Heroes: ‘Tis the Year 2024 

 

‘Do you want to ride? 

 

Sideways through time’ 

This week we look forward to next year, 2024. 

We will have a giveaway budget introducing a feelgood factor, followed by an autumn general election, possibly October. 

The campaign will be unpleasant, likely the worst in UK history, full of slurs, quasi-racism, and explosive comments. Labour will do their bit, but the Tory’s, buoyed by the likes of Braverman and Lee Anderson, and gleefully supported by their fawning media at the Telegraph, Mail, and Express, are in a class of their own. 

The contest will be tighter than might have been expected 12 to 18-months ago, but the Tory’s cling on to power. Labour, who’s lead had appeared unassailable before Sunak became PM, have forgotten how to win, and Tory electoral know how, carries the day. 
 

‘The contest will be tighter than might have been expected 12 to 18-months ago, but the Tory’s cling on to power’

 
This is what I believe will happen. The Tory’s despite laying waste to the country, know how to win. Don’t tell the truth, tell people what they want to hear. Paint lurid pictures of what Labour will bring; immigrants running wild, high taxes, transexual headmasters teaching heaven knows what to 4-yr olds, etc., etc.. 

In the red corner good old Kier will, despite a few controversial pictures, try and rise above this, and focus the electorate on real issues. Some of which I describe below. 

The economy is shot; the roaring 20s, impacted fatally by Covid, are still-born, boom is replaced by ever-deepening gloom. That is the message from the International Monetary Fund (‘IMF’) and the World Bank.  

The IMF not only outlines what a mediocre few years lie ahead, it is also worried that things could get even worse.  

Their latest global growth outlook predicts China will contribute 22.6% of global growth through the to 2028, with the US at 11.3%, behind India at 12.9%. Europe is very poor, with the UK, France and Germany at 5.5% – less than Indonesia, Russia and Brazil.  

The World Bank has published a 564-page book whose title says it all: Falling Long-term Growth Prospects. It warns of a ‘lost decade in the making‘, and projects that the meagre growth of the 2010s will ‘extend into the remainder of the current decade‘. 

It is easy to point the finger at Putin and his invasion of Ukraine, or Covid, but, in truth, the world economy was already stuck in a deep rut, in what the former US treasury secretary Larry Summers dubbed ‘secular stagnation‘. China has cooled down, and western economies have squandered the opportunities offered by a decade of almost free money. Instead of investing, Europe and the UK wasted it, with austerity for public services and handouts for the rich. 
 

‘The IMF not only outlines what a mediocre few years lie ahead, it is also worried that things could get even worse’ 

 
The climate crisis becomes more pressing with each day, and rich countries must use this decade to wean their economies off fossil fuels and junk consumption. This seems to be understood in Washington, where President Biden has made some impressive strides with his spending on green technology and infrastructure and services, that lead is not being taken up by other western countries. This is despite the White House arguing that it would boost economies. 

This has all the makings of being an inflection point for capitalism as we know it. It is failing too many. It is easy to foresee fights over who gets how big a share of the pie, leading to right-wing attacks on minorities and the poor. Capitalism needs to move further ahead, instead of  chasing illusory economic growth and productivity, we need to focus on a more equal distribution of what we do have. E.G., ensuring children are fed, the elderly and sick are looked after, and everyone is housed. There is always a deeper meaning to data than just numbers, it’s about impact. If we don’t learn then we are in for a long, brutal era of political extremism and nasty culture wars.  
 

‘rich countries must use this decade to wean their economies off fossil fuels and junk consumption’

 
We can survive the 2020s being different to the 1920’s, but we really don’t want the 2030’s to resemble the 1930’s, because that is where we are headed. 

Another question to ask is, will junior doctors still be on strike next year? 

One of the more interesting points about their action is that it is the first proper generation Z strike. They are the first disappointed children of a lost economic decade. After slogging their way through school to get the necessary grades, the GFC impacted their lives in the most unexpected way. Austerity led pay freezes has left them facing a reality far different from the one they were promised. 

They were the top students, and expected their chosen profession to be stressful. What they didn’t legislate for was finding themselves worrying about the cost of putting the heating on. 

In yesteryear it was a given that doctors would be homeowners, today the situation is very different.  

The Oxford professor of primary care Professor Trisha Greenhalgh tweeted this week, on a junior doctor’s salary of £15,000 in the 1980s she was able to buy a London flat for £50,000; now the equivalent salary might be £35,000 but the same flat costs £600,000. Meanwhile junior doctors are starting out six figures deep in debt for medical degrees that Greenhalgh’s generation didn’t have to pay for. 

Ed Miliband identifies this issue in 2011 when he talked about the betrayal of what he called ‘the promise of Britain‘, or the unwritten assumption that kids would be better off than their parents. 

