I’ve been trying to work out what yesterday’s events tell us about the state of the British Labour Party and British imperialism. The Diana business is just funny. Blair being questioned by the cops has a nice Berlusconi touch and the ending of the BAE enquiry is banana republic stuff.

Hats off to Labour MP Lindsay (or it might be Lyndsay) Hoyle on Newsnight last night. He distilled the argument in favour of ending the enquiry into the alleged BAE bribes right down to its essence. His points were that if the British firms didn’t bribe the Saudi officials and princes then the French would and that’s a price worth paying to keep the jobs in Britain. He is also very proud of the fact that the British killing machines are far superior to the French ones. I’m consistently impressed by the Blairites’ ability to find so many hacks with so little self-respect.

Hoyle’s sort of rampant chauvinism is a real “Old Labour” value and its been repeated by some of the unions. He could have made the blindingly obvious point that instead of making killing machines these workers could be producing socially useful items. He could have pointed out that Britain’s continuing financial and political support of corrupt oligarchs like the Saudi royal family in power is one of the reasons why Osama Bin Laden is so popular in his home turf. He might have mentioned the impact of corruption by imperialist firms on the development of civil society in Africa and the Middle East.

The episode demonstrates a severe weakness of British imperialism. No longer able to enforce its will by force of arms or industrial power it is reduced to squalid little deals when the Saudis demand a halt to a legal process. It’s almost as if the Saudi royals are treating Blair as a vassal and Blair covers it up with bluster about strategic interests. Attorney General and Blair’s mate Goldsmith has allowed investigations to continue into BAE activities in Romania, Chile, the Czech Republic, South Africa and Tanzania. Are there any obvious differences between Saudi Arabia and these countries?

There is good news. Shares in BAE Systems were up 7% in early Friday trading. What’s the betting that Blair or some of his cronies get seats on the BAE board in a year or two? That leads me on to my next point. No figure of any significance in the Labour Party is expressing anything like a reasonable amount of outrage at how dependent on the largesse of British capitalists it is becoming. Labour has always been fully integrated into British capitalism but now it has become the party of choice for big parts of the ruling class.

Naturally all this throws up the question of the creation of an alternative. More of this over the weekend. In the meantime this gem from Jarvis Cocker sums up what we Marxists call the conjuncture. (I know it’s got an offensive word in the chorus but you can understand his choice.)