The Trump Insanity Claws: psychology or machine?

 

Morlocks herd Eloi into cattle pens for cannibalisation. The Time Machine (1960)

There’s method in the madness of the relentless pursuit of profit in late capitalism but it’s not for your benefit

By Anna Chen. First published at Substack as Psychology or Machine? Are our leaders insane? 25 October 2026

This is a response to Nel Bonilla, who has written another insightful analysis. This time, she develops BettBeat Media’s critique of psychologism wherein we clutch our pearls at the horror of leaders rocking the Titanic as we get turfed out of steerage and into the briny deep.

Are our leaders mad? Or are they pursuing the relentless logic of the system?

Here we have both what appears at first glance to be madness, and then there’s method. But one serves the other, following a malign logic. To use another of my astro-political metaphors, the mad decision-making we are witnessing is like the speed of light and gravity embedded in the space-time structure of the universe. This insanity is not something separate that can be measured against the structure: it is a feature of the structure itself. It is determined by it. Changing the drivers of the clown-car-to-oblivion and hoping their good graces win out might offer a swerve. Perhaps even a slow-down in the way that light passing through the medium of water can be bent, interrupted by interacting with atoms. But it still retains its speed between atoms.(Perhaps sensing this is what, in earlier times, was known as fate or destiny. Or karma.)  

A respite buys us time — for Palestinians being wiped out in the Gaza genocide, that’s urgently needed and must be fought for. But the cycle still has its inherent quality, so said respite offers no place to stop and relax because the cycle always revs up. Our challenge, should we wish to take the red pill, is to realise we cannot delineate which is madness and which is method. And hopefully, realise in (space) time to do something about it. Oh, that’ll be root and branch revolution. 

The system is a machine, ultimately a war machine: a juggernaut that exists to expand and hold on to power. This is how my late father used to define imperialism, which he drummed into me from toddlerhood. Everything it does feeds that objective, like a great white shark forever moving forward or it dies. Different wings of the political class dress it up differently to render it palatable, but it always moves with the same relentless underlying ruthlessness. Sometimes that ruthlessness is disguised as soft power. Sometimes, when necessary, teeth are bared and jaws snap away. As we are seeing now. (Actually, there’s alwayssomeone outside our pampered delusional west who’s seeing it directly.) It’s Very Late Capitalism. 

At core is the dynamic of the board game of Risk, as anyone who plays it knows. I love that game and recommend you make it your game of choice during power cuts as we await the Apocalypse. That is, if you’re not already actively involved in juggernaut stoppage.

The presidential managers of the cycle line up

The start of the current wave of American imperial expansion can be located in 1992 with the fall of the USSR and the Paul Wolfowitz Defense Planning Guide, which identified China as the next rival to be preemptively contained. Asserting military dominance over China, and keeping check on a resurgent Russia, Germany and Japan and a unified Europe (see Brexit), would justify continuing massive investment in the Pentagon war machine now that the Cold War was officially over. You could actually take it all the way back to the 19th century Opium Wars, which capitalised western industrial revolutions and created a slew of banks and East Coast dynasties, but let’s start with the cycle rising in a crescendo towards a climax right now.  

We knew President George Dubbya Bush and his neocon flying monkeys were Patriot Act-level awful but if you’re looking back nostalgically at the cuddly Clintons and Obama, ask how sane were their actions? Yes, Clinton brought China into the WTO. But this was less from the goodness of his heart and more about having its huge scales of production function as the West’s factory of cheap goods, placating domestic populations being steadily stripped of their post-WWII gains. Clinton also dismembered former USSR ally Yugoslavia within Europe, launching the round of box-ticking as the serial-killer state scythed its way through its rivals now that the Soviet Union no longer stood in the way. The 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade served to remind them who was boss despite flattery as a “strategic partner”.  

Then we were given sophisticated, charming Barack Obama. His muted response to his fellow black people struggling in resistance was shown up in sharp relief when he crumbled over the grand jury’s failure to indict the police for killing unarmed youth Michael Brown in the troubled community of Ferguson, in 2014. However, African American solidarity was not his purpose, no matter what hopes had been pinned on the first Black president. He was more eager to be seen as “America’s first Pacific president,” as he grandiosely called himself, foreshadowing the line of destruction to come. Following Bush’s demand at the Bucharest conference in 2008 for Ukraine and Georgia to be drawn into NATO, Obama did most to kick off current conflicts: his Pivot to Asia to “contain” China and setting up Ukraine for the “proxy” war against Russia. Such sanity!

Smite and spite – sanity, insanity or something structural?

Which brings us to Trump, who is indeed unhinged. He’s the best wrecking ball the state ever had. The world waits on tenterhooks for his attempted destruction of a 5,000-year-old civilisation of 90 million Iranian people, even if he takes down the global economy with it. But it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. There’s a tiny elite that will do very well, whether from the Military Industrial Complex, fossil fuels or the massive pile of assets they’ve accumulated. The top one percent own as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, but even they are poor by comparison with the apex billionaire oligarchs and their ambitions to carve up the planet.  

Why so little pushback from a Congress packed with tools? How on earth did Biden do so badly that he ushered in Trump’s second term? Maybe it’s because our orange overlord does the elite’s dirty work so fast and furiously, easily manipulated by Deep State when he gets out of line. And he’s rewarded with his cut, billions to date. 

I’ve been yelling warnings that there are trajectories and objectives at work, but dearest friends have had two replies: it’s only “sabre-rattling” and “they’re stupid”. Head. Meet brick wall.

Subordinate to the uber-objective

There is no debate about any of this in the mainstream. On social media, algo-boosted commentators have been late, for example, only realising this year that China was the ultimate target in a seemingly disparate raft of targets. Another pundit belatedly observes that China is trying to save the world from America’s current excesses. Yes, China has been firefighting all along, providing our cheap stuff when underpaid workers couldn’t possibly afford American-made goods made on decent wages. China floated us out of trouble after the 2008 crash. In doing so, it also recharged American capitalism which can be seen directly in the longest bull-run ever. 

We shouldn’t rule out entirely the psychology that adds grace notes and potential shifts to the dynamic being played out. There is a human, psychological aspect to the subsequent betrayal by the US in that there was a responding period of paralysis when Vice Premier Liu He attempted to negotiate Donald Trump’s trade war in his first term as shock sank in. What an insane move for the new President Trump to make when China had saved the world from US folly and Wall Street was hogging down on a profit bonanza from China’s exploding middle-class: at 550 million, bigger than the entire population of the USA and still growing. Screw domestic sales, we’re gonna need a bigger wallet. The logic of self-interest would prevail — well, that depends on your ultimate aim. 

