Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Britain Page 1 of 9

Britain’s Bare Produce Shelves

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On March 9, 2023

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The Daily Mail had an article on this, and it’s worth reading.

A dig down in this reveals two main factors (the Daily Mail was pro-Brexit and discounts that factor).

First, increases in energy prices.

Tony Montalbano, a director of Green Acre Salads in Roydon, Essex, typically produces a million kilograms of baby cucumbers a year, but his glasshouses were empty last month.

He delayed growing his crops to avoid rocketing winter fuel bills of up to £500,000 a month. He expects his production to be cut by up to half this year.

‘It’s sad and frustrating but I can’t afford to grow,’ he said. ‘I must make a profit. If I don’t, there’s no point in me going on. Lots of growers are closing their doors and selling up.’

Jack Ward, chief executive of the British Growers Association, added: ‘Up and down the country, we’ve got empty glasshouses. People who would grow two or three crops of cucumbers a year may cut that to just one, because they want to avoid using more expensive energy.’

Eggs are also being rationed as farmers cannot afford the costs of keeping laying hens warm in energy-guzzling sheds.

Second, crop failures due to poor weather (aka. climate change) in Spain and Morocco have had a big effect, as Britain imports a lot from them.

Now, the thing about energy prices is that they have been raised far more than fuel prices have. The UK system has producers of energy, suppliers (the people who run electricity lines and ship fuel to retail customers) and the retail customers of energy.

Let’s take oil:

Unveiling its latest results, Shell said the price of the barrels of oil it sells rose from $62.53 a year ago to $101.42. Gas prices rose from $4.31 to $13.85 per thousand standard cubic feet over the same period.

So, their costs increased about 62%, and they about tripled the prices they charge.

In electricity, there is a price cap. The companies are not allowed to earn more than thirty-five pounds more than they sell the electricity to households. That cap, however, only applies to households, it doesn’t apply to business. So on the business side, they’ve been massively raising prices.

Thus the empty green (glass) houses, which grow far more than just cucumbers. Likewise vertical farms have been hit hard. If you want produce during the non-harvest season you have to buy from other countries or you have to grow in controlled environments. Add in climate fluctuations from climate change and high energy prices making it impossible to make a profit growing produce and you have shortages.

Price increases from Russia, in other words, are only an excuse to raise prices, not the reason for most of the price increase.

The solutions have been discussed even by the mainstream press: either re-nationalize the energy sector or put in a windfall profit tax so they don’t get to keep excess profits. And it’s worth noting that many energy companies did go under due to increased costs when they were regulated to be unable to pass them on. Some companies made way more than their increased costs, while others went under.

In the post-war liberal era private utilities were highly regulated, but a cornerstone of proper regulation was that they would always make a decent profit: enough for proper maintenance, which had to be done (remember all the fires in California because the privately owned utility won’t maintain power lines and poles), and to expand capacity as necessary. Utility stocks were “widow and orphan stocks” because they would make the same every year. Genuine price increases were passed on, but profits could not either rise or fall.

So, if you want to keep them private the best way isn’t so much a windfall tax, which is a response to a crisis, but proper regulation. Or you can just make them public again.

Energy prices in France have risen far less than in Britain for the simple reason that France owns its own generators and grid.

The other obvious factor is that if you have a cap on households for political reasons (they vote) you need a cap on the costs to farmers and to industry. But if you’re going to put all these caps in place, it’s better to just move to proper regulation, and a flat cap makes little sense, it should always be in percentage terms. When prices went up 60%, someone has to pay that. That either means end-users, or it means the government subsidizes. Those subsidies could be broad, if the increase is expected to not last long, or they could be targeted at specific industries and people with low income.

While generally means targeted subsidies are a bad idea, there are specific cases where they make sense, and this is one of them.

Anyway, Britain doesn’t have bare produce shelves “because of Russia” it has bare produce shelves because energy companies gouged the customers they could gouge using Russia as an excuse and because the government refused to step in and ensure prices which allow the “free” market to work properly, because there is no free market and never has been, and it always requires intervention to keep it working.

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The UK Continues Its Decline

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On March 3, 2023

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From the Guardian:

The number of UK children in food poverty has nearly doubled in the last year to almost 4 million, new data shows, ramping up pressure on ministers to expand the provision of free school meals to struggling families.

