Here it is, the masterpiece. Paul Mason ventures forth to promote the same demented garbage he's been pushing since 2016! Truly a man who has learnt nothing and forgotten everything. Here's a few thoughts from me on his ravings. 1/10 https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2021/05/keir-starmer-must-face-truth-he-needs-left-win

Mason starts by contradicting himself. He asserts that the primary divide in British politics is "values" and that this now has over taken everything else as the primary divide. He then asserts that this schism is a reflection of differing economic interests. 2/10

What Mason is doing here is the same tired rhetorical trick he's been using government since 2016. He is trying to draw a distinction between what he wants to present as the "good" workers in the cities who (in his mind) are good progressive liberals and the "bad" workers 3/10

The "bad" workers who Mason sees basically as a lumpen mass of racists. He's been explicit about that before. This is the line he pushed inside the Labour Party under Corbyn. Its the same line as the American left pushed with regard to workers who wouldn't vote democrat 4/10

BUT WAIT! The logician of Leight has something for you racists! His big idea is that he wants to build a "progessive alliance" with those titans of the working the class the Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid and the Greens! Oh what brave new world is this! 5/10

Well actually it's exactly the same dumb shit that the labour left started getting obsessed with back in the 1980's when they'd lost 3 elections in a row. One of the big reasons we have the unholy mess that is devolution in Britain now is because it was Blairs concession 6/10

to the left, based on the ridiculous idea that the Tories were (then and now) anything other than a liberal party. Back in the early 1990's and today the likes of Mason were pushing the idea that if they just united the votes of the nationalist parties, Labour and the Libs 7/10

then somehow those nasty old Tories would never get in again. Only someone who (like Mason) has totally abandoned any form of class analysis could come up with this dumb shit. The SNP and Plaid are petit bourgeois nationalist parties with zero to offer workers 8/10

The SNP have shown that in power they not different in the slightest to a government run by Johnson, they may even be worse. Plaid are no different. As for the Greens they prop up the SNP in Scotland and have a wretched record anywhere they've held power 9/10

The Lib Dems of course were in coalition with the Tories until 6 years ago and their current leaders was hinting as recently as the last election that they'd do a coalition with them again. So what in gods name is Mason talking about?

Mason is of course conjuring up the same phantasm as the American left is when it came to Trump. This turn in Masons analysis happened during and after the Brext referendum. He immediately started conjuring up the spectre of "fascism" to describe brexit just as the US left did.

Mason is as much of a true believer Blairite as Andrew Adonis is, he just masks it more. Blairs original idea for a government was one where he united with the Lib Dems and essentially disolved once and for all any remaining power held by organisied labour within the party.

This is the exact same vision that Mason presents now. A unity with the petit bourgeois parties of nationalism and the wholly bourgeois Liberals in the interests of what exactly? Mason, like the American left, argues that it's to stop "bigotry", again this is a phantasm.

Masons interests since 2017 has been in presenting a left face to a reconstituted establishment liberalism. For men like him the sight of even the slightest stirring of the working class even via the brext referendum made him shit his pants.

Further on in his latest screed he asserts that Starmer must do a "Biden style" spending plan. This is how bankrupt and empty British social democracy is that they are now seeking inspiration from the rancid corpse in the White House.

So lets look at the Biden plans for "infrastrucutre spending", what do they amount to? What they are is a series of gigantic handouts to the car industry and tech sectors on the promise that they invest it in "green tech".

It's a giant giveaway to the biggest US corporations with minimal oversight of it. It looks big, has a lot of big numbers attached to it and apparently this is all it takes to impress the great sages of British social democracy.

It's also further proof that the likes of Mason don't understand modern capitalism in the slightest. We're in the middle of what is effectively an investment strike by the British capitalist class, even the Tories realise that even if they can't/won't do anything about it.

So Mason's idea is the throw money at British capitalism? Great stuff Paul, really going to get the workers back with that one. That's assuming that Mason has actually read the Biden spending plan and not just scanned the headlines before vomitting up this garbage.

The likes of Mason have just retreated to Blairism, the same desperate search for a social democracy that can be embraced or tolerated by the ruling class has led him back to the same politics that made the Blair era. First as tragedy then as farce.