Heroes: ‘War, What is it good for?’ 

 

War, I despise
‘Cause it means destruction of innocent lives
War means tears to thousands of mother’s eyes
When their sons go off to fight
And lose their lives

 

Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur running third in Republican polling, speaking at the Republican focus debate this week: 

‘Unlock American energy, drill, frack, burn coal, embrace nuclear.’ 

‘The climate change agenda is a hoax … more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate.’ 

‘God is real. There are two genders. Fossil fuels are a requirement for human prosperity. Reverse racism is racism. An open border is not a border. Parents determine the education of their children. The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to man. Capitalism lifts us up from poverty.’ 

Yes, total madness, but remember Uncle Adolf: ‘tell the biggest lie you can, tell it as often as you can, and it becomes reality.’ 

 

‘tell the biggest lie you can, tell it as often as you can, and it becomes reality.’

 

Over in blighty we seem to have adopted the same strategy. Another Tory record as hospital waiting lists reach 7.6 million people in England, and the government has a new culprit. A source close to the health secretary, Steve Barclay, told journalists that, instead of being ‘relentlessly focused on caring for all patients and cutting waiting lists‘, NHS trusts and other health bodies had been ‘wasting time and money on woke virtue signalling‘. 

This is only a continuation of the war on woke that goes back to at least 2017 when absentee MP Nadine Dorries, tweeted that ”Left wing snowflakes are killing comedy, tearing down historic statues, removing books from universities, dumbing down panto, removing Christ from Christmas and supressing free speech.’ 

Whilst this is all depressing desperation from an out-of-touch, out-of-time government, It has impact. If you doubt that read the Mail, Telegraph, or Times, or, worse still, watch Nazi GB News. 

In most, if not all western countries, leader are just not powerful enough to alter thinking at this level. Russia typically has had leaders of this ilk, as has China, and 30s Fascist dictatorships. Perhaps this is why fascist populists favour ‘strong’ autocratic leaders, and find parliamentary government an unwelcome distraction. 

In the UK for the Tories it also represents an interesting contradiction; they champion small government while fantasising that it has the power to reach out and change the populations cultural beliefs. I suspect this is why autocrats regard freedom of expression in a similar way to parliamentary government and independent judiciaries.   

Perhaps the only way culture warriors can win support in the west is by working on the opposite principle; that people naturally resist the idea of being told what to do. If so, this helps explain why the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage framed issue as a rebellion against an authoritarian power., the last outpost of opposition to an often unspecified shadowy elite.  

As to the question, can it win you an election? Yes, look at Johnson, Trump, and the Brexit referendum. In doing so, a party will alienate some of the electorate. In the UK the Tories are supported by the elderly, rural, less liberal voters, whilst younger, urban liberal-minded voters support Labour, the LibDems, or Greens. 

Today, the electorate concerns are different to 2019, then ‘leavers’ were desperate to see Brexit done, and ‘remainers’ just wanted to see an end to the sorry saga. 

Whilst the economy, cost-of-living crisis, and housing top the majority of the electorates concerns what do the Tories prioritise? 

Low taxes is something the Tories are renowned for, but they are an inefficient way of dealing with the afore mentioned concerns as they disproportionately benefit higher earners. 

There is the traditional ‘tough on crime’ promises but it’s somewhat old hat. 

Migrants are a current favourite, providing plenty of red meat for the Tory media to chew on, with the added extra that they can be easily be victimised; taking all the benefit money, blocking up the NHS and schools, and as instigators of petty crime. Their inability to hit back makes them a voiceless victim, when lawyers defend them they can be dismissed as ‘lefty lawyers‘ and as ‘establishment’ determined to wreck the country. 

Net zero is an interesting one, as some polls estimate that C.73% of Tory voters back the 2050 deadline.  

 

Net zero is an interesting one, as some polls estimate that C.73% of Tory voters back the 2050 deadline.  

 

One of the problems of fighting an election on such bigoted and nasty policies, is that you run the risk of looking thuggish. Especially if Lee Anderson, your deputy chair, hogs the headlines by telling refugees seeking asylum they should ‘fuck off back to France‘ if they did not like being housed on the Bibby Stockholm barge. 

This leaves ministers defending themselves, and defending ideas or colleagues they may have little in common with. The question that must be going through some Tory MP’s minds now is, is the increasingly hard-right, culture war-infused stance taken by Sunak going to cost them their seats? 

Anderson, a former miner, who won the Ashfield seat in Nottinghamshire from Labour in 2019 might be an electoral asset in ‘red wall’ seats, but does this relentless focus on subjects such as small boats push away traditional supporters with less appetite for populism? 

The LibDems have succeeded in overturning several large Tory majorities in recent byelections. This was in part due to former Tory voters being appalled by Boris Johnson’s antics, and now by the hard-right populism. This has created a ‘blue wall’ that the LibDems feel they can overturn, much as Johnson managed in 2019 with the ‘red  wall’. A subject we covered in May 2022, in ‘A Tale of Two Walls’. 

Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said Sunak was engaged in ‘a numbers game’, aware that Tory majorities in the blue wall tended to be bigger than in red wall seats taken from Labour in 2017 and 2019. He said: ‘Putting it bluntly, Sunak can afford to lose a fair few southern votes without necessarily losing southern seats, but in the north and the Midlands, losing votes is more likely to mean losing seats too.’ 

Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, was one of the MPs who defended Anderson’s comments, he represents Cheltenham, where he has a majority of <1,000  over the Lib Dems.  Were he to lose his seat, Sunak’s recent embrace of culture war issues, including scepticism about environmental policies, could be a significant factor. 

Another factor to consider is that whilst culture war rows make headlines, they are a priority for only a minority of the electorate. Some Lib Dem MPs say blue wall voters targeted by the party remain notably more focused on the state of the NHS and the cost of mortgages. 

This is a point also stressed by Lord Hayward, an elections expert and Conservative peer: ‘At the moment, the Tories’ broader problem is they’ve got to prove their competence to govern. Any poll will tell you that economics and competence go hand in hand, and that they are the paramount issues. It’s the economy, stupid.’ 

 

At the moment, the Tories’ broader problem is they’ve got to prove their competence to govern

 

Away from policies and culture wars the first-past-the-post electoral system we use makes it easier for the Tories to win a majority, because the current Conservative voting coalition is more efficiently distributed across the country than Labour’s. (1) 

As a result, Labour needs to poll some 12% more than the Tories just to gain a majority of one, while the Tories with the same 12% lead would achieve a majority of over 100. (1) 

The 12% swing required by Labour is unprecedented in a general election, even greater than they achieved in either 1945 or 1997. (1) 

Whilst Labour are polling well now, this might be due to ‘protest votes’, which are likely to return to the Tories during an election campaign. For example, in June 2019 the Tories won 9% of the national vote in the European Parliament elections, 6-months later they won a landslide at the general election. (1) 

The Conservative Party is an election-winning machine, arguably the world’s most successful political party. Their ability to continually adapting themselves to changing times means that the party has been in office, either alone or in a coalition, for almost 90 out of the last 150-years. 

Theresa May told the party conference they were in danger of becoming ‘the nasty party’ in 2002, clearly nothing has changed. In truth they always have been that, but nobody ever voted for the Tories because they were ‘nice’. Their success was founded not on amiability but on competence. 

There are two final questions; 

Has the aura of competence been eroded by successive mis-government, failed headline policies such as austerity and Brexit, and the musical chairs of 5-PM’s in 7-years? 

Secondly, their claim to be ‘the natural party of government‘ has some validity after their electoral dominance. However, does continually serving reheated soup by continuing with Thatcherism allied to blaming immigrants for all their failures mean they have run out of purpose? 

For any that thought privatisation was just another discredited part of Thatcherism long consigned to history, think again.  

The general NHS crisis and ever-longer waiting lists present opportunity; according to the FT, in the past 2-years private equity (‘PE’) firms have struck 150 deals for UK healthcare companies. These firms have bought up ambulance fleets, eye-care clinics and diagnostics companies. Last month, it was reported that one such firm acquired a staffing agency that employs NHS doctors and nurses, betting that the painful backlog of rescheduled appointments will be good for business. 

 

The 12% swing required by Labour is unprecedented in a general election

 

From a financier’s perspective, this all makes perfect sense. In a low-growth economy, healthcare is one of the few sectors that is booming. People are living longer, medicine is getting better and the NHS crisis is creating more demand for private healthcare in England. Almost one in seven people in England are waiting for routine hospital treatment and many are struggling to get GP appointments. Some of them will go private simply because they don’t have another choice. The dream or nightmare of dismantling the NHS is happening. 

Something similar happened in Germany and should serve as a cautionary tale. Firms have bought up more than 500 German ophthalmology practices and hundreds of dental practices. 

Eye doctors have described how they face pressure to make ‘as much money as possible‘ by selling patients additional services, such as special examinations and cataract operations. One dentist told the German version of Panorama that she drilled into perfectly healthy teeth. Investor-run medical practices disputed the idea that they were looking to make ‘quick money‘, but because this industry is notoriously opaque, it is difficult to tell how much money is being made or even how many practices have been bought out. 

The crisis become self-serving for PE firms. The less we see public institutions as the provider of the services we receive, the less we feel we can trust those services or institutions.  

Secondly, the more the government depends on for-profit firms to deliver these services, the more it becomes a hostage to those same firms. 

Worryingly, Labour seemed as enthralled with privatisation as the Tories. When the shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting was asked how he would deal with the NHS crisis, he also pledged to use private companies to reduce waiting lists. 

 

‘Yesterday’s faded 

Nothing can change it 

Life’s what you make it’ 

 

Notes: 

1. https://www.compassonline.org.uk/six-reasons-why-labour-might-not-win-the-next-election-alone/ 

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Events in the US are always overshadowed by Trump. Remarkably the worse he gets the more a section of the electorate love him.

A week ago “PBS News Hour” reported that 63% of Republicans want him to run again, up from 55% in April. 70% of Republicans now have a favourable opinion of Trump, up from the 60 percent from June.

However, should he be incapacitated there is always Vivek Ramaswamy who sounds equally unhinged.

Both are classic fascists populists, anti-anything that is progressive, fiercely nationalist, and racist. And, especially important in the US, god fearing. There’s nothing quite like a gun toting bible basher full of righteous indignation.

Whilst Sunak isn’t unhinged in Trump or Ramaswamy style, it really is only shades of grey.

I can foresee a nasty election campaign, all negativity, regression, and racism. With evil comments from Suella Braverman, as she positions herself for a tilt at the leadership, and pub politics from Lee Anderson.

Despite what the polls say, I just can’t see Labour getting there. Despite talk of US orientated policies to regenerate our tired economy, it just seems too adventurous for a plodder like Starmer. He just doesn’t inspire, because of this people will stick with the tried and tested. You can hear people’s comments now; “Sure, it has failed but they have been there before, they are experienced”.

All rounded off with a media telling tales of Marxism running rife, not to mention immigrants talk all our money. Still once we have flogged off the NHS, they won’t be able to moan about sex changes on the state. Barclaycard really will be “your flexible friend”.

Lyrically, we start with Edwin Starr’s classic “War”, and finish with “ Life’s What You Make It” by Talk Talk. 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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