UK Starmer government deports more asylum seekers and migrant workers

Harvey Thompson

The UK Labour government has carried out a huge nationwide operation in recent weeks to arrest and deport “illegal” asylum seekers and migrant workers.

The Home Office announced last week that 1,780 people were stopped and interrogated over suspected “illegal working activity” between July 20 and 27. Described as a “nationwide intensification week,” it targeted workplaces in the hugely exploitative gig economy, with a focus on food delivery drivers.

Around 280 were arrested in areas including Hillingdon in north-west London, Dumfries in Scotland, and Birmingham.

A Home Office Immigration Enforcement vehicle in north London [Photo by Philafrenzy / Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Following the crackdown 89 people were detained pending deportation. Another 53 are having their asylum support reviewed, which the Home Office said could result in support being suspended or withdrawn.

Under UK law, asylum seekers are effectively barred from employment while their asylum claim is being processed. Permission can be applied following a year of waiting.

Boasting of the operation, the Home Office announced that “Immigration Enforcement teams will receive a £5 million funding boost to ramp up illegal working intensification activity even further.  

The “cash injection” would come from a £100 million investment for border security announced earlier this month. It would “contribute to a major surge in enforcement visits over the coming months” at “illegal working hotspots more frequently and increase enforcement teams’ intelligence gathering capabilities to support frontline enforcement activity.”

Sky News reporters joined police on some of the operations targeting delivery drivers. It reported that “Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat have said they will ramp up facial verification and fraud checks over the coming months to prevent people working as riders without permission.”

Around 50 smaller businesses including car washes and restaurants were issued with penalty notices that could see them handed substantial fines if they are found to have hired workers without the legal right to work in the UK.

In another direct dog whistle to the far-right constituency being mobilised by Reform UK and the fascist gangs who have mobilised throughout the summer outside hotels accommodating asylum seekers, the government announced it will share information about asylum hotel locations with food delivery firms in a purported effort to disrupt illegal work “hotspots”.

Heading up the campaign to vilify asylum seekers is Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who issued an X posting last week further conflating seeking asylum and immigration with crime:

“If you come to this country illegally, you will face detention and return. If you come to this country and commit a crime, we will deport you as soon as possible.”

Starmer claimed that foreign “criminals” had been exploiting Britain’s immigration system for far too long, that they have stayed in the UK for months or even years while their appeals continue to be processed. The fact is that the length of time for processing is the sole responsibility of this and previous governments.

On August 7, the government detained the first “small boat migrants” under the “one in, one out” returns treaty announced by Starmer in a joint press conference with the French president Emmanuel Macron last month. Under its terms for each small boat migrant sent back across the English Channel, an asylum seeker deemed to have a valid claim will be allowed to enter the UK from France under a “legal route”.

An unspecified number of migrants who arrived in the UK by small boat are being held in an immigration removal centre pending their removal to France, believed to be within weeks.

On the day, Starmer said: “No gimmicks, just results. If you break the law to enter this country, you will face being sent back. When I say I will stop at nothing to secure our borders, I mean it.”

In language supposedly aimed at the people smugglers rather than asylum seekers and replacing the previous Conservative governments’ mantra of “Stop the Boats” with “Smash the Gangs”, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper claimed that “criminal gangs” spent up to seven years embedding themselves along the UK border.

Conservative Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp taunted the government with, “Labour are now boasting about arrests, but we know they are too scared to actually deport anyone.”

Anxious to prove otherwise, with a frothing xenophobic media demanding deportations, on August 7 the Home Office posted a video showing asylum seekers being herded into a holding facility and a message on X:

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This was followed up August 11, with a Home Office video showing asylum seekers being frogmarched on to a plane accompanied by sinister music with the following message:

“For too long, foreign criminals have remained in the UK and exploited our system while their cases are processed.

“We are increasing the number of foreign criminals who can have their legal appeals heard from abroad - making more returns flights like this possible sooner.

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The government has also expanded its “deport now, appeal later” scheme to 23 countries, claiming this “would increase the country’s ability to remove foreign criminals immediately and ease the burden on detention centres and prisons. It will also save taxpayer money.”

Under draconian legislation enacted by the government in June and expected to come into force in September, prisoners will face deportation 30 percent into their prison sentence rather than the current 50 percent. The government will need parliament to greenlight its proposal to bring this down to 0 percent; which they will almost certainly get.