He foresaw the long-term consequences for the young of the GFC followed by sluggish growth and falling living standards, compounded by an asset bubble pushing up housing costs.  

At the core of the dispute is a greater crisis; the disintegration of publicly funded healthcare that can no longer be papered over by relying on the goodwill of NHS staff. The strike should not be viewed as all about junior doctors, it is also about us; we deserve to be treated by people who are not physically and mentally exhausted, or in financial difficulties. 
 

‘In yesteryear it was a given that doctors would be homeowners, today the situation is very different’ 

 
The government is playing politics, trying to appear tough ahead of a forthcoming election. Unfortunately, they are playing games with people’s lives. 

Signs that Labour is prepared to roll its sleeves up and join on the mud-slinging that is part and parcel of the Tory politics have been met with bouts of righteous indignation from the Tory media. 

My thoughts are simple, if the statement made is accurate and misleading, what’s your problem? The truth hurts, tough. 

As an example, let’s consider the Tory’s 1978 poster that proclaimed ‘Labour isn’t Working. Firstly, the queue of supposed jobless people in the poster were stooges, Tory activists. 

Secondly, the unemployment rate in 1979 was 5.4%, which may have been ‘unacceptable’ but it was considerably better than 1982’s 9.6% achieved under Maggie.    

Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemployment/timeseries/mgsx/lms 

The one about paedophiles, who are the lowest of the low, was in bad taste, I agree.  However, that didn’t seem to concern the home secretary, Suella Braverman, when she had branded British Pakistani men as child sex abusers. 

Her comments that the members of sexual grooming gangs are ‘almost all British-Pakistani, who hold cultural attitudes completely incompatible with British values‘, is two-things: factually incorrect, and racist, aimed at stirring-up ill feeling. 

A Home Office report from 2020 found that most members of sex-abuse gangs are white and aged under 30, not brown and middle-aged. According to the former chief prosecutor Nazir Afzal, who led the high-profile case against the Rochdale grooming gang in 2012, ‘the vast majority of these crimes are carried out by white British males’.  

But, inaccurate, inflammatory politics is what Braverman does best. 

There are signs that some senior Conservatives believe that her ‘racist rhetoric‘ is designed to further her own leadership ambitions. 

A former minister from the Johnson government said, ‘Suella’s comments pander to the unpleasant base instinct of a small section of the British population.’  

I query the term ‘small section‘. Accepting that people have different perceptions of what represents small, I would suggest that several million people share her sentiments, or at least, sympathise with them. 

I read that Tory MPs, peers and activists are worried that she is now at risk of repelling the kinds of swing voters the party is desperate to retain. In my opinion, it will have the opposite effect, areas such as the ‘red wall’ are home to older, conservative people. They are frightened of change, particularly the pace of it, and anti-immigration statements won’t offend them.  

A former senior minister from Boris Johnson is correct to say that the ‘Conservative reputation on discrimination has dropped to a new low‘ under her watch. 

They added: ‘Sunak needs to build upon foundations we already have – stop the culture wars and create change. But his inaction shows how insecure he is in his own ability.’ 
 

‘his inaction shows how insecure he is in his own ability’

 
Again I disagree; I don’t see this Sunak being insecure of his ability, more trying to hold together the factions within the party, especially the increasingly assertive hard-right. 

Today there are reports that C. 30 backbench rebels, led by MP Danny Kruger, have been pushing the PM to harden the legislation so ministers to can ignore interim rulings from the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECHR’). Previously the court had blocked the government’s first attempt to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda last year.  

Whilst a number of Tory MPs are pushing for the UK to leave the EHCR, this is thought to be problematical as the court was an integral part of the Good Friday agreement. 

This may also be a sop to another group of MPs who want the government to commit to establishing safe and legal routes available to people to claim asylum, with an annual cap on numbers. 

Why, given the above which is only a snapshot of how 13-yrs of Tory governments has trashed the country and the institutions we rely on, do I think the Tory’s will win? 

Far too much is made of the supposed new elite of people who run Britain, and the suggestion that they having largely displaced the old ruling class of ‘upper-class aristocrats, landowners and industrialists’. The idea that Gary Lineker shapes our lives more than Rishi Sunak or Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England is risible. Similarly, the suggestion that those who have been responsible for austerity, anti-trade union laws and the imposition of real-terms wage cuts on nurses and railway workers are not the ones who really have power over our lives is equally stupid. 

Labour are constantly battling themselves, old wounds don’t seem to heal, consequently the party never seems to have an identity. I would say they have forgotten how to win elections, but their record suggests that they rarely did know how to. 

Last week, Labour picked up the old Tory hobbyhorse, benefit fraud and error, effectively trumpeting the old stereotypes of ‘scrounging’ benefit claimants. All they have achieved is falsely portraying the benefits system as rife with fraud, while framing benefit claimants as the reason other ‘deserving’ people aren’t getting the support they need.  

