GOOGLE “levelling up” and the mysterious algorithm which governs what we can and cannot know takes us straight to BAE’s boss talking of “industry and government working together to increase investment in research, development and skills outside of London and the south-east...”
This deserves interrogation. BAE Systems is Europe’s largest defence contractor and its US arm is the seventh largest supplier to the Department of Defence. BAE is the monopoly merger of most British armaments manufacturers and is critically dependent on taxpayer money.
Think of it as the commercial arm of the imperialist state. As it proudly boasts on its website: “BAE Systems Saudi Arabia is responsible for all aspects of BAE Systems’ long-term presence in the Saudi Arabian home market. Working in partnership with its customers and Saudi industry, it delivers cost-effective solutions supported by in-country management and technical capabilities.”
Decode the PR speak and we understand that every house flattened and every child made an orphan in Yemen is courtesy of BAE — and the British taxpayer.
Whatever its pretensions might be in inserting itself in the government’s narrative about overcoming regional imbalances, its main business, outside of Europe, is “levelling down” the infrastructure, hospitals, schools and houses of whoever stands in the way of imperialism’s unquenchable thirst for raw materials, energy and strategic dominance.
The disproportionate importance of defence and aerospace in Britain’s lopsided economy reflects not just Britain’s role as the principal partner of the US but the broader rundown of British manufacturing over past decades.
Industrial production and construction make up just one-fifth of GDP with financial services more predominant than in most developed countries. The dominance of the City of London, combined with the net outflow of of investment income — as our “patriotic” bourgeoisie find more-profitable overseas spots for their investments — means Britain is overly dependent on inward foreign investment while industrial production is skewed towards defence.
Aside from arms and aerospace, Britain nowadays simply does not make enough of what other countries need and want. So long as Britain’s financialised economy retains its peculiar features, investment in high-skills industries with better-paid jobs is at the whim of the profit-seeking rich.
The 2008 financial crisis and consequent recession left investment flatlining and Covid caused another slump of one-fifth — the biggest of any G7 country — while productivity, a sure-fire measure of investment, limps along.
The government’s “levelling up” programme is more than a PR offensive. It is based on a strategy to directly fund monopoly corporations with state investment. Where the Tories talk about infrastructure development, house construction, or investment in health and education they see this as a private-sector operation. But, as always, profits are to be enhanced through a squeeze on pay, pensions and conditions.
The free ports feature of the “levelling up” programme is designed to intensify the existing drive for a weakened regulatory framework and degraded employment rights. New shackles, financial and legal, on trade unions are designed to weaken the struggle for better wages, intensify exploitation and raise the rate of profit.
Labour’s take on the levelling up project emphasises local growth in skilled and well-paid jobs, revived towns and high streets, better regional transport, affordable housing, a high-quality digital infrastructure and devolved power backed up by real money.
Each of these reflects strong solutions to real life problems. But any strategy for repairing the damage capitalism has done must tackle the question of ownership and the direction of state power.
Every sensible solution to Britain’s problems takes us to the question of ownership and control of the state’s resources — and thus in the direction of socialism.
