HP Source: ‘Democracy is the government of the people, for the people and by the people’ (1)

 

We Don’t Need This Fascist Groove Thing, 8^th October 2020; ‘Democracy is the government of the people, for the people and by the people’ ⁽¹⁾

 

‘You don’t have to take this crap

 

You don’t have to sit back and relax

You can actually try changing it..’

 

We start this week with another correct call from this column which has repeatedly warned first-time tory voters from the so-call Red Wall that the Tories were the cause of their financial woes not the answer to them.

This week the Resolution Foundation reported that one in three working-age families in these constituencies will be £1,000 a year worse off if government plans to cut universal credit benefit rates go ahead. The cut, which would affect 6m households across the UK is predicted to push C. 700,000 households into poverty at a time of rising unemployment.

The hit would fall disproportionately on families in areas the government has promised to ‘level up’ economically. These include 62% of working-age households in Blackpool South, and 44% in Great Grimsby, Birmingham Northfield, and West Bromwich West.

By contrast the percentage of working-age families affected by the cut in non-red wall Conservative seats is 24%. ‘You are 50% more likely to lose out in the red wall regions than in the south-east [of England],’ the analysis says. Quelle surprise……

Added to this, analysis in the Guardian showed that England’s poorest communities are nearly four times as likely to face lockdown restrictions as the wealthiest areas, as local leaders warned of a ‘winter of dangerous discontent’ in the north of England without urgent financial support. ⁽²⁾
 

England’s poorest communities are nearly four times as likely to face lockdown restrictions as the wealthiest areas

 

The friends of this government are the likes of Sir Jim Ratcliffe, UK’s richest person, who has moved to tax-free Monaco. In fact, him and his mates have a rather good pandemic; during this period, the world’s billionaires have seen their already-huge fortunes rise to a record high of $10.2tn (£7.8tn).

A report by Swiss bank UBS found that billionaires increased their wealth by more than a quarter (27.5%) at the height of the crisis from April to July, just as millions of people around the world lost their jobs or were struggling to get by on government schemes.

The report identified 209 billionaires who have publicly committed a total equivalent to $7.2bn from March to June 2020. Unfortunately, the research showed that 9 UK billionaires donated only $298m, whereas in the US 98 billionaires donated a total of $4.5bn, in China 12 billionaires gave $679m, and in Australia just two billionaires donated $324m.

As for the rest of us in the UK almost two-thirds of the areas with the highest infection rates were among the poorest 10% of communities in England. More than half of Birmingham and Manchester’s worst-hit areas are among the country’s most deprived.

Joe Anderson, the mayor of Liverpool, said, ‘Ten years of austerity is now coming home to roost. We’ve got 68,000 new people claiming universal credit, people asking for crisis loans, we’ve got massive health inequalities and infant mortality is now the highest it’s ever been,’ he said.
 

we’ve got massive health inequalities and infant mortality is now the highest it’s ever been

 

The Guardian also found that 42% of the areas flagged as of concern had a BAME population above the average in England. However, the available data on ethnicity and population dates from 2011 and is too old to draw clear conclusions about how the virus might be spreading among ethnic minorities in England.

Whilst the BAME population is among the worst hit by the pandemic, I doubt that will worry the Home Secretary. On Sunday she continued her descent into full-blown racism when she used a speech at the Conservative party conference to criticise lawyers who defend migrants, linking them directly with traffickers who help asylum-seekers to cross borders, saying: ‘No doubt those who are well-rehearsed in how to play and profit from the broken system will lecture us on their grand theories about human rights. Those defending the broken system – the traffickers, the do-gooders, the lefty lawyers, the Labour party – they are defending the indefensible.’

The Law Society has written to the Home Office asking them to change the language they are using. President Simon Davis said: ‘Slinging insults at lawyers risks leading not just to verbal abuse but to lawyers being physically attacked for doing their job … [and] it undermines a legal system which has evolved over many centuries, which helps ensure that power is not abused.’

Stephanie Harrison QC who specialises in challenging the detention of vulnerable migrants, including people with mental health problems and trafficking and torture survivors, said the ‘deliberate’ decision of the home secretary and the government to ‘turn on’ lawyers was a tactic used by authoritarian states. ‘It’s happening in a climate of extreme xenophobia. Targeting human rights lawyers is what you see in patterns of abusive behaviour by states around the world. When these states move to attacking those defending human rights that’s a really major development … undermining the legitimacy of the legal system and the role of lawyers.’

Racism is just one part of the governments systemic attack on the BAME society. Democracy is something we all claim to approve of; it is a ‘British value’ in the UK government’s Prevent strategy.

Only it isn’t: a combination of demographic changes and political interests are coming together to keep great numbers of the people who live, work and pay taxes in our societies excluded from representation. The disenfranchised are often immigrants and their descendants.

We have an aging society, but we still need workers for underpaid jobs such as to pick the crop picking, care for the sick and old, and the construct of housing and infrastructure. Politicians have found it beneficial to ‘get tough on immigration’ with the oft repeated mantra that citizenship is a privilege not a right.

The UK has gradually changed its nationality laws in the post-war period; legislation in 1981 ended the automatic rights of citizenship to those born in the country without a British parent. In the past decade access to citizenship for such children has been progressively restricted by increasing the fees payable for them to register as British.

Consequently, poorer families often cannot afford to regularise their children. The government has also applied tests of ‘good character’ to deny citizenship to children as young as 10.

The introduction of the ‘hostile environment’ by Theresa May means that those who are not British, or cannot prove they have rights of residence, have lost employment, homes and healthcare rights, and face the risk of deportation.

Although the UK gives some voting rights to some foreigners, such as Commonwealth and Irish citizens, Brexit has meant that roughly 3 million EU citizens who live and work in the UK have had their political rights reduced, and they, too, are at risk of removal to countries they may have left decades ago if they acquire a criminal record.

Taking these groups together, the UK has a large and growing population that is functionally a part of society but that lacks adequate political rights.
 

the UK has a large and growing population that is functionally a part of society but that lacks adequate political rights

 

Without realising it we are approaching a form of ‘apartheid’. The white, older, richer but often economically inactive, wield disproportionate political power as the democratic majority.

Whilst the younger, less likely to be white people, doing the jobs that keep our societies going are progressively stripped of political rights, facing a permanent hostile environment, disciplined by the threat of deportation.
 

‘Your European son is gone

You’d better say so long

Your clown’s bid you goodbye..’

 

This creeping nastiness is made worse by the governments (mis)handling of the pandemic, a continuing series of disasters, U-turns, and not understanding their own rules.

As a result, Johnson’s reputation among Conservative members has fallen to a record low, he has recorded his first ever negative satisfaction rating among a survey of Tory members on the ‘ConservativeHome’ website. Only education secretary Gavin Williamson was less popular.

These concerns are voiced by both wings of his party; the libertarian wing is increasingly concerned that Covid restrictions remain too severe. and are disappointed as they regarded Johnson as one of their own.

The government constant changing of the rules without prior consultation with parliament has isolated the PM from old allies, such as David Davis, Iain Duncan Smith, Steve Baker, Peter Bone, John Redwood and Bernard Jenkin.

Tory moderates are concerned by the perpetual war on the institutions being waged by Mr Cummings, the ‘chumocracy’ that seems prevalent in government appointments, and the threat to breach the withdrawal agreement with the EU and break international law.

The latter has aroused the opposition of senior Brexiters such as Michael Howard, one of five former Tory leaders to condemn the prime minister.

On top of this there is a number who are horrified by government’s sheer ineptitude. ‘It’s the incompetence more than anything else,’ sighs one of their number.
 

‘It’s the incompetence more than anything else,’ sighs one of their number

 

And it isn’t only parliamentarians who are concerned with the governments’ plan to breach the EU withdrawal agreement. Addressing an online meeting of lawyers, Lord Neuberger, a former president of the supreme court, said,  ‘Once you deprive people of the right to go to court to challenge the government, you are in a dictatorship, you are in a tyranny. The right of litigants to go to court to protect their rights and ensure that the government complies with its legal obligation is fundamental to any system … You could be going down a very slippery slope.’

His comments came as the Scottish parliament voted by 90 to 28 against granting legislative consent to the Westminster bill. The vote will not prevent the government pushing through the internal market bill.

However, as the SNP justice spokesperson fears that if the bill is approved it could end up in the courts and the Scottish government might itself have to initiate legal proceedings against the Westminster government.

Anyone who reads this column will know that we have been clear in our opinion that Johnson is totally unsuited to the job of PM. What I find remarkable is how he has fooled so many for so long. One senior Tory who voted to install him in Number 10 now laments: ‘I’m afraid Boris is simply not a good prime minister.’ Words fail me…
 

‘Die a thousand times

For every lie you hide inside..’

 

Johnson is like a game-show host, insincere but good at one-liners, as a PM he bluffs and blusters, lacks self-discipline avoids detail, over-promises and under-delivers.

Whilst a small minority of Tories may have mistaken Johnson for a steady strategist, a serious thinker, a diligent administrator and a man of his word, the rest knew his shortcomings when they chose to make him leader.

In fairness, Johnson, aided by a campaign choreographed to disguise his weaknesses and a strategy to blind-side Labour in their heartlands, won a sweeping election victory. But this was a campaign that typified his gameshow host tendencies, long on slogans and short on substance, which has become a continuing theme of his governments style. He swept into No.10 and appointed a cabinet in his own light; collectively useless.
 

a campaign that typified his gameshow host tendencies, long on slogans and short on substance

 

9-months on the party is beginning to realise their collective mistake, with many voicing the complaint that the cabinet is collectively incompetent, and that  Cummings is a menace, as the PM stumbles from avoidable debacle to foreseeable disaster.

There is a feeling that change is necessary, perhaps not at the top but a cabinet reshuffle? I believe the key question is, can anything change whilst Cummings is in-situ?

What is inescapable is the route cause of the issue, the government has but one purpose, Brexit. Why else would the likes of Gavin Williamson and Dominic Raab be appointed to cabinet posts, whilst the likes of David Gauke and Dominic Grieve were side-lined.
 

can anything change whilst Cummings is in-situ?

 

There is a bigger picture than simply leaving the EU, people such as Dominic Cummings see this as ‘remaking the British state’. ‘Out would go the elitist experts, and in will come a gang of anarchistic tech-wizards armed with supercomputers and reams of data.’

The is evidenced by the purging of people who knew their jobs, e.g. six Whitehall permanent secretaries driven out this year, the ongoing efforts to hobble the BBC. The experienced public servants who are much needed during times of the nation crisis have become the ‘enemy within.’
 

‘Where people are many and their hands are all empty

Where pellets of poison are flooding the waters

Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison..’

 

The result is a combination of incompetence and contradiction. Cummings, the ‘libertarian de-centraliser’, trusts no one outside of his handpicked circle, therefore he centralises power within his team. The net result is chaos, a successful test-and-trace system requires data, if this is hoarded by a centralised few it can never become functional.

Despite all the above Tories believe it is their right to be in government, a belief echoed by Johnson and a conviction that he was destined to rule over us.

At this weeks party conference he treated us to all the tricks in his toy box, in wistful moments he missed his adoring audience, he drew parallels between his recovery from Covid-19 and the country’s own renewal post the pandemic.

He emphasised his attachment to private enterprise and decried visions of an all-powerful state, all of which would have reduced the crusties in the audience to tears of joy. These diehards see him as vote winner, optimist, and charismatic leader, others see him as narcissist, who is often vague, and at times nasty.

His speech looked to the future, no doubt because it was better than facing the reality of a second wave of the pandemic and the continuation of the governments’ mismanagement of it.

It was long on what he was going to do, e.g. raising living standards, care homes, and creating a nation of wind-power homes by 2030. It was short on when this would happen, and how it would be delivered. Whilst the plans sound laudable, are they overambitious?

Are they just more hollow words aimed at seducing voters to continuing their support for a government that is already betraying their loyalty? Remember ‘Levelling Up.’

Inevitably we were treated to a new slogan, ‘Build Back Better.’ There is a retort to that which also begins with ‘B’, but never mind….
 

Inevitably we were treated to a new slogan, ‘Build Back Better.’ There is a retort to that which also begins with ‘B’, but never mind…

 

Some of Johnson’s most staunch supporters are the new Tory MPs who captured Labour seats in 2019, already a significant lobby who aren’t afraid to flex their muscles.

In addition, the 40-strong backbench levelling up taskforce launched in September, which speaks for many safer Tory seats.

One of the latter, the Harborough MP Neil O’Brien, produced a study showing that pay in the new Tory seats is on average 5% lower than in Labour seats. His report, ‘Measuring Up for Levelling Up’, highlights the need to prioritise locally focused action on earnings and employment, not the grand projects that entice Johnson.

What is clear to date, and we need to factor the pandemic into this, is that the government is levelling down not up. Inequality and deprivation are worse not better.

In this case actions speak louder than slogans.
 

‘Your words are broken, you got the flu, that tour of smokin’ your times are through

Your body’s achin,’, you need a rest, your body’s achin’, take a rest I say..’

 

Notes:

1. Abraham Lincoln
2. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/07/poorest-areas-of-england-four-times-as-likely-to-face-lockdown-as-richest?CMP=share_btn_link

 

Philip has filtered out much of the ridiculous noise from across the Pond and this week concentrates on matters closer to home.

However satisfying it may be to lampoon The Trumpinator jutting his jaw and declaring that ‘nobody that’s a leader would not do what I did’ (managing not to melt into a wheezing heap on the floor?) greater focus on this Sceptred Isle gives great cause for concern.

BTW, rumours that the First Lady and Carrie Symonds have shacked up together because of the sheer horror of their shared experience is gaining some traction in the Twittersphere.

Not one to gloat, but Philip could be excused the odd ‘I told you so’; convinced that those cresting the Red Wall were experiencing some form of mass-hysteria appear to be confirmed by his figures, and they’ve not yet taken the full-on nut shot that will come with Brexit – 83 days, 4 hours, 56 minutes.

It doesn’t even seem these turkeys will have a Christmas to vote for this year; then the looming spectre of inequality reappears – is anybody really surprised that those most negatively impacted by Covid are the most disadvantaged – and that a government built on privilege and cronyism doesn’t give two hoots?

I found the catalogue of manipulation, unpleasantness, lies, and sheer incompetence ground me down as his excellent article progressed; Reasons to be Cheerful didn’t make the playlist.

However, those that did, provide something of an OMG; Philip’s turned it up (down?) a notch this week – my cap is hitherto doffed should someone claim a full-house. Lockdown rules apply but maximum respect will be bestowed.

First off the rank  ‘he swapped his suit and wanted to dance, however the anger still burnt’ – and how, 3 pts for The Style Council and the excellent ‘Walls Come Tumbling Down’; next ‘this song is just wonderful percussive noise’ didn’t really grab me, but 1 pt for Velvet Underground and 3 for ‘European Son’ – I see what he did there.

Then, a track that confirms that whilst Philip and I can, and do, enjoy a beer together, he is actually an inhabitant of a parallel etherial plane; if you can claim a similar heritage, you’ll deserve every one of the 5 pts on offer for Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and the bonus 5 for identifying the ‘singer’ as Lydia Lunch. Wow.

Next  ‘who said a pop star couldn’t wear a tux’ back on more familiar ground, just the 1 pt for Bryan Ferry and 3 pts for ‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’. Hell yeah.

Last, but by no means least ‘one of the US’ best noise bands’ – I’m not sure how hotly contested that genre is, but full bragging rights, and 5 pts if you managed to finger The Jesus Lizard and “Wheelchair Epidemic’. I kid you not, enjoy!

 

 

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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