In effect, Labour has chosen to target families on universal credit rather than the £35bn lost to tax fraud and evasion. 
 

‘Labour has chosen to target families on universal credit rather than the £35bn lost to tax fraud and evasion’

 
If that wasn’t sufficiently light-blue, Starmer then stated that the pay demand of junior doctors was unaffordable. 

By comparison, the Tories, while factional, have one single uniting goal, winning. 

They have the distinct advantage of media support, the Mail, Telegraph, and Express have wide circulation. Whilst we have yet to see Murdoch commit, I suspect the Sun will shin blue, again. 

The BBC has become so neutered that it might as well join Talk TV and GB News as extensions of the Tory party. 

In short, nothing ever changes, the Tories control the levers of power. 

All that remains to be seen, is how long can they and their overseas contemporaries continue to prioritise their chosen few at the expense of the majority. If it continues capitalism as we know it is on borrowed time, remember 1789, 1917, it takes a great deal but people do finally rebel.  

‘They’re on the take and they don’t give breaks 

They like to take it away 

Some things never change’

An absolutely cracking piece from Philip this week, and one that couldn’t possibly be enhanced by my inky fingers.

His prognosis for 2024 isn’t pretty, but presented thus, it is awfully believable and potentialy just awful. ‘Starmer will never be PM’ may grab some attention!

It’s a fast-moving feast. 100,000 ‘crusties’ are giving Dibble someone to bash this weekend ’cause they are not really very keen on being governed by ecocidal maniacs in the pocket of the fossil fuel companies.
Elsewhere, in case you see a bear with a newspaper under it’s arm (leg?) heading for the woods, today we ‘learned’ that Dim Dom Raab is a totally nasty bit of work, but even then Sunak didn’t get around to sacking him, because he’s busy entombing his wife’s share certificates in a lead-lined box. FMOB. 

I tend to take extracts from Philip’s preamble to add some context to a particular piece, but in this instance, it as near as it can be to a stand-alone, and I thoroughly commend it to you:

‘This week I took out my crystal ball and black cape to predict the future. In the words of Madonna, it’s “True Blue”.

There are so many stories of what is wrong, how nothing works, etc., that my conclusion seems absurd. But, as I have written before, Starmer will never be PM. The Tory’s will just continue to destroy all in their wake.

As an example, take education in inner London; 4 schools have closed in Camden since 2019. Hackney is warning that two of its primaries are likely to fold and another four may have to merge to survive. Neighbouring Islington is considering closures, while Southwark believes 16 primaries are at risk.

They aren’t bad schools, inner London no longer has enough children to fill them.. Hackney has 589 fewer kids in reception today than it did in 2014, a shortfall equivalent to about 20 vacant classrooms. Since schools mainly receive cash per pupil, empty desks mean debts, and debts force closures.

Research by Jon Tabbush of the Centre for London has analysed 20 years of census results, and found that since 2001, Lambeth has seen a 10% drop in households with at least one school-age child; in Southwark it’s 11%. Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Islington: they are all losing young families.

As Camden council’s leader Georgia Gould says: “People are either being pushed out before they can have babies – or they’re choosing to leave.” In truth, they are choosing to leave because the cost of living there is unaffordable.

As a result, outer London boroughs such as Barking and Dagenham have seen a 34% increase in households with children. A similar story can be told all around the perimeter of the city: its children and its future are being formed on its outskirts.

As I have written so many times, the Tory’s priority is winning, this has rarely been better illustrated than by the fact that successive Tory governments have taken benefit money from the very youngest and handed it to the oldest. The Resolution Foundation calculates that new-borns have lost £1,500 a year in entitlements, while those aged 80 and above have gained more than £500.

I suspect this is what you get from a party defined by power, influence and privilege.

In a YouGov survey in March, the words people thought best characterised the prime minister was “out of touch”.

Not only can he afford a private swimming pool, he can also pay to upgrade the local electricity grid to heat it.

There is the failure to declare his wife’s interest in a childcare business, Koru Kids, and her previous non-dom status. Perhaps, it isn’t just his wealth, or his aloof nature, but the appearance  that the rules don’t apply to him.

At its heart is the message that the couple’s choices send about inequality and unfairness in Britain. This impression was reinforced last summer when Mr Sunak was caught on camera explaining at a hustings that what “levelling up” was doing was diverting money away from poorer areas and towards some of the wealthiest parts of England, to benefit people like the Tory supporters in Tunbridge Wells whom he was speaking to.

Now that politics is a business the only care many have is for themselves. They are in the wrong job.

Lyrically, we open with Hawkwind’s  “Silver Machine” (Lemmy’s debut), we close with Devo and “Some Things Never Change.” 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

Click on the link to see all Brexit Bulletins: