Reform\u2019s rise is a symptom of liberalism\u2019s failure<\/strong><\/h4>\nThe nature of Welsh devolution described in my previous blog<\/a>, combined with the wider backlash against liberal capitalism, leaves Welsh Labour fatally vulnerable to a political force like Reform. As noted in<\/span> my Caerphilly report,<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\u2018<\/span>Welsh Labour is the political embodiment of [the administrative class]: the<\/span> ultimate middle managers<\/span><\/a>, with the Senedd the ultimate institution of<\/span> passive mediation<\/span><\/a> between capital, state and public. With minimal autonomous economic powers (which Welsh Labour has historically resisted expanding), devolution can achieve little more than treating the symptoms of Westminster austerity to varying degrees of effectiveness.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAt best it attempts to inoculate Wales against Tory inhumanity. At worst, it<\/span> internalises and embeds the logic of neoliberalism<\/span><\/a> that has plagued every level of UK governance for decades. It should shock nobody that support for the party \u2013 and confidence in the institution it has run for 25 years \u2013 is collapsing in line with this worldwide upsurge in discontent.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n(Most of that article \u2013 and everything which explains Reform UK\u2019s influence on Welsh politics \u2013 is based on this thesis. So, again, for a deeper understanding: go and read it if you haven\u2019t already.)<\/span><\/p>\nReform\u2019s popularity must be understood as an \u2018anti-establishment\u2019 phenomenon<\/strong><\/h4>\nOrganised opposition to Reform will achieve little until it recognises Reform as an \u2018anti-establishment\u2019 force.<\/span><\/p>\nClearly, capital is failing. Or, more accurately, capital<\/span>ism<\/span><\/i> is failing <\/span>people<\/span><\/i>: capital itself remains intact. In real terms, the management of the economy is increasingly unable to sustain adequate living conditions for the majority, while remaining capable of reproducing the conditions of wealth accumulation for an increasingly selective elite minority. Our liberal economic custodians cannot account for this, and have spent decades insisting that everything is structurally robust even as the social order disintegrates around them.<\/span><\/p>\nInto this wreckage step the likes of Reform and the politics they represent: circumventing and exploiting crises of capital \u2013 an \u2018anti-capitalism\u2019, in a perverse sense \u2013 in order to become its last remaining beneficiaries. In this, they fully acknowledge the failures of capitalism, which the broken polity recognises and identifies with, and leave its defence to \u2018the liberal establishment\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\nAgain, from the Caerphilly article:<\/span><\/p>\n\u2018<\/span>As tolerance for the political establishment breaks, we\u2019ve seen a concurrent rise in the \u2018anti-elite\u2019: not anti-capitalists as such, but those<\/span> lauded as having mastered capital<\/span><\/a> for their own ends, in opposition to the public-servant \u2018capitalists\u2019 directly overseeing the managed decline of communities.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\nReform\u2019s appeal, therefore, lies in acknowledging systemic failure while purporting to be capable of bargaining with capital to extract the most value for its voter base, in a form of reactionary anti-establishmentarianism. <\/span>As I\u2019ve noted in a previous essay<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n\u2018Through their success, such figures set the coordinates for ruthlessly negotiating the landscape of capitalism, demonstrating ways of \u2018bargaining\u2019 with capital in order to thrive (or at least survive) among its indentured hardships. Whether presented as an against-the-odds everyman or victorious strongman (or elements of both), each notable new-right \u2018capitalist\u2019 possesses their own variation on the same basic mission statement that tacitly posits capital itself as the \u2018enemy\u2019. It says, \u201cthe demands of capital can rip you to shreds, but follow after me and I can help you make the most of it\u201d.\u2060 Where they acquire political influence, provisions can be made for further, more severe shortcuts to help get ahead in the thrive-or-die society, largely by eliminating or repressing large swathes of \u2018the competition\u2019 from the market, or stripping away supposed institutional impediments to success: immigrants, women, traitorous leftists, the social state, etc.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\nIt should, of course, go without saying that the promises of salvation here are mostly illusory. In many ways, Reform\u2019s politics is simply a crude intensification of the culture of Thatcherism already sadly dominant in modern British culture: the false freedom of the individual, predicated upon the suppression of others\u2019 individual freedom, and at the expense of true liberation through collectivism.<\/span><\/p>\nPostindustrial Wales is the perfect place for Reform\u2019s politics to take hold<\/strong><\/h4>\nWales has endured a decades-long socioeconomic decline, in which deindustrialisation has given way to<\/span> all the malign consequences of marketisation<\/span><\/a>. Little economic life remains beyond institutional residue and a weak industrial base: public bodies, a service sector and the wild west of self-employment \u2013 the ghost of a social state mopping up the crises that insecure or low-quality work engenders.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.parthianbooks.com\/cdn\/shop\/articles\/61XShdtfRlL_1024x1024.jpg?v=1636740425\")
<\/p>\n
Capitalism no longer expands through new spatial frontiers, but through<\/span> dismantling existing, stagnant territories of production and reappropriating the ruins<\/span><\/a>. Wales\u2019 lack of economic sovereignty leaves it particularly vulnerable to this recomposition being imposed on it. We\u2019ve seen this plenty already: manufacturing heartlands transformed into sprawls of warehouses and call centres, its inhabitants offered up as <\/span>cheap and exploited labour<\/span><\/a>, its <\/span>land appropriated for private housing stock<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\nSuch conditions are ideal for Reform\u2019s<\/span> disaster nationalism<\/span><\/a> to take hold. Frustrations created by the current political settlement, with its inability to produce public prosperity, are redirected towards a politics of resentment that manufactures consent for yet further subsumption into the market – and all the misery that entails.<\/span><\/p>\nWe’ll consider these long term prospects in the final part<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the second installment of Gareth Leaman’s commentary on the state of the nation, he explains the appeal of Reform. Reform\u2019s rise is a symptom of liberalism\u2019s failure The nature … <\/p>\n
\u2018<\/span>Welsh Labour is the political embodiment of [the administrative class]: the<\/span> ultimate middle managers<\/span><\/a>, with the Senedd the ultimate institution of<\/span> passive mediation<\/span><\/a> between capital, state and public. With minimal autonomous economic powers (which Welsh Labour has historically resisted expanding), devolution can achieve little more than treating the symptoms of Westminster austerity to varying degrees of effectiveness.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n At best it attempts to inoculate Wales against Tory inhumanity. At worst, it<\/span> internalises and embeds the logic of neoliberalism<\/span><\/a> that has plagued every level of UK governance for decades. It should shock nobody that support for the party \u2013 and confidence in the institution it has run for 25 years \u2013 is collapsing in line with this worldwide upsurge in discontent.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n (Most of that article \u2013 and everything which explains Reform UK\u2019s influence on Welsh politics \u2013 is based on this thesis. So, again, for a deeper understanding: go and read it if you haven\u2019t already.)<\/span><\/p>\n Organised opposition to Reform will achieve little until it recognises Reform as an \u2018anti-establishment\u2019 force.<\/span><\/p>\n Clearly, capital is failing. Or, more accurately, capital<\/span>ism<\/span><\/i> is failing <\/span>people<\/span><\/i>: capital itself remains intact. In real terms, the management of the economy is increasingly unable to sustain adequate living conditions for the majority, while remaining capable of reproducing the conditions of wealth accumulation for an increasingly selective elite minority. Our liberal economic custodians cannot account for this, and have spent decades insisting that everything is structurally robust even as the social order disintegrates around them.<\/span><\/p>\n Into this wreckage step the likes of Reform and the politics they represent: circumventing and exploiting crises of capital \u2013 an \u2018anti-capitalism\u2019, in a perverse sense \u2013 in order to become its last remaining beneficiaries. In this, they fully acknowledge the failures of capitalism, which the broken polity recognises and identifies with, and leave its defence to \u2018the liberal establishment\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n Again, from the Caerphilly article:<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018<\/span>As tolerance for the political establishment breaks, we\u2019ve seen a concurrent rise in the \u2018anti-elite\u2019: not anti-capitalists as such, but those<\/span> lauded as having mastered capital<\/span><\/a> for their own ends, in opposition to the public-servant \u2018capitalists\u2019 directly overseeing the managed decline of communities.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Reform\u2019s appeal, therefore, lies in acknowledging systemic failure while purporting to be capable of bargaining with capital to extract the most value for its voter base, in a form of reactionary anti-establishmentarianism. <\/span>As I\u2019ve noted in a previous essay<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Through their success, such figures set the coordinates for ruthlessly negotiating the landscape of capitalism, demonstrating ways of \u2018bargaining\u2019 with capital in order to thrive (or at least survive) among its indentured hardships. Whether presented as an against-the-odds everyman or victorious strongman (or elements of both), each notable new-right \u2018capitalist\u2019 possesses their own variation on the same basic mission statement that tacitly posits capital itself as the \u2018enemy\u2019. It says, \u201cthe demands of capital can rip you to shreds, but follow after me and I can help you make the most of it\u201d.\u2060 Where they acquire political influence, provisions can be made for further, more severe shortcuts to help get ahead in the thrive-or-die society, largely by eliminating or repressing large swathes of \u2018the competition\u2019 from the market, or stripping away supposed institutional impediments to success: immigrants, women, traitorous leftists, the social state, etc.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n It should, of course, go without saying that the promises of salvation here are mostly illusory. In many ways, Reform\u2019s politics is simply a crude intensification of the culture of Thatcherism already sadly dominant in modern British culture: the false freedom of the individual, predicated upon the suppression of others\u2019 individual freedom, and at the expense of true liberation through collectivism.<\/span><\/p>\n Wales has endured a decades-long socioeconomic decline, in which deindustrialisation has given way to<\/span> all the malign consequences of marketisation<\/span><\/a>. Little economic life remains beyond institutional residue and a weak industrial base: public bodies, a service sector and the wild west of self-employment \u2013 the ghost of a social state mopping up the crises that insecure or low-quality work engenders.<\/span><\/p>\n Capitalism no longer expands through new spatial frontiers, but through<\/span> dismantling existing, stagnant territories of production and reappropriating the ruins<\/span><\/a>. Wales\u2019 lack of economic sovereignty leaves it particularly vulnerable to this recomposition being imposed on it. We\u2019ve seen this plenty already: manufacturing heartlands transformed into sprawls of warehouses and call centres, its inhabitants offered up as <\/span>cheap and exploited labour<\/span><\/a>, its <\/span>land appropriated for private housing stock<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Such conditions are ideal for Reform\u2019s<\/span> disaster nationalism<\/span><\/a> to take hold. Frustrations created by the current political settlement, with its inability to produce public prosperity, are redirected towards a politics of resentment that manufactures consent for yet further subsumption into the market – and all the misery that entails.<\/span><\/p>\n We’ll consider these long term prospects in the final part<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the second installment of Gareth Leaman’s commentary on the state of the nation, he explains the appeal of Reform. Reform\u2019s rise is a symptom of liberalism\u2019s failure The nature … <\/p>\nReform\u2019s popularity must be understood as an \u2018anti-establishment\u2019 phenomenon<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Postindustrial Wales is the perfect place for Reform\u2019s politics to take hold<\/strong><\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n