Heroes: A Tale of Two Priorities 

 

‘Been standing still for much too long 

And I realize there’s something wrong 

I’m feeling strange, I need a change’ 

 
Lets start this with the 19% of the population for who, after 13-yrs of austerity and a cost-of-living crisis, poverty beckons. 

To succeed in something you need plan, a strategy. a report funded by the independent Nuffield Foundation, titled ‘Ending Stagnation a new economic strategy for Britain’. finds that ‘We are not on course towards setting any such strategy – indeed, we are not serious about the task.’ (1) 

Excepting black swan events such as Covid and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the authors document a series of failures that have left the UK a laggard among G7 economies, and ill-prepared for the task of providing a decent standard of living for most people in the years ahead. 

Rather than creating an economy where the number of high-skilled jobs is on the rise, workers will be £470 worse off by the end of the decade. This comes after 15 years of flatlined wages, costing the average worker £10,700 a year in lost pay growth compared with the pre-financial crash trend. 

The report cites Brexit and the resulting loss of international trade as one reason for the lack of growth; E.G., by 2023, UK trade as a share of annual national income was down 2.2% on pre-pandemic levels, compared to a rise of 0.5% across the rest of the G7. A loss of market share across EU and non-EU markets, including the US, Canada and Japan, is to blame, with a resultant decline in high-skilled jobs. 

Economically the report concludes that, ‘UK manufacturing will change rather than grow, as high-productivity sectors like chemicals and electronics shrink even as lower-productivity food manufacturing expands‘. 

Excluding London, all our biggest cities have productivity levels below the national average. 

What I find most distressing is the percentage of the population citing poverty and inequality as one of the most important issues facing the country, which has risen from 7% in 2010 to 19% immediately before the Covid pandemic. 

The toxic combination of low growth and one of the highest levels of inequality among any large European country has contributed to the lack of progress on living standards for lower-income households. Austerity has fuelled poverty, and benefit levels have failed to keep pace with prices in 10 of the past 15 years. 
 

‘The toxic combination of low growth and one of the highest levels of inequality among any large European country has contributed to the lack of progress on living standards for lower-income households’

 
The consumer group Which?’s latest ‘consumer insight tracker’ shows the result of these failed policies; 2.8m, 9.8% of the households had missed or defaulted on a loan, credit card, housing or household bill payment over the month. 

Which? said 57% of those surveyed had needed to make financial adjustments to stay afloat, such as cutting back on essentials, dipping into savings, selling possessions or borrowing in order to cover essential spending. 

16% said they had skipped meals due to high food costs, while 8% had prioritised meals for other family members, mostly likely children 

‘Young adults’ appear to have suffered more than most, as generational pay progress has ceased. Those born in the early 1980s were almost half as likely as their parents’ generation to own their own home by the age of 30. 

After 15-years of average wages after inflation remaining almost stagnant, almost 9 million younger Britons have never worked in an economy that has sustained rising average wages. 

Whereas previously it was taken for granted that each generation saw an increase in household disposable income, this has slowed or ground to a halt. The average income for those born in the early 1980s is almost £1,400 lower at 30 than those born 10-years earlier. 

Whilst it isn’t only the young who use the private rented sector, they are in the majority, therefore they have been particularly impacted as, since Covid private rents have soared by >25%, and will keep rising, according to an analysis by Savills. (2) 

Their research shows that a typical private rent will end this year 9.5% higher than in December 2022 and then rise a further 6% in 2024 before hitting an ‘affordability ceiling’. 

Overall, rents increased by nearly 6% in the first eight months of the year, taking total growth since March 2020 when the first Covid lockdown began to 26%. 

They suggest that a combination of demand for decent rental properties exceeding supply, and the cost-of-borrowing squeeze have been the main causes. 
 

‘cutting back on essentials, dipping into savings, selling possessions or borrowing in order to cover essential spending’

 
Savills said property supply shortages and ‘tougher conditions‘ for landlords ‘will keep UK rental growth strong in the short term’. 

Emily Williams, a director in the Savills residential research team, said: ‘It’s very difficult to see where an increase in rental supply will come from in the next couple of years.’ 

Savills estimated the average tenant household was now spending 35.3% of their income on rent, up from 33% in 2021-22. 

However, in London, rent typically swallows up a much higher proportion of income: 42.5%. The firm said average rents in the capital had increased by 31% in the last two years and, as a result, renters in London ‘have already exhausted their capacity to bid upwards‘. 

For the minority, of course, the story is very different; the ONS calculated that the richest 10% of households hold 43% of all wealth.  

What do they worry about? Well, not very much. For them preserving the status quo is key; low taxes, liberal free-market economics, small government letting them get on with what they want. In short, the current Tory government suits them just fine.  

What do the Tories focus on? Well, climate change isn’t high on the agenda as they see it as a differentiator from Labour, and one that can get culture warriors animated. 
 

‘average rents in the capital had increased by 31% in the last two years’

 
Last week was Cop 28; what happened to all the others? They seemed to just pass in a blur of broken, forgotten promises.  

Perhaps the increasing failure of these events can be explained by the attendees;  the Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition  estimates that C. 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists were been granted access to the Cop28 climate negotiations, raising further questions about the fossil fuel industry’s influence over these meetings.   

The revelations come during another catastrophic year for the climate, with supercharged extreme weather events striking every corner of the world, from unprecedented rainfall in Libya, severe drought threatening the Amazon, and a sharp increase in heat deaths from Arizona to southern Europe. 

For many culture warriors climate change is a side-show, the real focus is immigration, ‘stopping the boats’. 

As we know, Brexit has only made things worse, but, on the plus side for the government rising immigration is a flag they can rally the troops around. 
 

‘another catastrophic year for the climate, with supercharged extreme weather events striking every corner of the world, from unprecedented rainfall in Libya, severe drought threatening the Amazon, and a sharp increase in heat deaths from Arizona to southern Europe’

 
Or, at least it should be, instead it has ignited a civil war within the party, between those that believe we should obey the courts and international law, and those who think this is a just another reason for British exceptionalism.  

The whole mess was summed up the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, who said: ‘They’ve got open warfare among their backbenches, the starting gun fired on the next leadership election, and once again the whole country paying the price for this chaos.’ 

The immigration minister in question, Robert Jenrick, resinged after it was revealed that the legislation did not allow the government to override the international laws that have stopped the government sending asylum seekers to central Africa. 

In a letter published on X, the MP for Newark said Sunak’s bill was ‘a triumph of hope over experience’ and will mean that the policy will be challenged again in the courts. 

Jenrick’s resignation will be seen as a move to position himself as the head of the growing right-wing rebellion aimed at ensuring that the UK can act unilaterally and send flights to Kigali. 

A prime mover within this is the former home secretary, Suella Braverman. In a combative interview yesterday, Braverman refused to back Sunak’s Rwanda deportation plan, key to fulfilling one of his five pledges, insisting ‘the reality and sorry truth is, it just won’t work‘. 

Her comments came a day after delivering a personal statement in the House of Commons, in which she told MPs the Tories faced ‘electoral oblivion in a matter of months‘ unless ministers blocked all human rights laws used to halt deportation flights to Rwanda. 

‘The facts don’t lie, and we need to deliver on a key promise. That’s how we will win the next general election,’ Braverman told Today. ‘The time for talk, the time for slogans and promises is over. We need to show delivery and that’s what this debate right now is all about.’ 

Braverman, presumably trying to sound like a team-player, said she wanted Sunak to succeed in ‘stopping the boats as he said he would do whatever it takes’, but added that his draft bill would ‘allow a merry-go-round of legal claims and litigation‘. 
 

‘she told MPs the Tories faced ‘electoral oblivion in a matter of months‘ unless ministers blocked all human rights laws used to halt deportation flights to Rwanda’

 
In defending the bill, the PM said it was ‘the toughest piece of legislation ever put forward by a UK government‘ but ignoring the courts entirely would have meant Rwanda pulling out of the scheme. ‘There would be no point in passing a law that would leave us with nowhere to send people to.’ 

In a hastily convened emergency press conference, the PM claimed that his new Rwanda legislation would prevent legal challenges and finally allow deportation flights to take off to Rwanda. 

Then, somewhat in defiance of his own claims, Sunak said he would not treat the legislation as a vote of confidence in his leadership, freeing up Tory rebels to vote against it. With Labour having already stated it will oppose the plans, it would take just 29 Tory MPs to vote it down. 

In a somewhat forlorn attempt to curtail a growing rebellion within the party, he claimed that the legislation would be an ‘effective deterrent‘ to people entering the UK illegally and would restore public trust in the system. 

The new legislation would end ‘the merry-go-round of legal challenges‘ that had blocked the Rwanda plan so far. ‘We have blocked all the ways that illegal migrants will try and stay … We have set the bar so high that it will be vanishingly rare to meet it.’ 

Lastly, as he desperately tried to appease the hard-right, he warning that if the European court of human rights intervened to stop flights taking off once the legislation was in place, he would ‘do what is necessary’ to get the scheme working. In other words, he might consider pulling out of the European convention on human rights completely. 

In yet another move designed to appease the minority of racists in the electorate, the Tories are now seeking to decimate the care sector. 
 

‘In yet another move designed to appease the minority of racists in the electorate, the Tories are now seeking to decimate the care sector’

 
Walking misnomer, James Cleverly, the current home secretary is expected to raise the minimum salary requirement for a skilled worker from outside the UK from its current level of £26,200, to about £38,000. 

The move, which goes far further than anticipated, effectively reviving the pre-Brexit immigration system when skilled non-EU workers largely required degrees, is clearly designed to meet the demands of far-right Tory MPs . It is understood that the number of dependants social care workers are allowed to bring into Britain will also be scaled back. 

Home Office figures showed that visas granted to foreign health and social care workers more than doubled to 143,990 in the year to September. They brought in a total of 173,896 dependants. 

The general secretary of the Unison union, Christina McAnea, said the package of measures would be ‘cruel’ and ‘disastrous’ for the social care sector: ‘I think this is one of these really cruel and disastrous policies basically for the sector. We already know that there’s massive shortages in social care and indeed in health. 

‘I do want to know have they spoken to anyone in the sector about this before introducing these changes, have they spoken to anyone who commissions or provides or employs care workers? I suspect not. This will be an utter disaster because what they’re doing is basically sending out a really strong message to those migrant workers who are basically propping up the care sector and indeed in many cases the health sector and saying you’re not welcome here.’ 

Perhaps we should just be honest and say, ‘ you don’t vote Tory, therefore you don’t count, and we don’t care about you’.  

Oh, isn’t the season of goodwill to all? Cleary not. 
 

‘It’ll be lonely this Christmas 

Lonely and cold’ 

 Notes: 
 

1. The report was pieced together from original research by the Resolution Foundation thinktank and the Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE. 

 

1. Savills analysis drew on a mix of data including its own research, figures from the economic advisory firm Oxford Economics, and data on past rental growth from the UK property website Zoopla 

 
It’s a tough read from Philip, and all the more so because, however incongruous, this is all really happening in ‘Great’ Britain 2023.

Here’s his workings:

As we come to the end of another year, all I can find to say is that we are consistent.

The majority continue to suffer whilst the minority prosper.

The government continues to offer nothing other than chaos and disorder, all served with a large dollop of madness.

The Tories are a party that, since the Brexit madness of 2016, has been consistently unable to manage itself let alone the country.

Significant events, such as Brexit, a pandemic, European wars have come and, in some cases gone, and the government appears oblivious.

There is a cost-of-living crisis, people are having to choose between heating and eating, children go hungry, and……..nothing!

Strikes go on for so long they become a fact-of-life.

What does the government get animated about? Culture wars, particularly immigration.

Immigrants do the “low-paid” jobs that keep many public services going. What does the government do? It shows them the door.

Truly the Tories offer nothing other than misery.

Lyrically, we start with “Somethings’ Wrong” by my old favourites the Jesus and Mary Chain. I could think of nothing more fitting to end with that “Lonely This Christmas” by Mud. 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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