Beginning to See the Light; ‘It’s easy to make promises – it is hard work to keep them’

 

‘Dim the lights and draw the curtains; this is the end of love. 

Ready all your arguments; this is the end of trust’

 
At first reading the quote in today’s title seems profound wisdom, it was only when I saw that the source was Boris Johnson did, I realise we were going to have problems. Or more, specifically, he is.

By way of background, populists like grand gestures and sweeping promises, they help mobilise the masses in their favour. In a democracy it often follows that the masses vote for the person behind the promises in the expectation they will be delivered: ‘Levelling-up’; Build Back Better.’

Worryingly, even Andy Street, the mayor of the West Midlands, seems to believe him, too.

Street said the PM had shown he was ‘not for turning’ in the face of Tory heartland MPs worried the party would neglect its traditional voters but pressed him to set out a ‘full policy platform’ in the coming months. He went onto stress that the swathes of ‘red wall’ voters who backed the party for the first time in 2019 ‘want to see delivery’.

The was hint of realism when Street called on ministers not to rely totally on public spending to boost the life chances of those in impoverished areas, instead saying that leveraging significant investment by private businesses was ‘the only way out of this country’s economic challenge’.

He praised Johnson’s in Coventry last month, in which he vowed to make it ‘the defining mission of his government’, Street continued saying, ‘He could easily have turned his back on that after Covid. But actually, no, he’s leaning right into it. And he’s also telling his party – and this was what was so important – that that is what the Conservative government’s going to do.
 

‘red wall’ voters who backed the party for the first time in 2019 ‘want to see delivery’

 
He added: ‘The reason I say it couldn’t be everything we [wanted] to hear is it wasn’t a full policy platform. That’s being worked on … But he did something very, very important, which is say: ‘I am not for turning on this.’’

Street impressed the importance of action for retaining the voters who broke the habit of a lifetime by backing the Conservatives in 2019;’ … They want to see things happening. So I am very clear, we have got to deliver behind that, behind those votes of 2019 and 2021.’

There was another burst of realism when he said there needed to be a ‘reconciliation’ of the opposing voices in government for high spending versus a more restrained approach to public finances, urging Johnson and chancellor Rishi Sunak to leverage support from the private sector, especially post-Covid which has left a very different economic environment that was anticipated.

The gargantuan cost of these promises and expectations was highlighted by the Centre for Cities Boris who calculate the funding required to be in-line with the €2tn spent on the reunification of Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which was partly funded by a solidarity surcharge (Solidaritätszuschlag) tax on all German adults. Something, that no doubt will be met by howls of protest were it to be introduced here.

By comparison, we have the £4.8bn levelling up fund and £2.4bn distributed to 101 areas through the towns fund!

Their analysis showed that some of England’s biggest cities, including Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds, have the lowest productivity and life expectancy in western Europe.
 

• In Madrid, the average person can expect to live nearly a decade longer than someone in Glasgow or Liverpool, where life expectancy is four years below the European average.
• People in Manchester, Newcastle and Birmingham live on average two years less than those on the continent, the figures show.
• In Newcastle, Sheffield, Nottingham and Glasgow, the gross value added (GVA) per head (a measure of what is generated by economic activity in an area) is almost half that in Brussels, Amsterdam, and Munich.
• Except for London all major British cities are at the bottom of the western European league table for productivity

 
Finally, analysis by the University of Sheffield two years ago found that the UK was more inter-regionally unequal than 28 other advanced Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Slovakia and Ireland were the only wealthy nations with worse inequality between regions.

If we are to undertake a post-covid rebalancing it has been suggested that should follow what Harold Wilson called the ‘social infrastructure required for industrial change’. Better explained a, ‘labour reallocation’ to transition from one economic state to another. Covid has had a large impact on where and how we want to work, and where we are able to travel. Businesses are having to attract and train new workers, and there are shortages of workers in several sectors.

Gavin Kelly, the chair of the Resolution Foundation, points out that Wilson’s social infrastructure was built on new benefits, more training and university expansion. This helped enable a 44% rise in labour reallocation between industrial sectors in the decade following 1968 compared to the previous one. As a result, and contrary to conventional wisdom, these 10-years marked the most successful peacetime economic transition of the 20th century. Basically, the state helped workers find new jobs when the old ones fell away.
 

