Brexit Britannia: The Kingdom of Capital

Editor's note: This is the opening chapter from my new book, The Flagging Empire, a collection of writings tracing the evolution of British capitalism and its attempts to reconfigure its place within new parameters of 21st century imperialism. The book is available on all Amazon platforms. Go to the Home page for a direct link to the book and Amazon purchases.

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Welcome to Brexit Britain! The scene is Epping, London, and anti-immigrant demonstrators have gathered outside a hotel housing asylum seekers. It is one of many such actions across the UK organised by rightist groups such as Patriotic Alternative and the Homeland Party. Their target is not the government or the local authorities, but oppressed people from other countries seeking a half-decent life free from war, famine and poverty.

 The violent character and jingoist tone of these actions are frequently accompanied by the use of the reactionary nationalist anthem, Rule Britannia.  Together with the Edward Elgar classic, Land of Hope and Glory, both these songs are broadcast annually by the BBC as part of the grand finale to the Proms concert held at the Albert Hall –itself an iconic tribute to imperial grandeur.

The contrast could hardly be greater: on the one hand, you have throngs of middle and upper class devotees of classical music, gathered together in one of the nation’s wealthiest boroughs, merrily swigging their flutes of champagne and Pimms. On the other side are mostly working class residents of marginalised, run-down communities, who can barely afford the price of a pint of beer or a pack of cigarettes.

This is but one expression of a gaping class divide, deliberately obscured by a broad array of capitalist politicians who seek to convince workers that their interests and those of the British state are somehow identical.

With nearly every parliamentary party engaging in one-upmanship over who is the true defender of Britain’s borders, the ultra-right, led by figures such as Tommy Robinson, is having a field day. After all, it was the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, who opened the sluice gates with his speech warning that Britons were becoming “strangers in their own country”.

Little wonder then that Tommy Robinson’s “unite the kingdom” march and rally, on September 13, was able to attract around 150,000 people – the biggest far-right rally ever seen in Britain.

At the core of all this is the deepest social crisis that British capitalism has witnessed in nearly a century, coinciding with an attempt by Britain’s billionaire rulers to reposition themselves in a world that has changed so dramatically since the end of the 20^th century.

Brexit was the clearest expression of this dual crisis and the beginning of a political shift characterised by an increasingly shrill xenophobic narrative. Even before Trump, the underlying theme of this was to make Britain great again via tougher border controls and economic decision-making independent of laws governed by Brussels. Free trade was not the issue.

Brexit mythology

Despite all the hullabaloo, the UK’s withdrawal from the EU did not in itself induce any serious trauma. Even the mini crisis over the Northern Ireland border issue proved to be episodic. The scope and significance of this is best viewed historically

When Britain finally joined the EU’s predecessor, the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973 - sixteen years after its creation - and signed up to the Maastricht treaty 20 years later in 1992, it was never heralded as the consummation of an eternal romance. Certainly, on the UK side, there was no passion for giving birth to a new European superstate revolving around a Franco-German axis. 

The rule of thumb under capitalism has always been screw or be screwed, and it was this historical necessity that edged British capitalism’s ageing empire into a marital bed where Germany and France clearly held the whip hand.

The decision to opt out of the European Monetary Union demonstrated the fragility of the relationship almost from the outset. In essence, it was a kind of pre-nuptial agreement guaranteeing the UK’s financial independence as the world's biggest banking and foreign exchange market.

Britannia no longer ruled the waves, but the City certainly ruled the roost of high-flying finance.  It was not going to be governed by a European Central Bank favouring the interests of German and French capital. The 2008 financial crisis underscored this need for a completely independent monetary policy.

The economic advantages of being part of a free trade zone were undeniable, allowing the UK to also act as a conduit for US interests in Europe. However, the additional role imposed by Washington added extra strain. British capitalism simply did not have the legs for it, and it was only a matter of time before it upped anchor and steered its own course.

 Economically speaking, Brexit did not radically alter British capitalism’s relationship with the EU. Apart from adding a huge layer of bureaucracy imposed by a vast regulatory landscape, the subsequent five-year trade deficit was already part of a pattern that predated Brexit for decades. This is evidenced by the fact that the UK began to run up a deficit almost immediately after it signed up to the EEC.

This reflected the brutal reality that British based manufacturing was already unable to compete with its capitalist rivals in France and Germany. During the entire interval between Maastricht (1992) and Brexit referendum of 2016, the UK consistently imported more from the EU than it exported. The exception to this was in financial services, which had become a cornerstone of Britain’s continued imperial ambitions.

