Heroes: Could the UK Swing Further to the Right? 

 

‘Come quietly to the camp

You’d look nice as a drawstring lamp..’

 

Sunak may lack the cartoonish stupidity of Truss and Johnson, but he is a hard-line right-winger. He is anti-woke, pays lip service to global warming, looks after pensioners, is tough on immigration, and still believes in Brexit. 

 
He hasn’t failed to deal with the public sector strikes, he’s playing the long game. Even the media are now bored with them! 

Let’s look a little closer at some of the above. 

His commitment to global warming is such, that even the Ukraine has completed more onshore wind turbines than us, even after it was occupied by Russian soldiers. 

Ed Miliband, the shadow climate change secretary, said: ‘This extraordinary revelation is a terrible indictment of Rishi Sunak and his staggering failure to end the onshore wind ban. 

‘Even governments fighting for their very survival can get on and build the clean energy infrastructure needed to tackle the cost of living crisis, the energy security crisis, and the climate crisis with more urgency than the Tories can muster.’ 

The government had promised to dismantle an effective ban on onshore windfarms in England, but due to fears of a backbench rebellion only modest tweaks to the framework have been forthcoming. 

The ban on onshore wind, which is one of the cheapest sources of electricity, is estimated to have cost UK billpayers £800m over the past winter according to analysts at the Energy and Climate Change Intelligence Unit (ECIU). 
 

‘the Ukraine has completed more onshore wind turbines than us, even after it was occupied by Russian soldiers’

 
Whilst he cares about immigration, Sunak is just another Tory PM who has promised much and delivered little. 

Both David Cameron and Theresa May pledged to reduce net migration to ‘tens of thousands; neither did. 

Johnson promised ‘overall numbers would come down‘ as he aimed to ‘take back control‘ of UK borders. Number went up! 

It feels as if these are just words designed to please party members and backbenchers, all of whom assume that migration to Britain is uniquely high, and that it is opposed by the public in the way some newspapers and politicians insist. 

Sunak does have some excuses. As Oxford University’s Migration Observatory has explained, non-EU migration has significantly risen thanks to the UK welcoming 114,000 people from Ukraine and 52,000 from Hong Kong. 

This is partly due Johnson’s Brexit dream to introduce a points-based immigration system allowing employers to recruit overseas workers with some language skills and earning potential of £25,600. 

This has changed the dynamics of immigration: post-Brexit, Indians account for more than a third of those coming to the UK on long-term visas, whilst many of the Polish workers who arrived in the early 2000s have left. 

Skilled workers tend to be older and less transient, and likely to bring their families with them. We need them, especially, skilled workers, there is a labour shortage that impacts inflation. and we have an aging population and a consequent demand for labour across a range of economic sectors. 

In addition, specific sectors, such as care homes,  have been added to the ‘approved’ list. Last year the government allowed care homes to recruit overseas workers on £10.75 an hour, a little over the minimum wage. The number of overseas workers arriving to work in the health and care sector more than doubled last year. 

The reality is that immigration is likely to remain high, rather than decline.  
 

‘The reality is that immigration is likely to remain high, rather than decline.’  

 
The Tories are somewhat out-of-tune with the majority of the electorate who seemingly accept that migration levels should stay the same or increase, largely because so many legal migrants are in areas where we have shortages, E.G., nurses, doctors, care workers, computer programmers, and scientists.  

A poll by Best for Britain regarding our visa policies found that > 50% of all voters polled said the UK should issue more visas to allow foreign workers to come to the UK. Although some caveated that by specifying only in sectors with labour shortages. Only 23% wanted to see fewer visas issued. 

A rise in support for immigration is bad news for Suella Braverman as she continues to view herself as a future leaders. 

An Opinium poll for the Observer showed her approval rating had slumped to -36 among voters; 14% said they approved of the job she is doing, 50% said they disapproved. This is a significant decline since March, when 18% approved of her performance and 38% disapproved. Voters appear to be recognising that, fortunately, she is all tough talk and no actions. 

The poll also showed that both Sunak and Braverman performed poorly when voters were asked if they regard the pair as out of touch or representing what people think. However, Braverman performed significantly worse on trustworthiness, making big decisions, competence and ‘likeability’.  
 

‘Braverman performed significantly worse on trustworthiness, making big decisions, competence and ‘likeability”

 
Being out-of-touch with the electorate now includes Brexit, a clear majority of British voters now favours building closer relations with the EU. This includes constituencies that recorded the highest votes to leave the EU in 2016. 

A survey by Focaldata, polled > 10,000 voters, for the internationalist campaign group Best for Britain, found that 63% believe Brexit has created more problems than it has solved, compared with 21% who believe it has solved more than it has created. 

Overall, 53% of voters now want the government to seek a closer relationship with the EU than it now has, against just 14% who want the UK to become more distant. 

In Boston and Skegness in Lincolnshire, where the vote to leave the EU was 74.9% in 2016, > 40% now want closer links with the EU against just 19% who want relations to become even more distant. 