According to the Food Foundation thinktank, one in five (22%) of households reported skipping meals, going hungry or not eating for a whole day in January, up from 12% at the equivalent point in 2022.

Regular readers will know I’ve written about this often. The UK appears to be in decline to third world status. While the EU is neoliberal, it was better than what UK neoliberals wanted to do by leaving it. The UK has spent the time since Thatcher deliberately de-industrializing, leaving it with little more than the financial industry and a few hi-tech spars remaining. Leaving the EU makes the “City” less valuable: being inside the EU was useful, and now it’s outside.

On top of this, financialization cannibalizes real industry, since financial profits are higher and the highest profits come from taking public goods and privatizing them. This has been done to everything substantial owned by the UK government in 79, when Thatcher took power, from railroads to water and electricity, leaving on the National Health Service. That’s the last big chunk of profits, and then they’re done.

At that point, what does Britain have to offer to the rest of the world other than a corrupt financial center? Little, and that financial center can’t, won’t and doesn’t want to support most of the population, since even if they could, that would defeat the point: the people who run it don’t want to share, they want to be rich.

The Russia mess has also made this worse. There was a lot of Russian money in the UK, and freezing or taking it means no more will come in and it also makes everyone who’s in a non US ally country wary of using London to store money, whether in banks, securities or properties. After all, they could be next.

Brexit done right could have been the start of rebuilding the UK, but that would have required reigning in the City and engaging in industrial policy to provide industries capable of employing Britons, supply domestic British needs rather than importing, and also able to export.

As it is, Britain is done. The political fallout will probably include, within a decade or so, the loss of Northern Ireland and Scotland. At which point the United Kingdom (Scotland and England unified) will be no more, and England will stand alone again.

The Sun does set, it seems.

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The Life & Death Of Queen Elizabeth II

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On September 9, 2022

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Queen Elizabeth II in 1959

I was born in 68, and I remember the middle-aged Elizabeth and the era before the Commonwealth became meaningless. There was a post-war world where people traveled freely & often between the ex-Empire nations, and where economic ties between those nations and Britain were still primary. It came to an end when Britain went into a financial crisis so serious it required IMF intervention and then joined the EU to get a real bailout. Once Britain was in the EU, its focus became European, not ex-Imperial.

It was, in a way, a betrayal of the ex-colonies, but Britain didn’t have much choice. I’ve always found it ironic that British elites are such loyal dogs for the Americans, because the US did everything it could to hasten the fall of the Empire and then to put the boots to Britain. The US understood it was taking over the old Empire in a new form (less direct killing, but the boot was still there), and wanted to make sure Britain not only didn’t get back on its feet, but went from on its knees to on its belly.

It succeeded in this. Leading Brits in the late 40s and 50s knew this was what was happening, but could see no way out, given how relatively powerful the US was (and how Europe and Britain were garrisoned by US troops).

I can’t, offhand, think of a “good” Empire; they’re always bad, though in some places, some relative good can be done. (Hong Kong started out with a population under 1,000, and Chinese fled there. Though the Brits were bastards, they were better than the late Manchu, however.)

From Ireland to India and most parts in between, the British Empire did plenty of evil, as one would expect from the largest Empire to ever exist. (The Mongols come in second, though they had the largest land empire. The US? It’s a bit hard to count. Might be that post-USSR collapse they could be seen as eclipsing the UK.)

Elizabeth ceremonially presided over the dismantling of the British Empire. She worked hard to try and keep the Commonwealth together, but post-70s, even that disintegrated step by step. She died, I would say, mercifully, before the United Kingdom itself (the union of England and Scotland) broke up, and before Northern Ireland was lost. For a person in her position, she seems to have done less harm than one would expect.

The sun set on the British Empire decades ago. Soon, it will set on the UK. Europe is no longer the center of the world, but a collection of satrapies conquered by its old colony, the US.

In the normal order of things, the next Empire would rise in China — but we no longer exist in the “normal order,” but rather the end of a climate which has existed for thousands of years.

Elizabeth is lucky to miss the end of that order as well.

Note: Yesterday’s article was incorrect. A month after publication, the scientists clarified that the Antarctic sea-shelf collapse would not raise the sea level quickly, and that sea level rise (from this collapse) could take a century. I apologize for the error, and thank commenter David for catching it. The article is still up, with the error noted, but will be deleted after a bit. This note will stay.