Illustrating the internecine warfare among American capitalists, Gary Cohn — Trump’s chief economic advisor from Goldman Sachs — wailed, “Peter Navarro ratfucked us into a trade war with China by taking advantage of Trump’s very small brain”. Navarro, with his anagram creation ‘Ron Vara’, had been a much derided China-hating wing-nut on the fringes, but he was soon to be drawn centre-stage by Trump: welcome, the New Normal.  

China then pinned hopes on a “sane” Joe Biden who had promised cooperation in dealing with the existential global threat of climate change. Surely he would see that China was a Good Thing for the US and the world? Once in office, Biden promptly placed a $1.6 billion dollar propaganda bounty on China’s head and continued Obama’s conflict wherever China was heavily invested. Chiefly the Ukraine where Crimea was earmarked to be a key BRICS hub — well, fancy that! We do all realise by now, I trust, that US military pollution is one of the key contributors to environmental damage, not to mention from the destruction of the Russia-Germany Nordstream pipeline as threatened by Biden.  

According to the UN, the Nord Stream pipeline explosions resulted in the largest human-caused release of methane, with up to 485,000 tonnes of methane escaping into the atmosphere, contributing significantly to global warming. This release was nearly five times larger than the previous record holder for methane emissions. 

Oops, there goes the neighbourhood. So much for climate change concerns.

The snake eating its own tail

Insane, desperate and shortsighted. But the war in Ukraine functioned as pursuit of the longer-term goal. Although it stirred up a hornets nest of conflict, it was a major step in trying to defeat Russia, keep the Europe bloc under wraps and halt a peaceful Eurasia prospering. The logic of the machine is that Europe needed a spanking after it began successfully emerging from America’s crash through Russian energy and BRICS trade, and leaving the malfunctioning US on the naughty step. 

That European leaders succumbed to US-induced self-harm just as the Eurasian landmass was consolidating through peaceful trade might undermine my argument and prove that insanity does indeed have its part to play. However, our own slow, clumsy, cloth-eared vassal insanity is not necessarily the same as the hegemon’s overriding drive in the twists and turns of a writhing snake: the machine exists to continue existing. The snake may well be eating its own tail.  

Europe initially resisted America’s proxy war on Russia. Angela Merkel stated that pulling Ukraine into NATO on Russia’s doorstep would be seen as a declaration of war. And she was right. France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy resisted and was punished for it when his own crimes of corruption, which would normally be overlooked in someone of such power, sent him to jail: pour encourager les autres, to quote Voltaire. Prime Minister David Cameron was too busy forging a Golden Age with China to embroil us in a return to 19th and 20th century warfare.  

Unfortunately, in 2016, Old Etonian Cameron, none too bright, was manipulated into granting the non-legally binding EU referendum to placate Farage and his own right-wing in the Conservative party. Fending off an intra-party bunfight would have the severest of consequences for the UK and the world.  

The Brexit vote provided the trigger and lit the fuse. 

Whose finger is on the trigger?

Europe, weakened by Britain jumping out of the EU frying pan and into the US fire, was soon caught in the increased gravitational pull of a reviving hegemon stripped of all niceties and going for broke. It eventually mounted the bucking serpent only to be thrown off with the next writhing coil of Trump 2’s Ukraine machinations.  

Piling in on a Gaza breakout armed with Kalashnikov rifles by the occupying US-armed Israel on Biden’s watch less than two weeks after Netanyahu threatened Iran at the UN general assembly, opened a second major front in the Middle East. The resulting genocidal wipe-out violates every code of the New Testament, the Enlightenment, the Geneva Convention, and every decency we thought the horrors of World War II had taught us about humanity. Trump fantasises aloud about destroying a 5,000-year-old civilisation with his MOAB bombs and maybe nukes. Israel has its (unacknowledged) nuclear weapons at the ready. The Hormuz Strait, which was open to free passage of the world’s shipping, is now closed, threatening the entire global economy. But actually, it’s America that has its finger on the trigger. And the rest of the world — including perceived US rivals China and Europe — is held to ransom, not just Iran. 

Now, there’s method in that madness. 

Read how this was unfolding in Shakedown Timeline of America’s 21st century war on China.

The western Left snatches defeat from the jaws of victory

How did we get to this point, as a US-compliant UK, with so little resistance and a depleted consciousness in a country that once had a proto-bourgeoisie powerful enough to remove the head of a king?  

The Left allowed a 20-year vacuum to suffocate political consciousness since the proletarian classes flexed their muscle in the biggest protest ever seen in the UK, in the anti-Iraq war march of February 2003. Demobilising for the crucial day of Blair’s vote in Parliament the following month, which he had a real possibility of losing, was a Sliding Doors moment that stripped the movement of confidence. Failure to harness the public’s protest power built up over two years and mount a protest on the big day emboldened the hawks and shredded MP’s willingness to follow through with a dissenting vote: the result was 412 to 149. 

Opposition to war within the political establishment had collapsed. British parliamentary approval for the invasion of Iraq against the public wish shocked the movement. It created a lengthy hiatus in which the Right, largely marginalised throughout the post-war liberal period, has regrouped and consolidated. And, of course, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died, with millions displaced. 

The 2017 general election was our one chance to take some sort of power when Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn verged on winning in a landslide. I said at the time we’d better win. If it failed, the forces of reaction who’d been taken by surprise, would power-up and ensure that it never happened again. And they would be vicious and pitiless.  

General Election Sliding Doors, 2017

The Labour Party was the biggest in Europe, with 564,443 full members. The nation was waking up from the non-legally binding referendum with a hangover and a surge of regret that 37 percent of the population was about to destabilise the economy just as we were emerging from America’s Great Crash of 2008 and its recessional austerity. Campaigning in 2016 on his Remain and Reform agenda, Corbyn said, “We, the Labour Party, are overwhelmingly for staying in, because we believe the European Union has brought investment, jobs and protection for workers, consumers and the environment.” But then, in March 2017, he used the three-line whip to get Labour MPs to vote to trigger Article 50, overcoming the final hurdle against leaving. 

Despite massively confusing contradictory messages, a lingering hope remained that, with the Tories ousted, we might not have to complete the Leave process. A second less febrile referendum leading to Remain but Reform from within was mentioned as a possibility and was likely to reverse the result. Pro-Labour voting intention soared in the polls. But then, with 70 percent of Labour voters supporting Remain, along with the majority of youth who saw their future being destroyed, and ethnic minorities far from enamoured of Brexit’s anti-immigration emphasis, Corbyn’s office leaked to the press that our triangulating leader was actually pro-Brexit.  

It was almost as if someone in his office didn’t actually want to take power. Labour canvassers reported support on the doorstep draining rapidly after that. Another hint in the press that Corbyn was listening to Remain halted the outflow for a moment but another pro-Brexit leak set it off again. Attempts to staunch the wound failed and Corbyn lost by a whisker, even though he did manage to deny Theresa May a resounding majority. That was it. That was our chance. As predicted, the state’s vicious blowback saw Corbyn labelled an anti-semite as were Jewish progressives in the party who were critical of Israel. 

