantis wrote:Singapore is a hub for financial, trade, etc. services for South East Asia. To be the hub of something, you need to be the center of something far bigger. Unless you are prepared to colonize the Galaxy, the Commonwealth cannot become a hub.

Hmmm....... :eh:

Image

Now there's a spiffing idea, old chap! :D
By SolarCross
#15042016
@Presvias
Maybe, there are pros and cons to all things. "Emission standards" are meant to seem nice and helpful, but as a practical matter of fact it gives a bunch of bureaucrats excuses to loot an pillage and treat everyone like their BDSM gimps. That's the first reason for their existence and rest is just excuses.

Image

I love being regulated by the EU!
- The Gimp
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