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As the Sun Sets on the United Kingdom

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On July 18, 2022

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In Peter Hall’s Cities in Civilization, there’s a long chapter on the destruction of the Port of London. Hall doesn’t call it that; he is more impressed by the change from a decaying port which was close to a slum, which was losing importance to a new neighbourhood, headlined by the huge Canary Wharf complex, which is 97 acres with 16 million square feet of indoor space.

The port of London had been the greatest port in the world in the 19th century, but had slipped into decline in the 20th century, especially after WWI and II. The problems seemed intractable and the fact was that London was no longer the center of the world by 1980; it was New York. The Empire was gone, and when Britain joined the EU it abandoned its emphasis on economic and trade ties with the Commonwealth, made up of former members of the Empire like India, Australia, South Africa, Canada, and many more.

I remember the Commonwealth world, if barely, and my parents lived the prime of their lives in it. There was a lot of trade and travel and an entire class of people who moved easily between Commonwealth nations. But Britain, post-WWII had been de-industrializing, and Thatcher’s policies, economically, amounted to a “Fuck it, we’re giving up industry and pivoting entirely to finance.”

I recently saw someone mention the debate in England right now between the policies of Thatcher and Reagan (there wasn’t that much difference) but this is insane.

Thatcherism, Reganism, and indeed, neoliberalism, relied on built-up fat of the land. Thatcher’s big bribe to voters was letting them buy their council housing for below what it was worth. Over the neoliberal period, virtually everything owned by the state was sold off to the private sector: water, power, railroads, and as much administrative outsourcing as possible. Regulations were cut as much as possible, held back by the EU, which while neoliberal, prefers to keep some standards.

Industry was sold off to whoever wanted to buy it, often at fire-sale prices, and most of the purchases were moved overseas to places with cheaper labor.

A huge housing bubble, largely in greater London, was created. Housing bubbles always seem like free money at first, but they don’t create productive assets; what they do is make some people rich, let those who own at the beginning or get in early enough gain unearned wealth, and drive up the costs of living, and thus labor costs. This means that housing bubbles actually make a country less productive.

They’re attractive as hell, at first, and the play has been done often. Turkey under Erdogan ran one, and for about 15 years it looked great and a lot of people were made better off. But Turkey had a lot less fat to burn on the fires of housing speculation than the US, Britain, or Canada and when it ran out Turkey went into an economic tailspin. (There’s more to it than that, of course, but you can’t have housing as your engine of growth forever.)

Now, clearly, Britain was not going to regain its position as the greatest industrial nation, but by financializing and running a long housing bubble, and deliberately selling off all the areas of the state which need to be performed with competence, uniformly and at a low, fixed cost, Britain destroyed most of what it had left.

The port of London is symbolic of this. While London didn’t need it, and certainly wasn’t going to need the kind of mega-port it had been earlier, just giving it up meant the wholesale destruction of a myriad of small shipping, logistics, insurance, chandlery, repair, and shipbuilding companies.

It’s easy to destroy a network like that, but it’s hard to rebuild it. The smart play would have been to plan for a smaller port, but do what they could to keep as much of the network as possible. Mercantile policies similar to what Germany followed (or Northern Italy, until the Euro smashed them) were what was required for Britain to have a prosperous future.

What they did, instead, was throw everything productive on a huge fire, and live off what Brits had created for centuries. It worked for about 30 years, for at least a plurality of Brits, and it made a lot of people rich, but it also impoverished the industrial north and created massive distrust for the establishment, which was later parlayed to sell Brexit, as British decline was correlated so strongly with the period of its membership in the EU. (The EU was not responsible, and its policies made doing the right thing possible — if anyone had wanted to. No one did, but even so, EU laws actually slowed down the burn.)

Britain came out of WWII with a very bad hand. The US wanted to replace them, and they put the boots to Britain, doing what they could to ensure the UK would experience no industrial recovery, and that Britain would remain an American satrapy.

But as bad as that hand was, Thatcherism was a self-inflicted wound. There were alternative policies which wouldn’t have sold the patrimony to have a 30-year party.

Britain is in a position now where there is almost nothing left to throw on the fire. The NHS is next, but that’s about all there is.

