From Ukraine and Syria to Libya and Afghanistan, the US is involved in geostrategic wars and conflicts, which, aside from resource plunder, are increasingly fueled by a crisis of capitalism: war and militarism are the defining features of advanced capitalism as it increasingly struggles to find much profit in little else.
When you have nothing else to offer the public – only living under the tyranny of a dying capitalism – repeating the mantra ‘there is no alternative’ and instilling fear is all that’s left. And, if it is not about Putin or some other made up threat, it is about Jeremy Corbyn.
When your policies have already jeopardized national security by inflicting terror on other countries; when you have already sold the economy to the lowest bidder and have attacked welfare, unions and livelihoods; when you have allowed massive levels of tax evasion/avoidance; when you and your neoliberal policies have allowed national and personal debt to spiral; when you have driven up the cost of living by handing over public assets to profiteering cartels; when you have flittered away taxpayers money to banks; when you allowed the richest 1,000 people in the UK to increase their wealth by 50% in 2009 alone while you impose ‘austerity’ on everyone else – then what else can you offer but to roll out a good old dose of fear mongering about Corbyn simply because you have no actual argument?
Conservative Party hypocrisy and crony capitalism
Owen Paterson
Although certainly not exclusive to the Conservative Party, given how New Labour operated, hypocrisy and crony capitalism come natural to it. Millionaire Owen Paterson, a sitting MP and former environment, food and rural affairs minister, was a member of David Cameron’s cabinet of millionaires. The Conservatives have been for decades waging a war on working people in the UK, which is currently sold as ‘austerity’. And the outcome has been predictable.
See this about rising food poverty and increasing reliance on food banks in the UK. See this about the five richest families in Britain being worth more than the poorest 20%. See this about one third of Britain’s population being in poverty.
According to this report, almost 18 million people cannot afford adequate housing conditions; 12 million are too poor to engage in common social activities; one in three cannot afford to heat their homes adequately in winter; and four million children and adults are not properly fed (Britain’s population is estimated at 63 to 64 million).
Welfare cuts have pushed hundreds of thousands below the poverty line since 2012, including more than 300,000 children.
But Paterson really feels the pain of the poor – in faraway lands that is. He will even travel around the world to attend conferences to shout about his concern for the poor on behalf of transnational agribusiness interests. His indifference to poverty in the UK is in marked contrast to his concern about the poor abroad. The indifference suddenly becomes transformed only when there is an opportunity to line the pockets of the global agritech companies.
Then there is Liam Fox who belongs to Theresa May’s cabinet. Writing in The Guardian, George Monbiot describes how a discredited Fox has been central to cementing firm links with US corporate interests via The Heritage Foundation. The story Monbiot outlines is one of Fox’s associations with US banking, oil, agribusiness, pharmaceutical and tobacco interests which have pursued an ultra-conservative economic agenda based on deregulation and the capturing of legislative processes.
Monbiot notes that The Heritage Foundation is now at the heart of Trump’s administration. Under Theresa May, the trade treaties that Fox is charged with could plug the UK into US food and environmental standards, which tend to be lower than Britain’s and will become lower still if Trump gets his way.
Monbiot concludes that this is part of what Brexit was about: European laws protecting the public interest were portrayed by Conservative eurosceptics as intolerable intrusions on corporate freedom. Taking back control from Europe means closer integration with the US. The transatlantic special relationship is based on political and corporate power. That power is cemented by the networks Fox helped to develop.