CABLE - CONFUSED BY CAPITALISM & PERPLEXED BY PROTECTIONISM
Business Secretary Vince Cable recently announced the British government's  latest crazy privatisation, with their intention to sell off the Royal Mail – presumably, to people with enough money to buy it – ermm, that would be “capitalists”, right? 

He then voices his fears about the “worst scenario” of protectionism, and its possible threat to the steady march of “globalisation”. Now, who benefits from globalisation?

Is it the English workers who lose their jobs to cheaper labour abroad, or:

The architects of globalisation - the global capitalists - moving their money from country to country in the search for ever greater profits? Again, we get the answer: “capitalists”.

Then incredibly, at the Lib-Dem conference in Liverpool, he makes a speech to the party faithful, rightly criticizing capitalism, which contains the following statement:

“Capitalism takes no prisoners, and it kills competition where it can.”

So, why is he so hell bent on selling the Royal Mail off, to the only people who can afford it – capitalists? His Royal Mail privatisation and protectionist/globalisation statements totally conflict with this one. Ironically, we agree with Vince on the quote from conference, perhaps he is becoming an English Radical in his old age!

Going back to the “bogeyman” of protectionism, Cable's real fear is what lies underneath it – a growing awareness by the English that we should stop propping up the rest of Britain and the EU, and look after our own interests. As a British MP, an EU supporter, and the author of several works about global governance, he is firmly in the camp of “big government”, or rule by unaccountable elites. He realises the current economic crisis is making the English question the popular fallacy that being part of a larger unit (Britain, and the EU) is somehow beneficial, when in fact it is expensive and undemocratic.  

To add insult to irony, Vince Cable is himself in a “protected” job, and will be for at least another four years. Even if he should lose his seat at the next election, he will no doubt walk straight into another cushy job within government - or that rest home for failed politicians, the EU! The redundant workers at the TATA-owned Corus steel plant in Middlesborough won't be offered that kind of a deal, nor will the production staff at Cadbury, taken over by multinational Kraft, as their work is “globalised” (moved abroad). So who the hell is he, to lecture us, about protectionism? 

The key part of the word “protectionism” is protect. As an overpopulated territory that cannot feed itself, England relies on making and selling enough goods to raise the money needed to import essentials that we cannot produce enough of ourselves. If this revenue stream dries up, we cannot afford to live without borrowing – which is exactly where we find ourselves today, thanks to the short sighted policies of successive Tory and Labour governments since 1945. One wonders how much of our present malaise was just bad luck and poor planning, and how much was deliberate.

As Vince Cable says, capitalism takes no prisoners and kills the competition where it can – it wages war, and in wars the weak get crushed. In a war, you would protect your ports, your airfields, your weapons factories: to an English Radical, there is no difference between physically defending your country, and defending the wealth producing industries that reside within it. In our eyes, protectionism equals patriotism. As well as sending troops to die needlessly in Afghanistan, we are currently fighting another war nearer home – against mass unemployment and the national debt that goes with it, and sadly we are losing that struggle thanks to successive British governments’ poor, or even criminal, leadership.

It is no coincidence that those nations with real wealth are the ones staying out of wars and generating revenue through strong manufacturing output – Germany in the West, and China in the East who are, sensibly, very protectionist. Contrast their current positions with that of America and Britain – both, in their day, the largest manufacturers in the world, but now financially ravaged by years of war, hugely in debt and scarred with industrial wastelands - witness the ghost town that is now Detroit, once the thriving home of the American car industry, or the English north east where much of our coal and steel was produced: Once-wealthy California, reduced to paying its public sector workers with IOU’s: the English shipyards, virtually all gone. 

The globalist economics so beloved by Cable encourages key manufacturing to be outsourced abroad, as it is cheaper to pay grateful peasants in far off lands to churn goods out at lower cost, meaning more profit for the multinationals that sell them: only trouble is, so many of the product's target consumers in the West have lost their jobs through globalisation - via outsourcing - they can no longer afford to buy them.  

Like a giant parasite, global capitalism has sucked its original hosts – Britain, then America - dry, and is moving eastwards looking for fresh nations on which to feed, in its quest for profits. These nations will welcome the beast at first, their people will feel prosperous and their lives will improve for a while: but eventually the lure of even fatter profits in the country next door will cause the global capitalists to withdraw and invest there instead. The money will be pulled out of perfectly viable businesses and moved to yet another poor country in order to exploit the people there, and the original host nation, unable to compete with the new kids on the block and starved of vital capital, will suffer a slow death, just as others have before them. 

There is no quick fix to this problem: but people must wake up and be aware of it, and action taken. An immediate protectionist measure we should all adopt is quite easy to do – where an English made product exists, buy it! It may be cheaper to buy a foreign product, but the government will have that saving off you in tax at some point, as a down payment for an English worker’s dole.

England needs more self sufficiency and fewer imports: an English Radical government would adopt protectionism by imposing higher taxes on foreign made goods, but offer foreign manufacturers the chance to avoid these taxes if they produce in England. They win by undercutting their rivals, and we win by creating jobs.

But until then, defy Vince and the globalists, and support protectionism – please buy English, and help stop your own jobs being “globalised”!!
 


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