Corbyn was the last chance to make a turn, but the British elite united against him, smearing him with lies and Labour party operatives actively worked against his election — to the extent of lying to him about what ads were running and making sure his phone would see ads ordinary people didn’t.

So now, the Brits have a situation where “Great Britain” will likely come to an end: Remember that the United Kingdom is Scotland + England + Northern Ireland, and that Scotland is soon likely to go. I expect Northern Ireland as well, and even Wales is possible in a couple decades.

Those who rule England will still be rich, but they will rule over an impoverished nation. They’ll be able to afford servants and estates again, though, and I suspect they want a return to that “kind of life” more than anything else.

If the British, or the English (or the Scottish, etc.), want a future, they need to do something they’ve so far been unwilling to do: Replace their leadership class wholesale, getting rid of their class of public school-educated politicians and businessmen. Without this, it is not possible for the right things to be done — and even if they got rid of those people, they’ll have to rebuild from very close to nothing.

It seems likely that the sun will set on Britain, as it has on every other great empire.

Hail Britannia, and goodbye.

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The Possible Dire Consequences of NATO & Ukrainian Escalation

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On April 28, 2022

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So, UK foreign secretary Trus has said that the war in Ukraine must continue until Russia is forced out of Ukraine entirely, including Crimea.

Meanwhile, the UK is shipping weapons to Ukraine that are capable of striking Russian cities.

As a moral matter, of course, the Ukraine has the right to strike Russia, same as so many countries have the right to assassinate American leaders and bomb American weddings in which “high value targets” might be involved.

But let’s consider the state of the war. Putin calls it a special military operation. Reserves have not been called up, and a great deal of care is being taken in the use of force. Unlike in Iraq, Russia has not taken out power, sewage, water systems, most roads, or rail. It has not unleashed level bombers for massive bombing of Ukrainian cities.

Russia has also not called up its reserves. Putin appears to think that would be unpopular. Russia has millions of men in its reserves. It could call up two million men and not exhaust them. They’re not the best troops, but they would swamp Ukraine.

Now, if Ukraine hits Russian cities, however fair that is, what will happen to Russian public and elite opinion? Imagine Iraq somehow managed to hit New York and cause real damage in the 2000s (if you want a scenario: perhaps they could have smuggled bombs into the harbor on cargo ships).

How would Americans have reacted?

That’s how Russians will react. Add in some atrocity propaganda (and there are plenty of videos of Ukrainian soldiers doing horrible things, they aren’t saints) and Putin will easily have all the backing he needs to go to total non-nuclear war. In fact, even if he doesn’t want to escalate, it would be difficult to avoid.

This would mean, as a start, bombing every road and rail crossing leaving the Ukraine that Russia or Belarus doesn’t control, so more weapons can’t get into Ukraine. It would likely mean removing all power and water from western Ukrainian cities and forcing most of the remaining population in those areas to flee: 20+ million people. And it would mean taking major cities, which Russia will have the manpower to do.

Further, the idea that any Russian government would ever give up Crimea is insanity (that Russia would fight a war to keep Sevastopol is why I was able, in 2008, to predict the next war would be over Crimea).

This idea that NATO has that it can safely fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, without any chance of war-spillover is insane. Likewise, China CANNOT afford to let Russia be broken up. If it is, then China can almost trivially be blockaded and forced into subjugation. They need Russian oil, gas, coal, minerals, and food and without them they cannot survive a confrontation with the West. It is literally impossible.

What China sees is that the US wants to fight wars where they aren’t at risk. If there’s a war in Asia against China, without using nukes, China has little ability to hit the US mainland, while the US can hit China. Yes, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan (if they’re stupid enough to join in) get devastated, but the US laughs as the damage is done overseas.

I strongly suspect the Chinese now see this as the US plan for them. The US has stated it wants to place hypersonic missiles in the first island chain off China, which includes Taiwan, the same sort of movement of weapons which contributed to Russia’s demands before the Ukraine war (the US is a year or two from hypersonic, but the placement of other missiles and ABM close to Russia has been protested by Russia for years), and recently there has even been talk of putting US troops in Taiwan as a trip wire similar to the one in South Korea.

This means China needs a conventional deterrent; they need missiles that can hit the continental US, and they need to increase their navy to the point where it can fight the US navy in international waters and win. Remember that China’s ship-building capacity is VASTLY larger than that of the US.

