Heroes: ‘Disappointed and Let Down’

 

‘When your day is long
And the night, the night is yours alone
When you’re sure you’ve had enough
Of this life, well hang on’

  

In “Heaven Knows I Miserable Now” I wrote about how a percentage of the electorate felt betrayed, forgotten. The so called “Red Wall”, which had traditionally voted Labour tuned Conservative because they felt that Labour’s citycentric, “trendy” ideas offered nothing for them.

 
In turn they have equally been let down by the Tories. The catalyst for their change of allegiance was Brexit ,but that has only delivered disappointment; immigration has increased, the £350m per week for the NHS has been exposed as shameless lie. In 2019, Johnson pretended to listen to them, Yes, he delivered a hard-Brexit which has caused nothing but chaos and disappointment, and his of levelling-up simply hasn’t happened.

The salient question now is what do these betrayed, forgotten voters really stand for. Are they Tory or Labour?

In some respects they are right-wing populists, for example, anti-immigration and climate change. At the same time, when you listen to them laying into the government and big business, and championing the working class, small businesses and the NHS, they could almost be Corbynite.

Their opinions have become contradictory, chaotic and unpredictable, all of which seem to be unrecognised by the mainstream political parties who are still trying to pigeonhole them. The media report them as “Essex man”, “Stevenage woman”, the “red wall”; “boomers” v “millennials”, “ethnic minorities” v “the white working class” – and, of course, leave v remain.

As Dan Evans, the author of “The Unstoppable Rise of the Petite Bourgeoisie”, says, “One of the reasons we cling so faithfully to such simplistic categories is to do with the fact that social mixing across class lines has become increasingly rare in Britain.”

This has made understanding other people’s difficult. For some, myself included, the vote to “leave”, support for politicians such as Johnson and the rise of conspiracy theories is irrational. Additionally, we assume that anyone who supports these views must, naturally, be in full agreement with all aspects of them.
 

‘the vote to “leave”, support for politicians such as Johnson and the rise of conspiracy theories is irrational’

 
Evans explains the rise of “chaotic” views as being part of changes in our society over the years.

For example, the old industrial town created communities in which people worked and lived collectively. As a result there was a “more coherent class consciousness”, whereas, “today we live atomised, individualised lives.”

This “new” has made class boundaries less stable. Many people are now either in low-paid employment, unemployed, or described as “self-employed” in the gig economy.

Thatcherism created a homeowning democracy, which resulted in an increase of working-class home ownership. This, allied with an increase in self-employment has created a class of people whose interest align with labour and capital. Or, in more technical terms, they “believe in change and the status quo”.

Initially, these impacted the “left” more; there is less political education work by union reps, political parties, and through entities such as libraries and clubs. The decline of the trade unions has had perhaps the greatest impact, leading to these seemingly contradictory opinions.

The predominance of a right-wing media gives the impression that we have become a “rainy fascist island”, however, most people in the UK generally have progressive values. Broadly speaking, they are tolerant and open-minded when it comes to race, gender and sexuality. They also support redistributive economic policies such as public ownership and higher taxes on the rich. The fact these progressive instincts have not always been harnessed by the Labour party, especially post the GFC, says more about the Labour party than the electorate.

This seemingly incoherent vision by parts of the electorate helps to explain the appeal of both Brexit and the Johnson led Tories in 2019.

More traditional Tories, for example, those of the Cameron government, and Labour failed to understand the changes taking place within the electorate. During the Brexit campaign, Dominic Cummings, the arch-strategist, understood that these changes had created “floating voters” who could change the outcome of the referendum. Cummings understood that both “Leave” and “Remain” had a hardcore 40%, who wouldn’t be swayed by the opposition. He then focussed on the 20% who could be influenced. It was much the same in 2019; “Red Wall” seated were traditionally Labour but had strongly supported “Leave” in the referendum. His focus, and the pretence of levelling-up saw the “Red Wall” turn blue and were, in large part, responsible for Johnsons’ majority.
 

‘Dominic Cummings, the arch-strategist, understood that these changes had created “floating voters” who could change the outcome of the referendum’

 
In addition to Cummings’ electoral strategy, Johnson was aided by Farage’s decision to stand aside, allowing the “right’s” vote to coalesce around Johnson. Today, Sunak faces a double-whammy; Reform won’t stand aside, and these new Tory voters have been equally disappointed with the outcome.

As a result of this, the Tories now look set for a heavy defeat. The hard-right, ever opportunistic, realise this and are seeking to take advantage of the situation. As I wrote in “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”, this weeks YouGov poll appeared to have been a poorly hidden agenda.

The poll was commissioned by a previously unknown group of Tory donors calling themselves the Conservative Britain Alliance, with commentary from David Frost, the former Brexit negotiator. He concluded that a disastrous defeat could only be averted by turning to hard-right policies.

The theory was based on hardline policies stopping Conservative voters migrating en masse to Reform. The timing might be described as coincidental given this week’s vote on the Rwanda safety bill, and was clearly aimed at drumming support for the rebel amendments to allow indiscriminate deportations.

The theory forgets that Reform isn’t the only destination for ex-Tory voters. Many, including myself, are appalled by this swing towards fascism and feeding the masses red meat to satiate them, rather than dealing with real issues such as the economy and climate change.

However, they are correct in assuming that a hard-right alternative such as Reform, will split the Tory vote, allowing Labour an even larger majority.

One of the key questions is what is Reform’s strategy? Do they wish to be an actual electoral force, or just fringe irritants? The biggest impact on this is likely to be their choice of leadership. One commentator described their current leader, Richard Tice, as “smoothly forgettable”. Proof of this could be the fact that the party hasn’t troubled the scorer in either local elections or byelections.

