Beginning to See the Light: ‘Are you better off now than you were four years ago?’ 

 

“We go wherever we want to

Do what we like to do 

We don’t have time to get restless, 

There’s always something new.” 

 

As the last few columns have been so miserable this week we start with some humour. 

Johnson, after two disastrous byelections, interprets this as a mandate to carry on for two further terms. He referred to his government achievement as “remarkable”, claiming he made the right call. Perhaps this explains why we are now trying to break the Brexit treaty he signed two-years ago. The Brexit deal he had insisted was compatible with the Good Friday agreement. 

Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, last night piloted the bill through its first reading in the House. During the debate she was reminded she had campaigned to stay in the EU, she responded by saying that she was a patriot. Err, and? 

Another half-wit, Sally-Ann Hart was adamant; the Tories had a majority and they could do what they wanted. The law was whatever the government happened to say it was. 

In a nutshell, the government had decided to break the law because it couldn’t think of any other way of dealing with the problem. It isn’t our fault that the EU have been unreasonable enough to stick to the treaty and expect the us to do likewise. 

In meantime Johnson is swanning around the G7 demanding other countries uphold international law. 

It wasn’t so sad it would be funny! 

 

‘the government had decided to break the law because it couldn’t think of any other way of dealing with the problem’

 

Returning to the by-elections and Johnson’s mandate for two more terms, voters in opposite ends of England have rejected him.  

Voters, LibDems, and Labour appear to have de facto progressive alliance. For once the overwhelming anti-Conservative majority are efficiently, deploying their own votes to ensures a Tory defeat. Perhaps Keir Starmer’s dullness, and the fact he seems inoffensive to LibDems is the essential prerequisite for this tactical voting.   

“Partygate”, whilst relevant isn’t the driver, this cruel and useless government is out of time and devoid of ideas. 

The railway network is immobilised by an industrial dispute the government hasn’t tried to solve, there are cancellations, queues, and backlogs at airports, A&E departments and magistrates courts.

Economically, inflation is at a 40-year high of 9.1%, while GDP is projected to slump to 0% growth in 2023, with Britain behind every developed economy in the world bar Russia. 

Now, even a 7% pay rise is a pay cut! When Ronald Reagan ran for his first term in 1980 he asked voters: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” 

What can we answer?  

We have a leader next to no one trusts who can offer nothing but culture war distraction, polarisation and hate. It can’t end the strikes so they rely on their Fleet Street allies to pretend it’s the late 1970s and blaming Labour, forgetting that its they who are in government. Instead of dealing with the cost of living crisis they spend £120m attempting to deport 500 refugees to Rwanda then move to repeal the Human Rights Act. And, in a desperate attempt to lure businesses to a desolate post-Brexit Britain, they propose lifting the cap on bankers’ bonuses. 

Last week’s byelections in Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton are constituencies that are at opposite ends of the country geographically, socially and politically. What they have in-common is that both strongly voted Leave in 2016. Defeat in both suggests that the majority  Johnson stitched together based on “getting Brexit done” is beginning to unravel. 

It is well documented that byelections are not always an accurate measure of voter sentiment when it comes to a general election, with voters using them as a “protest” prior to the real thing. Thatcher, Major, and Cameron all weathered heavy swings in byelections, but all three were able to draw on advantages over Labour in leadership, the economy and the issue agenda to bounce back. 

The economy, long the Tory’s trump card is now their Achilles heel, their ratings on every aspect of economic management have slumped as inflation has soared and wages have fallen. Labour has taken the lead on many economic performance measures, again putting them in their best position since the heyday of Tony Blair’s opposition. And with further strikes and energy price rises ahead, the worst may be still to come for the government. 

 

‘And with further strikes and energy price rises ahead, the worst may be still to come for the government’

 

To try and offset this the government is pitching itself against both workers and unions. As Paul Nowak, the TUC deputy general secretary who was part of the furlough talks, says: “Trade unions worked closely with the government to protect jobs and keep people safe during the pandemic. Ministers could have carried on in this constructive spirit. But they have decided to pick a fight with unions to distract people from their failings and the cost of living emergency. Instead of inflaming tensions, and pitching worker against worker, the government should be getting people around the table to find a fair resolution to this rail dispute.” 