The western Left snatches defeat from the jaws of victory

How did we get to this point, as a US-compliant UK, with so little resistance and a depleted consciousness in a country that once had a proto-bourgeoisie powerful enough to remove the head of a king?  

The Left allowed a 20-year vacuum to suffocate political consciousness since the proletarian classes flexed their muscle in the biggest protest ever seen in the UK, in the anti-Iraq war march of February 2003. Demobilising for the crucial day of Blair’s vote in Parliament the following month, which he had a real possibility of losing, was a Sliding Doors moment that stripped the movement of confidence. Failure to harness the public’s protest power built up over two years and mount a protest on the big day emboldened the hawks and shredded MP’s willingness to follow through with a dissenting vote: the result was 412 to 149. 

Opposition to war within the political establishment had collapsed. British parliamentary approval for the invasion of Iraq against the public wish shocked the movement. It created a lengthy hiatus in which the Right, largely marginalised throughout the post-war liberal period, has regrouped and consolidated. And, of course, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died, with millions displaced. 

The 2017 general election was our one chance to take some sort of power when Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn verged on winning in a landslide. I said at the time we’d better win. If it failed, the forces of reaction who’d been taken by surprise, would power-up and ensure that it never happened again. And they would be vicious and pitiless.  

General Election Sliding Doors, 2017

The Labour Party was the biggest in Europe, with 564,443 full members. The nation was waking up from the non-legally binding referendum with a hangover and a surge of regret that 37 percent of the population was about to destabilise the economy just as we were emerging from America’s Great Crash of 2008 and its recessional austerity. Campaigning in 2016 on his Remain and Reform agenda, Corbyn said, “We, the Labour Party, are overwhelmingly for staying in, because we believe the European Union has brought investment, jobs and protection for workers, consumers and the environment.” But then, in March 2017, he used the three-line whip to get Labour MPs to vote to trigger Article 50, overcoming the final hurdle against leaving. 

Despite massively confusing contradictory messages, a lingering hope remained that, with the Tories ousted, we might not have to complete the Leave process. A second less febrile referendum leading to Remain but Reform from within was mentioned as a possibility and was likely to reverse the result. Pro-Labour voting intention soared in the polls. But then, with 70 percent of Labour voters supporting Remain, along with the majority of youth who saw their future being destroyed, and ethnic minorities far from enamoured of Brexit’s anti-immigration emphasis, Corbyn’s office leaked to the press that our triangulating leader was actually pro-Brexit.  

It was almost as if someone in his office didn’t actually want to take power. Labour canvassers reported support on the doorstep draining rapidly after that. Another hint in the press that Corbyn was listening to Remain halted the outflow for a moment but another pro-Brexit leak set it off again. Attempts to staunch the wound failed and Corbyn lost by a whisker, even though he did manage to deny Theresa May a resounding majority. That was it. That was our chance. As predicted, the state’s vicious blowback saw Corbyn labelled an anti-semite as were Jewish progressives in the party who were critical of Israel. 

Parliamentary Brexit advisory referendum briefing document for MPs

Not that I’m advocating a return to the EU. We should never have left the EU bloc, (whatever its faults at the time, of which there were plenty), and destabilised the geopolitical equilibrium that was peacefully uniting the Eurasian landmass through cheap Russian energy and Chinese trade. But the damage has been done and Europe has been yanked rightward by the shock of Brexit. As an entity blatantly fashioning itself into the US elite’s battleship to fight Russia and China using our public money, it does not fill me with hope for a better future.

What now?

Since Corbyn’s chance was lost, there followed as Prime Ministers: New York-born Boris Johnson; lettuce-longevity wassername; US Green Card-carrying Rishi Sunak; Keir Starmer, now working for “international affairs including defence, security, trade, and technology in a fast-changing world,” having boasted of setting up war as “the next generation of good, secure, well-paid jobs”; and Andy Burnham and his Friends of Israel cabinet all pursuing the same goals. Burnham offers headphones and car park power while continuing to drag us into war, poverty and climate warming. He tells us to gather three days-worth of food for the coming storm but no word of what happens after that.  

Any glimmers of hope? An awakening working and middle-class on both sides of the Atlantic in the process of ditching their liberal Democrat managers and realising they have more in common with the global south. Interest in Marxism and hopes for socialism on the rise. America running out of armaments and unable to wreak further mayhem. China declining to provide its rare earths to make the weapons that will be used on them and other nations.  

Last thoughts: it’s a race against time. Sanity is relative and depends on which class you belong to. None of this is mechanistic — there’s still room to stop the maniacs furthering their selfish goals. Don’t succumb to nihilism. Americans and Europeans need to stop oscillating between two malign wings of the same deep state and create a better system that serves humanity, not the bottom-feeding apex predators. As Rosa Luxemburg put it, the choice is between socialism and barbarism. 

We are social animals. Love, peace and understanding are actual things worth fighting for when they come under attack. Like now.

BRICS First China freight train to Barking, east London, UK, 2017

Further reading

How the press was done: The Iraq War protest 2001-3, from race war to 9/11 

How the US wrecked Britain & China’s “Golden Age”: The Brexit trigger 

Shakedown Timeline of America’s 21st century war on China, Page 1: 1997-2010 — Hong Kong handover & WTO to President Obama’s Pivot to Asia 

Shakedown Timeline, of America’s 21st Century War on China, Page 2: 2010-2020 — Obama’s Pivot-to-Asia to Donald Trump’s first presidency 

Shakedown Timeline Of America’s 21st Century War On China, Page 3: 2019-2024 — Joe Biden’s presidency, Covid and Ukraine to the rise of BRICS and Donald Trump’s second term 

Shakedown Timeline of America’s 21st Century War on China, Page 4: The Opium Wars on steroids. 2024 to the Present — President Trump’s 2nd term turmoil 

How the Covid Pandemic was weaponised: Covid-19 Timeline — the politics, the science and the timing of the pandemic

The unfolding endgame: Gaza, rare earths and western decline

Anna Chen – First published 26 July 2025, rare earths

Glimmers of hope in the darkness

Rare earth mining

The relentless violence against Palestinians by Israel in Gaza continues to expose the brutal logic of Western imperialism, but two significant developments offer glimmers of hope in the unremitting darkness: the rise of a new UK political force challenging Labour’s complicity, and China’s rare earths squeeze that is crippling the US-led war machine. These forces, combined with a tornado of reckless reactions under pressure, suggest an accelerating decline of American hegemony.

The Corbyn-Sultana Party: forcing accountability on Palestine

Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s newly launched left-wing party, temporarily dubbed “Your Party,” represents the most significant challenge to Keir Starmer’s Labour government from the left. Its founding declaration explicitly condemns a “rigged system” that funds “billions for war” while denying basic welfare, and demands a “free and independent Palestine”.