The alternative, Nigel Farage, has media magnetism, that could upgrade Reform from the fringes to meaningful opposition.

From Farage’s perspective he would need to consider the potential damage to his carefully curated brand, as he would be leading a bunch of predominantly doomed parliamentary candidates, proposing a manifesto based on white nationalism and conspiracy theories.

The upside could be the opportunity of picking over the pieces of what is left of the Tories should they suffer a humiliating defeat in the forthcoming election. To an extent Farage’s decision to stand-down candidates competing against Tory incumbents in 2019 laid the ideological foundations for a merger. Prior to that, there had been plenty of defections from Tory to Ukip and back again.
 

‘Farage has greater appeal to grassroots Tories than the parliamentary party where the more moderate “One Nation Tories” are in the majority’

 
Farage has greater appeal to grassroots Tories than the parliamentary party where the more moderate “One Nation Tories” are in the majority. For government ministers it is difficult to practise perpetual grievance, which is why they migrate to the backbenches, E.G., Suella Braverman.

This uneasy balance of power was highlighted by the way that Sunak replaced Liz Truss. Truss had been the party members choice but the parliamentary party wasn’t prepared to entrust them with choosing her successor, and they were bypassed

Sunak, as leader, has the impossible task of trying to reconcile the conflicting wings of the party, which has resulted in fusion style policies, as he seeks to appease both.

As in other countries, the Tories feel they have to adopt policies that previously had been the domain of the hard-right. The new-found dominance of the hard-right was highlighted at last year’s Conservative conference when Farage was given almost a hero’s welcome. Sunak, when asked whether Farage might be welcome to rejoin the Conservatives (he left in the early 1990s), replied that his party is a “broad church”.

The fact that there is now so little difference between the Tories and Reform allows little opportunity for incumbent Tory MPs to defend themselves against voters switching to Reform. Their only possible option is to warn that a vote for Reform is effectively a vote for labour, who will be the likely beneficiary of the switch.

Clearly, a sweeping Labour victory would benefit Farage. Many Tories will turn further right, and he is probably the most electoral of the potential leaders, allowing him to shape what is left in his own light.

 

“I remember how you used to say 

You’d never change, but that’s not true” 

 
 
 
Plenty of reasons to be fearful for Sunak as a YouGov poll predicts that after the GE, Tory MPs will be rarer than many of the species their climate denying policies are destroying.

Another great preamble to this one, and not one that I could improve  in any way:

This week has been as surreal as life can get in the UK.

In the real world we have the ongoing disgrace that is the Post Office (“PO”) scandal. With each day there are new revelations that are simply awful. It is really hard to express just how bad the conduct of both the PO and Fujitsu was. There really is no punishment sufficient to recompense the misery and disaster their behaviour is responsible for.

You can call it callous, deceitful, fraudulent, and dishonest, and there are still adjectives that could be levelled at them. They effectively stole money from people and used it to prop up their balance sheet.

This week the public  inquiry heard a Fujitsu manager describe Lee Castleton, whose bankruptcy over missing Post Office funds featured in a recent television drama:.

“That Castleton is a nasty chap and will be all out to rubbish the FJ name. It’s up to you to maintain absolute strength and integrity no matter what the prosecution throw at you. We will all be behind you hoping you come through unscathed. Bless you.”

Castleton had been refusing to pay the money on the basis that he had not done anything wrong, but the high court, in 2007, ordered him to repay the funds and cover £321,000 in legal costs, leading to his bankruptcy.

Gerald Barnes, a software developer at Fujitsu who raised the issue of bugs in the Horizon IT system said the company did not properly fix the problem because it would have been too expensive and time-consuming, the inquiry into the Post Office scandal has heard.

As early as 1998, it was found that there were “significant deficiencies in the product, code and design” of software being used to move functions online.

“Error handling wasn’t as good as it could have been if designed properly from the start,” said Barnes, speaking at the inquiry on Wednesday.

Finally, I read that Fujitsu have, to date, made C. 2.4bn in ill-gotten gains from their much flawed Horizon system. Their current boss, Paul Patterson, agrees that they should “contribute towards” compensation; that’s good of him isn’t it. But, he wants to wait until the inquiry is over to determine how much.

Here’s a clue Paul, all £2.4bn, plus a suitable redress to spilt equally amongst the people whose lives you help to ruin, and which now shed crocodile tears over!

Oh, and banned from any UK contracts for a minimum of 10-yrs.

Over in la-la land the PM pushes on with his absurd, and likely illegal Rwanda bill, trying to pretend everything is OK when it plainly isn’t.

At a press conference, which was more of a monologue, he said; “The Conservative party has come together”.  If it has, it is only out of self-preservation, rather than because it thinks the Rwanda bill is workable. Half the Tories are horrified at how far the party has lurched in its willingness to ignore international law. The other half feel it hasn’t gone nearly far enough.

He told us that sending refugees to Rwanda was “The will of the people”. Which is code this is the last resort of a populist who has run out of road. Everyone knows that the Rwanda plan was only dreamed up as a distraction to get Boris Johnson out of a Partygate hole, and was never intended to be implemented.

So determined is Rishi that Home Office staff removing asylum seekers will be told to implement last-minute injunctions from the European court of human rights (ECHR) only if ordered to do so by a minister, according to official guidance.

Three civil service unions say this will mean that senior civil servants and Border Force staff will have to choose between breaking international law, disobeying the instructions of a minister or resigning.

I just despair!

Lyrically, we have two hauntingly beautiful songs. After being moved to tears on several occasions watching the ITV PO drama, I felt both were a fitting dedication to all of those victimised by big business. We start with REM’s “Everybody Hurts”, and finish with “Caroline, No” by the Beach Boys. 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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