British state a roadblock to change not a route to it

by Ken Ferguson • With each passing day the elite running the British state grow increasingly delusional and thus increasingly dangerous. However those on the left who portray this as some kind of crisis of control by those shaping British policy need to be more careful.

It is axiomatic that the British Tories are the core of what is probably the most experienced and ruthless ruling class on the planet and anyone who thinks they are either panicked or confused isn’t paying attention.

Despite the fish revolt—quelled in five days—and the row whipped up by the ever more shrill right wing press around blue passports, the looming Brexit deadlines have created an uneasy unity in the Tory party.

It is in this context that the statements of Boris comparing the upcoming World Cup in Russia to the Nazi hosted the Berlin Olympics in 1936 must be viewed.

For a nation which lost 20 million dead fighting the Nazi menace and in the words of Boris-hero Churchill “tore the guts out of nazism” a more offensive parallel would be hard to find.

Whipped-up furore
But this is not, as some claim, the act of a blundering buffoon but of an arrogant calculating far right pillar of the establishment.

The furore whipped up about the Salisbury attacks and the deliberate drive to spark a new Cold War is no accident but part of a wider strategy to return to the glory days when Britannia ruled the waves as a big player on the world scene.

This is what drives the supporters of the far right deregulated, big player UK such as Rees Mogg to slaver about ending the UK’s “vassal state” status and far from confusion they have a coherent free market vision of a post-Brexit Britain.

It is this reality that the key elements of the British state exist to ensure the continued power of the City of London and the class ridden power structure designed to serve and maintain a bulwark against any progressive change that anyone suggesting this can be changed must face.

Elsewhere in this Voice we look at the reality of power in today’s Labour Party and what this tells about the prospect of it leading a movement for shifting power in favour of the working class majority.

The Voice warmly welcomes the better than expected election results of last year and the opening that has made for discussion of socialist solutions but care needs to be exercised on the real prospects which resulted from it.

Firstly it needs to said that, despite the euphoria, Labour actually lost last year’s general election and has not been able to establish a serious poll lead over the Tories despite the multitude of gaffes and splits within that party since last year.

Secondly and perhaps most central is the sharp divisions now concealed, now open between the party in the country and its machine on the one hand and scores of Corbyn sceptics—and open opponents—among the MPs and MSPs.

As we go to press, the sacking of Owen Smith and the hyped nonsense from former left winger Lord Hain about it being a “Stalinist purge” is but the latest illustration of these divisions.

All along the green benches of the Commons scores of unrepentant right wing MPs are in the words of Burns “nursing their wrath to keep it warm” and hide under a cloak of supposed loyalty waiting to strike.

Indeed as first raised in the Voice early in the New Year, the mainstream press are now reporting that a number of them are plotting and planning the possibility of a centrist breakaway linking up with anti-Brexit Tories “in the national interest” to spike Corbyn’s guns.

It has after all been done before in 1931 with Ramsay McDonald and his “national” government and the SDP in 1981.

It is against this background that the Voice—like the SSP—views the British state as an obstacle to change not a vehicle for it and considers the prospect of any British Road to Socialism at best an illusion and a worst dangerous diversion leading to a Scotland—as happened through the Thatcher years—ruled by a right wing British Tory government that we did not vote for.

Vision for real change
The pro-independence left’s vision of independence for real change was right in 2014 and it is right now. However, while we remain convinced that an independent Scotland is the surest way to a changed Scotland, putting people and planet before profit, we also need redouble our efforts to tackle the crisis facing working people today.

This means action on winning a £10-an-hour minimum wage and ended the tyranny of zero hours contracts and the so-called “gig” economy, building homes for rent by the thousands,slashing fares and moving towards free public transport and taking our renewable energy industry and key services like rail and post into public ownership.

Real campaigning on these issues can win gains—as is shown by the current UCU dispute and build people’s confidence that change can be won.