Jan
2023
Heroes: Them and Us
DIY Investor
27 January 2023
‘If some brat annoys you
Do what’s felt impromptu
Kick them in their own’
This week we consider the divisions in society, ‘them’ and ‘us’. The Tory’s have become increasingly divisive as their fortunes plummet, but they have long been a party of exclusion not inclusion.
In truth, this a historical way of life for them. Whilst they have always appealed to the monied classes, there has also been a predominant feeling that they are sound economically, the natural party of government.
Prior to WW2 people were still ‘tugging the forelock’ to their betters, convinced that they knew best. Post-WW2, returning soldiers wanted more in return for their sacrifice, the welfare state was born, and socialism was in the air.
As boom turned to bust in the 1970s, people again turned to their betters. Only this time, it was a lady at the helm who created a new class of Tory voters, based on making them property owners via ‘right-to-buy’. They became aspirational, and moved on from the ‘Daily Mirror’ to the ‘Sun’. Now they have gone from aspiration to reaction, reading the ‘Daily Mail’.
What is the them and us, politically?
There is young and old. The Tory’s do nothing for the young who are set to be worse off than their parents and grand-parents, unsurprisingly the majority vote Labour. Conversely, they give freely to the old, ensuring they get to their votes.
They do all the can to stoke the culture wars, knowing it plays well with the older voters.
To the Tories and their supporters, social change is viewed as a left-wing liberal conspiracy.
But change is in the air demographically. Today England’s shires and suburbs are increasingly liberal, and broadly ‘woke’. Among millennials, the old Tory certainty that people shift rightwards as they get older is becoming history: voting figures suggest that today’s 35-year-olds are the least conservative in history, and may well continue that way.
In 2010, the terrible twins, Cameron and Osborne, sensed this and talked of modernisation and ‘liberal Conservatism’, today the right regards this as dangerous heresy.
Last year an article by an academic in the Daily Telegraph suggested that ‘a clear majority of British schoolchildren are being indoctrinated with cultural socialist ideas. The vast majority of young people support remain, and only a third of remainer youth say they would date a leave supporter.’ He concluded that this was a threat to ‘the very essence of British civilisation’. (1)
‘only a third of remainer youth say they would date a leave supporter’
Workers in the public sector are public enemy #1. Their pay has declined in real terms over the 12-yr life of the Tory administration. This is especially true of NHS and care workers, who, only 20-months ago had the country clapping for them are now they are being crapped all over. The government is making no attempt to settle the pay dispute, and is trying to create another them and us.
Ironically, their biggest supporters are the elderly who are the biggest beneficiaries of the NHS, and therefore its biggest liability.
‘The very people we rewarded by clapping them in the streets are now reduced to using food banks’
The very people we rewarded by clapping them in the streets are now reduced to using food banks.
So much for the ‘them’, in the ‘us’ camp, government policy enabled the ultra-wealthy to multiply their fortunes grow as asset prices increased, and furlough payments that ensure landlords were paid. Post-Covid the soundbite was ‘building back better‘, it should have been ‘business as usual‘.
The NHS is a very much a them and us for the government, designed for the masses, many of whom they despise. The ‘them’ chose, for the last years to neglect and mismanage what was for the benefit of ‘us’:
- Waiting 6-to-8 hours in A&E increased the rate of death by 1.7 percentage points. (2)
- Between August and November, that 325 people a week were dying because of longer waiting times. (3)
- In 2022, excess deaths from all causes were 51,159 above the pre-Covid five-year average, the highest rate for 70 years. (4)
The neglect and underfunding means that the NHS lacks the capacity, the equipment, and the staff (there are 133,000 jobs vacancies) it needs. Why? ‘Them and ‘us’; it was all a vain attempt to shrink the state in order to fund illusory tax cuts.
From 2010-16 the government pursued a deliberate policy of austerity, there was no economic necessity for this, they decided to reduce the budget deficit by reducing public spending rather than raising taxes.
Not dissimilar to the neoliberal madness of Trussonomics: shrinking the state and lowering the taxation which would lead to a reinvigorated private sector driving growth.
Next we consider immigration, the bete noire of the government and its supporters. Ironically, three of four highest offices in government (PM, Foreign Office, and Home office) are held by the children of immigrant families.
The previous Home Secretary, Priti Patel, was also from a similar background. Whilst she was big on rhetoric, she was, in the words of Mussolini my mother ‘useless, all talk‘. Perhaps that was a good thing, her rhetoric was horrible.
‘she was, in the words of Mussolini my mother ‘useless, all talk”
Her successor Suella Braverman, is equally repulsive, promoting policies with inflammatory, hate filled language designed to stir up racial hate. When questioned two-weeks ago by, Joan Salter, a holocaust survivor, she made no apologies for this.
Yet, she readily admitted that her parents came here with nothing. Her father was kicked out of Kenya and taken in by the UK, and ‘they owe everything to this country‘.
She sees her job as honest. Listening to her I couldn’t help thinking back to Nazi Germany, and the individuals who attended the Wannsee Conference that decided on the Final Solution. They thought the same thing!
Brexit has fuelled a rise in hate crimes have increased. In Huntingdon Polish schoolchildren were called ‘vermin‘ on cards left outside their school gates.
Racism is a historic Tory problem, another them and us.
Benjamin Disraeli declared that the Irish ‘hate our order, our civilisation, our enterprising industry, our pure religion. This wild, reckless, indolent, uncertain and superstitious race have no sympathy with the English character.’
Winston Churchill, when PM, pronounced: ‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.’ The Bengal famine of 1943 is widely estimated to have killed about 2 million people.
‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.’
David Cameron used the term ‘swarm‘ in speech denouncing multiculturalism at the same time Tommy Robinson’s British Freedom Party troops marched on Luton. Margaret Thatcher talked of how the British felt ‘rather swamped‘ by immigrants.
Racism is the Tory’s historic them and us, it is electorally useful. Their targets change with the times, the Irish, people of colour, Poles, today it is Albanians, – but the strategy is consistent: pick the group, render them inhuman, then chuck them out.
Joan Salter quoted a parliamentary debate from 1943, concerning 2,000 Jewish children in France refused British visas and who were deported to Germany. The foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, claimed ‘no knowledge’ of the matter. Salter read out the minutes and memos that proved he was lying: he was in the war cabinet meeting where the issue was discussed.
Another ‘them’ and ‘us’ situation is the cost-of-living crisis, which has highlighted the extent of income inequality in the UK.
Whilst the inflation rate fell to 10.5% in December, the cost of food and non-alcoholic drinks jumped by a collective 16.8%, the fastest annual rate of increase since 1977.
Below, I have listed staples that we all buy regularly, alongside the annual price increase for each:
- Low-fat milk 46%
- Sugar 38.5%
- Butter 29.3%
- Eggs 28.9%
- Coffee 10.1%
- Tea 11.2%
- Gas 128.9%
- Electricity 65.4%
- Solid fuels 31.7%
Whilst the ‘us’ struggle, the ‘them’, the super-rich are doing better than ever. Research by Oxfam shows that C.63% (£21tn) of the new wealth amassed since the start of the pandemic has gone to the richest 1%, up to the end of 2021. And, for the first time in a quarter of a century, the rise in extreme wealth was accompanied by an increase in extreme poverty.
Oxfam called for new tax of up to 5% to be levied on the super-rich saying that it could raise $1.7tn p.a., enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty, and fund a global plan to end hunger.
Marlene Engelhorn, a multimillionaire heiress, co-founder of campaign group’ taxmenow’ understands this implication of this inequality:
‘The whole world – economists and millionaires alike – can see the solution that is staring us all right in the face: we have to tax the ultra-rich. If we care about the safety of democracy, about our communities, and our planet we have to get this done. And yet our decision-makers either don’t have the gumption or don’t feel the need to listen to all of these voices. It begs the question, ‘What, or who, is stopping them?’
But, of course, all isn’t as it might seem in the world of ‘them’ and ‘us’. Whilst on the surface the ‘thems’ seem to be doing well, they are in fact looking after ‘us’.
A recent report by the right-wing thinktank Civitas, shows that the top-10% of earners contribute 53% of all income tax. So outrageous is this fact that some Tory MPs demanded tax cuts.
In their eyes, it’s ‘us’ that is the problem; the report concluded that over half of us now live in households that receive more from the state in benefits and services than they contribute via taxes. Or, in the words of the Daily Mail, there is a ‘something for nothing‘ culture sweeping the nation.
‘For all those years we told them you can’t get something for nothing, and all of a sudden they did’
The former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith told the Mail that, ‘Lockdown changed the psyche of the British people. For all those years we told them you can’t get something for nothing, and all of a sudden they did’.
So, who amongst ‘us’ pays little tax yet consume tons of healthcare, cash benefits and assorted perks in kind? Retired people.
Pensions are the single biggest item of welfare spending. Typically we use the NHS most heavily in the first and last years of life. The contributions made in the intervening years enables them to benefit in old age when they again become heavy users of the NHS.
The issue here is that of an aging population, meaning that there are fewer people of working age paying taxes at a time of mounting costs for healthcare and retirement benefits. This is further exacerbated by restrictions on immigrant workers.
This will worsen as the economy deteriorates. The OECD predicts Britain will grow more slowly than any other G20 country bar Russia next year, this rising dependency ratio could become a long-term trend; less money coming in, more spending going out.
This simply confirms that, as a country we’re no longer that rich. Continual sluggish growth allied to the disaster of Brexit has caused our GDP per capita to fall below that of neighbours our peers such as France, Germany, Canada or Australia.
Our high level of income inequality means that high earners have broadly kept pace with their peers across Europe. However, on current trends, the average British household’s standard of living will fall below that of Slovenia by 2024, and perhaps below that of Poland by the end of the decade.
‘the average British household’s standard of living will fall below that of Slovenia by 2024’
The final them and us is, of course, Brexit. Them represented by ‘leave’ carried the day, and almost 3-yrs ago we left the EU, which, in the words of Jacob Rees-Mogg was ‘The moment of national renewal..’
Leave (‘them’) told us that our contribution to the budget would be redirected to the NHS, transforming it into a world-envied health service. Instead it’s in crisis.
We would ‘take back control‘ of our borders; unmanaged migration continues to rise, and despite immigration restrictions we are short of workers in key sectors
The economy was going to be liberated from EU constraints returning us to being an economic powerhouse. Instead, the UK is the sick man of the G7, the only member with an economy that is still smaller than it was before the pandemic. Powering the economy was burgeoning exports, part of ‘Global Britain’. Instead, businesses have been strangled by red tape, and we have yet to secure a single better trade deal than we had as members of the EU.
‘we have yet to secure a single better trade deal than we had as members of the EU’
All of this is Brexiters tell us is because Brexit wasn’t done properly, even though Brexiters have been running the government for nearly 4-years. The Tory peer and boss of Next, Simon Wolfson, complained this is ‘not the Brexit I wanted‘. And I thought leaving was leaving.
What Brexiters can’t, or won’t admit is that it was always a project founded in delusion and fantasy, riddled with contradictions, and marketed with lies that was never going to ‘work’.
The polls tell us that ‘us’ is now seeing through them Brexit lies of ‘them’. Pollsters report that those who think Brexit has had a negative impact outnumber those who reckon it positive by more than two to one. Six years on from the referendum, a chunky segment of those who supported Leave are realising caveat emptor. A rising majority of the public now say that it was wrong to leave the EU.
Will the ‘us’ strike back?
‘My manners are failing me
I’m left feeling ugly
And you say it’s wonderful
To live with I never will’
Notes:
- The Emergency Medicine Journal
- The Economist
Division and inequality have been long-running themes in Philip’s column, and here, he really highlights the scale of the problem, in so many sectors. I’ve left his preamble intact because it serves as a perfect introduction and adds a further, ghastly example.
If you’re looking for a summary it is included too – ‘Really, there are so many “them” and “us” we are so divided and excluded that it beggars belief.’
So here it is:
This week it’s “them” and “us”. Government for the few to the exclusion of all others.
For years the Tory’s have rattled on about small government and shrinking to the state, and finally they have succeeded. They have created no government, a mob run by chancers who do as they please, believing that the rules apply to us not them.
Racism plays a large part in this, and is something that has always been prevalent is the party. The quotes from Churchill and Eden are damning in themselves.
Of course, historically the Tory’s have always been better than us. They are the natural party of government and nothing should be allowed to detract from this. Our problem is that this is baked into the perception of too many, it stops them from being objective as they assume their “betters” know best.
If you look at Modi’s India there is similar, with the high caste section of the population.
The ”them” and “us” I left out as I wanted to include here is the Met police, the upholders of lawlessness and disorder. They exclude two classes of people, those of colour, and women.
I have always regarded the police as thugs in uniform. They are too much a “blokey” cult, a number are ex-army, they are simply racist and misogynistic.
David Carrick committed dozens of rapes and sexual offences against 12 women, yet that the police had been warned 8-times about his behaviour and did nothing, other than promoting him to an elite armed unit.
Worse still this isn’t confined to the Met. An inspectorate report in November looked at eight separate forces and concluded that “a culture of misogyny, sexism, predatory behaviour towards female police officers and staff and members of the public was prevalent in all the forces we inspected”. Literally every female police officer and staff member the inspectors spoke to told of harassment and, in some cases, assaults.
There were 70,000 rapes recorded last year in England and Wales, although this is estimated to represent only 20-25% of all the rapes that happen. Of those recorded, just 1.3% resulted in a suspect being charged, with ever fewer resulting in a conviction.
Today, I read that PC Hussain Chehab, 22, admitted four counts of sexual activity with a girl aged 13 to 15, three counts of making indecent photographs of a child, and sexual communication with a child.
What was Chehab’s job in the Met? He was attached to the north area command unit, serving as a safer schools officer in a secondary school in Enfield between May and August 2021. Unbelievable!
Really, there are so many “them” and “us” we are so divided and excluded that it beggars belief.
Lyrically we pay tribute to Alan Rankine of the Associates who died last week. Simon Reynolds, writing about them in his excellent book “Rip It Up”, said: “If I had to pick one band that fulfilled the New Pop dream of a chart-busting music that combined pop’s flash with post-punk’s perplexity, it would be the Associates.”
We start with “White Car in Germany”, the Kraftworkesque opening track from the Associates’ 1981 compilation album Fourth Drawer Down. Inevitably, we finish with the quite wonderful “Party Fears 2”. 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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