This comes up so often when discussing Welsh, Scottish, Cornish etc. secession from the Westminster state. Liberals often conflate the often coercive and dominating force that England has on the politics of the union to colonialism, when in fact this is more akin to the exact same stratification that develops within all bourgeois societies.

The development of a reserve army of labour entails the oppression of the proletariat of the imperial core, because the goal of imperialism is NOT to sprinkle treats amongst the workers to keep them suppressed, it is to create the gradient boundary necessary for the accumulation of capital.

The fact we have treats to buy and the means to do so is part of the process, not a byproduct. Yes, it also has the benefit of suppressing our efforts in class struggle, but no less do bullets, bombs, and hunger suppress the workers at the imperial periphery. The treats are not a reward.

The point being, colonialism isn’t when one country is annexed by another and develops a stratified hierarchy within its borders, it is when that system is exported and maintained through its military. The struggle between the imperial and colonised world powers does not negate the importance of class struggle within the imperial core; both produce the social and material relations to produce the other.

At least this is how I’ve come to critique this misinterpretation of the relationships of the UK’s inner states. I should probably read more theory.