Commenting on the law change, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said, “Our message is clear… If you abuse our hospitality and break our laws, we will send you packing.

“Deportations are up under this government, and with this new law they will happen earlier than ever before.”

In its first five months in office, the Starmer Labour government set a new record on deportations. But the noxious anti-immigration atmosphere—with the government playing a major role—means that whatever repression is meted out is never enough to satiate the most vicious anti-immigration forces.

Last week, figures showed that the number of migrants arriving in the UK this year after crossing the English Channel topped 25,000—the earliest point in a calendar year at which the 25,000 mark has been passed since data on Channel crossings was first compiled in 2018 under the Conservatives. On August 12, the Home Office published official statistics showing that more than 50,000 people have crossed the Channel in small boats since Starmer became prime minister. Every right-wing newspaper and media outlet pounced on the figures to denounce the government for its inaction. The nominally liberal and pro-Labour Guardian pointed out that “Rishi Sunak, the last Conservative prime minister, took 603 days in office to pass the 50,000 milestone, while it took Boris Johnson 1,066 days during the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Predictably the figures prompted responses as to which party was genuinely the most anti-immigrant.

Labour former home secretary Jacqui Smith (now Baroness Smith of Malvern) told the BBC that reaching the milestone is “unacceptable”. Speaking to Times Radio she said while the government “have taken a lot of important action already” such numbers were arriving “because it hasn’t been tackled by the last government over recent years.”

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch utilised the occasion to address anti-migrant protesters in a public house in Epping in Essex—where the local Bell Hotel has been under siege for weeks by the far-right. She declared “just having people who can stay in a hotel, go out and come as they please, whether or not they’re criminals, we have no idea who these people are—I don’t think that that’s right and it’s gone on long enough.” Badenoch suggested detention camps along the lines of “Nightingale pop-up hospitals” built in the early months of the COVID pandemic be built. She asked, “Is it possible for us to set up camps and police that, rather than bringing all of this hassle into communities?”

She invited the far-right organisers of anti-migrant protests to advise the party declaring, “As a party, we need to also hear from the community about what you think the solutions are. We don’t have all the answers; it’s important that we make sure that the community is part of the problem solved.”

On Sunday, Tory Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick, likely the next party leader, attended a far-right mobilisation outside the Bell Hotel. He told the Telegraph, “This problem has been going on for six years —170,000 people, mostly undocumented young men, have broken into our country. Each one of them is going to cost us half a million pounds if they stay.”

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Declaring solidarity with the fascists, Jenrick declared, “This has to come to an end, and I wanted to come here today to show my support for the fair-minded patriotic people here who are out protesting every weekend.”

Wildfires fueled by climate change devastate Spain

Santiago Guillen

Firefighters battle a wildfire in Veiga das Meas, northwestern Spain, Saturday, Aug. 16, 2025. [AP Photo/Lalo R. Villar]

Massive wildfires have burned in Spanish forests throughout August, devastating multiple regions. In the past two weeks, they erupted in Galicia, Castilla y León, Extremadura, Madrid, Asturias, Cantabria, Andalusia, and Valencia. More than 350,000 hectares have already burned across Spain, an area equivalent to 34 times the size of the city of Barcelona or to the entire island of Mallorca, making this the worst year since records began.

The fire that started on August 10 in Molezuelas de la Carballeda (Castilla y León) has already become the largest in Spain’s history, killing two and burning over 50,000 hectares. In Galicia, the Chandrexa de Queixa fire is the largest in the region’s history, which has historically seen its forests burn intensely.

So far, four people have died, dozens have been injured—ten seriously—and more than 30,000 have been evacuated. Many villages have been destroyed, with families losing their homes and belongings. Dozens of roads have been closed, and the rail connection between Madrid and Galicia has been suspended due to fire.

The archaeological complex of the Roman gold mines of Las Médulas, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was devastated by the flames. According to experts, the thermal shock and loss of protective vegetation could endanger centuries of Roman engineering. The Picos de Europa Natural Park was also affected by the fires.

