A united Britain for progress

The ruling class drive to dissolve and divide Britain is a decades-long, never-ending enterprise. And yet they have not succeeded. It’s time for workers to push back. 

The new prime minister, the seventh in a decade, shows all the signs that he wants to continue and accelerate this attack and to peddle the same snake oil on both devolution and the relationship with the EU. 

Workers are not getting a say in any of these decisions. Since the Leave vote the ruling class have learned the lesson that they can’t afford for workers to have their say. Instead they pursue their plans by stealth and deception.

Workers who want an independent future for Britain, not as a US puppet or an EU appendage, have to learn lessons from the past decade too.

We have to find ways of forcing working class needs and wishes to the fore. And that means more than embarrassing the parliamentary incumbents occasionally at the ballot box, satisfying as that is.

Further devolution within Britain and sneaking back into the orbit of the EU are not change, they are ruling class continuity. Yet all that Burnham offers is more of the same, more devolution, more devotion to the EU.

Promising local mayors a slice of income tax receipts offers nothing for the future of Britain. Whenever more devolution is offered – as to Scotland in 2012 – it’s a political calculation by the government of the day to remain in power.

‘Devolution – to English mayors or would-be parliaments for Wales and Scotland – tries to create an image of local power, more responsive to people’s needs. They don’t create any more resources to tackle local issues, and arguably eat up resources with the overhead cost of yet another layer of government.

The weight of debt facing local councils and the lack of funds for essential services are real and urgent issues. They won’t be solved with vanity projects and grandiose plans, which tend to be the hallmark of devolved government. Frequently changing structures, with token consultation, mitigate against any effective local influence.

The strategy on getting closer to the EU is to hold talks and make legislation with little scrutiny – trying to walk around Brexit. The strategy for the internal government of Britain is to split responsibility so there’s no effective point of political leverage.

And when Britain’s many needs demand a long-term strategic approach – not least on energy, manufacturing, health, education and food – localism offers short term and partial solutions at best.

And localism is in many cases an illusion. Angela Rayner, before and after her political reincarnation, continued the policy of her Conservative predecessor on planning – making it much harder for local objections to housing or wind and solar power plants to be effective. The SNP-led Holyrood government has done much the same with Scottish local authorities.

This makes the task of asserting and securing an independent Britain all the harder and more urgent.

Every time the working class makes progress, as with the referendums on Scottish independence and leaving the EU, the ruling class makes a counterattack. Sometimes it’s overt, at other times more subtle, but always persistent and unrelenting. 

Local control might sound positive. But in reality it’s the opposite, a means of putting distance between the rulers and the ruled.

The lamentable track record of the devolved administrations in Cardiff and Edinburgh is only the symptom. The failure of devolved government is structural. And the same political weakness that buys into localism also claims subservience to the EU as progress.

Just as devolution within England was imposed, and the 2014 Unity vote in Scotland was undermined, the EU and its advocates never accepted the Leave vote. 

Real power isn’t devolved. Devolution just makes it harder for people to challenge and change what’s happening. Progress for Britain doesn’t come as the gift of the EU.

Fight for the unity of Britain! Fight against the dissolution of our nation from within or without! That’s the way to progress.