Then, as today, the EU remains Britain’s largest trading partner. The 2025 Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) codified this with its continuation of a zero-tariff, zero-quota regime conditional upon the provenance of all goods being proven to be exclusively from the UK.

Certainly, from a working class standpoint, there was no advantage to either leaving or remaining. If anything, the austerity policies following the 2008 financial meltdown were worse as part of the EU, and was the decisive factor fueling much of the popular support for Brexit. Many workers thought that exiting the EU would assuage this crisis, but bitter experience has demonstrated otherwise.

 Either way, the working class suffered from a huge rise in the cost of living, a substantial loss of its purchasing power, a perennial housing shortage and a deterioration of health and social services.  With the economy flatlining and burdened by unprecedented levels of public debt, the stage was set for a sweeping Labour victory at the polls.

The changing face of British capitalism

Despite its vague promise of change, the newly elected Labour government revealed just how deeply rooted the social and economic crisis was.

Starmer’s decision to maintain the two-child benefit cap and withdraw the winter fuel allowance for pensioners meant that millions of workers were immediately forced to tighten their belts even further. It was the same old song with an even more baleful tune: whilst millionaires and billionaires were multiplying their fortunes, the UK witnessed a surge in baby banks to fill a huge gap in the provision of essentials such as nappies, formula, and clothing for those on or below the poverty line.

Labour’s attempt at reversing the economic crisis banked on a strict fiscal regime tied to an ill-defined growth.  Given British capitalism’s historic decline, this was a labour of Sisyphus if ever there was one. In the first year in office, quarterly economic growth averaged just 0.35%, with the Bank of England forecasting the same again for 2026. The scale of this challenge can best be appreciated when we consider the UK’s global position.

Measured by both GDP as well as banking assets and liabilities, British capitalism is the 6^th largest economy in the world. This is despite a drastic decline in UK manufacturing from 30 per cent of its GDP in 1970 to just 8 per cent in 2024. Compared with China in particular, this sea change in fortunes is registered in their respective share of global exports. Whereas the UK share in 2022 was valued at $1.045 trillion*, China’s share was three times that amount. Moreover, a large chunk of the UK figure was accounted for by service exports (such as financial services, accounting, marketing, etc), amounting to $515 billion USD.

The last 30 years have seen a marked shift in the modus operandi of the global economy, whereby primary manufacturing has been outsourced to semi-colonial (Third World) countries where labour costs and their means of reproduction are substantially lower. The consequence of this has been a parallel process of deindustrialisation in the advanced capitalist countries of the West.  

The UK’s deindustrialisation, however, is only partly conditioned by this global trend. Big capital has by and large completely abandoned investment in coal, steel and car manufacturing. Even privatisation did not fundamentally revive its fortunes, as overseas capital took over water, electricity, gas, transport and telecom industries.

As of 2024, the UK was the 3^rd largest car importer in the world, most of them coming from both EU countries, acting as home to Japanese, German, French and US manufacturers. Even the iconic brands such as Rolls-Royce, Mini, Land Rover and BMW are owned and produced by German or Indian companies.

This dismal performance of British manufacturing capital is even more dire when it comes to the steel industry. The UK’s main steel plants in Port Talbot, Scunthorpe, Sheffield and Teeside are owned by Chinese and Indian companies.  However, even these companies serve just a small part of the UK’s manufacturing industry. For the most part, the UK steel consumption is comprised of imports, which amounted in 2024 to between 68 to 82 per cent.

This is not due primarily to the loss of empire. In the post-war economic boom, the British car industry was at the heart of a thriving industrial economy alongside coal, steel and engineering. The truth is British capital in these sectors simply could not compete with its overseas rivals and sought more lucrative outlets. Privatisation and deindustrialisation went hand in hand in the false belief that a lightweight Britannia could stay afloat more easily.

The Thatcher government’s Stock Market Big Bang of October 1986 was a pivotal moment in this respect. Its deregulation of the stock exchange created a bonanza moment, a time when capitalists became dazzled by the short term gains to be made from electronic trading.  As the volume of trading surged from $4.5 billion to $7.4 billion, some 1500 millionaires were created almost overnight.

This feeding frenzy turned London into a financial capital to rival New York. For the billionaire barons of finance it was like a dream come true but for millions of workers, the subsequent deindustrialisation would become a social nightmare.