What is happening in Spain is not an isolated event. In Europe, France is experiencing its worst wildfire season in 75 years, Portugal is on high alert, Cyprus suffered its worst fires in half a century on July 22 and 23, and massive fires are spreading across Greece, Turkey, Albania, and the Balkans. So far this year, Europe’s wildfire season has burned 439,568 hectares, more than twice the average of the past 19 years.

Outside Europe, the US and Canada have also experienced massive wildfires. Canada is enduring its second worst wildfire season in history, with an area burned nearly the size of Panama.

This is a consequence of climate change and capitalism’s inability to combat it. Lorenzo Labrador, a scientist at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), explains that climate change “plays an indirect but key role by increasing the frequency and intensity of heatwaves and prolonging droughts. These conditions raise the risk and likelihood of fire spread.” Extreme heat and drought dry out vegetation, turning it into the perfect fuel for wildfires.

The data leave no room for doubt: July 2025 was recorded as the third hottest month in history since reliable climate records exist, only surpassed by July 2023 and 2024. The global average surface temperature, both land and ocean, for 2025 so far (January to July) is 1.18 °C above the 20th-century average. This makes 2025 the warmest year on record to date, surpassing even the record set in 2023.

This gives rise to so-called sixth-generation fires. These fires can generate their own weather, producing winds, lightning, or storms—known as pyrocumulus—due to the extreme heat they emit. This also makes them spread rapidly, making them nearly impossible to extinguish.

A study by the University of Tasmania, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, revealed that the frequency and intensity of extreme wildfires have more than doubled over the past two decades.

CO2 emissions generated by wildfires are also the highest since records began 23 years ago. Serbia, Greece, and Albania recorded their highest emissions since 2007, Cyprus reached its highest annual total in just two days, and the United Kingdom saw its highest emissions in history, largely due to the large wildfires in northern Scotland in late June-early July.

The consequences of climate change are catastrophic, and not only in terms of wildfires. Last October, severe floods in Spain—also a result of climate change—left more than 200 dead. Although scientists had predicted that such floods could occur, the Spanish authorities did nothing to prevent them or prepare emergency plans.

It is known that climate change produces increasingly severe natural disasters, yet no coordinated action is taken to stop it or to allocate the necessary resources to establish infrastructure and disaster response plans capable of mitigating such emergencies.

The rotten governments that run the capitalist system funnel these resources to large banks and corporations via massive bailouts, or they invest them in preparing for war. In 2024, the combined defense spending of EU member states reached €326 billion, 30 percent more than in 2021, representing 1.9 percent of the EU’s GDP. Now NATO countries are expanding their military budgets to up to 5 percent of GDP, while Europe’s ‘Readiness 2030’ rearmament plan foresees spending up to €800 billion over four years.

These immense sums will come from savage cuts to social spending, health, education, pensions, but also from efforts to combat climate change. Spain spends €26 billion a year on military expenditure, a figure that will more than triple in the coming years under the aforementioned plans. By comparison, the funds for fighting wildfires are ridiculously low and decreasing: between 2009 and 2025, they fell from €1.742 billion to €1.295 billion. The budget allocated to fire prevention has dropped from €364 million to €175.8 million.

In 2020, Greenpeace reported that 81.52 percent of Spain’s forested area has no management plans. Additionally, from 1962 to 2019, 4 million hectares of farmland in Spain were abandoned and have now become forested areas.

Mónica Parrilla, Greenpeace Spain’s head of wildfire response, warned back then: “Spain is the second country in the EU in terms of forested area, yet two-thirds of it is at risk of desertification. These are not contradictory messages. The abandonment of farmland and the lack of forest management have resulted in a highly flammable landscape. If we do not manage that landscape, fire will do it in a devastating way.” This is what is happening now.

The lack of funding also affects forest firefighters, who work in grueling conditions. There is a shortage of personnel, salaries are very low, and workloads exhausting. Moreover, many contracts are temporary and last only through the summer. There are no additional pay allowances for exposure to toxic agents or hazardous conditions, nor are there specific occupational risk plans.

A firefighter from Castilla y León, where 80 percent work only in summer under private company contracts, said: “We are in the hands of people who have no idea how to manage a firefighting operation.” He added that “Salaries are miserable” for shifts that can reach up to 18 hours a day. Regarding the companies that hire them, he noted, “The jobs are awarded through low-bid contracts, and the company that pays the least gets the contracts for prevention and firefighting work. In the end, the ones who pay the price are the workers, because these companies skimp on everything they can: on salaries and on equipment.”

National strike by public employees in Turkey

Barış Demir

Many workers were on strike nationwide on Monday in response to the Turkish government’s low wage offer in contract negotiations affecting around 4 million public employees and 2.5 million retirees.

Facing rising living costs and a significant decline in real wages, public employees were so angry that all public sector union confederations, including pro-government ones, struck together for the first time.

Striking public employees demonstrated in Ankara, August 18, 2025 [Photo: MemurSenKonf/X]

No official turnout figures were released for the strike, which was joined by confederations such as Memur-Sen, Kamu-Sen, Birleşik Kamu-İş, KESK, BASK, and DMK, as well as independent unions like HAK-SEN, YURT-SEN, and ASİM-SEN. There are approximately 2.3 million public sector workers who are union members.

Strikers staged protests in nearly every province, especially Ankara, Istanbul, and Izmir. Tens of thousands reportedly participated in the Ankara demonstration. Despite the legal ban on strikes for public employees—which goes against international agreements and numerous court rulings—and the fact that Monday’s protest was not labelled a “general strike,” it had a significant impact, particularly on railways, where many services were cancelled, and on Turkish Post (PTT) services.

Before, the general directorates of national railways (TCDD) and PTT sent letters to workers stating that they “must not participate in the work stoppage under any circumstances” and threatening disciplinary action against those who did.

After initial negotiations, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government proposed a 10 percent increase for public employee and retirees in the first half of 2026, followed by 6 percent in the second half of that year and 4 percent in both halves of 2027. Memur-Sen, one of the union confederations representing public employees, demanded an 88 percent total increase for the first year and a 46 percent for the second year.

Despite the significant difference between the official offer and the workers’ demands, the government responded to the strike on Monday by mockingly offering a mere 1 percentage point increase in its offers for 2026. An 11 percent increase was then proposed for the first six months of 2026, followed by a 7 percent increase for the second six months. The 4 percent increases planned for 2027 remained unchanged. Workers refer to the proposed salaries as “poverty wages.”

The Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) announced the official annual inflation rate for July was 33.5 percent. However, ENAG, an independent organization, calculated the rate to be 65 percent. In recent years, the real annual inflation rate identified by ENAG has remained above 100 percent for a long time.

Union bureaucrats rejected the government’s offer because accepting it would have further angered public employees and risked their losing control over them. If no agreement is reached, the Public Servants Arbitration Board will determine the contract soon. Previously, the board just approved the government’s final offer.

On Monday, union confederations organised a work stoppage to placate pressure from workers. However, they left it unclear what would happen next. This tactic is used by union bosses to leave workers disoriented and force eventual acceptance of arbitration decisions.

Workers cannot rely on upper-middle class union bureaucracies, which have their own separate interests, in their struggle for better wages and working conditions. For decades, these bureaucracies have collaborated with the state and corporations to suppress class struggle and worsen workers’ conditions.

Public employees walked out after a struggle that was barely suppressed. Just a month-and-a-half ago, 600,000 public workers were preparing to strike against a similar austerity contract. However, the Türk-İş and the Hak-İş union confederations signed the contract just one day before the strike was set to begin.

Over the past few years, the government has been implementing a brutal class war program aimed at reducing real wages and eliminating social benefits. The government claims that wage increases lead to inflation and that there is no money for proper salary hikes. However, both claims are lies.

In fact, the main source of inflation is the exorbitant profits of banks and large companies, which the government fiercely defends. The government transfers public resources to these corporations through tax cuts, incentives, and interest payments. It also spends large amounts on armaments to defend the interests of these same capitalist oligarchs.

In 2024, Turkey, whose defence spending accounts for 2 percent of GDP (800 billion Turkish liras), will need to allocate an additional 1.5 trillion Turkish liras from its budget to increase its spending to 5 percent in line with its NATO commitment. This would mean further cuts in social spending and an increase in taxes, which are mainly collected from working people.

