HP Source: ‘It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.’ (1)

 

We Don’t Need that Fascist Groove Thing, 27^th August 2020: ‘It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.’ ⁽¹⁾

 

‘I’m no clown I won’t back down

I don’t need you to tell me what’s going down..’

 

This column was borne out of the catastrophe that is Brexit, and we begin with another of the PMs stupid statements; ‘Over my dead body’ will there be an Irish Sea trade border.

 

Another stupid statement from a very stupid man, there will an Irish Sea trade border, it’s in the protocol he signed, and the international treaty all his MPs voted for. Crossing the Irish Sea will require still-unbuilt checkpoints at ports, lorry parks, customs declarations, veterinary checks, and tariffs to be paid and reclaimed, and 50,000 extra customs officers still unrecruited.

The promised hi-tech electronic certification of trusted trader lorries far away from borders seems only a figment of his imagination. If track and trace is anything to go by it won’t work.
 

‘If track and trace is anything to go by it won’t work’

 

After trade negotiations broke down acrimoniously last week, with the Michel Barnier, the EU negotiator, announcing an agreement was now ‘unlikely’, and there is little time to prepare for no deal, disaster looks inevitable. Even if there is a typical EU 11th-hour fix, it will be a poor compromise.

Brexit will be one of the great frauds of our time. All the high-sounding promises; ‘access to the single market’, Johnson’s ‘oven-ready deal’ the ‘easiest in human history’,  with no ‘sudden change that disrupts the economy’, and ‘wages will be higher for working people outside the EU’, will turn into dust and blamed on the EU.
 

‘You’re painted into a corner

Whatever fits in your pockets, you’ll get your due..’

 

For some the exit cannot be complete enough, most scenarios are dismissed as Brino (Brexit in name only).

Iain Duncan Smith now rejects the withdrawal agreement he backed, though why anyone would be worried by what a has-been thinks mystifies me.

Then there is Nigel Farage, the never has been, licking his lips, ready to remind us that he only stood down his 317 Brexit party candidates because Johnson promised no Brexit concessions. Nige: life is about timing and taking your opportunities, you didn’t!

Whatever! Johnson will just blame it all on the EU and move on, he has an 80-seat majority making him a virtual dictator, his word serves only to be broken, parliamentary conventions are meaningless, and MPs are MPs in name only.
 

‘Johnson ignores the sovereignty of parliament, the central pillar of our unwritten constitution’

 

Johnson ignores the sovereignty of parliament, the central pillar of our unwritten constitution, avoiding parliament, whenever he can, this includes PMQs where he is regularly bettered by Keir Starmer. He had to be forced to do a session with the liaison committee of Commons select committee chairs which went badly.

Johnson is not a parliamentarian and his sidekick, Cummings, views parliament with the same contempt he reserves for all government institutions. Both prefer it when parliament is absent, leaving them to get on with governing in dictator mode.

His choice of platform during lockdown was the press conference not parliament, unfortunately he still performed poorly.

However, he operates his government is a shambles, his ministers objects of mockery and contempt. But this is populism, competence isn’t a concern, its oxygen is peoples off feelings of loss and outrage, there is little in the way of substance; ‘Competence is a necessary condition of electability,’ no longer applies ⁽²⁾.

This seed change in voters’ mindset is proven by the fact that the proportion of people still planning to vote Tory is significantly higher than the proportion who think the government is competent.

Hence ministers such as the as hopeless education secretary, Gavin Williamson, do not resign or get sacked, therefore they have no need to be contrite. Competence is no longer a priority for Conservative voters or politicians.

This, in turn is enabling a government ‘takeover’; centralising power, limiting parliamentary democracy, rewarding party donors such as property developers, and awarding public sector contracts to companies with Conservative connections.

In fact, Tory governments have been remarkably ‘non-stick’ since 1992, when Major’s sterling policy collapsed on Black Wednesday.
 

‘whatever the Conservatives do, or fail to do, in government doesn’t matter, as long as there’s a sense of underlying momentum towards a loosely defined right-wing goal’

 

Since then, the Tories have produced a succession of policies more ambitious than practical; austerity, reorganising the NHS, universal credit, Brexit.

All the while their share of the vote has risen at each election as, for a large minority of Britons, whatever the Conservatives do, or fail to do, in government doesn’t matter, as long as there’s a sense of underlying momentum towards a loosely defined right-wing goal, such as a smaller state or a ‘global Britain’ that can dump the EU and keep out migrants.

If this shower has an Achilles heel, it could be the reforms to the development laws which will strike at the heartlands of traditional tory support.

Other commentators have featured on this, I am somewhat undecided for the simple reason that the last election showed the party finding support in unexpected areas whilst losing ground in London and the SE.

At present I find it hard to define a Tory voter, they seem to be either working-class people feeling disenfranchised by Labour, or older voters yearning for yesteryear, convinced that the ‘blacks’ are only coming here to take our benefits, and that no one had it harder than they did, whilst the young sit on their backsides and play with their mobile phones.
 

‘No future they say

But must it be that way?’

 

All of this begs the question, why?

I think there are several answers, starting with an aging population, that is rooted in the days of Enid Blyton, of jolly japes, and awfully good fellows.

