It would be heartbreaking for the working people in Britain to expect a massive transformation with the transfer of power from Prime Minister Sir Keir Rodney Starmer to Mr Andy Burnham. For the last two decades, the political ritual of British democracy has reflected more continuity than outright ideologiccal contradiction or political crisis. The appointment of James Purnell as Chief of Staff offers early signs of the nature of the Labour Government under Burnham: Purnell is set to become the voice of corporations and big business within the Burnham-led administration. Different leaders, but the same political ideology – one that pursues identical policies, which in turn produce crises for working people. The British governments have continued to follow policies and politics that ‘extract revenue by squeezing every penny from the working people’ for last two decades. This approach – like ‘squeezing a red ant’s rear end to extract jaggery’ – has been the ideological foundation of the British bourgeoisie and their shopkeeper mindset, driven by business and profit. Human welfare and the empowerment of British citizens are not options available to a nation of shopkeepers.
Historically, it is not Napoleon but the Scottish philosopher and political economist Adam Smith who, in his book The Wealth of Nations (1776), defined the United Kingdom as a ‘nation of shopkeepers’ whose government is not only ‘influenced by shopkeepers’ but also ‘governed by shopkeepers’. Two hundred and fifty years after the writing of The Wealth of Nations, the Scottish philosopher must be laughing in his grave at Canongate Kirkyard on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh – where the gravedigger once ran a gruesome trade of dead bodies, robbing even small pennies and trinkets left beside or inside the graves – upon reading about the appointment of James Purnell, who led a global lobbying firm called the Flint Global. Purnell has had an illustrious career spanning civil service, business consultancy, advisory work, academia, and politics. No other Chief of Staff in the history of the British Prime Minister’s office can match the dynamic career of James Purnell. His appointment is a signal to business communities and corporations that here is a person they can trust. As for representing the working class – there is no one to do so, either in the contemporary Labour Party or among their Conservative brethren.
The petty bourgeoisie and their lumpen reactionary forces, led by white supremacists, have formed an inseparable bond with the British establishment, placing their trust in its feudal, colonial, and capitalist politics. Alternative politics and policies are therefore anathema to these forces – who, though a minority, nonetheless control contemporary British politics and politicians through a shopkeeper mindset, where quick profit at the cost of care defines the everyday operations of government under a Labour Party whose politics are indistinguishable from those of the Conservatives. These two mainstream parties operate in an ideological free zone, where policy consensus ensures the historic continuity of Thatcherite British politics.
The politics of Thatcherism and its fetishised entrepreneurship without innovation—aka opening shops (nail, hair and beauty shops) to fulfil the aspirations of the petty bourgeoisie and their individualistic values—work as an ideological recipe and guide policy frameworks concomitant with the requirements of British and international capitalist classes. Both mainstream ruling parties are part of this framework, shaped by the British establishment, which promotes conspicuous consumption in economics, white supremacy and racism in politics, and unbridled petty bourgeois individualism in society and culture—all of which have fractured British society and undermined its capacity to walk a progressive path.
The politics of a nation of shopkeepers have produced social, economic, and cultural conditions in which petty-bourgeois individualism militantly fights against any form of available socialist alternatives. It also creates political conditions where resistance movements are branded as crimes, reflecting the decline of British democracy in terms of citizens’ ability to express discontent with the government, political parties, and the state. Consequently, the organised struggle against the Thatcherite consensus between Labour and the Conservatives has been further weakened by the rise of petty-bourgeois individualism, represented by white supremacists invoking the name of indigenous people and their aspirations. These so-called bourgeois aspirations are being constructed and promoted by the British establishment and its media outlets, and are pushing Britain down a path of uncivilised backwardness where racism, sexism, xenophobia and all other forms of marginalisations, exploitations and inequalities are normalised.
The Andy Burnham government is likely to entrench the British establishment rather than dismantle its unequal structures that breeds everyday inequalities and exploitations in contemporary Britain. Such a bourgeois culture—permeating all spheres of British politics, economy, society, with its colonial and imperialist lineages—is not going to be reversed by the Andy Burnham government, which is poised to celebrate and represent the British establishment far more than it represents the working people of Britain. The culture of reform-by-petition is not working; it has become a failed strategy. Britain needs revolutionary change and radical reforms to deepen its democracy, where the economy works for the people and their collective prosperity and happiness. Working-class struggle is the only alternative in British politics capable of securing peace, prosperity, and happiness in Britain.