As manufacturing shed some 60 per cent of employment, former industrial areas of South Yorkshire, Lancashire, the Midlands, Tyne & Wear, South Wales and the west of Scotland, which were once the beating heart of imperial supremacy, became virtual wastelands. Gone were the mines, the shipyards, the steel mills and the car factories, as well as the associated engineering works producing the tools and the nuts and bolts of an industrial economy.

The so-called regeneration of these areas with new leisure, sports and catering services could not conceal the utter devastation which this process inflicted. As pubs and shops closed, entire communities were starved of what little oxygen they once had.

In tandem with the sale-of-the-century privatisation of all public utilities, council housing was also sold off at bargain basement prices. On the other hand, youth, health and social services were run down, precisely at a time when the rising rates of homelessness, poverty and drug addiction depended more upon them.

The contrasting fortunes of British labour and British capital throughout the past 40 years are a direct consequence of the contradictions that governed the evolution of British imperialism.

Even at its peak, the British empire did not structure its economy exclusively around manufacturing. Finance capital was always at its centre. It was the big banks, insurance firms and trading companies primarily in the City of London, that managed vast flows of capital and served as the financial heart of the British Empire and the Sterling area,.

To a large extent, the expertise and financial networks established during its heyday gave the City a leg-up in its re-emergence as a powerful rival to its New York and Tokyo competitors. This is reflected in the City’s current stock of financial assets estimated in 2025 at somewhere between £4.5 to £5.5 trillion, compared to New York City’s figure of £6.5-£7.5 trillion. This has given the City an edge over Tokyo and a commanding lead over Frankfurt and Paris as centres of finance capital.  

A crucial part of this is the offshore system, which has become a fundamental pillar of Britain’s economic model. The City of London benefits immensely from the trillions in global capital that flow through this offshore network. This is part of its imperial legacy, including most notably the Cayman and British Virgin Islands, which provide an invaluable shelter against tax and regulatory restrictions.  

In total, Britain’s empire of finance capital is estimated to be around £28–30 trillion, the equivalent of more than ten times the value of the UK’s public sector debt of £2.7 trillion.  Despite this, finance capital’s contribution to the public purse accounts for around £208 billion, a meagre 0.74 per cent of its overall value.

This fact alone serves to illustrate the scam represented by a taxation system that barely touches the vast inequalities in wealth that have always underpinned British imperialism. It also puts into sharp relief the way immigration is used to divide British workers and divert them from challenging the true source of homelessness and poverty.  

From big bang to big bust

Thatcher’s ‘big bang’ was predicated upon this domination of finance capital and its seemingly endless capacity for expansion when left to its own devices. However, it did not take long before the inherent contradictions of this boom-and-bust cycle rose to the surface. The 2008 financial crisis seemed to appear from nowhere, with no warning. That it did not quite reach tsunami proportions was due primarily to the reserves accumulated during the post-war boom. As the Bank of England stepped in to bail out the failing banks - on a scale far exceeding that of the European Central Bank - it did so at a tremendous cost. In the first instance, it triggered a seismic shift in UK government debt and borrowing.  Public sector net debt spiralled from 36% of GDP in 2007 to 70% by 2012, before rising to an astonishing 85% in 2019.

It was the then Labour chancellor, Gordon Brown, who was in the saddle as the state rode to the rescue of the banks. It was under Labour that the financial feeding frenzy had become a raging bonfire of vanities. The subsequent age of austerity, inaugurated by the 2010 Tory-Lib Dem coalition, was a direct consequence of that. All three parties acted to defend the empire of capital and the working class would be made to pay for it.

 Besides the swingeing cuts to spending on vital services, workers saw a dramatic decline in their purchasing power. Such is the legacy of that period that British capitalism today boasts the ninth highest level of income inequality amongst the world’s biggest economies. This was registered in 2022 by a record total of 177 UK billionaires living in the lap of luxury whilst nearly 4 million workers faced destitution.

A new feature was added to this miserable landscape with the emergence of food banks as a primary source of everyday survival for workers. These had a very modest beginning as a small church-led project initiated by the Trussell Trust. However, what started with just one food bank in 2000 skyrocketed to around 4000 by 2024.

The scope of this can be gleaned from the estimated 9 million people who are currently vulnerable to reliance on charity food handouts. Out of all those people  facing hunger and hardship, some 58% of them were in a household where at least one person was working. This should come as no great surprise, given the 2024 TUC (Trades Union Congress) report showing that workers' earnings were still below pre-2008 levels, by as much as 23 per cent in some regions.

The power of finance capital is frequently seen as extraneous to the “normal” or “productive” sectors of the capitalist economy. This leads some to view it as purely parasitic when in fact it has always been integral to the development of monopoly capitalism, both during the heyday of the British empire and after its demise.

  British finance capital was and is at the heart of the UK’s status as the sixth richest nation in the world. Not only does it serve industrial capitalist development throughout the world economy, but it has also become an indispensable part of Britain’s balance of trade. This is reflected in the international bond trading business that saw the UK as the location for some 70 per cent of global business.

This connection between “money” and manufacturing capital in the 21^st century is explained by Tony Norfield in his excellent book, The City, 

The distinction between the different ways in which capital is invested does not imply that ‘financial capitalists’ are a different group of people or a different class in society. All big capitalists tend to become money-capitalists.  The active capitalists, using their own funds in their own enterprise, as depicted in the cartoons of the fat, cigar-chomping, nineteenth century industrialist, who Marx named Moneybags, have little relevance in today’s financial markets. (The City, pp 78, Verso, 2016)

An outstanding example of this can be seen in the mini empire of Sir James Ratcliffe, CEO of INEOS and the seventh richest man in the UK with a personal fortune of over £17 billion. Leaving aside his other interests,  Ineos alone is a global petrochemicals giant with  $65–68 billion in annual revenue, operating across 29 countries.

However, even INEOS is known for using large-scale leveraged financing to fund acquisitions and projects rather than relying solely on retained earnings.  It does this partly through high yield bonds sold through special-purpose financing subsidiaries e.g., INEOS Finance plc, INEOS Group Holdings.  INEOS then hires large investment banks such as Barclays, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and so on, as bookrunners to structure the bond terms and market them to investors.

The mechanics of this are only interesting insofar as they illustrate how finance and industrial capital are intertwined, all the more so on a global level where British capital is still capable of outmuscling the vast majority of other capitalist nations.

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British imperialism versus Indian capitalism

Nobody would question the fact that British imperialism was severely wounded in World War II.  Its once mighty imperial navy and Royal Air Force gave way to a US colossus whose enormous industrial power far outweighed that of Great Britain. The resurgence of the defeated powers – Germany and Japan – added to this changing global landscape, one that has been complicated even further by the restoration of capitalism in Russia, Eastern Europe and China.

In terms of its world ranking by GDP, British capitalism  currently holds sixth place.  Even India is ahead according to this base criterion.  On the surface, therefore, it might seem that  Britain's former colony has now overtaken the UK as a global power. However, the mere fact that India is not part of the G7 grouping shows that GDP alone cannot account for a country’s true position and role in the world.

 India today continues to suffer from its former colonial status and remains a net importer of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Its outgoing FDI for 2024, calculated at $29.2 billion, seems more than impressive for a Third World country.  Nevertheless, this pales into insignificance when compared to the UK figure for the same period which was $1.85 trillion, i.e., 63 times larger, even though India’s share of global GDP was more than five times that of the UK.

Despite its phenomenal growth, the strength of Indian capitalism is conditioned by its place in an imperialist world order, regulated by the World Bank and IMF whose principal donors are the USA, the UK, Germany, France, China, Russia and Japan. These are the capitalist powers that call the shots in shaping the future of the semicolonial (Third World) countries and lesser capitalist nations such as Greece and Portugal.

An important feature of British imperialism’s continuing global ambitions is its military expenditure, which far outstrips that of India by a significant margin. Superficially, this may not seem the case, given that India’s military budget of £64.41 billion exceeds that of Britain’s, which is £56.9 billion. However, the real measure of this is per head of the population, and this shows that the UK spends over 17 times more per person on “defence” than India. Like Britain, India too is a nuclear power but spends just 3 per cent of its military budget on nuclear weapons in comparison with the UK’s 14 per cent. A similar discrepancy exists in arms exports, where the UK’s share of the global total (3 per cent) is 15 times greater than that of India at just 0.2 per cent.

The contrast between these two capitalist powers is not just about the size of their economies. It reflects the continuing role of British capitalism as an imperialist power that contributes towards and benefits from the impoverishment of the semi-colonial world.

Bring me the island of Diego Garcia

The preeminent role of British finance capital, partnered by an increasingly aggressive military profile, is at the heart of an attempt to recover at least some of the ground lost to the USA during and after the last world war. This helps explain why the UK has repeatedly upped its war readiness, particularly with increased spending on high tech naval and air power, using the vestiges of its old empire to patrol far flung regions of strategic economic interest.

