Great Britain is writhing in post-colonial and capitalist denial, and of course, it does not even realise it. As we prepare to be dragged and gagged in to a third year of Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, the warning signs are flashing ultra-violet.
The response to the pandemic by the government and wider establishment in Great Britain has been wilfully incompetent and corrupt, resulting in a ridiculous, but predictable, level of death and suffering, that only a few countries around the world can rival. The extreme-capitalist economic system already in place here, has ensured that those most befouled by the system, have suffered most during this latest capitalist-induced crisis.
There have been a couple of bright moments during this continual wave of doom. The “everyone in” campaign of housing the street homeless people during the height of the first wave in Spring 2020, presented an extraordinary opportunity to end street homelessness in this country, forever. This has since been squandered, wilfully, as this government does not believe in housing as a basic and fundamental human right, it believes in the right of landlords, many of whom they are or protect, to continue to hoard wealth gained from property and land (including the monarchy) and make money off the backs of the poor.
The Black Lives Matter movement electrified a significant number of people, most importantly white people, in the country, who took to the streets and the digital airways, and made a lot of others pause for thought and reflect on the question; What should racial and economic justice in this country look like? Was Britain truly about to engage in truth and reconciliation around its ongoing and global imperial legacy? Not with this government in charge! Who have made it their continuing mission to demonise the movement and ideas of change behind it, going so far as to back the booing of the multi-cultural England National Football Team for taking the knee in support of the changes needed to grant and apply full human rights to everyone in this country, without exception. The government continues to threaten people of colour with deportation, jail and fatally treats human being asylum seekers as sub-human sounding boards to use as props in their relentless culture war.
These are far-right talking-points and policy in practice.
Is this not just Britain’s chickens coming home to roost? After all millions of people voted for this government. Granted this was on the back of an electoral campaign of lies and treachery, and a wilfully archaic and undemocratic voting system. However, there was still a clear choice at the ballot box, wasn’t there? Between a wealthy, corrupt and racist man fronting a reactionary right wing party vs a decent man and progressive cause. We really did get what we voted for, a crony-capitalist far-right government, at the worst possible time.
This country, and its elite, invented capitalism and still live at the very heart of it and its exploitation. The City of London is widely acknowledged to be at the centre of global money laundering, tax evasion and other financial fraud, both in its legal and illegal forms (does it matter which one) and has been protected at all costs by every government that that has been elected. All of this is understood background public knowledge in this country, but the proverbial we just accept it as “the way things are”. Well change is coming whether we, or they, like it or not. Uprisings against capitalism, and its symptoms, are popping up everywhere, around the globe, whether they are framed as this or not.
Capitalism OR humanity will not last the century, which one are we going to choose to fight for?