This isn’t mere rhetoric. Starmer is vulnerable. The party’s emergence follows Labour’s internal rebellions over Gaza and welfare cuts, with Sultana suspended for opposing the two-child benefit cap. Corbyn’s independent victory in Islington North proves grassroots support exists for anti-war, redistributive politics.

On Thursday, Starmer performed an abrupt U-turn from branding himself a supporter of Zionism “without qualification” to acknowledging what the rest of us can see: the suffering in Gaza is indefensible. Timing suggests this might have been stated to save his skin from the Hague, besides which, he is still resisting recognition of an independent Palestinian state. By calling out UK policy as complicit in genocide, the new party amplifies legal and moral pressure on him. With the ICJ investigating genocide claims, Corbyn’s alliance with pro-Gaza independents could provide a home for a fractured Labour’s base.

Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana announce the formation of the Your Party, July 2025

China’s rare earths fightback: economic warfare against the war machine

Deng Xiaoping said in 1987 that the Middle East has oil but China has rare earth minerals.

China’s restriction of rare earths exports, controlling 90% of global processing and 70% of mining, is a masterclass in asymmetric economic statecraft. It’s a determined throttle rather than an immediate military face-off, pre-empting US stated intentions to go to war with it by 2027. Never do what your enemy wants you to do, a lesson underlined by Russia’s incursion into Ukraine under provocation.

Its impact cascades through the Western war apparatus:

Israel’s Iron Dome is at Risk. Raytheon, manufacturer of the Iron Dome system, relies on Chinese-sourced terbium and dysprosium for guidance systems. Export controls have already slashed US rare earth magnet imports by 58%.

There’s panic in the Pentagon as supplies run dry and weapons are used up on the European and Middle Eastern fronts before they even have a taste of China, the neocon elite’s ultimate objective.

This month’s $400 million investment in MP Materials, America’s sole rare earth producer, is a desperate, unsustainable stopgap. MP’s refining capacity remains years behind China’s, and its California mine lacks heavy rare earth reserves essential for advanced weaponry.

Western powers losing their composure

In Europe, Ursula von der Leyen’s dire threats of WTO action are a bark worse than any bite she can muster, and echo the failed 2012 case against China. EU High Representative and Vice President Kaja Kallas is reduced to screeching at Wang Yi and accusing China of enabling Russia which is clearly winning the West’s proxy war in Ukraine.

Beijing now frames restrictions as “environmental protections” and “security measures,” utilising WTO rules while accelerating BRICS mineral independence. Why on rare earth would you enable openly hostile forces to tool up against you?

The rare earths battle is part of an existential problem for China but one which they’ve tackled with martial arts dexterity without a shot being fired.

China’s high prices allowed US and European companies to set up competitive rare earth mining enterprises, including Chevron’s Molycorp Mountain Pass mine in 2008. When China lost the WTO ruling in January 2015, it had to drop its export restrictions. Its response was to massively lower its prices until its competition could no longer compete, and sent Chevron’s mine into bankruptcy. Two years later, MP Mine Operations LCC, which had a Chinese minority interest, bought it up: it’s now better known as MP Materials Corp; trading as MP on the New York Stock Exchange.

Raytheon makes Israel’s Iron Dome and declared the war on Gaza as “good for business”. But it is running out of rare earths.

The Military-Industrial Complex under stress

The war economy’s insatiable greed now collides with material reality.

War profiteering has been exposed. Raytheon’s CEO openly declared the Israel-Gaza war “good for business” as Biden sought $14 billion to restock the Iron Dome. “ He said, “I think really across the entire Raytheon portfolio, you’re going to see a benefit of this restocking. On top of what we think is going to be an increase in DOD top line”. Yet China’s export controls have triggered artillery shortages in Ukraine and delayed F-35 deliveries to Israel; systems dependent on Chinese-refined scandium (restricted April 2025).

While 700 defence lobbyists swarm over Washington, MP Materials’ $400 million Pentagon bailout can’t resolve its dependence on Chinese processing. Apple’s parallel $500M deal with MP underscores corporate panic over supply chains.

Apart from which, Israel and the Ukraine are running out of weapons from sheer disproportionate overuse. Nato members are being compelled to send their own Patriot systems to the Ukraine while chucking money at the Military Industrial Complex in order to keep Israel armed. US General Witkoff’s abrupt withdrawal from truce talks with Hamas on spurious grounds shows how panicked they are as they race against time.

The death spiral of American hegemony

It didn’t have to be this way. China’s gratitude for Nixon-Kissinger and genuine affection for America was an equilibrium that could have rolled on for ages with America enjoying its twilight years as venerable elder.

My wishful thinking on this, however, may be belied by the dynamics of imperialism and the tragic inevitability of the failing power lashing out in its death throes.

China inadvertently tested US relations when it gave the benefit of the doubt and hoped for the best. It showed more than good will by rescuing the global economy from America’s Great Crash of 2008, taking a hit itself and kicking off the longest market bull run ever. It was promptly rewarded two years later by Obama’s world-changing Pivot to Asia to “contain” China, an act of aggression that, far from revivifying US fortunes at the end of its capitalist cycle, has accelerated its own demise. All that affection, admiration and support destroyed by the hegemon’s paranoia and, paradoxically, its hubris: the worst possible combo.

Nixon-Kissinger’s triangular diplomacy once balanced China against the USSR, securing US twilight dominance. But Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” shattered that balance, revealing imperial hubris. America’s proxy war against Russia, beginning with the US-backed Maidan coup in 2014, ensured China awakened to its own position as final target once Russia was dispatched.

The rare earths boomerang effect

By treating China as a threat after it rescued global capitalism in 2008, the US accelerated BRICS consolidation. Russia now supplies 70% of China’s palladium; China processes 59% of the world’s lithium.

It has resulted in Capitalism’s auto-cannibalism. The dollar’s weaponisation hastened de-dollarisation. The US prints money to fund MP Materials and Ukraine aid, but inflation erodes this lifeline. As Raytheon lobbies for more wars, the economy strains under $1.7 trillion F-35 programmes.

The Global South’s Answer: BRICS embodies collective resilience. China’s rare earths strategy isn’t aggression; it’s self-defence against a dying hegemon’s lashing out.

The path ahead

Gaza’s suffering is not an anomaly but a template: the Palestinians today are the Global South tomorrow. Yet the tools of resistance are crystallizing. Corbyn’s party fractures the political cover for genocide. China’s rare earth stranglehold exposes the war machine’s material fragility.