There are some Conservatives who see this as a high-risk approach. The former Cabinet minister David Willetts said: “Overall, pay is rising less than inflation. This is not some inflationary spiral. It looks as if the adjustment to our being poorer is partly happening through pay rates. The disappointment of expectations which inflation brings is particularly felt amongst workers. They are unhappy, but they are not getting an explanation of what is going on around them which is honest about the economic pain and recognises who is bearing it.” 

Torsten Bell, director of the Resolution Foundation thinktank, summed up the situation perfectly; “But the government needs a narrative so it makes the unions and the Labour party the problem.” 

The economy aside, their saviour in the last two strongest elections, Brexit and immigration, no longer exercise voters, and the government’s efforts to revive them seem to be falling flat. Alongside the all-consuming cost-of-living crisis, voters’ rising concerns include the NHS, the environment and housing; all of which should play to Labour’s strengths.  

 

‘planning to build a £150,000 treehouse for his son at Chequers hardly help matters’

 

In addition, 25% of voters now name “lack of faith in politicians” as one of their main concerns, largely due to Johnson, and headlines such as Boris Johnson planning to build a £150,000 treehouse for his son at Chequers hardly help matters. The project was abandoned only after police raised security concerns. 

It is understood there were discussions about the project being funded by David Brownlow, a Tory donor, and that designs had been prepared. Mr Brownlow had previously contributed to the Johnson’s renovations in their flat in No.10 which were reputed to have cost at least £112,000, and included gold-coloured wallpaper and fittings. 

This is just another example of a PM failing to understand, or worst still, not caring about the problems encountered everyday by “ordinary” people. Whilst he was planning the tree house Johnson was demanding his MPs voted against plans to extend free school meals for the poorest children over the Christmas holidays.  

Further evidence of how detached the party has become from reality comes from Conservative MP, Ben Bradley, who claimed that extending free school meals would lead to increased dependency on the state.  

We turn now to the NHS, who, only a short time ago were being lauded by one and all as we battled Covid. Johnson referred to the nurses as ”angels”, and, every Thursday, we clapped the service. Memories are short and now the government and its fawning press are busy crapping on them!    

“The NHS is failing us all,” says the Spectator. 

The Telegraph’s Charles Moore relishes every bad news NHS story: “Patients are failed by the NHS’s blind belief in its own altruism – and no politician can admit it.” 

There is no doubt that the NHS is struggling, the current waiting list of 6.2 million people is the longest on record. Now it’s about the blame game.  

An inpatient survey by the Care Quality Commission found 84% “had confidence and trust in the doctors … treating them”, and 85% said “they were always treated with respect and dignity”. 

The Tory press is good at spinning things the governments way,  but you can’t hide from the data; as Amanda Pritchard, the head of NHS England, reminded us, just 2p in the NHS pound was spent on administration: “In France, it’s double that, and in the USA, it’s four times.” 

It is no surprise that a recent survey show 64% are dissatisfied with the service and only 25% think the NHS should not get more funds. However, across Labour and Tory supporters there were “high levels of support” for NHS founding principles – 94% backing free for everyone, 86% for funding through taxes. 

Source: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/public-satisfaction-nhs-social-care-2021 

Much of the publics problem with the NHS stems from perception, and the high levels of self-entitlement the baby boomer generation have. Their parents, who saw what the situation was pre-the NHS, understood the NHS for what is was, a necessary luxury funded for them by the state. Unfortunately, their children are just flaky, spoilt, and ungrateful! 

 

‘this week I have decided to look at two of her flagship policies, privatisation, and right-to-buy’

 

The hero of the baby boomers was Thatcher. Last week some seemed surprised when I took the line of criticising her, therefore this week I have decided to look at two of her flagship policies, privatisation, and right-to-buy. 

Recently we have seen three examples of the failures of privatisation. 

Last week Ofgem was judged guilty of adding £2.7bn to household bills, as, in its desire to create a competitive energy market it forget to undertake due diligence on the firms setting up as suppliers. As a result 28 providers have collapsed, leaving us all sharing the cost. 

Next up is Anglian Water who announced a £92m dividend for investors, despite the Environment Agency fining it for water pollution on three separate occasions in the past few months.  

Finally, the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, claims that it isn’t the government’s responsibility to negotiate with the RMT Union, despite them owning the company that owns the tracks, tunnels and signals, but is also the paymaster for all the train operators. 

In the 1980s and early 90s the Tory’s went on an unprecedented privatisation spree, unbundling and  selling-off telecoms, gas, electricity, water, airlines and trains. Each time we were assured that this would provide better services, savings for the government and an investment boom.  

The service improvement contains example such as raw sewage being pumped into rivers or of packed intercity trains.  

Rolling back the state was simply rhetoric, Thatcher never actually cut the amount that the country paid in tax and, even before the pandemic, the size of the state (measured by government spending as a share of national income) was roughly in line with the 1970s.  

For investment, there is the example of the Thames Tideway super sewer, which is largely being funded by higher water bills putting the burden onto, rather than by Thames Water who continually pay-out dividends in preference to reinvestment. 

The prime beneficiaries of privatisation have been the comparatively few investors, often from overseas, at the expense of the public. In the main the owners and politicians have created a tangle of  shoddy service, naked profiteering and a complete lack of ownership.  

 

a tangle of  shoddy service, naked profiteering and a complete lack of ownership

 

Perhaps we should be “taking back control?” 

Another form of privatisation was “right-to-buy, which saw 2m homes bought by council tenants at massive discounts since 1980. Whilst, in terms, of public awareness it can be seen as a success the “property-owning democracy” Thatcher craved is receding from view.  

 

• When right to buy was launched as part of the Housing Act 1980, 55% of householders were homeowners.  
• The figure peaked at 72% in the early 00s but currently stands at 65%.  

 

Meanwhile, council housing has decreased, too.  

 

• In 1979, there were 6.5m council homes; now there are 2.2m, 
• Today 4.4m households rent privately, twice as many as 15-years ago.  

 

Now, Johnson is jumping on the bandwagon, fired-up by Thatcher’s fixation on “the independence that comes with ownership”, as right-to-buy will be extended to tenants of housing associations who let homes to C. 2.5 million people with a further 1.6m on their waiting lists, at rents of up to 80% of the market rate. 

A proposal that Polly Neate, the chief executive of the housing charity Shelter, described as, “baffling, unworkable and a dangerous gimmick”. 

Right-to-buy benefitted an older generation of working- and lower-middle-class people in the 80s, whilst today millions of mostly younger people have been forced into insecure, privately rented accommodation. 

A combination of low levels of housebuilding, “landbanking” by property developers and the equity pumped into the housing market by right-to-buy sellers has carried on driving house prices upwards, whilst wage growth lags behind. As the first wave of right-to-buy beneficiaries  moved on, ex-council homes are now being bought up by-to-let investors. Former right-to-buy properties now make up 40% of all available private rented housing across England, reaching a high of 70.9% in Milton Keynes. 

To understand the political significance of right-to-buy we need to understand the ideas of the post-war Labour government. Aneurin Bevan in charge of health and housing whose vision was the building of excellent-quality council housing not only to narrow inequalities in public health, but as a way of forging a society where class mattered less. These homes had several-bedroomed with gardens, which were rented by middle-class as well as working-class people, and not to “be sold to others merely because they have the money to buy them”. 

When Thatcher came to office in 1979 property ownership appealed to her idea of the respectable working class. 

Within right-to-buy there were class divisions; “It was particularly attuned to the needs of wealthier, often skilled, working-class, older voters and those were the kinds of people Thatcher wanted to secure as Conservative voters. It wasn’t really a policy for single mothers or the poor because they couldn’t afford to buy and Thatcher was keen to peel off the skilled working class from the Labour party.” 

One of the impacts of right-to-buy was the funnelling of money and power away from the local authorities which once built and maintained millions of homes to central government. This has meant that local authorities are relatively powerless when it comes to housing problems. 

At the same time right-to-buy devalued renting as opposed to owning. “The more that rental housing comes to be seen as something that is not desirable, not worthy, and not part of the ‘normal’ aspirational life, the more you pump up the bubble around home ownership. Right to buy is not just a problem of, and in, the rental sector, it’s a problem for housing as a whole.” (1) 

Housing is part of the cost of living crisis, as it is the major part of people’s budgets. All that has happened is that we have become immune because house price inflation creates a feel-good factor, the illusion of prosperity. 