 As the May 2025 deal over Diego Garcia clearly reveals, preserving these imperialist outposts is vital, regardless of the immediate costs.

Diego Garcia is an island in the Chagos archipelago, which the British government separated from Mauritius in 1965, creating a new colony in Africa known as the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). This dismemberment of Mauritian territory prior to the latter’s independence in 1968, was carried out at the behest of Washington and involved the forced displacement of the islands’ population to make way for the British colonial administration of US military facilities.

The UK itself has no fighter or bomber jets there. It is part of a post-war deal whereby the remnants of empire are used to bolster Britain’s junior partnership with the USA. The island’s military infrastructure is overwhelmingly dominated by the United States, which operates long-range bombers, surveillance aircraft, and naval logistics from the base.

The final ceding of sovereignty back to Mauritius includes the central provision that the island of Diego Garcia would be leased back to the UK for at least 99 years. Westminster will now pay £101 million per year as part of a lease arrangement which gives the UK complete operational control over the island, including veto power over any development within a 24-mile buffer zone.

Diego Garcia is situated in a strategically vital area of the Indian Ocean, with military flight times of 3 hours to the Gulf States and 5.5 hours to Beijing. It is part of the UK’s sizeable overseas possessions which continue to act as crucial outposts for both US and British imperialism’s capacity to strike at its enemies. These are supplemented by UK military bases in Cyprus, Oman, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirate, Jordan and Qatar, all of which are predicated upon a strategic partnership with the reactionary oil sheikhs in the region.

For King and Country: Labour’s social patriotism

When Labour gained a landslide victory in the 2024 general election, albeit with a lower share of the popular vote than that of Jeremy Corbyn in 2019, it did so with a vague promise to ease what has probably been the greatest social crisis since the 1930s. Having sidelined the Corbynista wing of the party with barely a whisper of opposition, Starmer proceeded to demonstrate the true nature of the Labour Party, not just as an instrument of capitalist rule but one which was steeped in the most reactionary traditions of Union and Empire.

It was Lenin who first labelled this as social patriotism, i.e., socialist in name but fundamentally patriotic by nature. Bearing in mind that the Labour Party has supported British imperialism in every single war from 1914 through to 2025, Lenin’s description has been totally vindicated.

Both at its conferences and at virtually every government event, the Labour leadership has raised the Union Jack as a mandatory part of its public communication. Whether it be Starmer himself or one of his cronies, the flag of Union and Empire is omnipresent. 

The import of this US style of bourgeois politics  -  where the  Stars and Stripes and Presidential portrait have a mandatory place in almost every public building - is a new development in the UK. The Tory government attempted something similar in the wake of King Charles’ coronation when it offered a free official portrait of His Royal Highness to tens of thousands of public institutions.

Things did not go quite according to plan though, when it was subsequently revealed that some 46,000 public bodies had declined the offer. So, who and how many institutions actually accepted the offer? The Guardian newspaper attempted to discover this using a Freedom of Information request to the new Labour government. Starmer’s Cabinet Office stonewalled the request on the grounds that it was against the public interest to reveal such information.

This was unpalatable even for the noted royal historian, Dr Ed Owens, who could not help but declare,

The Cabinet Office seems to be playing an active role in seeking to protect the reputation of the monarchy … they are clearly anxious about this kind of information being used to discredit and to further undermine the monarchy’s public image. 

Given that an earlier YouGov poll had revealed a steady decline in public support for the monarchy between 2019 and 2024, Owen’s observation was not without foundation.

Royal capitalism

The monarchy itself, nurtured by centuries of imperial plunder, is the perfect standard bearer of the British ruling class’s wealth and ambition. Aside from all its feudal trappings, this mediaeval relic enjoys a family fortune in excess of £3 billion. This does not include the host of official palaces, ancient crowns, various castles, or the army of servants, both civil and domestic that serve this reactionary institution.

The latter is paid for in the form of the Sovereign Grant whose value  is pegged to the profits from the Crown Estate (the inherited wealth of the monarchy). So, the more profits made from this vast estate, the more the monarchy receives for its so-called Royal duties. This meant that the Sovereign Grant for 2025-2026 was set to rise by more than 50 per cent to £132.1 million, a staggering £45 million increase over the previous year.