While the government suppresses wages and imposes austerity policies, the unemployment rate is rapidly increasing. According to a DİSK union confederation report based on official data, the broad unemployment rate rose by 3.5 percentage points to 13 million people (32 percent) in the second quarter of 2025. This figure is nearly three times higher than the EU’s broad unemployment rate of 10.9 percent.

Swedish advanced battery maker Northvolt purchased by US competitor

Gabriel Black

Northvolt Labs, December 2019 [Photo by Anders Utbult / CC BY 4.0]

The Swedish advanced EV battery maker Northvolt—once lauded as the best-funded start-up in the European Union (EU)—was purchased by Lyten, an American battery company, in early August. The takeover came after months of bankruptcy proceedings involving Northvolt in both Sweden and the United States.

For many years, Northvolt was seen as a critical part of European and American efforts to create an EV battery supply chain relatively independent of East Asia. Today, East Asian countries control an estimated 80 to 85 percent of global lithium-ion battery production, with China alone accounting for about 75 percent. The European imperialist powers in particular promoted Northvolt with substantial government subsidies to strengthen their independence from the United States in the emerging “clean energy” economy.

Over the past year, however, it became increasingly clear that Northvolt’s production facilities were facing serious industrial problems: high defect rates, extremely low factory output and the relentless burning of cash. This culminated in the company’s bankruptcy filings—first in the US in November 2024, and then in Sweden in March 2025.

At the height of Northvolt’s crisis, the company was rumored to be flying in Chinese battery technicians and engineers on a weekly basis to perform damage control on its factory machinery, critical sections of which had been imported from Wuxi Lead Intelligent, the world’s top supplier of the machinery. The episode underscored how far European companies had fallen behind Chinese producers in the race to dominate the EV market.

Lyten, a Silicon Valley-based start-up backed by investors such as Stellantis, FedEx, Honeywell and McKinsey, is acquiring Northvolt’s main assets at a steeply discounted but undisclosed price. This includes the giant gigafactory in Skellefteå in the north of Sweden, the company’s research facility in Västerås outside Stockholm and a planned plant in Heide, Germany. Lyten’s chief executive Dan Cook has pitched the deal as part of a broader effort to establish secure local supply chains in both Europe and the United States, citing Northvolt’s existing strong relationships with Western car companies.

Unlike Northvolt, which concentrated on conventional lithium-ion batteries for the EV market, Lyten specializes in lithium-sulphur technology, a chemistry it claims is cheaper to produce and offers higher energy density. The combined company will now pursue both.

The bankruptcy of Northvolt, followed by its acquisition by an American company, underscores several interrelated economic and geopolitical realities.

First, the United States and Europe, despite significant efforts and tens of billions in investments and subsidies, remain markedly behind China’s rapid development of EV batteries. Between 2020 and 2024, China experienced a meteoric expansion of its car industry, growing exports from under 1 million to 5.7 million vehicles, outpacing every other country, including Germany and Japan. Much of this growth came from electric vehicles, made possible by China’s domination of advanced battery production and its control over the critical minerals needed to produce them.

Despite years of promises, the US and EU remain far behind in electric vehicles. China now controls “the entire EV supply chain—from mineral mining to battery development, car manufacturing, operating software development, and even car shipping,” according to the Center for European Policy Analysis. Six of the world’s top 10 EV makers are Chinese, and BYD has already surpassed Tesla as the world’s largest seller. Some Chinese EVs now sell for under $10,000—a fraction of the cost in Europe or America—and are only kept out of those markets by steep tariffs.

Meanwhile, the sale of Chinese EVs outside Western markets is undercutting the established car companies. A key issue in Volkswagen’s current troubles is that the Chinese market, long its main driver of profits, is now turning away from European and American brands toward Chinese cars. 

Collectively, China’s EV dominance poses a critical problem for American imperialism and its former European allies.

Large sections of the US and EU ruling class recognize that the energy transition will inevitably make fossil-based cars and trucks increasingly expensive and outdated. As Rystad Energy, one of the world’s leading oil and gas consultancies, has noted, “global petroleum reserves are insufficient to support oil demand if there is no transition to electric vehicles.” In other words, the shift to EVs will be driven not only by demand (EVs inevitably becoming cheaper and higher performing) but also by supply constraints, as the cost of oil is expected to climb to new highs over the next quarter-century despite the relative lull today.