Never underestimate the power of an Eton education, these are the people who were bought-up to believe in their ‘betters’, and what bigger ‘better’ than Eton.

Secondly, the press in this country is predominantly right-wing, often controlled by billionaire donors to the party itself. They keep up a constant pro-tory barrage which, seemingly, brainwashes their readers.

Out of a total daily circulation of C. 5.6m copies, only 130,000, 2.3%, clearly opposes the government ⁽³⁾. As Malcolm X ⁽⁴⁾ wrote, ‘The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. Because they control the minds of the masses, they have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power… If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.’
 

‘Johnson and his self-serving cabinet of toadies, accumulate as a form of self-preservation, allowing them to blame others for their mistakes’

 

Next, the Labour party have, in terms of electability, chosen their leaders badly. Corbyn was old-fashioned socialist, much like Michael Foot, well-intentioned but politically out-of-step. Whereas a modern ‘social democrat such as Tony Blair showed them a clean pair of heels, hopefully the same can be said of Keir Starmer.

Finally, the radical right understands every crisis presents an opportunity, and is adept at manipulate situations to meet its own interests, E.G. the Conservatives are using the opportunity of the pandemic to stockpile power.

Populists such as Johnson and his self-serving cabinet of toadies, accumulate as a form of self-preservation, allowing them to blame others for their mistakes.

Obsequiousness allows them to reward followers with jobs they could not hope to attain on merit. In addition, they have an all-encompassing conspiracy theory that portrays accountability and rational criticism as plots by liberal elitists to undermine them, rather than as the necessary checks of a true democracy.

Johnson cannot enact necessary reforms, such as:
 

• Rebuilding local government, whose public health officers ought to have been at the forefront of the fight against Covid, as it would mean reversing austerity and giving up a part of the power he monopolises at the centre.
• They cannot undo many of the privatisations, which have fragmented and enfeebled the country, as it would mean abandoning Serco and other crony capitalist firms who are their natural allies.
• As for freethinking, Cummings might pretend to favour open, scientific debate, whereas ‘his treatment of Conservative MPs and the civil service shows a Putinesque intolerance of dissent.’

 

An example of this scapegoat mentality is their decision to abolish Public Health England (‘PHE’) in favour of a new agency.

For all its undoubted failings PHE was not a rogue quango, it was wholly under the control of the Department of Health and the health secretary, Matt Hancock.

Rather than resigning and accepting that he was the man-in-charge, Hancock has shimmied out of the firing line offering up PHE as the sacrificial lamb.

As a worker at PHE explained ‘By scapegoating PHE, the government both absolves itself of any blame and removes the need for any independent inquiry. Any future criticism does not need to be addressed as the matter has been dealt with.’

The new body, the National Institute for Health Protection, has enabled the government to reward one of its obsequious followers, the Conservative peer Dido Harding, with a new job. Her CV is deeply unimpressive:
 

• As chief executive of TalkTalk, she presided over the mass leak of its luckless consumers’ confidential data.
• In government, she headed the test-and-trace programme, including the ludicrous ‘NHSX’ app that most of us are still waiting for, and presided over a centralised system of contact tracing that was so inefficient that many tracers spent their days watching Netflix.

 

This appointment is no more than another step towards the governments’ goal of accumulating total control.

Accumulating and then maintaining control seems to be the fashion in the increasingly intense, global battle for democratic rights. You only need to look to Belarus where the forces of reaction; autocrats, authoritarian nationalists, populists and racists who rule by division, violence and fear are stamping on the opposing camp of liberals and progressives who aspire to the ideas of universal, law-based human rights and values.

As Barack Obama warned last week as the Democrats geared up for the US election, ‘What we do these next 76-days will echo through generations to come,’. He was speaking about the threat to American democracy.

In truth, the threat is ubiquitous, it is fought everywhere, too often, the fight is being lost. In Hong Kong, Thailand, Lebanon, and Mali. Everywhere many of the world’s most influential leaders distort, ignore, or reject outright the supposed post-1989 democratic consensus.

However, our focus must be on the US, the worlds’ policeman, where Trump is trampling over their democracy.

Only last week, a bipartisan Senate inquiry confirmed the Mueller report’s findings that Trump’s campaign worked with Russian officials to turn the 2016 election.

The Senate went further saying, in effect, that Trump lied when he denied knowledge of Russia’s theft of Democratic party emails, later published by WikiLeaks.

Trump could be jailed for this alleged criminal behaviour. As the New York Times wrote, he was complicit in ‘a plot against American democracy’.
 

‘A second term for Trump will give the bad guys the world over an air of legitimacy’

 

Trump, Obama said, ‘will tear our democracy down if that’s what it takes to win’. Please don’t be fooled into thinking this is an exaggeration, Trump is a real threat to democracy. A second term for Trump will give the bad guys the world over an air of legitimacy.

As Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn ⁽⁵⁾ wrote, ‘Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic.’

The Republican party seem to have lot any moral compass they may have had and are in awe of Trump. Some of the comments made at this week convention are stunning, however I have chosen not to quote any to avoid giving them further oxygen.

All I will say is that woman and black people spoke in favour of him, which bewilders me, truly turkeys voting for Christmas. What is terrifyingly apparent is that there is a generation following Trump that will keep his fascist revolution alive.

As for BLM, well the police continue to stoke the fire. This week police in the state of Wisconsin shot Jacob Blake several times in the back as he entered their car where his three children were seated.

Unfortunately for the police the incident was caught on video by Raysean White, who told CNN that before he began filming, he saw police wrestle, punch and Taser Mr Blake.

It was then he started recording. Mr Blake is shown walking around the front of the SUV. The two officers closest to Mr Blake at this point on the video are white males.

As he opens the door and leans into the car, one officer can be seen grabbing his shirt and opening fire. Seven shots can be heard in the video, as witnesses shout and scream.

Mr White told the AP news agency that he heard police officers shout ‘Drop the knife!’ before gunfire erupted, but said he didn’t see a knife in Mr Blake’s hands.

Like many of you I have seen this footage on the newsreels. I am surprised by the fact that it shocked me but, even by the low standards of the US police I was left speechless.

All I could think of was it was reminiscent of a scene from the Godfather, but that was the mob, the bad guys, this is the police the upholders of law and order.
 

‘The world is in a very dark place globally’

 

Trump has a solid 44% voter base, he will fight the election on race, and law and order. He can win this election; we must all hope he doesn’t.

The world is in a very dark place globally. Inevitably we look to the UKs problems first, but we are just following the trend, populism / the far-right/fascism is making in-roads everywhere.

It is, as I have said for 3-yrs, a return to the politics of the 1930s which was, inevitably, payback for the GFC.

Although, it can be argued that central banks dealt with the crisis better than their peers 90-yrs earlier, Obama didn’t have the mandate that Roosevelt enjoyed, which enabled him to deliver the New Deal.

All we have had is the worlds’ biggest ever asset bubble, central banks must keep it inflated as no one knows how bad it could be should it deflate. This bubble has enabled the rich to get richer as the poor get poorer.

Hidden within this inequality is the age divide, the only consolation is that it self-fixing!

The bigger issue is that, whereas in the 1930’s the US had yet to become all powerful, this time around they are.

Victory for Trump will accelerate the already shifting power of US global influence, weaken alliances, and weaken the dollar which will destabilise the dollar foundations of the global economy, while opening doors to China.

We could be back in the 1930’s once more as right-wing ‘dictators’ dominate. This time who will stand-up to them?
 

‘If you give this man a ride, sweet family will die

Killer on the road..’

 

Sources:

1. Mark Twain
2. Jane Green and Will Jennings 2017 book, The Politics of Competence:
3. https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/national-newspaper-abcs-full-figures-for-november-2019/
4. Malcolm Little (May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965), better known as Malcolm X, was an African American Muslim minister, and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement. He is best known for his time spent as a vocal spokesman for the Nation of Islam.
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_von_Kuehnelt-Leddihn

 

Given that this government continues to deliver him plenty of slow balls to dispatch over the bleachers, it will surprise few that Johnson and his hapless band of ‘obsequious toadies’ are given a bit more treatment; yet however much democracy has been eroded and however catastrophic Brexit turns out to be, there is seemingly always someone else to blame, and the Tories remain stratospheric in the polls.

Quite how they continue to ride so high is confusing – Robert Jenrick’s planning reforms seemingly drive a stake through the hearts of the ‘Disgusteds’ of Tunbridge Wells, yet still they come back for more. Much could be down to the loss of identity of a ‘typical’ Tory; Blair used blurred lines to take the political centre ground and become electable whereas Johnson is able to replace those heading for the exit with disaffected traditional Labour voters.

Economic and generational lines of division are creating massive inequality and that can only accelerate when the Covid credit card bills start arriving.

Matt Hancock scapegoating Public Health England to save his own skin is a bit ‘naughty’ but when Philip starts to look at the bigger picture, that is where it becomes truly terrifying; he has been warning of the march of Fascism in this column for three years, but now he has many real life examples from around the world.

So much is riding on the US presidential election; if the Donald gets away with declaring himself as having done ‘more for the Black Community than any President since Abraham Lincoln’ what hope for democracy? What hope Jacob Blake’s family?

Some cracking tracks for lyric spotters this week, but not a sniff of a gimmie; keen to support an ordered return to city centre life, socially distanced, physical entries will be accepted this week at the usual address.

First ‘Madchester at its finest, put on your bucket hat and prepare to dance’ 3 pts for The Stone Roses, 3 for ‘Fools Gold’; a bonus 3 for naming the bass player and a further 3 for the band he joined after the Roses wilted*.

Next, three points for the artiste – ‘right up to date now and newcomer to this column’ – bragging rights too for LCD Soundsystem; then ‘post-punk electro at its best from one of Sheffield’s finest’ – again 3 pts for The Human League.

Last ‘we need a band like this in the US today. One that profoundly upsets the government and whips up the young’ no arguments here – 3 for The Doors and 3 for the classic ‘Riders on the Storm’. Enjoy!

_{* ‘Mani’ Manfield and Primal Scream}

 

 
 
 

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: