Beginning to See the Light: Now it’s the Summer of Discontent 

 

‘What can you do? 

With a brat like that always on your back’ 

 
As ‘big dog’ lives to fight another day the forthcoming summer of discontent will see poop everywhere. 

During PMs question today (08/06), Dame Angela Eagle, the Labour MP for Wallasey, asked Johnson about the vote and the fact that 41% of his own MPs have no-confidence in him; he responded saying, ‘And what I want her to know is that absolutely nothing and no one, least of all her, is going to stop us with getting on delivering for the British people.’ 

Oh dear, what have we done to deserve more of this?  

It gets worse, he continued, saying; ‘I can assure her in a long political career so far – barely begun – I’ve of course picked up political opponents all over and that is because this government has done some very big and very remarkable things which they didn’t necessarily approve of.’ 

At this point I feel somewhat queasy, I find myself agreeing with Johnson; it is remarkable that he has been so incompetent, so behind the curve, so corrupt, so untruthful that it beggars’ belief. 

Another remarkable achievement is managing to unite 148 disparate Tory MPs from all sides of the party, uniting ‘remainers’ such as Caroline Nokes and ‘leavers’ such as Steve Baker, one-nation Tories such as Damian Green and right-wingers such as Andrew Bridgen. They came together for one reason; to vote Johnson out. 

Given that the bulk, if not all the MPs, who voted against Johnson were back benchers, it is difficult to see how he will get and legislation through parliament. A majority of 80+ isn’t so great when 148 members of your own team are against you. 

And, what do his 211 ‘supporters’ think of him? Do they consider him a man of honour? Unlikely. That their support isn’t based on moral inspiration or shared principles, both of which the PM lacks. Like him they are clinging on to jobs that would never have been available if competence had been the recruitment criterion. 
 

he has been so incompetent, so behind the curve, so corrupt, so untruthful that it beggars’ belief

 
They are little more than sycophants, capable of little else than repeating ad nauseum his rhetoric; massive agendas, his capacity to ‘deliver’, lines in the sand, and moving on. Tuesday morning video of his address to the cabinet post the no-confidence vote resembled a Putin-style ramble. 

They are supposed to be senior politicians, running departments spending millions of pounds. In reality Johnson’s cull of ‘remainers’ left the party shorn of talent, the beneficiaries are over-promoted, and owe their good fortune to him. 

There is also a fundamental misunderstanding of the party’s predicament. The ideological right of the party believe that policies, primarily tax cuts, rather than change of leader will provide the answer to the government’s problems.  

They are still caught-up in the cult of Thatcherism and her legacy of a small state. Cabinet members such as Kwasi Kwarteng, and Sajid Javid, are part of this yearning for yesteryear. The reason we have high taxes is that public needs are great, and the global economy has been disrupted. It has nothing to do with the government failing to follow the gospel of Thatcher.  

Within the ideological right, Brexit is still part of their raison d’etre. As this column predicted in ‘Brexit, The Never Ending Story’,  leaving the EU, especially exiting the free-trade agreement, has seen the party splinter into factions.  

The party has an identity crisis, the far right is dragging it towards small state, insular nationalism, whist ‘one nation Tories’ seek more inclusive policies. Johnson is in the middle propounding more left-wing policies such as ‘levelling-up’ whilst pandering to the hard-right. What we are left with is government by reaction; U-turns, and populism aimed at shoring up his position with not a policy in-sight.  

In his letter explaining why he would vote against Johnson this week, the former minister Jesse Norman succinctly summed up Johnson; he lacks a mission, prefers campaigning to governing, rhetoric to planning, and was attempting to import elements of a presidential system, Norman wrote. ‘All these things are at odds with a decent, proper conservatism: with effective teamwork, careful reform, a sense of integrity, respect for the rule of law and a long term focus on the public good.’ 

Johnson’s vulnerability plays into the hands of the right whose conditional backing can be used as a veto over the government’s agenda. As the Guardian reported, this explains a recent U-turn last month over an anti-obesity plan that would have banned some junk food advertising and supermarket deals. MPs who hated the infringement of market freedoms threatened Johnson with letters of no confidence. He yielded. 

Outside of parliament he is equally exposed to party funders. This perhaps explains why 22 donors, responsible for more than £18m in contributions to the party, signed a letter offering him their ‘unwavering support’. They also realise he has to be malleable. 

Unsurprisingly Europe has been bought into the fold. Prior to the no-confidence vote, stalwarts such as Nadine Dorries, declared that Johnson’s critics were disgruntled remainers. Not to be outdone in the stupidity stakes, Jacob Rees-Mogg, denounced the ballot as a plot ‘to undermine the Brexit referendum‘. 

Ignoramuses of this type should be worried about Brexit and the EU. We can only hope that Johnson’s replacement sees the wisdom of a conciliatory relationship with Brussels rather than one based on confrontation and naked aggression.   

Getting Brexit done further enhanced the cult of Johnson, as he appeared to have succeeded where Theresa May had failed. This is rubbish.  

What actually happened was that Johnson hit the same negotiating impasse as May, the issue of the Northern Ireland border, he just chose to ignore it. Whilst May had struggled to find compromises that would be operable, Johnson ignored it enabling himself to do a deal. How did he achieve this conjuring trick? Simple, he signed a withdrawal agreement he had no intention of to implementing, then lied its contents. 

Now the truth is out; his threat to enact a law that would override the Northern Ireland protocol is an admission that the original deal was a bad one. It was all fantasy, Brexit wasn’t done, we just kicked the can down the road. Now, at some point we will have to return to something resembling May’s deal. The alternative? Tear-up the Good Friday Agreement. 

Who replaces Johnson, and what direction the party choses is difficult for the party after so many deviations from economic, diplomatic and strategic rationality. 

Johnson’s loyalists are bedazzled by the last election when he achieved the seemingly impossible, winning both ‘red wall’ seats in northern England and the Midlands, whilst retaining the support of traditional Tory’s in the south 

As with all magic it was based on smoke and mirrors, based as much on anti-Corbyn sentiment as it was on the Boris effect’. Opinion polls, council ballots and byelections suggest that a repeat is unlikely. In reality, the electorate was tricked by a snake-oil salesman, a more truthful one wouldn’t have succeeded.
 

In reality, the electorate was tricked by a snake-oil salesman

 
In turn the majority isn’t the much vaunted change in the electoral structure of the country, it is an illusion. Many of those red wall votes could have gone to Nigel Farage’s Brexit party if he hadn’t withdrawn candidates from 317 Conservative-held seats.  

Brexit bought together discordant strands;  a Conservative party that traditionally represent the pillars of the establishment and insurrectionists who were anti-establishment. Johnson, who is a very competent campaigner, managed to appeal to both at the same time. But, as with all things Johnson, once the veneer is removed you expose the lies that enabled the seemingly impossible. Unfortunately for the Tory’s they are now caste in his image, devoid of conscience, integrity or values other than the maintenance of power.  

Business, for so long a cornerstone of Toryism is equally concerned by the party’s fall from grace, and its choice of leader 

Crispin Odey, the Brexit supporting hedge fund manager said of Johnson, ‘I expect politicians to be appalling and to behave badly but even by their standards he behaves badly.’ 

Sir Philip Hampton, the former chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland, drugs giant GSK and Sainsbury’s, said: ‘Since the financial crisis, the Tories have been less clearly the party of business. The windfall tax [on energy giants] just underlines that. Boris has become an electoral liability. Do the Conservatives think he will help or harm them in the next general election? Most of the signs are he is not helpful to them.’ 

Johnson remains in denial, yesterday rambling speech in Blackpool summed up where we are; back of a fag packet ideas tossed out at random. Although, I imagine hard-pressed consumer will be delighted to hear that tariffs on olives will be reduced, that will make such a difference! This was the most amusing part of what was a series of Thatcherite ideas aimed at shoring up his premiership. As the Guardian wrote, ‘the only concrete proposals he’s got up and running , sending refugees to Rwanda and changes to the Northern Ireland protocol, involve breaking the law’.   
 

While Johnson fiddles the country will burn, as a summer of delays and strikes seems inevitable. 

 
While Johnson fiddles the country will burn, as a summer of delays and strikes seems inevitable.  

Rail workers belonging to the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union will stage walkouts on 21, 23 and 25 June, with the effects likely to disrupt many services through days where workers are not on strike. The strikes, which will include most of its signalling staff as well as the onboard and station staff of 13 train companies, are expected to leave fewer than one in five services running, probably only between 7am and 7pm on main lines. 

Many rail workers had their wages frozen during the pandemic, and have not yet been offered a pay rise, with inflation at its highest for decades. 

The government has called the strikes ‘an act of self-harm‘, saying they could drive more passengers away in the long term. 

The strike is unlikely to drive people towards using their cars, the price of petrol at UK forecourts has made its biggest daily jump in 17 years. The cost of filling a family car threatens to exceed £100 for the first time. 

A litre of petrol cost an average of 180.73p on Tuesday, according to the data firm Experian Catalist – up an astonishing 2.23p compared with the previous day. 

Some forecourts are already selling petrol above £2 a litre, including a BP garage on the A1 near Sunderland, which is charging 202.9p. 

The increase in prices has been blamed on increased demand for fuel across the world, including in China and the US as Covid restrictions loosen. 

A squeeze on capacity at refineries has also kept pump prices high while oil has fallen from peaks seen at the start of the war in Ukraine. 

Elsewhere, a survey of nursing staff showed 80% reporting that their last shift had had insufficient nurses to look after patients safely and effectively. Put simply, staffing levels in today’s NHS are so low they put patients in danger. At the weekend patients at major hospitals in Devon were waiting more than 15 hours to be seen in A&E. 

Mark Docherty, the nursing director of the West Midlands Ambulance Service admits that patients are ‘dying every day‘ because of delays, and predicts that his entire service will capsize within two months. ‘Around August 17 is the day I think it will all fail. That date is when a third of our resource [will be] lost to delays, and that will mean we just can’t respond … It will be a bit like a Titanic moment. It will be a mathematical [certainty] that this thing is sinking, and it will be pretty much beyond the tipping point by then.’ 

In summation we are back where we were in the late-70s, heading for a prolonged period of stagflation. 

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) singled out the cost of living crisis as a cause of Britain’s slide down the international growth league table. It said the UK would be the weakest economy in the G7 group of leading industrial nations next year
 

we are back where we were in the late-70s, heading for a prolonged period of stagflation

 
They predict that the UK economy will grow by 3.6% in 2022 and there will be zero growth in 2023, a sizeable downgrade from the estimated 4.7% growth this year and 2.1% next year made six months ago. Inflation expected to average 8.8% this year and fall to 7.4% in 2023. 

The OECD said the UK was expected to go from being the second fastest-growing economy in the G7 group of industrial nations after Canada this year to the slowest-growing in 2023. Japan, Germany, Italy, France and the US are the other members of the group.  

Whilst some Conservative MPs are demanding tax cuts, the chancellor intends to wait until the autumn budget before coming up with another package of support. Instead, the chancellor and the prime minister will outline plans in the coming weeks to boost growth through measures such as improving skills and raising Britain’s investment in research and development. 

We are in a ghastly state. Even allowing for Covid things should not be this bad. When 41% of your own party have no-confidence in you, the decent thing to do is bow out gracefully. Unfortunately, Johnson, even though he attended Eton and Oxford, doesn’t have a decent bone in his body. 

I find it hard to recollect a more incompetent government, a government that struggles from crisis to crisis with nothing more than lies and deception. There have been bad governments, but never one that has wilfully deceived the population. 

I fear the next few years will be very bad! 
 

‘No future, no future 

No future, no future’ 

 
Wow, those of you hoping for a little light relief as you celebrate POETS day in the time-honoured fashion may be slightly disappointed by a pretty downbeat summary of just where we find ourselves; and don’t say he idnt warn us – Philip got pretty much every call right. So what prompted him to treat us to a second column of the week?:

This week we have two columns as I know people will have missed me!

In truth, I couldn’t let the moment pass. It’s everything I have predicted and more, a total shit show.

Hiding behind covid and inflation doesn’t wash, both are global phenomena, and we have just been shown up as unable to cope.

Why? We have a government led by an incompetent, and comprised of idealistic sycophants, with too much money to have a clue what the real world is like. They don’t understand, they don’t care, and just deceive us continually.

How the Daily Mail can continue to be their cheerleader baffles me. I always skim through it, on one level it’s amusing, on another it’s deeply depressing. It’s the Sun for people with delusions of grandeur. At the least the Sun kept the tits to P.3, with the Mail it’s the readers!

It is very difficult to see where we go from here. I just think the next 2-years will be miserable. At least in the late 70s I had punk and post punk, and early Giorgio Armani to cheer me up. Whilst Armani is still going he’s 85, and where are the next Sex Pistols? Who’s going to get on stage and be the adrenalin shot we need?

For once I am almost glad I’m old.     

Lyrically, we return to Year Zero, 1976. We start with the Ramones and “beat on the brat”; if only someone would. We finish with what was written as “No Future” by the Pistols, because, well……..just because.

Enjoy!

 

@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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