The U.S. still dreams of a 2027 war with China, but Beijing refuses to play by Washington’s script: never do what your enemy wants. China’s rare earths throttling is a masterful evasion; a peaceful, systemic counterstrike that collapses the war economy from within. The Erysichthon Curse takes hold: the empire, gorging on its own institutions, now consumes itself.

Food queue of starving Palestinians in Gaza due to Israel’s blockade of aid trucks. Even medics and press are starting to succumb.

Further reading

Shakedown: A Timeline of America’s 21st century war on China: Page 4, 2024 to the Present — President Donald Trump’s second term turmoil

Shakedown Timeline 2010-2020: Page 2, Obama’s Pivot-to-Asia to Donald Trump’s first presidency

Anna Chen — Writer, presenter and broadcaster: BBC and Guardian before the pivot to China; ResonanceFM. Asia Times, New Internationalist, South China Morning Post. TED speaker, Orwell Prize shortlisted, cultural outrider.

The Power of Propaganda: Barrie Weiss in conversation with Anna Chen and Robbie Barwick

A three-way conversation with Anna Chen in the UK, Robbie Barwick in Australia and Barrie Weiss (AKA Barrie V) hosting from China, 16th September 2022.

THE POWER OF PROPAGANDA PART 1: Barrie Weiss in conversation with Anna Chen in the UK and Robbie Barwick of the Australian Citizens Party discussing Australia, the UK, US, mainstream media and Rupert Murdoch.

THE POWER OF PROPAGANDA PART 2: Barrie Weiss in conversation with Anna Chen in the UK and Robbie Barwick of the Australian Citizens Party discussing the UK, US, Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party, Rupert Murdoch, the PNAC.

THE POWER OF PROPAGANDA PART 3: Barrie Weiss in conversation with Anna Chen in the UK and Robbie Barwick of the Australian Citizens Party discussing the Fall of the US Dollar, Empire: Sanity vs Insanity.

Video originally recorded and edited by Barrie Weiss at Best China Info on 16th September 2022: https://youtu.be/25Vq2RiE2TA 

TWITTER:
Barrie Weiss @BeehiveChina
Robbie Barwick @RobbieBarwick
Anna Chen @MadamMiaow

How's it hanging in Brexitland? Politicians fiddle while Brits stare catastrophe in the face

With mere weeks to go before Britain crashes deal-less out of the European Union, where are we now?

Britain is leaving the EU just as Japan's ground-breaking trade pact with the EU kicks in, making those combined forces the world's largest trading body and one in which we still (for a nanosecond or two) have a major say.

The rest of the world's trade is blowing up under US tariffs, trade wars and imminent hot wars, while the WTO, which is supposed to be our life-raft after Brexit, has been marked for death by Trump.

Theresa May's principle-free efforts to push through Brexit at all costs are so unpopular that there were suggestions she might even have to call upon the Queen to overrule Parliament and force it through by royal decree ... until 25 Labour rebels helped her out by abstaining or voting against Yvette Cooper's attempt to extend Article 50. If the Queen had done so, it would have been the first use of the royal prerogative of prorogation (shutting down Parliament) in 300 years.

Someone's taking back control, but it isn't us.

Meanwhile, facial recognition technology is forced on UK citizens in expectation of riots on a No Deal Brexit, with one guy in Romford fined on the spot £90 for not complying. Cold War plans are being revived to evacuate the Queen and the royals to "safety" and away from the civil unrest (in other words, legitimate protest) that the rest of us will be coping with.

Goodbye NHS, already eyed up by Farage et al for privatisation, the 80 per cent of our fresh food that comes from Europe, libraries, anything that gave some bare bones to the nation's infrastructure for working class people.  It was already being clawed back. Brexit accelerates the process.

Perhaps Jeremy Corbyn's Brexit-supporting coterie is co-operating with the Tories because they hope that in the ensuing chaos, they will win power. Triggering Article 50 and then doing the bare minimum in the Remain campaign to the extent that swathes of the population have no idea where Labour stands on Brexit, against a legally questionable Leave campaign, may have seemed like a good idea to Lexiteers stuck in the 1970s. However, I have news for them: this is the right's revolution. Not the left's.

Despite John McDonnell's touching faith that Labour MPs will never accept Theresa May's bribes, there are some like John Mann ("Show me the money!") willing to take the Tory shilling when much of the problem was created by Tory austerity in the first place. I am even more doubtful about good faith on offer after Corbyn took no disciplinary action against the 25 pro-Brexit Labour MPs — including 8 front-benchers — who refrained from voting or voted against Yvette Cooper's attempt to extend Article 50, a chance for a second referendum. As every good tailor knows, you have to measure twice and cut once to make sure. So what gives?

How will Labour play the post-Brexit unrest when the state rolls out its repression? Will Corbyn weep for the youth protesting against the very measures he helped usher in? If he gets voted in, he'll be the one wielding the power of the state. The squirmy squaring of that contradiction will be fascinating to watch.

The three-quarters of the population who did NOT vote for the permanent Brexit change to the constitution in the ADVISORY referendum, including the youth generation who weren't allowed to vote in 2016, have had their future ripped from them by charlatans who have already moved their money offshore, and applied for French/Irish/other European passports for themselves and their children. At least the wealthy will avoid the EU tax avoidance laws and get to buy up UK assets at firesale prices. After all, it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

Rees-Mogg in line for a huge personal windfall when Britain exits the single market. His firm Somerset Capital has 9.6 billion dollars under management according to its website. Banking on Brexit! https://t.co/ZyjxahRBXy via @LondonEconomic

— Gina Miller (@thatginamiller) February 8, 2018

Jeremy Corbyn condemns cheap labour from abroad on day of Chinatown protest against immigration fishing raids

Labour dogwhistles echo Trump protectionism and the spirit of MAGA

Congratulations and a big thank you to everyone who made it to today's protest against the Home Office's aggressive immigrant fishing raids blighting London's Chinatown, called by the London Chinatown Chinese Association. These raids have intensified under the Tories' hostile environment ever since the Brexit vote to the point where shocking footage shows an elderly woman collapsing and almost being hit by a vehicle in a raid on 5th July.



Tellingly, Jeremy Corbyn not only neglected to tweet support to a community under siege, but he chose today of all days to state his opposition to cheap labour from abroad, reinforcing the bogus immigration debate as if this was the key problem facing British workers.

Instead, he launched "Build It In Britain". Not like MAGA, then.

Today I launched our ‘Build it in Britain’ campaign, to revive industry, create jobs and support local economies by manufacturing in the UK, not outsourcing to companies abroad.

We'll reprogramme our economy so it stops working for the few and begins working for the many. pic.twitter.com/JIVgcvco19

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) July 24, 2018

He could have argued against companies that pay low wages. However, instead, the implication is that its the phenomenon of immigration itself that is the cause of our economic woes and not any one of a myriad of screw-ups such as Cameron and Obama destabilising the world by military action in Libya, the pound tanking after the EU referendum or even just a predatory, greedy ruling class.