If the United States and Europe fail to develop their own domestic supply chains for affordable, advanced EV production, including batteries and critical minerals, they risk becoming increasingly beholden to China, especially as pressures mount to move global production away from combustion engines. This both undercuts Washington’s drive toward war with China and at the same time accelerates it as the US seeks to secure its position before the global era of oil and gas fades away.

Meanwhile, the deepening rift in transatlantic relations has further complicated a coherent strategic industrial policy. The constant lurching between support for fossil fuels and renewables within the American ruling class is not merely the quirk of a passing administration, but a reflection of the deeper irrationality of capitalism itself—its anarchic competition, both among rival sections of the capitalist class and between nation states.

Lyten’s purchase of Northvolt underscores the fact that American imperialism and its erstwhile European allies increasingly view each other as opponents. What was initially promoted as a joint transatlantic push to break free of China’s dominance has developed into US-based companies moving to scoop up European assets at a massive discount, while Brussels struggles to hold its industrial projects together. To put things in perspective, Northvolt was funded with around $25 billion of capital but will likely be selling its assets for around $1 billion or less to Lyten.

The German ruling class touted Northvolt as leading the “green energy” revolution of the future. The Social Democrat/Green/Free Democratic Party federal government cooperated with the state government of Schleswig-Holstein to provide financing of €600 million for the Northvolt gigafactory in Heide, which is due to start production by the end of 2027. An additional €300 million in loan guarantees extended to Northvolt by the German government in 2020 remained outstanding when the company declared bankruptcy, meaning that over €900 million in public funds could be lost.

The Heide factory was hailed as a symbol of European energy independence amid the European imperialist powers’ waging of war against Russia in Ukraine and ending of cheap Russian energy imports. Then Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Robert Habeck were part of a high-profile delegation to celebrate the beginning of construction at the proposed factory site in March 2024. Now, the question of whether the factory will ever commence production remains open. Only its foundations have been completed to date.

The broader crisis facing European capitalism was expressed in last year’s Draghi report on European competitiveness, which warned that Europe faces an “existential challenge” as it falls further behind both the US and China. Growth in Europe has slowed to near-stagnation, energy costs remain several times higher than in the US, and the EU’s fragmented financing system has prevented the scale of investment needed in advanced technologies.

An August 15 Wall Street Journal article described the growing “domination” of US investors over European financial markets as an “emergency” for Europe. Noting the tendency of European companies to list their main operations in the US, the Journal pointed out:

So far this year, according to Dealogic, six companies have gone public in the U.K., raising $208 million, the lowest level in three decades of data. It isn’t much better across the English Channel, despite surging stock markets. Initial public offerings in continental Europe have nearly halved in value compared with last year. Fundraising in the U.S., meanwhile, has jumped 38% to around $40 billion.

Northvolt’s collapse is a symptom of the structural weakness of European capitalism and contributes to the growing resentment within the European ruling class at its dependency on the United States, especially when it comes to the question of Ukraine, armaments and advanced technologies, such as AI and EVs.

At its height, Northvolt’s main factory in northern Sweden employed some 4,000 workers. The mega factory was seen as underpinning a broader regional development of the north, a scarcely populated area being remade as a hub for renewable steel and EV production, based on cheap hydropower. With Northvolt’s bankruptcy, thousands of those jobs vanished, taking down with them thousands of other businesses and livelihoods in the area. Reportedly, some of these jobs may now return if Lyten ramps up production. However, when Lyten previously bought Northvolt’s Polish battery-pack plant, it actually cut further staff.

Meanwhile, Chinese carmakers continue to make breakthroughs. In 2025, BYD announced a new charging system that could power a 249-mile battery in just five minutes. With that said, even as Chinese EVs set the global pace of the industry, the intensity of competition in China—combined with overproduction and a flattening of demand growth—points toward a new wave of bankruptcies, as weaker firms are forced out and the industry consolidates.

Ultimately, the industrial conflict over critical minerals and EVs, expressed in Lyten’s purchase of Northvolt, exposes the irrationality of capitalism itself. At the very moment when global cooperation is most needed to build a renewable future, the great powers are instead sharpening their knives, driving the transition deeper into rivalry, confrontation and war. The working class in every country will bear the main burden through job losses and attacks on wages and conditions to improve “competitiveness.”