ALB
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Another Tory denounces the Johnson government as “socialist” for stealing Labour’s clothes.
Nonsense of course since the Labour Party has nothing to do with socialism.
Be interesting (well sort of) to see how the capitalist class, via the traditional Conservative Party elements, get rid of a prime minister who is clearly unsuitable from their point of view. Actually, his government was more a Brexit government than a traditional Tory one.
Review here in this month’s Socialist Standard up online today.
I thought you were talking about popular opinion rather than government policy. Anyway, here’s more about Rumania and Russia.
History, I suppose. I think it is only people in the Baltic States (which were independent states after WW1 until 1939 when they were forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union under the Nazi-Soviet pact to divide up Eastern Europe) and in Poland (which was divided under the same treaty and parts of it incorporated into the Soviet Union). I don’t think other East Europeans are particularly anti-Russian. Some might even be pro-Russia, if you include Roumania and Bulgaria as east European where Russia was historically seen as the state that championed the Christians there against Turkish rule.
But, as you say, it is conflicts between states that have left a legacy of antagonism between different groups, so they identify with their “nation-state” and the interests of its rulers rather than with their fellow workers in other states.
Nobody wants confrontation except the US government and its poodle, not even Ukraine.
Them stealing our name is a cross we have to bear. That does mean that we should let them get away with it by calling ourselves all the time “SPGB” or “The Socialist Party of Great Britain”. We are the Socialist Party.
Under the unwritten British constitution, going to war has been a “a royal prerogative”, ie something the government can do off its own bat without needing to get the approval of Parliament first. However, if a government did this against the will of parliament it wouldn’t last long as a parliamentary majority would vote it out of office. As Alan has said, the practice has grown up of governments formally consulting Parliament before authorising military action. In one case, over Syria in 2013, they didn’t get it.
But let’s not exaggerate. The UK government is planning to double the number of British troops in some NATO countries bordering on Russia — from 800 to 1600. Russia is going to be trembling in its boots over that.
The only interest I can think of for British capitalism in Ukraine would be to weaken Russia generally. In other words, it wouldn’t be about the Ukraine as such. This could be an advantage because, due to global warming, a north east passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific will be open as a regular commercial trade route which Russia could control. Can’t think of anything else.
Looking for something else I came across this from 2015 when Trump was only running for the nomination.
The irony is that, under Trump, this crisis might not have happened. So who was the imaginary “lesser evil” on foreign policy: Biden the Bellicose or Trump the Isolationist? This is assuming of course that the military establishment wouldn’t run rings around him as they did over Syria.
I see the President of Ukraine has just complained about alarmist stories about an imminent invasion causing the Ukrainian economy to slow down.
You mean like the fanatical Serbian nationalist who shot the Austrian Crown Prince in Sarajevo in 1914, providing Austria and Germany with a pretext to mobilise?
You’re right mad ultra-nationalists are quite capable of this sort of thing. But the Ukrainian ones would be very silly to do that as the West have said that there will be no military response to a Russian invasion. So Ukraine would be on its own and would probably have to hand the eastern part inhabited by a Russians back to Russia.
I think that last week Western propaganda was warning of something like this as a “false flag” operation by Russia. The sensationalist media (that’s all the daily papers and all commercial TV stations) love this sort of thing as it sells papers and gets more people watching ads before, during and after the news. Advertising revenue of course is what they are in business before and how they generate income, part of which is their profit.
Probably not. She got a better deal on the BBC.
I think we are. That’s why they employ and train lawyers and diplomats — to draft provisos and let-out clauses in small print !
The relationship between individual capitalists and the state, raised by Wez, is not straightforward. It is not as if capitalists directly control the state or can tell those in charge of it what to do. For a start, the various members of a national capitalist class are not a monolithic bloc with a common interest on day-to-day issues. That’s why there are competing parties and interest groups seeking to place those who support their sectional interest in office or to lobby those who do control the government to act in their interest.
The role of the state is to represent the general interest of its national capitalist class, which might not be the interest of all sections; in fact probably won’t be. It might not even be in the interests of any of them. I don’t know whether the Russian oligarchs with money invested in property in London are worried about Ukraine joining NATO (or whether the Ukrainian oligarchs next door are either) but those in charge of the Russian state (Putin & Co) evidently do, considering Ukraine joining NATO to be a threat to the overall interest of Russian capitalism.
