ON May 17 1933 Adolf Hitler, then three months into his burgeoning Nazi dictatorship, addressed a Reichstag already purged of its Communist representatives.

He was speaking to a statement outlining his foreign policy, touting his commitment to peace and equal rights for Germany and Germans.

One historian records what happened as this exercise in fascist demagogy was put to the vote by Goering: “When the Social Democratic deputies rose as a body to vote with the bourgeois parties, the chamber, including Hitler, broke into a storm of applause. The German Nationalists burst into Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles, and many Social Democrats joined in.”

It is only fair to note here that some leaders of the SDP had already fled into exile, and others were under arrest. Let’s also allow that these were frightened people. One deputy committed suicide rather than follow her party into Hitler’s embrace.

The point is that social democracy has never been a bulwark against the far right, since its commitment to the maintenance of the capitalist system will always align at least some of its adherents with whatever political expedients seem necessary to keep that show on the road.

Other examples could be provided. Our own putative 1930s Fuhrer, Oswald Mosley, did not come from nowhere — he came from a Labour cabinet in point of fact.

And so to Keir Starmer’s Powellite anti-migrant speech. We can dismiss any idea that the rhetorical confluence of Powell 1968 and Starmer 2025 is a mere coincidence. Downing Street has too many researchers for that.

Nor is it a blunder by the Prime Minister — an instance of tactical misjudgement. The Labour government’s every move now is carefully targeted at those tempted to shift their votes to Reform UK.

The attack on welfare. The evisceration of the overseas aid budget — Britain is no longer a “global charity,” says new aid minister Jenny Chapman, in words which will unite the world in hollow laughter.

The chest-thumping, flag-waving militarism, with the brasshats’ tab to be picked up by the disabled.

According to Treasury Chief Secretary Darren Jones, speaking at the weekend, this is the politics of “love, compassion and community.” More-or-less what the Reichstag was assured in 1933.

However, Jones was on the money in one respect. He also observed that “we may be in an era of five-party politics. But there’s only really two sides.”

It is just that the dividing line does not run where Jones would claim it does, between the loving, compassionate Labour government and the rest. In fact, there is an unseemly scramble on the part of both traditional governing parties to get the same side of the line — the side of “anger, division and blame,” according to the Chief Secretary.

Nigel Farage, a bourgeois reactionary putting a populist gloss on his essential Thatcherism, is setting the tone of political discourse from his perch of five MPs, yet an increasingly imposing opinion poll lead, largely substantiated by the results of the local elections across England and the Runcorn by-election.

Kemi Badenoch has set off in hot pursuit, probably the most culturally reactionary Tory leader since Thatcher herself. Many of her MPs, looking nervously over their shoulders at Liberal Democrats snapping at their heels in suburban constituencies, may not wish to follow her but they are aware that, in the event of a Badenoch defenestration, their malign membership will likely impose worse in the form of Robert Jenrick, advocate of an alliance of the right with the far right.

And now here comes Labour, like a three-legged dog trying to keep up. It has already edified us with filmed deportation raids. Starmer’s latest moves, accompanied by tired tropes about “integration” and worse about “strangers,” amount to a “me too” message aimed at the Farage-curious.

It feels like Mission: Impossible. Evidence suggests that most Reform voters by far come from the Tories — or from the ranks of non-voters — rather than Labour, which is actually losing two votes to the Liberal Democrats or Greens for every one going rightwards.

Even Starmer’s new proposals do not compete with Reform’s pledge to end migration completely. Nor will many be persuaded by arguments that this is all about mitigating downward pressure on wages.

Of course, employers want a mass of cheap labour in order to cheapen the value of labour-power as a commodity, and hence pay lower wages. In other news, the Pope appears to be Catholic.

A proper Labour response would be to tackle low wages whoever they are paid to, which in the here-and-now would mean sectoral bargaining agreements with trade unions, among other measures.

Yet the government has postponed until 2028 the introduction of such an agreement for social care, the sector likely to be most impacted by the curbs announced this week. And that, in one of many climbdowns over employment law reform, is the only sectoral agreement proposed at all.

And if forced to raise wages, most employers will eventually start shedding labour, replacing workers with technology wherever possible, which in the age of AI is pretty near everywhere.

Yes, that will erode the rate of profit, which in turn will mandate other attacks on working people, as well as intensify international competition, enhancing the already non-negligible risk of war.

Starmer, you will notice, has all that covered too.

Many decent British social democrats are anxious about all this and argue for a different course. So far, their efforts have been somewhat incoherent and irresolute. What they actually want has, over the last decade, acquired the name “Corbynism.”

That last — which, I will repeat until the last cow is safely back indoors, was wildly more popular than war-austerity-and-racism Starmerism — may soon return centre-stage. The times are certainly demanding it.

Now there is the other side of Darren Jones’s line, right there. Millions are already standing there. The people are not looking for a round of applause from Hitler’s heirs, nor signing Rule Britannia as the night draws in.

HMS Prince of Wales heads to war as Britain’s imperial zombie marches on

ORDERS from Washington are normally implemented without much question in Whitehall. So it is noteworthy when one apparently isn’t.

The Financial Times reports that the Pentagon has told the British government to focus its military efforts on Europe and cease what it must regard as vainglorious posturing in the Asia-Pacific region.

This position is consistent with the Trump policy of a fairly strict division of the world into spheres of influence. A world where the US neither wants nor needs European involvement in its regional confrontation with China, something incidentally not going terribly well.

Yet it seems that the British state is, on this occasion, paying no attention. One of the Navy’s two aircraft carriers, the Prince of Wales, is on its way to the Indo-Pacific on its own anti-Chinese mission, just as its twin, the Queen Elizabeth, was dispatched in 2021.

From a US perspective, such a visit adds little or nothing to the enormous firepower it already deploys across the region.

Yet seen from London, it is an essential expression of Britain’s “world role,” further manifest in the part played in global finance by the City of London, at a time of dog-eat-dog imperialist politics. See also the arms-escalation Aukus pact with Australia and the US.

This subterranean dispute highlights the strategic dilemma facing Britain in the emerging new order. Does it work for a continuation of a free-trade, relatively-integrated world imperialist bloc in which it holds a privileged position? Does it build itself up as an economic and military power in its own right?

Or does it simply align unconditionally with the US, come what may?

Not choices Starmer seems up to making. In fact, he makes a principle of not doing so, and instead attempts all at once.

In the end, the establishment is likely to opt for some variation on the Washington-first option, since key parts of the British state cannot operate effectively without US buy-in.

At any event, the presence of the Prince of Wales off the coast of China will prove that British imperialism remains undead, and that as the world moves towards war, Britain will be there, as always. Unless and until the people have their say.