The US and UK, both of whom think that Russia and China can’t hurt them, are pushing this war in ways that are very dangerous. This is a bet, in fact, that Russia and Putin are entirely “rational”, despite the rhetoric and won’t risk escalation. But Putin is reputed to have spent hours watching the video of Gaddafi being sodomized by a bayonet before being killed, and the CCP knows that “regime change” is what the US wants for China.

Regime change in China will leave a lot of CCP members, and especially leaders, dead.

This is an existential issue for China and Russia. If they lose to America, their leaders are overthrown. Russia will be dismembered (this is what multiple NATO leaders have said they want), and China will be relegated to permanent 2nd tier status at best. Many of the leaders will die, and many of those will die ugly.

This is understandable for the US. They have a wasting asset: China, given enough time, will inevitably have a larger military, since it has the larger economy, and they are catching up in technology. The US Navy has been shrinking for decades and the US has lost the ability to build ships: they have had to cancel recent designs because on testing, they suck. The US’s ability to build planes is also in doubt: the F-35 was a massive mess and is far too expensive.

Since the US also judges that any escalation short of nuclear won’t hit them, except economically, and will hurt their enemies and their satrapies worse (making Europe weaker economically and stronger militarily is a win for the US), they have a great deal of incentive to escalate as much as possible, and just make sure it doesn’t go nuclear.

This isn’t in anyone else’s interest, but Europe is consumed with fear of Russia, and Western European leaders have accepted the narrative of Eastern Europe and the USA about Russia as a completely rogue power which must be destroyed, because it can never be trusted.

Meanwhile, the US’s ability to control foreign countries outside of Europe is dropping fast. Three of the four Gulf States (creations of the UK and kept in existence by the US) refused to side with NATO in the UN. Saudi Arabia has basically told the US to fuck itself. The Solomon Islands signed a military pact with China which spawned threats from Australia and the US of military action if a base is built because apparently the right to make military alliances and do what you want in your own territory is available only to would be American allies.

India has not gone along with sanctions and Malaysia is wavering.

US hegemony is breaking. Western hegemony is breaking. As alarmed and scared as Chinese and Russian elites are, American and Western elites are furious: absolutely livid that anyone dare challenge them, or that the days of their hegemony may soon be over. Right now, calculating that the costs of wars to stay in charge will not primarily be born by them, they are willing to escalate recklessly.

Since passions are up, I note that this is not a moral analysis about who is good or bad. There was certainly moral justification for going to war against the USSR at various points, but we didn’t and we avoided escalating beyond certain levels because we knew that war with them was unthinkable.

War with Russia is still unthinkable. War with China is abominable.

Our time is done. We sold our patrimony to the Chinese from the 90s thru the 10s, so that our elites could break our working class and get richer than if they had to pay 1st world wages and costs. That’s the truth. Our elites thought they were international elites, not national elites, and they were wrong. The Chinese knew they were a national elite, and, in effect, bribed our elites to give away the most important sources of their real power: having the largest industry, and having a huge tech lead.

Our elites gave it all away, for a few trillion dollars, and China paid happily. Our elites now see that their only chance to retain power is to use the waning asset of military supremacy. First they need to take out Russia, then they can choke China out.

This is an incredibly dangerous thing to do. Even if it doesn’t blow into nuclear war, it can easily blow into hot war. American allies in Asia, I would suggest, would be well advised to decouple militarily. This especially goes for Japan: build your own nukes and conventional deterrent and sit this one out. China can’t reach the US mainland yet, but it can reach you.

On top of all of this extraordinarily dangerous nonsense is the opportunity cost: we should be spending trillions on preparing for climate change and ecological collapse, not playing war games. NATO and Russia, over the last 10 years should have been disarming near mutual borders, not rushing troops, missiles and planes to the borders.

We are acting insane, chimpanzees trying to maintain dominance, locally or globally. And we are going to pay for it, even if we avoid nuclear war, with hundreds of millions, probably billions, of unnecessary deaths.

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The Destruction of the United Kingdom

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On October 21, 2021

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Jeremy Corbyn, the UK’s Last Hope

The more I look at the UK the more I become convinced it’s done. We tend to forget that United Kingdom is the union of Scotland and England and I don’t see a reasonable scenario where Scotland doesn’t leave the UK. The UK will almost certainly also lose Northern Ireland, which post-Brexit does not make sense in the UK (and the EU is FAR more powerful than the UK and wants Ireland re-united). Give it a couple decades and I wouldn’t be surprised if England (they won’t be the UK then) loses control of Wales.