This is hardly surprising when you consider the damage that Brexit has caused the economy with increased barriers, extra bureaucracy and costs to exporters and importers. The London School of Economics estimate that British households had paid £7bn since Brexit to cover the extra cost of food imports from the EU resulting from new trade barriers. 

Peter Norris, co-convener of the UK Trade and Business Commission and chair of the Virgin Group, added: ‘From higher inflation to fruit rotting in fields, we can see the economic impact of both labour shortages and divergence from our largest trading partner, the EU. And from this polling, it is clear that the majority of voters knows that Brexit is a key factor.’ 

This week it has been suggested that the government implements what is akin to price controls to combat food inflation, though they will be voluntary rather than mandatory, unlike the Tory policy under Ted Heath in 1973. ⁽¹⁾ 

Of course, the 1970s are hardwired into all Tory party folklore as a parable of national decline, represented by a bloated state, and Bolshevik trade union excess. If that wasn’t sufficient there was Heath’s eagerness for Britain to join the European Economic Community. All of this was, of course, redeemed in the 80s, with privatisation, deregulation and tax cuts.  
 

‘the Conservatives continue to eulogise around an outdated political doctrine’

 
Fifty years on, several generations have been born and reached adulthood whilst the Conservatives continue to eulogise around an outdated political doctrine. 

‘Intellectual stagnation invites demographic decline, which militates against fresh thinking‘. Many who lived through the 1970s, now have grandchildren old enough to vote. The Tory’s remain loyal to their ageing electoral base, and shy away from building new homes in the backyards of rich pensioners, or asking them to cash in their assets to pay for social care. 

Their grandchildren, the millennials, don’t vote Tory. A polling report, published on Tuesday by Onward, a centre-right thinktank, points out that they comprise C.25% of the electorate, and are the largest cohort in just over 50% of all constituencies. 

What do they want? They want secure jobs, an NHS that works, affordable homes and childcare that doesn’t take all their income. They are socially liberal, care about the environment, and are anti-Brexit.  

Everything seems to be moving away from them. Recent Resolution Foundation research showed that the long-running housing boom, quantitative easing and zero interest rates, has meant baby boomers now own >50% of Britain’s wealth, against 8% for millennials. 
 

‘the long-running housing boom, quantitative easing and zero interest rates, has meant baby boomers now own >50% of Britain’s wealth, against 8% for millennials’

 
And, while only 10% of families headed by a baby-boomer were living in the private rented sector at the age of 30, today, for millennials of the same age, it is 40%. 

Former Tory cabinet minister David Willetts said; ‘In my experience, by and large young people are not plotting Marxist revolution in Latin America; what they want is to own a place of their own and to have a decent job. They’re not so fundamentally radical that a sensible Conservative party couldn’t appeal to them. But the more difficult we make the process, the harder it is for them to get a stake in society, the less likely they are to become Tory.’ 

James Meadway, director of the Progressive Economy Forum thinktank said; ‘Effectively government policy has been geared towards making sure that house prices stay up – this is what QE [quantitative easing] actually did – whilst at the same time, it has been difficult to actually get a mortgage. That’s great if you own a house, and you’re trying to pay off your mortgage; but it’s been pretty terrible if you’re trying to buy a house. And then you’re forced into the private rental market which is hideously underregulated and generally terrible.’ . 

In addition, Meadway points to the current job market: ‘If you think about the period from the mid-1990s through to 2008, for a lot of graduates you could come out of university and go straight into a reasonably secure job with some prospects of something that looked like a career. And since 2008 that’s just not happened: you’ve had this profusion of zero-hours contracts, insecure work, part-time work: and it’s particularly younger workers who have ended up in these things.’ 

Turning to Brexit; 66% of millennials voted for remain, compared with just a 33% of boomers, yet they have been as badly impacted anyone by its economic impact. And, still the Tories fly the flag for leave. 

In theory, as a ‘young’ PM, from immigrant stock he should appeal the millennials. In practise, it is hard to pigeon-hole him; he combines doctrinal rigidity with a pragmatic streak.  

As chancellor, he borrowed huge sums to pay people’s wages via the pandemic furlough scheme. When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatened gas supplies, he subsidised household bills. Both a  temporary abandonment of Thatcherism. When Ed Miliband proposed freezing energy prices in 2014, the Tories denounced it as unhinged Marxism. Now it is government policy.  

The contradiction is explained as deploying state control was expedient, short-term and reluctant, whereas with Labour it is the default option. This assumes a return to free-markets allocating resources efficiently and distributing reward according to merit, a solution that never really existed other than in Tory imaginations. Voters want the state to be active on their behalf, and because most are in a very different position financially to the Sunak’s experience issues that he cannot conceive of. 

As a result we have no plan; the US and EU are quick to subsidise new technologies, secure supply chains, make themselves hospitable to innovation and resilient against global turbulence, whilst we dither being neither fish nor fowl. 

All of the above points to moderate, centrist politics, however the right still marches. 

Twenty years ago,  Austria’s far-right Freedom party (FPÖ), led by Jörg Haider, who had made comments suggesting he was sympathetic to the Nazi regime – entered a coalition with the conservative People’s party, mass protests not only erupted in Vienna but across Europe and in the US. The EU even imposed diplomatic sanctions on Austria.  

In 2017 the FPÖ formed a new coalition and the protests were muted. Today, the party picks up victories in local elections and leads Austria’s opinion polls, and has every chance of leading the next government.  

In Spain’s 2019 elections, the far-right Vox party, who are hostile to migrants and oppose regional autonomy in Spain, came third. A snap general election has been called for July, and Vox could soon be in government. 

In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is surging: one recent poll forecast it would come second in a general election, ahead of the ruling Social Democrats. 

In France, Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party scored their best ever results in presidential and parliamentary elections last year.  

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is of the far-right Brothers of Italy party.  

In eastern Europe, Hungary is ruled by a de facto far-right autocracy, and the more extreme Our Homeland Movement is gaining support. Poland is also ruled by a hard-right government. 

The question is, what has caused this rise in hard-right politics? 
 

‘increasing economic insecurity and inequality has provided the far-right with plenty of ammunition, allied to the traditional use of migrants as scapegoats’

 
Well, it is based on what the column has continued to warn of; increasing economic insecurity and inequality has provided the far-right with plenty of ammunition, allied to the traditional use of migrants as scapegoats. The left has missed their opportunity. They failed to blame austerity policies, low-paid jobs and the GFC as evidence that free-markets don’t work. 

Mainstream parties have been too nice, and have not provided the vigorous opposition required to defeat the far-right. They have failed to offer an alternative vision of the future, and instead have sought to imitate their rhetoric and policies. In doing so they have given credibility to hard-right politicians. 

Labour have been no different, offering up a stream of reheated Tory policies in the hope that the electorate might prefer light blue. 

 

 

 

Notes: 

1. The Price Commission was set up in the UK under the Counter-Inflation Act 1973, alongside the Pay Board, in an attempt to control inflation. 

 

They smelt of pubs, and wormwood scrubs, And too many right wing meetings’ 

 
 

Pithy stuff from Philip this week, with some recurring themes brought up date, and all the scarier for it.

Opinions about the thorny issues of immigration, the cost of living crisis, housing and the NHS are deeply divided along generational grounds, with Millennials also having to wrestle with massive economic disadvantages compared to their parents and grandparents – probably the wealthiest generations there will ever be.

From a political perspective, it’s fascinating; instinctively liberal, younger generations seek only the opportunities to flourish that their parents enjoyed, but they in turn are putting their arms around their considerable stash to safeguard it from thieving immigrants, food bank scroungers, scalping care homes and the NHS ‘they’ve paid into all their lives’.

There is also the inconvenient truth, that whilst sitting on massive gains in the value of their properties, and lobbying to scrap the ‘punitive’ Inheritance Tax, they are living longer than ever before and putting an intolerable burden on the NHS and the current tax payers that fund it.

The rise and rise of the far right has been a mainstay of Philip’s column, and we should all be afraid of the way things have developed and continue so to do.

So, what was he thinking?:

After the 100-miles an hour chaos of  Johnson and Truss, Sunak is a writer’s worst nightmare. He plays the long-game, and displays the quiet confidence of someone who knows where he’s going and how he’s going to get there.

For him that destination is the next election. I believe he will be a very difficult campaigner for Starmer to defeat. Yes, he doesn’t have the charisma or tells people what they want to hear as Johnson did, but that style is now thoroughly discredited.

When you look at his beliefs he is a hard-line Thatcherite; low taxes, small state, but only when the economy justifies it. He still thinks Brexit works, and is a true Tory on immigration. To do this we can add a degree of pragmatism when required.

As I try to highlight, much of this puts him out-of-step with the electorate in ongoing polls. But, as we have seen before, when it comes to a general election people return to their “roots” rather than registering protest votes, as they might in by-elections.

The Tory’s have consciously ignored younger voters and continued to favour the “grey brigade”. This strategy might have one more electoral triumph left in. More about this next week.

In answer to my question about the hard-right, they have benefitted from the GFC and anti-globalisation, and have done just what the predecessors did when they rose to power. The left has been culpable in letting this happen by not standing up to them, and aping their policies which has the effect of legitimizing the rights extremism.

I don’t believe Britain will go that far. Historically, there is a dislike of bullies and an underlying anti-authoritarian streak in our make-up.

Forgive the following racial stereotyping, but Germany and Austria have a history of preferring authoritarianism. France, Italy and Spain are catholic countries and used to conservative orthodoxy. Democracy in eastern Europe is young and easily influenced.

However, the big battleground for the right will be the US. If there is another Biden/Trump showdown the result will be decisive for global politics.

Should Trump regain power, the right will be further empowered.

Lyrically, it is all anti-right. We start with “California über alles” by the Dead Kennedys, and play-out with Jam’s quite brilliant “Down in the Tube Station at Midnight.” 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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