I don't know which double-barreled twit in his team claimed his words were being twisted into Fake News, but recent statements by his mates chart the course of this disastrous anti-foreigner frame of mind, especially when it comes to the Chinese.

A perfect storm has been brewing for Britain's Chinese community: a hostile immigration environment sweeping up east Europeans and Windrush workers alike; the Labour Party's betrayal of the principle of freedom of movement for labour; the increasingly bizarre political scapegoating of Chinese by Paul Mason and fellow left populists. Then, of course, there's Trump whose protectionism against the world, and especially China, is plucked straight out of the Steve Bannon playbook (more on Trump's China trade war in another blogpost).

This has been building for a while. Bereft of socialist ideas to galvanise the opposition into government despite nearly a decade of Tory austerity that's left most of us desperate for progressive, inclusive politics for a change, Corbyn, Seumas Milne et al have chosen Trumpian populism, focusing on foreign workers as responsible for our ills. Think I'm exaggerating? Here's Jeremy's left stablemate, Paul Mason:

You think western democracy can survive another decade of enriching millionaires of China and impoverishing the workers of Europe? I don't

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) June 23, 2018

'Cause China's millionaires are so much more venal than ours ... who've been around for a lot longer. So much for class analysis. Mason has been trying to persuade Corbyn to favour "... a strategy designed to allow the populations of the developed world to capture more of the growth projected over the next 5-15 years, if necessary at a cost to India, China and Brazil ... to save democracy, democratic institutions and values in the developed world by reversing the 30-year policy of enriching the bottom 60% and the top 1% of the world's population". So we're fighting for the 39 per cent, then — for the few, not the many. I like the way he's snuck in the 1% to justify his proposed wreckage of foreign economies.

Here is someone who was prominent in various left parties, including being in the Socialist Alliance press team (where he did very little while I did the work for no pay),  dropping his "workers of the world unite" Marxism for a piece of whatever it is that Trump's got. "It is," he continues in an appalling lurch to the right, "a programme to deliver growth in Wigan, Newport and Kirkaldy — if necessary at the price of not delivering them to Shenzhen, Bombay and Dubai."

Evidently, China raising 800 million out of poverty after decades of low paid labour in suicide factories making our stuff, and following almost two centuries of misery inflicted by the world superpowers as well as their own decaying Qing dynasty, is an unacceptable inconvenience to westerners and nothing to do with the dynamics of capitalism. My major objection came when China was persuaded by the US to join the WTO and suddenly state assets ended up in the hands of the children of top cadre. However, they are where they are. All that pain they went through and now western opportunists want to trash it just as they're getting up off their knees.

The China-bashing is getting ridiculous. Domestically, there's much to challenge but in terms of economy and foreign policy, right now, China and Germany under Angela Merkel look like the only grown-ups in the room — if we're stuck with capitalism until that ol' gravedigger gets going, these are the best. Mason's passionate pleading for plucky little Victoria's Secret against big bad China was puzzling on many levels. I remember when Chinese women were often represented by women in white science coats cuz we were encouraged to use our brains, not our T and A. Today, women in China have to struggle against the sort of shite portrayals of women that white left males crave but should have dumped a generation back: the lingerie company does not represent any sort of liberation. Neither is it some sort of workers' paradise for anyone who knows the company's exploitative history of using child and slave labour, and its terrible sweatshop conditions in Jordan for "guest-workers".

Nearly 20 years ago we held our first Chinatown demo when New Labour tried to blame the UK Chinese for the devastating outbreak of foot and mouth disease, an association of a racial group with filth and pestilence that would make Goebbels proud. I'd hoped that things would be better under a purported socialist but I've been told by Corbyn's friends that there are no Chinese workers in Britain (not even the Dover 58 or the 22 cocklepickers who were lost in Morecambe Bay) because we "all work in catering" and are therefore all "petit bourgeois", and that it's "British workers who count".

As Catherine Stihler, co-chair of the Scottish Labour for the Single Market group, told the Independent: “While some voters are angry about immigration, it is the job of the Labour Party to challenge anti-immigrant sentiment and promote the benefits to our economy and public services.”

Freedom of movement for labour has long been a crucial left credo, a counterbalance to the freedom of capital to chase cheap labour across the globe. Thus, when James Dyson's cleaning technology proved to be so massively popular, he closed down the Wiltshire factory and moved it to Malaysia for all that loverly cheap labour. We wouldn't blame Malaysian workers for Dyson's decision but it's Dyson who gets the CBE and the knighthood while the foreign workers get the vilification.

Trump's trade war with China could easily slip into a hot war as some of Trump supporters seem to want. One nuclear superpower in Thucydidean conflict with the upstart power. If that happens, none of us will be  immune from the fallout.

Here at least is one welcome message of support for today's demo.

We stand with the Chinatown community as they strike and protest against immigration raids!

As queer people we remember the history of police raids on LGBTQ venues in Soho and we stand with communities facing state harassment

End immigration raids and the hostile environment! pic.twitter.com/DH3QVk84hI

— Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants (@lgsmigrants) July 24, 2018

Today, China is being scapegoated for "impoverishing" the global working-class. Eighteen years ago, New Labour was blaming UK Chinese for the foot and mouth disease outbreak that Blair's government had abysmally failed to deal with. I was twice blasted out of the blue by the pro-Iraq War Ipswich Labour MP: first time for joining the Labour Party to support Corbyn (I've since departed), the second at a party where he ranted at me at length about "iniquitous Chinese" and their death penalty ... which I oppose, by the way, but that made no odds, my Chinese face being my guilty scarlet sign. The Labour Party has failed to uproot their prejudice against Chinese people and it's getting worse. Anti-Chinese racism — the one you can get away with.

Jeremy Corbyn's Momentum betrays the 70% of Labour voters who voted Remain

Jeremy Corbyn's Momentum group repackages betrayal as a nationwide campaign to 'Take Back Control' of Brexit and push it through despite only 37 per cent of the electorate voting Leave.

Around 70 per cent of Labour voters chose Remain in the EU referendum but Remainers are unrepresented by the main parties. Instead of robustly challenging the Brexit narrative and the referendum result which was always advisory only, Labour plans to help the Conservatives slip it through with a few tweaks if we're lucky.

Far from saving £350 million per week to give to the NHS, the politically neutral Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimates that Brexit will cost an EXTRA £250 million per week or a weekly total of £600 million, and forecasts a £220 billion increase in national debt by end of parliament to a shocking £1.945 trillion. If this happens, you can forget state pensions, saving the NHS or having anything like a stable economy.

If it hadn't been for Bank of England chief Mark Carney pumping another £60 billion pounds into the economy by buying up gilts (government debt) after the EU vote, extending the existing quantitative easing (QE) programme to £435bn and keeping the stock markets artificially inflated, it would have been even worse.