This has been a long time coming. England has been de-industrializing since the late 19th century. After the war they didn’t renew their physical plant and wound up in such bad shape in the 70s they had to go to the IMF for help. They joined the EU to get help, so that the IMF wouldn’t completely immiserate them (which is what it does to countries.)

The EU did bail them out, that’s just a fact, but then came neo-liberalism. Remember that it first took formal power in Britain, with Thatcher, in 79. Oh President Carter in the US had a lot of neoliberal policies, but he wasn’t formally with them. Thatcher was.

Thatcher deliberately accelerated de-industrialization. The decision was made that Britain couldn’t compete, and more importantly, shouldn’t even try: neoliberalism said to open borders, not engage in industrial policy and so on. The policies needed to rejuvenate Britain’s industrial plant and become involved with the next great techological leap (which Britain still had the ability to do, to be clear, it still had good computer companies, for example, and auto firms and so on), were thus ideologically forbidden.

So what happened instead is that Britain completely financialized: everything poured into “the City”, the financial capital and money was made primarily from financial games. The people who lost their jobs were not compensated and did not find good jobs to replace them. The social state was liquidated in wave after wave, starting with Thatcher bribing people by selling them council homes for less that they were worth.

As usual, some people won from this, at least for a generation or two, but the real wealth production of the UK was absolutely shattered (financial games do not count.)

Then came Brexit. It’s worth noting two things about the EU: it is an evil neoliberal institution AND it was less evil than a big chunk of the British establishment: it was stopping them from doing even more evil things (aka. even more immiseration of the population and even more lowering of regulations and privatizing of the state).

The people who had lost their good jobs and been plunged into multi-generation shit-lives blamed the EU. Remain pointed out that the EU was actually keeping those people’s heads above water, but it was also true that the policies required to un-immiserate them were essentially forbidden by EU rules. No matter, it wasn’t decided on that: it was decided on the UK having been in the EU for the entire period when their lives had gotten worse. Maybe the EU was not the villain, but their lives still sucked ass. “The EU makes sure your miserable lives aren’t even more fucking miserable, peasants” was not the winning argument many Remain types seemed to think it was.

So Britain left the EU, and now what is happening is that the population is being even further immiserated. Austerity upon austerity upon austerity. Every pound which can be hoovered further up the chain is being sent up. The ruling class is solidifying its position over a de-industrialized country. It is better to be rich and powerful over a bunch of beggars, than to give any power or money to the hoi polloi.

The route out was offered: elect Corbyn, a 60s style liberal, and do a left wing Brexit. Then engage in actual industrial policy and bring back an economy which actually produces things and services (other than financial games) that both it and the rest of the world needs.

But Corbyn wanted to help reduce poverty, to give more money and power to the poors and the middle class. He wanted to gut the City (which has to be done, because a financial center like that actually harms the rest of the economy outside of it), and to let people into the power-franchise who didn’t go to OxBridge.

He was a direct threat to the elites. They would rather be in charge of a collapsing country returning to poverty than be less powerful in a more prosperous nation returning to true health, though most of them are too ideologically bound to even understand that was what was on offer: all they could see is Corbyn was a threat.

So they took him out, lying about him almost 80% of the time, and enough British voters were fooled.

And now the UK’s days are numbered. The only way to keep Scotland in would have been to make it a good place to be again: to reverse the decline and be seen to be reversing the decline.

The EU sucks, but it’s better than a Britain run by people like Boris Johnson, and the Scots can see that, and soon enough the Irish and Welsh will too.

And so the sun which was never to set, will set on Great Britain.

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The Betrayal At The Heart of Sanders, AOC and Corbyn’s Refusal To Use Power

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On February 24, 2021

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You’ve probably heard of Manchin. Conservative Democratic Senator. With a 50/50 Senate and few Republican Senators willing to cross the aisle, Manchin has been having a field day: he’s been determining much of what can be done by Democrats, since without him they can’t get votes thru the Senate.

Manchin’s mostly using this for evil, but recently he decided to oppose Biden’s budget chief pick, Neera Tanden. Neera’s a famous twitter warrior, who was viciously anti-Bernie, but she also famously shut down Think Progress, a media site she ran, because the workers unionized. She punched a journalist in the chest, and outed a sexual assault survivor.