 

‘We have become immune because house price inflation creates a feel-good factor, the illusion of prosperity’

 

One theme that runs through many of these articles is my fear of far-right politicians. The 1930s saw their emergence on the back of the Wall St crash, and a rise in nationalism often triggered by discontent engendered by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. Post the GFC of 2008 similar economic conditions and a rise in nationalism gave rise to Trump, Johnson, et al. 

Whilst Trump is no longer president he influence and appointments he made lingers. An example of this is the three supreme court justices he appointed which rebalanced the court to lean conservative for a generation to come. The most immediate and publicised impact of these appointments was Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an opinion released this week in which supreme court justices voted to overturn the landmark case Roe v Wade, which in 1973 granted a constitutional right to abortion. 

The court’s decision flies in the face of popular opinion, as C. 85% of Americans favour legal abortion in at least some circumstances 

“The anti-abortion movement is “the best organized faction in American politics” (2).  

“They understand they’re a minority of the population, of the electorate, and certainly a minority set of views on reproductive rights issues,” he said. “But because they know that, they’ve found effective ways of maximizing their political clout by being better organized than numerically greater factions who are less well organised.” 

The ruling was handed down in the same week that the Supreme Court has struck down a New York law restricting gun-carrying rights, finding that requiring residents to prove “proper cause” – or a good reason – to carry concealed firearms in public violates the US Constitution.  

Somehow something is very wrong here. 

These people are often referred to as Libertarians defined as; seeking to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state’s violation of individual liberties; emphasizing free association, freedom of choice, individualism and voluntary association. 

Perhaps it’s a men only thing? 

 

“’Cause I don’t wanna be your baby girl 

That you show off to the world 

When you decide you wanna feel 

Like you’re living something real” 

Notes: 

1. Brett Christophers, author of The New Enclosure and of Rentier Capitalism 

 

1. said Frederick Clarkson, an expert on the Christian right and a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, 

 

As Promised, a more upbeat piece this week. We start by having some fun with the government and their bill to change the NI Protocol, then move onto the byelections. Two defeats = a mandate for two more terms. Errrr really!

Two things are apparent. Firstly, a progressive coalition driven by an unofficial electoral pact can deliver a Tory defeat. Secondly, people are wise to Johnson’s game of picking fights. They are concerned about inflation, pay rises,  and the cost-of-living,  not Brexit, immigration, and lefty lawyers.

His latest scapegoat, the NHS, could be his last. At heart people like and care about the NHS, very few like and care about Johnson.

We move on to tackle two current issues, privatisation and right-to-buy, both flagship policies originating with Thatcher. Neither did anything for Main St, but the rentiers did very well, thanks. Perhaps there will be right-to-by treehouses for little Wayne in Newcastle under Lyme.  

It’s really as I have said before Tory policies enable the rich to get richer, whilst everyone just muddles along. Even the Blair governments were Thatcher influenced, the closest we have come to socialism since 1979 were the Brown years which will always be remembered for the GFC.

Johnson is experiencing back-to-back challenges with Covid and inflation. Whilst neither is the government’s fault they have served to highlight the paucity of talent in the party and an inability to deal with things. Instead they just continue to govern through confrontation.

As I said when we met, every so often there needs to be a reset, market crashing and rebasing themselves. Too much time is spent on talking markets up, and on actions that raise share prices in the short-term at the expense of long-term growth. Increased dividends, share buy-backs are often no more than a placebo to shareholders. The same can be said of economic policy, there is no plan just a series of reactions based on hope.

We finish with the US and their anti-abortion legislation. This is a very emotive subject, therefore I reported rather than commented. Regression aside, it shows the power and influence the hard-right has stealthily acquired. This doesn’t bode well for the future.

The column will be back in 3-weeks.

Lyrically, we start with some fun, the Monkees theme tune, before getting darker with “Your Dog” by Soccer Mommy. A song that pushes back against the male gaze and the suffocating ownership women can find in relationships, declaring, “I don’t wanna be your fucking dog.”

@coldwarsteve

 

 
 
Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.

Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s

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