I’m So Bored With the USA: Morals are “so last year, darling!” 

 

 

“For he that gets hurt

Will be he who has stalled” 

 

Whilst there isn’t an actual date when, as a country, we became so nasty, former PM, Theresa May’s speech to conference in October 2002, serves as a guide: “You know what some people call us: the nasty party.”   

 

Whilst some readers might dismiss my concerns as being a bit “wet”, there must be some basis to how we behave. I am not religious, but I respect right and wrong, good manners, and keeping ones word. 

As a country, we have seeped into intolerance, of race, of gender, of sexuality. Too many are hung-up on gay marriage, transpeople; if that’s what they enjoy or want, good luck to them. 

Race and racism is obviously key amongst too many of the electorate, and has become a tool to be exploited. You can be as anti-Islam as you want and it’s acceptable, but being anti-Israel, in spite of their governments many wrongs, is being  antisemitic, which is totally unacceptable.    

 

‘As a country, we have seeped into intolerance, of race, of gender, of sexuality’

 

In “Patriotism, Nationalism, and Racism”, I wrote about the Tories rising star Katie Lams’ comments about retrospectively revoking indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status for large numbers of people. 

Despite repeated questions from journalists, the Conservatives have not clarified even central aspects of the policy, including what benefits would count towards losing ILR, and if families would be split up. 

In her letter to Lam, Anna Turley, the Labour MP and Chair, said her interview had drawn attention to a policy which involved “deporting people who have played by the rules, who are lawfully in this country, working in our schools and hospitals and businesses and living as our neighbours”. 

Retrospectively removing their right to stay would, she said, “break up families and communities as well as undermining the rule of law and trashing our country’s reputation for fairness”. 

Turley went on: “Beyond questions of morality, your proposals raise deeply troubling practical and legal questions that require urgent clarification.” 

The Tories seem intent on proving they can be harder on immigration and nastier than Reform, in this they are closely followed by the government, whose moral compass isn’t the only direction they seem to have lost. 

Of course, both the Tories and Labour are no more than a decaf espresso, for the full version voters turn to Reform, whose previously unconscionable racism has been legitimised by the previously mainstream parties. 

Given this, it was most pleasing to see a supposedly triumphant Reform dumped into second place by Plaid Cymru in the Caerphilly byelection. 

From the governments perspective the result was a disaster, loosing a seat that had been theirs for as long as anyone can remember. 

Plaid’s victory, perhaps shows Welsh voters seeking “fairness without nostalgia – who feel Welsh rather than Westminster-facing, and progressive rather than populist”.  

The local electorate appeared to have electorate realigned itself around ethics rather than pure economics, which should be a concern for the PM, who has mastered neither of these.  

Reform’s divisiveness and negativity is the road to nihilism, where life is without inherent meaning, value, or purpose. Where moral values are baseless. The result in Caerphilly raises the hope that right-wing populism can be contained by a sense of decency.  

 

‘Reform’s divisiveness and negativity is the road to nihilism, where life is without inherent meaning, value, or purpose’

 

Many of the issues that plague our country are present in Wales; a broken industrial economy replaced by low-wage, de-unionised service jobs; a party in power committed to managerialism, and a choice of either reactionary or progressive politics. The voters in Caerphilly chose the latter, and Labour must learn that their voting was based not only on materialism, but for basic decency and tolerance.   

Perhaps the road to Labour’s renewal will be helped by the election of Lucy Powell as deputy leader in-place of her rival, Bridget Phillipson the education secretary, who was regarded as Downing Street’s preferred candidate. 

In her victory speech, Powell hinted at failings by the government and said Labour had not been strong enough against Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.  

She urged the leadership to listen to members and MPs, of whom several of the latter have had the whip withdrawn since the party came into power for rebelling over issues such as welfare spending and the two-child benefit cap, saying: 

“Our members and our elected representatives are not our weakness, they’re our key asset, delivering change on the ground. Unity and loyalty comes from collective purpose, not from command-and-control. Debating, listening and hearing is not dissent. It’s our strength.” 

She later said: “It starts with us wrestling back the political megaphone and setting the agenda more strongly. Because let’s be honest,  

Starmer, for his part, picked-up on the comments made by Katie Lam, saying it showed the Conservatives and Reform wanted to take Britain to a “very dark place”. 

Whilst, on one hand it is reassuring to hear such talk from the PM, it also appears to define his ongoing “Personality Crisis”, as his home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, appears to be heading down a similar path to both the Tories and Reform. Something I covered in “Fine Words, Good Intentions, But…..” 

Powell’s comment, “…..we’ve let Farage and his ilk run away with it”, is a clear sign that she can see the PM and the party’s failings. 

If we travel forward in time to the year 2029, Reform could clearly be in government, and looking to replicate their idol, Trump. 

 

‘travel forward in time to the year 2029, Reform could clearly be in government, and looking to replicate their idol, Trump’

 

Our constitution is uncodified and not contained in a single document. Instead, it is made up of various sources, including statutes (laws passed by Parliament), common law, constitutional conventions, and treaties. This makes it flexible, but also means its interpretation can be subject to debate. As a result, less scrupulous PM’s have sought to exploit it; E.G., Boris Johnson’s prorogation of parliament, and Tony Blair’s attempt to stop parliament debating his attack on Iraq, by invoking royal prerogative.   

A constitution such as this present open season for an authoritarian government.  

I read recently of Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform, admiration for the autocratic United Arab Emirates. He voiced agreement with his partner Isabel Oakeshott’s article about moving to Dubai in the Telegraph, which praised the absence of protests, the fact that there is “no safety net” and that people who “can’t look after themselves are simply imprisoned or deported”, and minimised the poor working conditions of migrant labourers.  

She forgot or omitted to mention that homosexuality is illegal, there are no significant environmental protections and modern-day slavery is rife. Dubai is the ultimate expression of inequality, great if you’re wealthy, but don’t be poor! Comparing the UK to the UAE. Tice said that the UK had become “decadent.” 

Personally, I have always enjoyed decadence! 

In reality, our lack of a clearly, “codified” constitution, means that any government with a safe majority, can do as it pleases. We talk of parliamentary sovereignty which is great, until you realise it means that a majority gives you carte blanche. 

On the subject of Reform, we turn to another right-wing, populist basket case. No, not the US! Argentina. 

The Argentine peso is one of the worlds more unstable currencies  and the president, Javier Milei, has placed a cap on the currency to tame triple-digit inflation, leaving it overvalued and reserves are depleted, and the  economy stagnant as consumers turn to cheap imports. 

According to the Centre for Argentine Political Economy (CEPA), between December 2023 and July 2025, 18,000 businesses closed and 253,800 registered jobs were lost, Alongside the exchange rate freeze, which made Argentina the most expensive country in South America, Milei’s government reduced or scrapped tariffs, leaving heavily taxed local industries at a disadvantage against Chinese imports. 

As I wrote in “Populism Explored”, Milei is a textbook populist: charismatic, iconoclastic, promising muscular policies to wrest back control of the economy from the establishment on behalf of the people. Just another Trump or Farage… 

Initially, Milei’s approach, based on extensive privatisations and deep public spending cuts was praised by the IMF as it helped bring inflation under control. But, as I covered previously, to avert what threatened to become a full-blown currency crisis, there has been massive financial intervention by Trump in recent weeks. 

Trump then took the opportunity to meddle in last week’s election, vowing to jettison his South American ally if, as widely predicted, Milei fared badly in Sunday’s make-or-break legislative vote. “If he doesn’t win, we’re gone.” 

Voters clearly understood the threat as Milei took C.41% of the votes.  

Diego Guelar, an Argentinian politician and former ambassador to China and the US, voiced unease at how Trump had warned voters “they had to vote for his friend [Milei] or he would abandon them”. He said Trump’s “direct intervention”, while “awful”, had worked, with voters accepting “the need for American assistance” and blaming the economic crisis on the opposition 

Despite their obvious shortcomings, populist parties continue to make ground, as voters become progressively disenchanted with mainstream parties, and the austerity and inequality bubble of the post GFC years. 

In the UK, the appeal of Reform  was explained by Ben Ansell, a professor of comparative democratic institutions at the University of Oxford’s Nuffield College. “The answer is probably quite simple: people feel rotten about the economy and have done since the end of Covid or the start of the Ukraine war. They switched government, they still feel awful, they don’t trust the main parties, so they turn to someone who says: ‘Everything needs to be disrupted: trust me.’” 

 

‘people feel rotten about the economy and have done since the end of Covid or the start of the Ukraine war. They switched government, they still feel awful, they don’t trust the main parties’

 

Reform, immigration aside, have little clear economic plans. Their tax and spending policies appear work-in-progress. They have abandoned a Liz Truss-style splurge based on a promise to make £90bn of tax cuts, instead turning their attention to public spending cuts.  

From what has been said, Reforms economic programme is contradictory. The party is bankrolled by wealthy people who want tax cuts and deregulation, whilst the party talks about the grievances of working people and the loss of industrial jobs. Essentially, they are trying to be everything to everyone; Thatcher on steroids for the wealthy, whilst appealing to the masses with job creation and reindustrialisation. 

Aside from the debt markets and its international investors rejecting any form of Truss style unfunded tax cuts, there is the inherent problem of the huge public debt caused by the GFC and Covid, coupled with the need for more defence spending and ageing societies. Countries in general are borrowing more making bond markets unusually volatile, and impacting interest rates. 

Aside from racist and contradictory policies aside, Reform’s main vulnerability should be the Brexit debacle but Labour continues to dance around the fact. Brexit makes the chancellor’s job that much more difficult, as it is one of the reasons the OBR reduced its growth forecasts,  

Labour also needs to improve its communications, especially their use of social media if they are to successfully counter populism. Within this, the government needs to accept and understand voters anger over a system which continually impoverishes the many for the benefit of the few. 

In effect their solution might be described as left-wing populist, such as that offered by New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani or the UK Green party leader, Zack Polanski, both of which echo the sentiments of Bernie Saunders and Jeremy Corbyn, challenging the power of corporations, central banks and the super-rich. 

Trump is imposing tariffs on countries he blames for America’s economic ills, especially Mexico, Canada and China, but the real problem might be closer to home: Silicon Valley and Wall Street.  

 

“Economic disintegration, decreasing macroeconomic stability and the erosion of institutions typically go hand in hand with populist rule”

 

In addition, Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” will cut taxes for the wealthy and slash regulation in some sectors, and he is also taking stakes in strategic firms in addition to weaponizing trade. 

Despite all of this, it is too early to accurately measure the impact of Trumpism on the US economy. Also, there is historic boom in AI investment, which appears to be well into bubble territory, which might mask issues in the immediate future.  

In summary, populists have historically struggled in government. Populism’s nihilism work best in opposition, criticising everything with no substantive alternatives 

This was confirmed in a recent paper in the American Economic Review, which analysed the performance of 51 populist leaders from 1900 to 2020: on average, after 15 years, GDP per head tended to be 10% lower than in similar economies with more mainstream regimes. 

“Economic disintegration, decreasing macroeconomic stability and the erosion of institutions typically go hand in hand with populist rule,” argue the paper’s authors, Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick and Christoph Trebesch. 

Despite this, their research found that these leaders are better at retaining power, lasting on average 8- yrs, compared with four for their more moderate equivalents. 

Perhaps, they can really fool all of the people, all of the time? 

 

“And I just wanna tell you, everything was alright
Hey, now, baby, I’m beginning to see the light” 

 

‘I thought it was high time we considered how nasty the country is becoming.

Neither Badenoch for the Tories or Farage have seen fit to censor either Lam, or Sarah Pochin for their recent comments. Farage satisfied himself that her comments were “ugly, but not racist”.  Clearly, I am too sensitive.

Or, perhaps not, as Reform’s only Black branch chair has left the party, saying the tone of Britain’s migration debate is “doing more harm than good”.

Neville Watson, said he had not experienced any racism in Reform, but he was alarmed by the growing influence of Christian nationalism – the hard-right movement that blends politics with fundamentalism.

Watson added that he was dismayed by rising levels of Islamophobia, feared some people within the party were “sympathetic” to the far-right activist Tommy Robinson, and was concerned British politics was “losing its compassion” as parties vied to compete with Reform.

Elsewhere, the rather nasty Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has ordered a halt to the advancement of parliamentary bills linked to the annexation of the West Bank after the US vice-president, JD Vance, described a vote on two bills in the Knesset as an “insult.” Peace in our time, anyone!

Finally, something for the chancellor to mull over, as the OBR calculates her self-imposed fiscal target will  be missed by upwards of £20bn in 2029-30.

To you and I, £20bn is a lot, but in the context of a near-£3tn economy it is lunch money.

In addition, the OBR struggles to forecast accurately what will happen to the public finances one year ahead, let alone four years ahead, and its assessments are based on a series of assumptions that are fast-changing. As a result, even a relatively small improvement to the underlying growth performance of the economy could change the outlook considerably. Put simply, the OBR’s forecasts are just guesswork. Informed guesswork, but still guesswork.

Lyrically, we start with Bob Dylan and “The Times They are a-changin’”, and finish with an old favourite of the column, the Velvet Underground’s “Beginning to See the Light”, in tribute to the voters in Wales’. Enjoy, Philip

 

@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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