‘Covid has had a large impact on where and how we want to work, and where we are able to travel’

 
Johnson’s promised restructuring of the UK economy is finding itself competing for funds with his commitment to Zero Carbon. In addition, he has an internal battle with a Chancellor making a name for himself with traditional Tory’s, including the ‘Blue Wall’, preaching fiscal / spending prudence, whereas he is ‘committed’ to spending large to appease the ‘Red Wall’ and achieve his own promises.

Some Conservative MPs have created the ‘net zero scrutiny group’, set up by Steve Baker and led by South Thanet MP Craig Mackinlay, which is calling a halt in the race to net zero which, perhaps not surprisingly, has received a warm welcome in sections of the press.

There seems to a perceived electoral advantage in being seen to be anti-green. This is yet another glaring example of the Tories desire to hold the reins of power at any cost. After all, what is the destruction of the planet compared to five more years of the Tory’s in their God-given seat of power.

Kate Blagojevic, the head of climate at Greenpeace UK said: ‘The chancellor’s position may be politically expedient for him in trying to court the small number of Tory MPs intent on delaying climate action. Ultimately, though, history will not look kindly if he is the chancellor who tried to hobble our chances of reaching a low-carbon future, with all the growth, good jobs and stable better future it offers.’

Craig Mackinlay, is keen to point out that they aren’t a bunch of climate change deniers; ‘What I want this group to be is a clearing house, a balanced academic facility where we get all sides of the argument. We only seem to get one argument from the climate change committee and when the serious decisions come we want to be fully armed.’
 

‘There seems to a perceived electoral advantage in being seen to be anti-green’

 
Their main worries are the cost of many of the proposed measures on the lower paid, as well as the real greenness of what’s on offer. Members often cite electric vehicles as an example. ‘We are being skewered down the route of just battery vehicles,’ explains Mackinlay. ‘But there are a lot of hidden costs to the planet here, not least because of the rare metals involved, which are usually produced in the Democratic Republic of Congo involving unspeakable human misery. I’m not convinced that the mining companies have got the ability to produce the volumes of these things that we need.’

One MP says: ‘We have got to be careful that we are not targeting language to address seats in south-west London’

MPs in red wall seats are also very anxious. They are represented by the Northern Research Group, which worries not just about the cost of electric vehicles, green boilers and other measures for their constituents’ homes, but also about the language ministers are using.

Apparently red wallers think that ‘green jobs’ are ‘some kind of civil service, public sector thing, a council employee who goes around wasting taxpayers’ cash.’ They feel that ‘traditional green language’ only ‘address seats in south-west London’. As one said, ‘Green’ does not go down well up here because it sounds naff and something that’s being imposed.’

I find this dismissal of people in SW London offensive, how would red wallers like to be viewed as stupid northerners, drinking warm beer, wearing clogs, and keeping whippets?

Another ‘champion’ is irritated that the prime minister’s wife, Carrie, an environmentalist by profession, seems to have more influence over green comms than elected MPs. But he adds: ‘How do you tell your boss that you think his wife is wrong and has too much power? You can’t. And that’s why so many people are making noises off about Carrie.’ Other loyal MPs say that regardless of whoever is leading the comms on this matter, they are being pushed to breaking point by what they see as the ‘tin-eared’ approach of the prime minister.

Apart from those who appear to be utilising carbon zero for their own political ends, there is also the Treasury, who seem determined to keep the purse strings tightly closed.

Jamie Peters, director of campaigning impact at Friends of the Earth, said: ‘The Treasury has been helping to fuel the climate emergency for far too long. The reality is that a rapid transition to a zero-carbon future would be far less expensive than delaying the green measures we so urgently need, and that will create significant economic opportunities and new jobs.’
 

‘our plan is seemingly being chucked together at the last minute and without any effective or joined-up strategy’

 
Civil society groups, thinktanks and political insiders said the Treasury had refused to commit to the spending needed to shift the UK’s economy to a low-carbon footing, leading to tension between Johnson and Sunak.

Blagojevic said: ‘There are strong reports that Rishi Sunak is intent on blocking climate spending at exactly the moment we need it most, and that his fingerprints sit heavily on moves to delay or block crucial investment to cut emissions from buildings or gas boilers.’

Given that Johnson’s supposed big priority was the Cop26 UN climate conference later this year, our plan is seemingly being chucked together at the last minute and without any effective or joined-up strategy.