How many of us knew that we were voting to make ourselves poorer?

Philip Hammond's Autumn Statement on Wednesday confirmed that there's already a £100bn hole in the treasury, £58bn of which is a direct result of the Brexit vote.

So the worst off who suffered most under Bullingdon brat George Osborne's "austerity" measures when he should have been spending to stimulate the economy at rock bottom interest rates have even more to lose in the years ahead. Will the richest who tripled their wealth during the same period take their turn to recapitalise the banks? I wouldn't bet on that.

EU immigrants may be a net gain to the public purse but they are anathemised with barely a whisper from Labour. If their numbers fall, public finances will take an even bigger hit. Theresa May knows this. Jeremy Corbyn et al know this. The economy is reeling, the pound plummeting way below the level necessary to be advantageous to our exports. Britain's population is getting older and needs immigrants to do the work but Labour still panders to the right's obsession.

In response to a catastrophic future, Corbyn's Momentum leaders squeal breathlessly about a series of events whose objective appears to be to bamboozle their audiences that Brexit is an inevitability and the result of an "overwhelming majority". Only a quarter of the population voted for this permanent wrench and yet only the terms of Brexit are to be debated, not the legitimacy of it happening at all.

Momentum's Emma Rees gushed:

“After the success of The World Transformed in Liverpool, ‘Take Back Control’ is a series of exciting events that will bring together leave and remain voters to debate the terms of Brexit, the future of Britain and give a platform to voices too often left out of political conversations.”

Momentum's "exciting" sounds more like the ancient Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times".

It's like asking how you would like the poo in your dinner. Hard or soft? The answer, "I'd rather not have any, thank you," is not up for grabs at all.

LATEST: LABOUR LIST: The Brexit referendum wasn't legally binding, however ...Corbyn: “Article 50 has to be invoked now” 

GUARDIAN: State pension under threat as pension age may be about to rise again, says former minister. Not what most people would describe as "exciting" prospects.

INDEPENDENT: John McDonnell: Labour will not block hard Brexit – but will rely on 'moral pressure.'

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES: Hard Brexit could lead to '25 years of economic pain' for UK.

SUNDAY TIMES: Why Brexit means a bigger debt burden for Britain

Andrew Coates thinks the Momentum membership might not have been consulted.

Tories under pressure to go for investment: Labour's opportunity to drive the economic narrative

The Reluctant Capitalist: keeping the Left up to speed

From Anna's Facebook post Sunday 2nd October 2016:

I'll give this to Team Corbyn for free (as always).

I'm delighted to see left arguments for infrastructure investment entering the debate at the Labour conference. What you might not know is that investors, AKA the capitalist class, are in a panic because austerity hasn't worked for them, either. It’s all very well being a First Class passenger on the Titanic while those in steerage drown first under George Osborne’s austerity measures, but they know the sea will get you in the end.

The markets are fat, flat and running on petrol fumes. Bonds have no yield. Gold has soared as the last refuge of value but looks like dropping. Everyone is expecting a massive correction (slump), only unlike the 2008 crash, an economically strong China is not there to help pick up the pieces — China has a terrifying amount of debt as they have learnt about printing and pumping money from our own Quantitive Easing (QE). It is like playing pass the parcel with a live grenade.

Philip Hammond is now under pressure from significant bodies of Tories. Now that the central banks have run out of ammo and the poorest have suffered from austerity while national and personal debt has soared, there’s a clamour for what we needed right after the 2008 crash: investment in infrastructure such as rail, roads, housing, ports, power stations and so on.

However, Hammond is dithering. This means there is a window of opportunity to change the austerity narrative and get speakers into the media — you'll be pushing at an open door. This is your chance to update your fact-files (I am sure you do this regularly), brief your speakers, give them some media training and shape the debate.

For instance, the Tories will baulk at building social housing among all the possible projects. Your task, if you care to take it, is to grab the limelight PROACTIVELY, get into the various print, broadcast and social media and foreground the facilities we want built for need not greed.

Aditya Chakrabortty: Hammond is leading Britain into another lost decade

Questions for Jeremy Corbyn, Seumas Milne and Alan Johnson on the Brexit victory

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. But it wasn't Jeremy Corbyn. Or even Labour's Remain front man, Alan Johnson.

So the morning after Great Britain was cut adrift in an ocean of uncertainty by the Brexit vote, the public were finally told the truth by the Leave campaign: there will be no £350mn saving per week going to the NHS; Turkey is not joining the EU; Britain wasn't party to the Schengen agreement anyway so the EU vote will have no effect on immigration except for a possible increase; the British Army was never going to join the fantasy Euro army of Ukip nightmares; expect TTIP on steroids.

However, we will have that recession that's been looming and we will lose Scotland and Northern Ireland. Little England has done more for a united Ireland than any IRA bombs.

And the 75 per cent of young voters who voted Remain feel their futures have been destroyed by older voters. Plus an explosion of far-right race hate is transforming the UK.

Boris Johnson and Michael Gove put the prick into Pyrrhic.

Parliament's raison d'etre (sorry to go all European on you) is surely that momentous events are presided over by our democratically elected representatives whose job it is to know what they are talking about. But like the cynical demagogue he is, Gove dismissed not only all the experts as Nazis and cast himself as their persecuted Jewish genius Albert Einstein, but he drew to an end the whole Enlightenment movement's emphasis on reason, provable evidence and facts, stoking up a Dark Ages dependence on blind faith.

The mainstream media will always be hostile to Corbyn. We know that. Which is one reason why our side had to be at its sharpest, most agile, ethical, lively, imaginative and honest. It is dismaying to see the one quality in play — JC's honesty — end up as a pearl cast before swine and trodden underfoot in a skint and lacklustre campaign. So much for "balance", especially from the BBC. (Jeez, even that other JC, Jeremy Clarkson, was to the left of The Management on the EU, stunning us with his Remain stance.)

Corbyn's 30 or so Labour In meetings for the Remain cause around parts of the country, while encouraging and a vital plank for the cause, were largely speaking to the converted and perceived by the wider national audience as too little, too late. A whole lot more was required: a bigger audience reached, a wider bandwidth of communication deployed.

And now vast swathes of Leave voters have woken up with a hangover.

Some questions:
Why did Jeremy Corbyn not share every Remain platform with Cameron, taking advantage of Remain's resources, and have the confidence that his better arguments would outshine the Tory wing of Remain? Some have argued that JC would have been damaged by this in the same way that Ed Miliband was damaged in the Scotland independence referendum. Yet this was such an unusual set of circumstances that, had a powerful narrative been harnessed, that's what would have lasted beyond the dreaded photo of Corbyn holding his nose and standing 10 feet away from a clearly desperate, weak Cameron. He didn't have to be chummy but at least he would have been in the game.

