Heroes: Utterly Pointless, but What Comes Next? 

 

‘Yesterday’s faded 

Nothing can change it 

Life’s what you make it’ 

 

Aside from an evil Home Secretary, who, fortunately, is all talk and no action, what does the current government deliver? 

 
On the plus side I am struggling to think of anything, which is why I find the report from The National Institute for Economic and Social Research (‘NIESR’) so prescient. The basis of the report is simple; Jeremy Hunt risks condemning Britain to a decade in the doldrums unless he uses this month’s autumn statement to announce a £30bn-a-year investment plan to upgrade public infrastructure, rather than bowing to colleagues demands for pre-election tax cuts. Their research shows a need to focus on measures to boost growth through improvements to transport, digital networks, skills and housing. 

They recommend that he raises the level of annual public investment from 2% to 3% of GDP. The NIESR believes that if current tax and spending plans were kept to there would be scope to raise spending or cut taxes by up to £90bn in five years’ time. 

Prof Stephen Millard, NIESR’s deputy director for macroeconomic modelling and forecasting, said: ‘Although the good news is that the monetary policy committee have done enough to bring inflation down to target, the bad news is that the UK’s sluggish growth performance continues. It is up to the government to increase public investment and encourage private investment so that UK productivity growth may return, and standards of living improve.’ 

The thinktank said the inflation-adjusted incomes of families earning less than £32,000 a year – would be 5% lower in 2023-4 than they had been five years earlier, and not return to pre-pandemic levels until the end of 2026. 

The final word goes to Prof Adrian Pabst, NIESR’s deputy director for public policy, who said: ‘Only a rethink of economic and social policy can avoid another period of protracted stagnation where the UK falls further behind other advanced economies and regional disparities continue to widen.’ 
 

‘Only a rethink of economic and social policy can avoid another period of protracted stagnation’

 
The King’s Speech would have been an ideal time to present something new. Something that addresses real issues. Instead, we got reheated soup and divisive political games.  

The decision to max-out north sea oil comes despite warnings from the world’s energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency,  that new exploration will push the world beyond the 1.5C climate limit. 

The new legislation will allow for new rounds of North Sea licensing to be held each year. Aside from being an ecological disaster, this is pointless because Ministers are already able to hold licensing rounds at any time, and have done so. 

This is political games. As Shaun Spiers, the executive director of the Green Alliance thinktank said, ‘It puts Labour on the spot.’ Labour has pledged to award no new licences in the North Sea if elected, but will honour those already granted. Some trade unions are unhappy with this stance, putting pressure on the party’s leader, Keir Starmer. 

Tessa Khan, the executive director of campaigning group Uplift, said: ‘This government’s obsession with oil and gas is making people in this country poorer and colder, all just to please a handful of multinational fossil fuel firms. Big oilfields like Rosebank, which will see most of its oil head abroad, won’t even bring in tax revenue, thanks to the vast subsidies this government is giving the industry to develop fields.’ 

If Sunak is trying to win votes, green Tories are doubtful. Sam Hall, the director of the Conservative Environment Network, told the Guardian: ‘Oil and gas is one of the least popular parts of the government’s energy policy. A major political focus on new exploration could undermine voters’ perception of the Conservatives’ commitment to climate action before the general election. It could also overshadow efforts to promote the party’s positive record on renewables, which is not widely known and significantly more popular.’ 
 

‘Rosebank, which will see most of its oil head abroad, won’t even bring in tax revenue’

 
Other initiatives include law and order (again, yawn!), banning councils from boycotting goods from certain countries on political grounds, and banning the young from smoking. 

The latter should promote a growth industry in supplying cigarettes, just as Prohibition did for bootleg booze in the US. Al Capone, here I come! 

Unsurprisingly, there was little or nothing on the issues that voters care about the most: help for the NHS (yes, a smoking ban helps, but it will never work), nothing on education, little on the environment except for a long delayed animal welfare bill, no improvements to employment rights, nor any direct measures to address the cost of living crisis. 

From the electors perspective the party is drifting to nowhere. In the past, they would have laid claims to being a safe economic pair of hands and competent government, but Liz Truss and Boris Johnson have destroyed that. 

In addition, there was nothing addressing Sunak’s main priorities, stopping small boats, cutting waiting lists, bearing down on inflation, improving the economy and reducing debt. 

In effect, a sea of nothing, only a slogan, ‘decisions for the long term.’  
 

‘a sea of nothing, only a slogan, ‘decisions for the long term’

 
I suspect that even Rishi he knows he isn’t there for the long-term. In case, who, and what next? 

Liz Truss, surely even the Tories aren’t that daft? Johnson? No way, the Covid enquiry has done for him. Farage? I suspect he’s too smart. He’s happier sitting back and criticising things. 

If recent behaviour is anything to go by, the most likely candidate is Suella Braverman. 

A series of unauthorised, incendiary speeches has, in effect, seen her undermining the PM. The subject she has chosen, homelessness, demonstrations and multiculturalism are deliberately aimed at wooing the party’s hard-right faction. 

The PM and other senior ministers  have refused to endorse Braverman’s claims that rough sleeping is sometimes a ‘lifestyle choice‘ and the flagship criminal justice bill has been delayed amid resistance from some cabinet ministers over her measures to stop tents being given to homeless people. Ministers have also refused to repeat Braverman’s description of pro-Palestinian demonstrations as ‘hate marches‘. 

One former minister said: ‘It is as if she wants to be fired so she can get on with a leadership bid … If she is tied to the government for too long, she will have to carry some of the blame for Rishi’s failure – and few people think he will win a general election outright.’ 

Another former Tory frontbencher said Braverman’s decision to make statements that have not been signed off by No 10 shows that Sunak is weak. ‘She is employing a self-preservation strategy which is not going down well inside the parliamentary party outside of the 40 or so MPs who might support her.’ 

However, Braverman is closely tied to Sunak through his promise to ‘stop the boats’ and the court battle, expected to conclude in mid-December, which will decide whether the government can deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. 

If the government loses, there will be pressure from Braverman’s backers in two hard-right Tory factions – the Common Sense Group and the New Conservatives – to leave the European convention on human rights (ECHR). At this point, it is possible Braverman could call on Sunak to make it a pre-election promise and quit if the idea is ruled out. 

An insider who has worked closely with Braverman said she was ‘definitely not‘ trying to be sacked, but appeared to be out on a limb because she was ‘the only right-winger at the table‘, which was good for her chances of winning the next leadership contest. 

However, many Conservatives are not convinced that her rhetoric will win over voters at an election, even if it might appeal to party members in a future leadership contest. 

Richard Graham, the MP for Gloucester and a former minister, went public on Tuesday with a warning that Braverman’s language was inflammatory. 

‘Tone matters. It’s our duty to calm, not inflame, to reduce, not increase, tensions. The language of the home secretary, whether on tents or on marches, is unhelpful to cohesion in our communities and is not in my name, nor does it reflect how we tackle issues in Gloucester,’ he said..’ 
 

‘The language of the home secretary, whether on tents or on marches, is unhelpful to cohesion in our communities and is not in my name’

 
If Braverman is the ‘who’, what will the next brand of Conservatism look like?  

Since 2021, three successive Tory premierships have tried to reinvent the party, leading to self-doubt and experimentation, through which a new Conservatism has been struggling to emerge. 

We have had Theresa May’s misfiring 2017 manifesto, with its surprising attacks on ‘untrammelled free markets’ and ‘the cult of selfish individualism‘, pledging to create an ‘economy that works for everyone‘. 

Boris Johnson, or perhaps more accurately, Dominic Cumming’s, promised to ‘level up‘ Britain and build a ‘high-wage economy’ were part of the same stop-start Tory re-evaluation.  

Now we have Sunak’s absurdly ambitious vow to end ‘30 years’ of ‘broken’ politics and ‘fundamentally change our country‘. 

Alongside the anti-establishment rhetoric, the overall direction of travel has been towards the right: culture wars against minorities, the authoritarian approach to protest and parliament, and the attacks on any institution that frustrates the Tories’ exercise of power.  

It’s as if they don’t like the society or economy they in large part created. This, allied to the party’s increasing unpopularity, has carried them to a strange place. Ideas, such as those proposed by UKIP, that were once seen as too extreme, are taking root. As was the case in the mid-70s and the formative years of Thatcherism, the definition of Conservatism is up for grabs. 

Globally, the political right is in a state of flux, fuelled by disillusionment with modern life and the market values conservatives used to venerate. This ferment involves populists and intellectuals, insurgents and party leaders, semi-academic conferences and crudely aggressive media, ordinary activists and billionaires. 
 

the political right is in a state of flux, fuelled by disillusionment with modern life and the market values conservatives used to venerate

 
Within this, unexpected people are coming to the fore, some are billionaires, such as Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and the data analysis company Palantir, a self-styled libertarian who has contracts with the Pentagon and the NHS. He has also been a leading funder of Donald Trump and other unpredictable right-wing US politicians.  

In a recent lecture he, predictably attacked  ‘this woke disease‘ and, more surprising, the property market, which he called ‘the housing racket‘. On the Tory idol Margaret Thatcher, he said her deregulation and tax cuts were unrepeatable, ‘one-time’ policies. But then he ‘…was very sympathetic to Liz Truss‘, who disastrously tried to extend them.’ 

He criticised Sunak, who many see as an increasingly aggressive social conservative and lifelong free-marketeer, as too moderate and essentially the same as Keir Starmer.  

Worryingly, he argued that fascism was ‘more innocent‘ than communism. 

It would be easy to dismiss this as rabble rousing, but the lecture was held in a grand Oxford university auditorium, to a capacity audience full of high-profile right-wingers from Britain, the US and Canada, such as Toby Young, Douglas Murray and Eric Kaufmann. 

The audience in many ways depicts modern-day Conservatism, gloomy about the state of the world, warning about all the dramatic deeds needed to save it, supported by the well-off whose assets and social status are safe from most upheavals. 

What the current right-wing turmoil tells us, is that Conservatives around the world are belatedly facing up to the inadequacies, and quite possibly outright failure, of the economic model they have supported for half a century. Within this is the fact that free-market capitalism is almost certainly not environmentally sustainable. 

Conservativism has alienated most young people, and many middle-aged people. They blame on the supposedly malign and unnatural spread of liberal and left-wing values – ‘the woke disease’.  
 

‘free-market capitalism is almost certainly not environmentally sustainable’

 
Thatcherism is out-of-time, if the Tories are to remain as a viable political force they need to be more realistic about the problems and opportunities of the modern world, and about how to govern. 

Thatcherism has ultimately created a divide in society, and in some way taken inequality back to pre-WW1 times. Whilst we aren’t in the political ferment of Tsarist Russia, the silent majority want more, they want to see equality, and policies that work for all, not just the few. 

With Braverman as leader the only change will be the increased dominance of hard-right factions, this will leading us back to the politics of hate, of the 1930’s.  

At that point, all we can hope is that the party spends years in opposition. 
 

‘A sieg heil-in’ squirt, you’re an impotent jerk 

Yeah, a fascist twerp, it’s the song I hate, it’s the song I hate’ 

 
 
Grown up stuff from Philip, and an excellent assessment of current events as we wait with baited breath to see how this weekend pans out in London; it would benefit not one jot from comment from this department.

‘My editor wrote to me saying he was looking forward to my thoughts regarding banning the Palestine war march taking place on Remembrance Day.

Before that, I wanted to remind everyone that this week, on the 9^th of November, was the anniversary of Kristallnacht, which has long been the most delicate day in the German calendar. It brings a balancing act of remembrance for the state-sanctioned murderous devastation of the Nazi pogroms across the country in 1938, and, 51 years later, the overnight collapse of the most famous barrier in the world, the Berlin Wall.

Now to the march. Needless to say, Rishi made a mess of it. Firstly, he wanted the march banned, and was holding the Met chief responsible if there was trouble. When it wasn’t banned, he used it as an example of us championing free speech. Errrr!

Polls suggest that only 3% of people in the UK oppose an immediate ceasefire. This leaves Israel’s apologists in government and the media politically exposed.

Many commentators have not been subtle over their objections to the protests being driven by the number of British Muslims attending. Talk of deporting protesters who desecrate war memorials exploits bigotries about the demonstration being full of Muslim protesters with disloyal extremist inclinations

Rather than a “hate march”, as Braverman – whose particular specialism is hate – puts it, this protest is driven by a love for humanity.

Remembrance Day is about remembering those that died  so that we could live in a peaceful world. A march aimed at stopping the slaughter in Gaza, and finding a peaceful solution, is, to my mind, not an insult to the dead. Instead it is a fitting legacy to them, remembering the horrors of war by seeking to end them.

As Harry Patch, the last surviving Tommy, put it: “War is organised murder and nothing else.”

People like Braverman are just exploiting the situation for their own gain. If she cares about anything, it’s herself, and her quest for power. If she attains it, we will go back to the evil politics of the 1930s which led to WW2, and millions dying to stop the spread of fascism.

That war is part of Remembrance Day.

On a brighter note we turn to music. We start with “Life’s What You Make It” by Talk Talk, which I find apt as I consider what might have been and all of the lost opportunities to change things post the GFC

We finish with “Youth Against Fascism” by Sonic Youth. The age divide is very apparent in politics, if we are to avoid the spreading of hard-right politics it will need to be led by young voters. 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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