Now Machin isn’t opposing Tanden because of stuff like the union, but he is opposing her and there’s a good chance she won’t get in. What he’s really doing, though, is trying to stop Hillary Clinton’s primary proxy from being in the Biden administration, because that’s what she is.

Bernie, who chairs the committee she has to get by, has not opposed her even though she’s been his savage enemy, and he is opposed ideologically to her.

Manchin is using his power, and Sanders is not.

Let’s think back to when Nancy Pelosi was running for Speaker. It was a close run affair and AOC and the squad had the votes to stop her. Yes, the person who got in would have been very slightly worse, but the difference is marginal and Pelosi is almost done in politics anyway, given her age. The Squad voted for Pelosi and got nothing for it: they tried to claim that the organizing resolution not including Covid and the environment as requiring budget neutrality was their win, but that doesn’t pass the laugh test, because those are Biden’s priorities. Pelosi’s always been very willing to work with the priorities of Presidents: Democratic or Republican.

They had power, didn’t use it, got nothing. AOC didn’t even get the committee assignment she wanted. It wasn’t Pelosi who made sure she didn’t get it, but she didn’t lift a hand to help AOC either.

Let’s consider a third situation: the first Covid stimulus bill. Progressives could have stopped it. They didn’t. But that bill had the key bailouts for the rich. Once they were done, Progressives had no leverage. Future Covid relief bills, centrists and right wingers didn’t care: it wasn’t important to them if ordinary people got relief, so they’d just hold firm for really crazy stuff.

Sanders and AOC had a chance to hold what the rich needed in order to get something for the poor. They didn’t.

This is a pattern, and a nearly constant one. It is related to Sanders being unwilling to call out Biden on his record because “Biden was his friend.” (Gagging sounds. Their friendship isn’t worth millions of Americans in poverty because a Biden admin won’t help them.)

But what I want to examine now is the use of power.

Here’s a rule: power everyone knows you won’t use, you don’t have.

Left-wingers are not credible because they never use their power. We saw this with Corbyn in Britain when  he repeatedly refused to throw out MPs who challenged him or allow MPs to be re-selected (primaried, in effect.) There was nothing they couldn’t do to his cause or him that would get him to retaliate.

If AOC had taken down Pelosi people would remember. Pelosi did not and does not want her last political memory and piece of  history being defeated for the role of Speaker. AOC and the Squad had the ability to take something away from Pelosi that REALLY mattered to her, and everyone would have noticed that they did so and would take their threats seriously in the future. Including the guy who won the Speakership, who, if they controlled the margin next time would know they’d take HIM down if they didn’t get something important to them.

When Boris Johnson became Prime Minister of Britain some Conservative MPs voted against his most important project: Brexit. He immediately threw them out of the party, and went on to resoundingly win the election.

Voters don’t like wimps who won’t use their power and they are correct in this: if you won’t fight, it doesn’t matter what you believe. Corbyn was the man who could take any punch, but would never throw one, no matter what his opponents did.

Using power tells both your enemies and your friends that you are serious, and that your demands must be met or you will make them pay.

Progressives (not necessarily AOC/Sanders/Corbyn, but those who justify their behavior) are like bullying victims who have forgotten that you end bullying only by hurting the bully (win or lose) not by giving in to them. Progressives who support them are often similar, they’re scared “but if we oppose Tanden won’t Biden retaliate?”

Let the fucker retaliate (though he probably wouldn’t much care, she’s Hillary’s servant, not his.) It’s a 50/50 Senate, and Bernie is a powerful committee chairman. He can make Biden’s life Hell AND, more to the point, Biden already isn’t doing most of what Bernie wants despite Bernie being super nice to him. Being nice doesn’t work. Threatening Biden’s legacy might. Sanders can have exactly the power Manchin wields, and more, the second he wants it: the second he decides that making them remember that if the poor people he represents don’t get something, neither do the rich.

A compromise is where you get something and so do I. What progressives do far too often is capitulate: they get nothing.

Use your power, or you don’t have it.

I’m going to return to this and the reasons, which go beyond a misunderstanding of how to use power or cowardice (Corbyn is not in any way a coward) , because it’s important. I like Bernie and AOC, and I admire Corbyn, but their refusal to use power is a betrayal, and I use that word deliberately, of the people they represent and who trust them.

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The European Union

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On September 21, 2020

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CONTENT WARNING: *** MANDOS POST *** MANDOS POST *** MANDOS POST ***

Both inside and outside Europe, the left is highly divided on the topic of the European Union, with a large current being firmly against it for reasons that are actually quite understandable, from multiple perspectives (not just economic). The recent history, especially the Syriza episode in Greece, does not help the reputation of the EU from a left-wing perspective, and there is a temptation to see anything that damages the EU as being good for the people of Europe.  Jeremy Corbyn’s somewhat incoherent position towards the EU can therefore be dismissed by some as the result of a circumstance impossible for him, whereby a good chunk of Labour voters were supportive of EU membership while a principled leftist like Corbyn would have to, in their inner selves at least, be against it.  The EU’s association with neoliberal economic policy has led some, including a large percentage of this blog’s own commentariat, to view Brexit as just another stick with which to beat the neoliberal dog, so to speak, and to take at best a neutral view of who and how the stick is wielded.

It is absolutely correct to say that EU institutions have developed in such a way as to embed neoliberal attitudes and policies deeply within them. The institutions of European integration were largely built at the very same time as the neoliberal consensus’ apparent accession to the Mandate of Heaven.  (Providence does not hand out these mandates on the basis of evident goodness or wisdom.)  Starting from the late 2000s, it became obvious that neoliberalism was losing the Mandate, and no clear claimant has as yet emerged, a worrying sign.

The dilemma for those who want a more just and sustainable human future is extent to which the active dismantlement of the EU is necessary or warranted.  There is a left-wing position that is a kind of short-term nihilism which celebrates the destruction of institutions as a necessary step in creating the opportunities for beneficial change.  This position should certainly be taken seriously and becomes increasingly relevant as neoliberal institutions continue to operate in “zombie” mode, deprived of the providential imprimatur.

The ideal case is that the dismantlement of the EU would lead to a condition that was more beneficial, i.e., replacement from the ground up with, if not with a single institution, then with a collection of polities that are better empowered to serve the needs of their citizens.  The prospects for this can only be understood in terms of the forces that created the European Union (and its predecessor organizations) in the first place.  Europe as viewed from a Martian height consists of extremely unstable, contentious nation-states with badly drawn borders (as it is impossible in Europe, the birthplace of the nation-state, to draw the borders well).  A handful of these nation-states took advantage of a specific set of historical circumstances to become great colonial-imperial powers, but partly due to their own internal contradictions and external developments eventually lost their own heavenly mandates.  Present-day Europe, ex-EU, is a checkerboard of small states and middling industrial powers which had to reinvent themselves in the latter half of the 20th century.

A cursory, common-sense examination of Europe’s present-day geographic situation indicates that the checkerboard (or chessboard) analogy is more than apt.  European countries sit on geographically strategic (if resource-poor, relatively speaking) real estate between the current hegemonic military powers and become easy prey for the very colonial tactics Europe itself perfected.  The post-WWII architects of European convergence, themselves functionaries of states skilled in colonial tactics, were absolutely correct to surmise that Europe required a super-state level of organization that was at least partly independent of other power blocs in order to prevent being further carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey. The Middle East’s current, long-standing troubles illustrate clearly what can happen in that case.

The adolescence of European institutions during the neoliberal moment presents the central dilemma, because it itself is now a major threat to a protective European unity.  The question is: what is the optimal and most feasible way to lever out zombie neoliberalism without putting European countries at risk of “integration” into the pathologies already evident in the current hegemons?  The question is not an abstract one: one of Brexit’s consequences is that the UK likely will adopt an even harsher internal economic stance with integration into the weaker, less consumer- and worker-friendly economic regulation of the USA.

My own position is that the only way to resolve the deadlock is by the boring, difficult work of building cross-border, cross-polity popular solidarity both inside and outside the current EU.  It is the only way to enshrine the benefits of European integration with the necessary reform of the EU’s economic management.  Anything else — and admittedly, “anything else” is the most likely prospect — risks that those who live in Europe jump from the frying pan into the fire, following a mirage of dead-end cultural-nationalist idylls and emotional appeals to a clean, safe world that never really existed.

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