Secondly, they needed a potent Remain vision to inspire voters and fill the void. Leave had Take Control. What did we have instead? How did Corbyn's team aim to cut the legs out from the powerful emotional pillars of Leave's argument? Were they methodical? Did they think that simple facts would win the day when dealing with such deep illogical fears from a working class pummelled and pulverised by Tory austerity and twisted by media collusion for half a decade?

Thirdly, are Jeremy's close Lexit friends [STW] relying on the ensuing chaos, calamity and misery to drive the workers into their arms? Or have they effectively driven them into the predatory arms of the right?

JC did not cause the country to vote Brexit but as leader of the opposition hoping to win power in the next general election he could and should have done much more to weight it in Remain's favour. This was Corbyn's chance to shine, to show everyone what the progressive Remain but Reform side represented, and to have done it with clarity and good conscience for a better future in common with all the other workers of the world who are being stiffed by the bosses.

Yet he went on holiday in the middle of the campaign, 30th May to 8th June. This says much about his sense of urgency and perhaps a residual desire for Brexit based on 1970s circumstances.

Jeremy Corbyn is a great constituency MP with a left conscience. He was as surprised as anyone else when, having given John McDonnell a break to stand as leader of the Labour Party, he actually won. Like thousands of others I joined the LP because of Jeremy. But the victory for Leave, condemning a younger generation to an enfeebled economy for the rest of their lives, is due at least in part to Labour's slothful, uninspiring, ineffectual campaign. For too long Labour voters didn't even know which side the party was on.

Alan Johnson, chair of Labour Remain, was to grasp the campaign by the scruff of the neck and drag it into the public eye. I'd forgotten. That's how much of an impact he made.

Corbyn's strongest suit in the political sphere is that he is honest and straight if a bit dull. That honest, reliable quality should have been promoted to the max flanked by his bruisers — Tom Watson and Alan Johnson in the case of Brexit — doing the heavy lifting. The campaign was lacking in all counts.

There is history to this. The one far left analysis from the late 1990s, one that has stayed with me, was that the working class would grow more bitter with each of Tony Blair's inevitable betrayals and would turn to the right. That's why it was vital to build a left alternative to the Labour Party.

Instead, the far left leadership of bureaucrats (prominent in Lexit — left Brexit — and a key part of Corbyn's Labour leadership campaign) proceeded to stop and start, initiate and then sabotage, the various attempts to create a left pole of attraction. They took an axe to the fledgling Socialist Alliance  just as it began to make an impact. Their dishonourable opportunism around the Birmingham Mosque, PJP and Respect ended with the OFFU cheque debacle. Valuable organising time was frittered away, opportunities wasted, trust destroyed, careers made.

The important job was to make sure there was no vacuum which the right could fill. They failed to do even this. All their bickering and internecine warfare may have secured a top place for certain ambitious lefties but it has left the working class in disarray, clutching at the nearest nationalist straw.

Paul Mason is more forgiving of Corbyn, crediting him with keeping two thirds of Labour supporters on board to vote Remain. He writes:

Our strategic problem is to reconnect not only with the Labour core voters who backed Brexit but with those who have drifted to Ukip. I don’t know whether the present leadership can do that; I do know all the previous leaderships failed to do it so we need to work out a plan and try.

Who is the "we" who are going to work out a plan? The usual far left clique of charmers?

Phil Harris, chair of the Labour In campaign, says that Corbyn's office:

"... consistently attempted to weaken and sabotage the Labour remain campaign, in contravention of the party’s official position. For example, they resisted all polling and focus group evidence on message and tone, raised no campaign finance, failed to engage with the campaign delivery and deliberately weakened and damaged the argument Labour sought to make.

Corbyn made only a smattering of campaign appearances, and they were lacklustre in delivery and critical of the EU in tone resulting in Labour voters not knowing the party’s position or hearing our argument. Corbyn’s infrequent campaign appearances and narrow focus, in turned limited the party’s appeal. He kept saying that the economic shock of Brexit was not real. It is. And it is working people and Labour communities that will pay the price. A price that is being felt right now."

Sabotage is probably too strong a term for the incompetence on display but this certainly felt like going through the motions in every sense. While the reluctance to do the necessary work may not reflect Corbyn's past position of the 1970s, how much of this damage was down to his press supremo Seumas Milne who did share Lexit's desire for Out last time anyone looked?

One left commentator, Sukant Chandan, writes:

"The first thing Corbyn said on the early morning of the Brexit victory was to 1, Capitulate at the feet of the ‪Brexit Fascists‬ by demanding we fast track exiting the EU by invoking article 50! The other thing he said is that immigration is a real issue that needs to be addressed. Since then he has been increasingly positioning himself as someone who is going to 'fight for plucky england/UK against the EU for brexit', this is positioning him increasingly directly with the UK nationalist right who are similarly invested in 'fighting the EU for the UK' which is neatly centred in the UK right and far right project. Corbyn is fast becoming right now (has already become?) the figure head that the Brexit/Lexit camp are attaching themselves to to develop this UK nationalist fight with the EU."

However, faced with the prospect of a Blairite coup, I do not want Corbyn to go. Replacing him with Blairites seizing on this chance to ditch the hope he embodies is to score as big an own goal as working class Leave voters have just done. We do not need more capitulation to austerity, supporting wars without end, appeasing business and taking jobs with the worst offenders (such as former Home Secretary Dr John Reid and G4S, Alan Milburn and privatised health, Tony Blair and his evil empire).

Eleven Labour cabinet members have resigned to oust Corbyn. Yet how many resigned over austerity?

We are reaching an existential stage of the survival of the British working class and the struggle requires all hands on deck.

I've been arguing for improved media relations since I started doing presswork in the left: if we are so overlooked by the mainstream press with only the pro-Brexit Morning Star to plough the socialist furrow, would the TUC use some of its treasure to finance a cable TV station that combined news and arts to give the left a cultural base? It would take time to build but the longest journey begins with the first step. More Yellow Brick Road than Shining Path, we hope.

Sign the Second Referendum petition

Open letter from Women of Colour supporting Remain.

Leave campaign wipe all their pledges off their website.

George Soros predicts break-up of the EU, of the UK and the end of decades of peaceful European unification.

Lee Jasper on Bracist Britain: a Black British perspective.

LSE Blog: Brexit is not the will of the British people – it never has been

Anna Chen started and ran many press operations for the left including Globalise Resistance, Socialist Alliance, various UK Chinese campaigns such as the Foot and Mouth Disease smear 2001 and the Morecambe Bay cocklepickers disaster. She was the press officer who succesfully relaunched Stop The War (STW) with Jeremy Corbyn's first STW meeting in London, September 2001, breaking it into the mainstream media.