 Behind the monarchy’s feudal trappings can be found a thoroughly modern capitalist family, creaming off profits from their inherited wealth. The King and his heir are proprietors of the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall. These are home to vast swathes of farmland, hotels, medieval castles, offices, shops and some of London’s prime real estate. In Scotland alone, the Royal family boast 19 residencies in vast landed estates of forests, rivers, mountains and agricultural lands. The total spread of these Scottish holdings is estimated at 287,000 acres.

To be sure, Their Royal Highnesses can be counted amongst Britain’s most modern magnates. Alongside the non-dom giants such as Amazon and Google, King Charles also enjoys the privilege of not having to pay any taxes: not bad considering that he and his late mother had received payments to the tune of £1billion from their two estates.The sniveling obeisance offered to this medieval institution by all the parliamentary parties is part of a long tradition of class rule. 

Hinduja with Prince Charles

The British Raj has long gone, but the monarchy remains as an emblem of empire, where the number of UK  billionaires has increased more than tenfold from fifteen in 1990 to one hundred and fifty six in 2025. 

Topping this list – with a personal fortune of some £35 billion – is the Indian born Gopi Hinduja, heading a multinational conglomerate with global business interests in vehicles, banking, energy, IT, and health care.

A shaky union

Labour’s devout monarchism, together with its brash display of the flag of Empire, is not an exhibition of confidence or strength. Rather, it comes at a time of considerable uncertainty, when the fault lines of imperial decline have shaken the foundations of the Union at its very core.

The devolution measures of the 1990s, giving Wales and Scotland a measure of home rule, were already a sign that the old ruling class could not continue to rule in the old way. Then, after almost 30 years of waging a counter-insurgency war in Northern Ireland, the Good Friday agreement brought a definitive end to the Loyalist monolith, that had served the Union so well.

In Scotland, a large part of the capitalist class, which had willingly hitched its wagon to the train of empire, saw its fortunes lying closer to home. The Scottish working class also saw an opportunity to gain some leverage, both socially and culturally, by turning its back on the staunchly unionist Scottish Labour Party. 

The 2014 Scottish independence referendum saw a record-breaking 84.6% turnout — the highest ever for a major UK-wide or devolved vote since universal suffrage. The prospect of Scottish independence provoked such a panic that Washington and NATO felt obliged to throw their not inconsiderable weight behind Westminster. Even the Vatican stepped in, with Pope Francis warning against “divisions”.

In these circumstances, and given the English ruling class’s virtual monopoly of Scottish media output, the nearly 45 per cent of those who voted yes was a startling revelation of a yearning for independence, fueled in large measure by the years of austerity.

The powers that breathed a huge sigh of relief. Had the result gone the other way, the dismemberment of the Union would have been catastrophic. With Northern Ireland waiting its turn, Westminster – and possibly NATO - could have lost immediate access to the North Atlantic seaboard. That would have been in addition to the economic damage inflicted by the loss of some 10 million barrels of oil and gas from the North Sea.

Brexit threatened no such calamity, but it did serve to underscore the national inequalities at the heart of the Union. The majority of people in both Northern Ireland and Scotland had voted against Brexit, but this mattered not one iota. The boundaries of devolution were clearly limited, and the decision was final.

The bourgeois nationalism of the SNP and Sinn Féin

Despite the growing popular support for independence, the SNP and Sinn Féin have been content to work within the boundaries set by Westminster. Both parties are advocates of the capitalist system, albeit one with a more human face. However, this has not stopped them from implementing neoliberal measures, including favourable tax regimes for overseas investors.

Both the Scottish and the Northern Ireland economies are an integral part of the same UK capitalist system that is responsible for austerity, homelessness and increased poverty. As such, the SNP is being punished by huge electoral losses, which, whilst not on the scale of the collapse of the Tory vote, is leading to a partial revival of unionism.

It remains to be seen whether this same process will be repeated in Ireland. Sinn Féin had already shared power with a Stormont government that oversaw the highest levels of deprivation compared to anywhere else in the UK. Nevertheless, it has yet to be put to the test as a majority governing party on either side of the border.

Its ministers in the north have signed off on private companies building and managing schools, and have called for a big cut to corporation tax. Echoing this is Sinn Féin’s finance spokesman in the 26 counties, Pearse Doherty. It was he who proudly came to the defence of the multinational companies which have consistently benefited from cheap labour and generous tax relief, both of which are features of Ireland’s continuing status as a dependent country.

Although the prospects for Scottish independence and Irish unity seem remote, the spectre of the disintegration of the Union still haunts the English establishment. Starmer’s outright refusal to grant referenda in either Ireland or Scotland within the lifetime of the new parliament is part of a policy of bolstering the Union. This, after all, is the ship of empire and all its gunnery portholes need to be at the ready as it sets course for new conquests.

Ukraine and British rearmament

Before Donald Trump’s pressure on Europe to shoulder a bigger portion of NATO’s budget, Westminster had already upped its military spending by a record £16.5 billion. The year was 2020 and as tens of thousands of British citizens were falling victim to Covid, the government of Boris Johnson announced the largest military investment in 30 years.

This was in addition to existing plans and represented a 10–15% real-terms uplift on the annual Ministry of Defence budget. Starmer supported this at the time and has now ramped up military spending even further, pledging a total  5% of GDP by 2035. The EU has followed suit, citing the Russian war on Ukraine and general global instability as harbingers of a potential threat to European and UK security.

The idea that Russia represents a threat to the rest of Europe and the UK, is just a smokescreen. Despite its long history of imperial grandeur and conquest, Russia has never tried to invade Britain - or any other western European country for that matter - not once, not then and not now. Moreover, three years have passed since Russia first attempted to invade Ukraine, and still it is bogged down in a war with no victory in sight. The idea that Russia represents a clear and present danger to the combined forces of Germany, France, Britain and the 24 other countries of the EU is clearly ludicrous. So, what is this all about?

 The historical decline of British imperialism is not absolute. Britannia may have been breached and is taking in water, but it is far from suffering the same fate as the Titanic. British imperialism still has global economic ambitions, with some of the most advanced air and naval weapons systems capable of defending and advancing its and Washington’s interests.  The Falklands war, in which UK naval power was tested by a distance of some 8,000 miles, was a reminder of this – as is the continued presence of the UK-led Carrier Strike Group (CSG) throughout the Indo-Pacific region.

It is noteworthy that Starmer’s first significant tranche of investment in new military hardware was the purchase - at a cost of  £1billion - of 12 US F-35A long range jets that can deliver  tactical nuclear weapons,

These include the US B61-12 gravity bomb, a variant of which has the explosive power of more than three times the weapon dropped on Hiroshima. Alongside the Trident programme, these are inherently offensive weapons carrying the threat of complete obliteration

As things stand, there is no clear target or timeline for the use of such deadly force. However, as part of Westminster’s new lexicon of “war readiness” and preparation for “high intensity conflict”, the menace of China looms large. In the 2025 Strategic Defence Review, Westminster characterises China as a “sophisticated and persistent challenge” to British interests. This helps explain why the CSG has been deployed in the Indian and Pacific oceans, carrying out joint exercises with India, Japan, Australia and the USA.

However inept and incoherent as Trump may appear, his MAGA project marks a rational, albeit radical, shift in US capitalism’s strategic overview of its global position vis-à-vis its Chinese, Russian and European rivals. This reflects a weakening of its own position in a world economy whose global GDP in 2009 contracted for the first time since WWII and from which it has never recovered. According to the World Bank, global growth in the 2020s is on track to be the slowest of any decade since the 1960s, averaging just 2.5%.

With China knocking on the door of US economic hegemony, Trump has been forced to downsize Washington’s role as world cop. The attempted rapprochement with Putin is best understood in that context. With no end in sight to the war, a deal with Putin to carve up Ukraine offered some immediate economic benefits and the deployment of military resources elsewhere. The fact that Putin did not want to play ball and used Trump’s retreat to escalate the war only confirms the weakening of US global hegemony.

This pivot towards Putin caught France, Germany and the UK – not to mention Ukraine itself - quite unawares. It not only upped the ante over who would benefit most from the post-war division of spoils in Ukraine, it also forced his European rivals to put more in the pot for financing NATO’s global operations.

Amongst the proverbial pigs around the trough, the UK has been at the forefront of a charm offensive towards Zelensky. This led to a 13.2% increase in trade in 2024 alone and has been accompanied by substantial financial packages including £billions in both military and non-military assistance.  The UK is already the fourth largest investor in Ukraine and plans are afoot for substantial private sector investment in a post-war deregulated economy.

As Washington steps back slightly from its role as world cop and demands the EU assume greater responsibility for NATO funding, Westminster has been the frontrunner in raising projected military spending. As of 2024, Britain already ranked third in total military spending - after the USA and Germany - amongst all NATO members. It was the first to announce the projected increase of 5 per cent of GDP

It seems clear, therefore, that Starmer is intent on both retaining and strengthening Westminster’s bargaining position as Washington’s junior partner. To be sure, UK firepower can never be the same, but whilst it may no longer be the ferocious rottweiler it once was, British imperialism today is nobody’s poodle.

Internationalism versus social patriotism

The various attempts to revive the ailing fortunes of Britannia, have still to be met with any serious resistance from a labour movement that was gutted following the defeat of the miners in 1985 and the print workers in 1987, both year-long strikes that marked a watershed moment in British politics.

Union membership had already begun to decline as key industries started to fold, but the defeat of these strikes accelerated the process whereby union membership went from 13.2 million in 1979 to just 6.4 million in 2024. More significantly, this coincided with a decline in labour militancy.

The union brass refused to defy  Thatcher’s anti-union laws, hoping instead for a better deal under a new Labour government. That was not forthcoming and in the 30 years from 1990 through to Covid, the number of annual days lost due to strike action witnessed a dramatic decline from almost 2 million to just 273,000.

The post-COVID period saw a significant revival in labour militancy. Driven mainly by nurses, doctors, train drivers and teachers, the number of days lost to strike action skyrocketed to a peak of 2.51 million and 2.66 million in 2022 and 2023 respectively.

These figures are indicative of a changing mood amongst millions of workers. However, as working people struggle to feed, clothe and house themselves, and working farmers are driven to the wall, the British working class still lacks an anti-capitalist political alternative to a system that exploits and oppresses it.

As all the traditional parties continue to trumpet the outworn values of Empire and Union, it is little wonder that the far right, represented by Reform, has been able to exploit the vacuum.  As in many other parts of Europe, the traditional two-party system in the UK is becoming increasingly fractured. Besides the sizeable number of Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationalist MPs, there is a small bevy of Green Reform and independent MPs.

This growing split within bourgeois politics has yet to reach French proportions, but it is a foretaste of the deepening crisis that faces many capitalist countries in Europe - such as France, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Greece and Poland – where the old capitalist parties are being or have been displaced.  With the possible exception of France, this is not yet based on a fighting labour movement.

The Labour left, since the days of Michael Foot and Tony Benn, has always been wedded to Westminster and the Union. Indeed, it was the Labour government, with Tony Benn in the Cabinet, that first sent the troops into Ireland to protect the Unionist monolith.

When the Labour Party was founded, it was anchored to a trades union movement actively fighting for workers' rights.  This gave it a unique character as a party of the working class.  At the time, it was affiliated to the Second International whose German and British parties proclaimed their unswerving commitment to proletarian internationalism,

It was not long before these sister parties of the Second International were at each other’s throats and joined with their respective rulers in the first inter-imperialist war of 1914-18. That Labour treachery and its ensuing slaughterhouse is today celebrated by Corbyn, as it has been by every Labour leader before and since.

Corbyn joining chorus of pattriotic celebration of First World War

Faced with a similar conflict today, and especially in light of Corbyn’s support for Britain in both world wars, there is no indication that his new party would not pursue a similar course.

In its founding declaration, the Your Party – as it is currently being branded – takes aim at some of the ills of British society. At no point does it distance itself from the basic institutions of the Union and Empire:  the monarchy, the House of Lords, Westminster and the ongoing partition of Ireland are not within its sights.

Despite railing against the most extreme forms of class privilege and rule, there is not the slightest hint of building a mass popular movement to take on the billionaire class that rules the UK.   Instead, the solution is posed in the following terms:

 We will only fix the crises in our society with a mass redistribution of wealth and power. That means taxing the very richest in our society

Taxing “the very richest” goes nowhere close to challenging the ruling class that has been and remains at the heart of the British empire. In effect, it would be an attempt to remove some of the worst excesses of the system whilst leaving the core of it intact.

History tells us that British imperialism will do everything within its power to defend its interests.  The imperial state – with its kings and queens, its royal air force and navy, his majesty’s secret service, the crown courts and constabulary – has always been schooled in a long tradition of repression against labour struggles both at home and abroad. One thing is for sure, it cannot be reformed or reshaped in the interests of the working class.

 There is even less scope for this in a 21^st century marked by simmering inter-imperialist rivalries and stained indelibly by the Israeli genocide in Palestine. The mere fact that Westminster enjoys cross-party support for this genocide confirms that only a root and branch radical revolution offers the possibility of real change.