From green we move to pink, namely woman’s role in society.  Now, for anyone even moderately enlightened this should be simple; women are in all and every respect man’s equal, gender equality.

Although this issue has been bought to the fore by the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, it is matter closer to home than concern me more.

Police increasingly believe that Jake Davison, who shot dead his mother and four other people last week may have been part of the ‘incel’ movement; an extremist ideology based on being ‘involuntary celibate’.

Incels do not seem to be a clearly defined, organised group, more a sprawling, disparate community of men across a network of blogs, forums, websites, private members groups, chatrooms, and social media channels. Several of the forums have memberships in the tens of thousands, with around a 25% increase in membership in the past two years.

Their ideology seems to be based on white male supremacy, oppression of women and the glorification and encouragement of male violence. As Laura Bates wrote, they ‘see themselves as perpetual victims oppressed by a ‘feminist gynocracy’, they believe that sex is their inherent birthright as men, and that rape and murder are appropriate punishments for a society they perceive as withholding sex from them.’ ⁽¹⁾

There are clear links between Incel extremism and more ‘general’ sexism. Whilst most people are not in favour of forcing women into sexual slavery, a significant portion of the British public believe that women are fully or partially to blame for their own rapes if they were drunk or flirting. ‘The normalisation of low-level sexism and sexual harassment makes extremist misogyny seem more acceptable to young people when they happen across it online.’

Whilst Incel might be at the extreme end of the spectrum, it is another example of regression in society.

Everywhere we look, climate change, race, gender, etc. we are seeing a regression to past years when these issues were denied, swept-under-the carpet, or just encouraged. This regression is from a minority of the public, but one that is increasingly pervasive in the electoral stakes. This, allied to a Tory party whose raison d’etre is power at all and any cost, does not bode well for any sort of enlightened future.
 

‘But some days there might be nothing you encounter, to stand behind the fragile idea that anything matters.’

Notes:

1. The founder of the Everyday Sexism Project and author of Men Who Hate Women

 
Philip’s column this week considers all of Boris’s promises and how he might go about keeping them; or indeed working around them.

His populism lends itself to grand, rabble rousing speeches, followed by some good old, ‘we’re all in this together’, solutions. The trouble is that very often this involves the allocation of significant resources where they are scarce, or perhaps required to be deployed elsewhere.

There appears to be plenty of shenanigans going on behind closed doors at Tory HQ, and the simmering rift between Messrs. Johnson and Sunak seems likely to spill over into open warfare at some point; money is, as always, the issue – Johnson’s promised net zero, levelling-up and building back better, require cash and lots of it, which simply isn’t the Tory way.

Regional inequality is a well trodden path for Philip, but now it seems that the UK is cementing its place as the sick man of Europe as life-expectancy lags large swathes of our continental cousins. 

While Boris juggles with keeping the red and blue walls strong, there is increasing disquiet about the cost of him delivering on his green promises; with evidence of rapid climate change all around, COP26 was seen as the defining moment, if not the last chance saloon, in the fight back.

Few disagree that the cost of postponing firm action to curb emissions will make it immeasurably higher, but grandees don’t want to impose ‘green’ costs on those that may be ‘enjoying’ being Tory voters for the first time.

One thing’s for sure, what Mother Nature doesn’t need is Bloviating Boris delivering a performance long on hyperbole and devoid of substance and commitment; however unconvincing Boris has been on tackling climate change to date could he end up pitching himself as the planet-saving superhero facing down the evil penny-pinching Chancellor?

Lastly, and in advance of a more forensic examination of events in Afghanistan and the threats posed by the Taliban, Philip turns to the subjugation of women in this country and specifically the horrific events in Plymouth.

It’s rare that I don’t learn something new from Philip’s column, and this week its about a ‘brand new’ – as if we needed another – terrorist group in the odious Incel; and what an unpleasant bunch.

One of the big problems with terrorists is that they are the ‘enemy within’; the thoroughly nice chap that lived next door for thirty years – ‘used to buy his dear old mum flowers and all that’ – who then goes on a shooting spree. 

At least this new crowd will be easier to identify – they’re the ones with hairy palms and a guide dog.

Two haunting and poignant tracks this week revisiting the green theme – The Weather Station with ‘Trust’ and ‘Tried to Tell you’. Enjoy!
 

 

 

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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