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AT THE recent virtual Tory Party conference Boris Johnson demonstrated that his government is ratcheting up its attacks on the role of the state and using Brexit to divide working people by using nationalist and jingoist rhetoric.

We are proud of this countrys culture and history and traditions; they literally want to pull statues down, to rewrite the history of our country, to edit our national CV to make it look more politically correct, he said.

We arent embarrassed to sing old songs about how Britannia rules the waves while the Labour opposition continue to flirt with those who would tear our country apart.

I remember how some people used to sneer at wind power, 20years ago and say that it wouldnt pull the skin off a rice pudding.

They forgot the history of this country. It was offshore wind that puffed the sails of Drake and Raleigh and Nelson, and propelled this country to commercial greatness.

You can almost hear the drum rolls and see the Union Jacks waving above the marching storm troopers.

He went on to reiterate the mantra of dismantling the state:We must be clear that there comes a moment when the state must stand back and let the private sector get on with it.

I have a simple message for those on the leftwho think everything can be funded by Uncle Sugar the taxpayer.

It isnt the state that produces the new drugs and therapies we are using. It isnt the state that will hold the intellectual property of the vaccine, if and when we get one. It wasnt the state that made the gloves and masks and ventilators that we needed at such speed.

It was the private sector, with its rational interest in innovation and competition and market share and, yes, sales.

He totally ignored theshambolic mess that has been created by incompetent private companies many owned by cronies of the government which has resulted in the unnecessary deaths of thousands and made the Covid-19 pandemic much worse than it should have been.

The thinking behind the calls for dismantling the state has a long tradition and its more insidious aim is hidden behind a smokescreen.

It is one of the most blatant examples of double-think. Both Thatchers and succeeding Tory governments have undertaken massive state intervention and an increased consolidation of state power but on a class basis, while describing it as giving back control to the people.

Regulation of business and the economy has been pared back under the guise of tackling red tape granting monopoly capital almost total freedom to operate as it sees fit, polluting the environment without repercussions and paying minimal taxes.

Trade unions, though, have found themselves shackled by draconian legislation: no solidarity action or secondary picketing allowed, strike ballots and internal elections have to be held under voting rules that are extremely restrictive.

Workers rights have been eroded. Local government has been so hollowed out and underfunded that it has become barely functional and is now largely a tool for implementing central government policy at local level.

The Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit have given the Tories the unique opportunity of rolling back the state even faster than they could have hoped.

There has been a concerted privatisation of many areas of the NHS without parliamentary debate or scrutiny.

The drive to complete Brexit is allowing them to ride roughshod over workers rights, food standards and environmental protections.

Many more people today are realising that we are living in a dysfunctional capitalist system subject to continued crises.

There has been a renewed interest in socialism, not only here but in the US too.

With the increasing militancy and success of a number of new, basicallyanti-capitalist organisations, from environmental groups like Extinction Rebellion, the international Occupy movement, to Black Lives Matter and numerous smaller ones, the ruling class is seriously worried about the stability and resilience of the prevailing system.

This why it is no longer satisfied with defining the shape of the economy, it wants to take full control of British culture as well.

As Andy Beckett in the Guardian (October 10 2020) writes:Starting with the Brexit campaign, the right has launched a series of culture wars: against Remainers, the BBC, the universities, the legal system, the big cities and seemingly anywhere that liberal or left-wing thinking still lingers.

This culture war has appealed to conservative Britons, ensured that debates about patriotism and social cohesion are conducted on right-wing terms and helped the Tories win its recent parliamentary majority.

The latest culture war is the war on woke (woke: being alert to injustice in society, especially racism)being waged by the Tory press.

Right-wing commentators describe wokeness as a cult, an epidemic, anti-Western, totalitarian, and even as cultural Marxism a favourite far-right conspiracy theory.

Last month, the Department for Education instructed schools not to teach pupils about extreme political stances such as the desire to overthrow capitalism,or to teach victim narratives that are harmful to British society.

Such policies reveal the underlying fears of the ruling class and of a government that sees culture wars as a way of gaining electoral advantage.

Only last month, Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley made it clear what is involved: Boris and Cummings understand that you cant change Britain unless you march through the [cultural] institutions that you cant simply cede culture to the left.

The Covid-19 pandemic has made it clear to them that they can control culture because they hold the purse strings.

As Stanley put it: When youre in power and you control the purse strings of many cultural institutions, you do have a say to change their political balance.

The idea that dyed-in-the-wool reactionaries like Charles Moore and Paul Dacre could be proposed respectively as chair of the BBC and head of Ofcom, both supposed to be politically neutral roles, can be seen in this context.

Similarto today, the early 1980s saw an upsurge of British activism for racial, sexual and gender equality.

Parts of the left became involved, in particular with the support of the Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone.

The right-wing press and the Thatcher government were appalled and saw it correctly as a major threat to the status quo.

But they also saw a political opportunity. Aided and abetted by the right-wing press, branding all practitioners of the new identity politics the loony left, they created a bogeyman that helped the Tories win a series of elections.

Today, political stances which would have been considered loony in the 1980s, such as celebrating multiculturalism, are widely accepted.

Johnson has devoted his political career simultaneously spouting both liberal and reactionary views, sometimes in the same sentence and generally getting away with it. Populists and the people who vote for them are rarely bothered about ideological consistency.

Since the Thatcher era the idea of a benevolent state has been vilified as anathema by Tories and right-wing pundits.

The nanny state became a cliche term of abuse and a put-down for all those calling for state regulation of any sort.

It was argued that state intervention damages the economy and society and that it is authoritarian and undemocratic.

Just leave the market to regulate itself and social harmony and stability will prevail went the mantra. Johnsons government has adopted this policy with a new vehemence.

Thatcher used it as a battering ram to destroy any remaining belief in the effectiveness and need for socialist ideas. She talked of rolling back the frontiers of the state and used it to justify her objectives.

In a 1987 interview with Womans Own magazine, she said that people had become too reliant on the state: They are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing!

She saw state regulation as the slippery slope towards socialism which she hated.

Thatcherism represented a systematic, decisive rejection and reversal of the post-war consensus, whereby the major political parties had largely agreed on the central themes of Keynesianism, the welfare state, nationalised industry and close regulation of the British economy.

Since Thatcher the programmes of successive Tory governments and of Blairs New Labour basically accepted the central interventionist measures of Thatcherism such as deregulation and the privatisation of key nationallyowned industries, maintaining a flexible labour market and marginalising trade unions, while centralising power.

Governments could get away with such policies in times of relative material affluence, entrepreneurial opportunity and full employment.

If democracy is to mean anything, decision-making at local level has to be a vital part of it, as is meaningful and functioning local government.

By increasingly concentrating power at national level and starving local government of proper funding, we have seen an unprecedented concentration of that centralised power the complete opposite of what right-wing pundits have been telling us is happening.

Johnsons government is pushing for a complete elimination of the state as a means of regulating the economy and bringing about even a modicum of social justice.

We shouldnt forget, though, that the right isnt always as confident and all-conquering as it sometimes seems. The measures being forced through by this government demonstrate a fear as well as power.

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The culture wars and rolling back the state - Morning Star Online