Mr Brightside: Two Tribes 

 

“When two tribes go to war 

A point is all you can score” 

 

Frankie seemed to be having much more fun than us; they asked “Are we living in a land, where sex and horror are the new Gods”? I’m asking are we living in a land where and nationalist crusaders are the new Gods? 

 
Liberal constitutionalists are the defenders of the 20th-century legacy of multilateral treaties, respect for democratic protocol and the rule of law. Nationalist crusaders see themselves as warriors in an existential, civilisational struggle against moral decay through “wokeism” and cultural dissolution in an immigrant horde. 

Let’s start by considering the nationalist crusaders (“Nationalists”) first. 

For them immigration is the problem 

In his new book, “Manifesto: Free Speech, Real Democracy, Peaceful Disobedience”, Tommy Robinson writes….“For decades the political class have openly planned to replace the indigenous people of Europe and in Manifesto we focus on how they are doing this in the UK.” 

This is the great replacement theory, today’s basis for white supremacists. To take racism from passive to active there is the need to create the sense of an active threat, ideally, a grand conspiracy. Today, it is Muslims seek to overrun the Judeo-Christian order by first arriving and then breeding faster.  

In comments made before a speech to the European parliament last week, Viktor Orbán dismissed existing EU policy on irregular migration and asylum, saying: “If we cannot agree that those who want to enter the EU must stop at the European border and apply outside our borders, we will never be able to stop migration,” suggested Hungary’s prime minister. “The only migrant who does not stay is the one who does not enter the EU.” 

Previously, statements such as this would have made Orbán an outlier in European politics. Only last month, Brussels took steps to recover €200m in EU funds from Hungary, having fined Budapest for ignoring its asylum laws. But times are rapidly changing. A newly agreed migration pact, eight years in the making and establishing a fairer quota system for member states, already looks out of date. 

Instead, an EU Council meeting this week looks set to confirm that Orbáns’ views on migration become EU policy. The recent success of the anti-immigration far right across Europe has panicked the political mainstream into apeing the approach of Mr Orbán and his Italian ally, Giorgia Meloni. Before the summit, 15 EU countries, including Germany and France, produced a diplomatic text calling for a “paradigm shift” in asylum and migration policy. Ominously, the signatories seek a diminished role for the European court of justice in hearing appeals against deportation decisions. 
 

’15 EU countries, including Germany and France, produced a diplomatic text calling for a “paradigm shift” in asylum and migration policy’

 
In parallel, Mr Orbán’s notion of fixed migrant camps outside the EU’s external borders is becoming increasingly popular with other member states. Whilst they are given warm names such as “return hubs” or “hotspots”, they are little more than mass holding pens in third countries, created to ensure that people escaping war, persecution and the effects of the climate emergency could be kept out of sight and out of mind. 

Ironically, in 2018, the idea of externally located return centres was deemed by the European Commission to be incompatible with the EU’s values. 

Representing the liberal constitutionalists (“Liberals”) within the EU is the more enlightened Spanish PM, Pedro Sánchez, who, in a recent speech, recalled the desperate journeys of Spaniards fleeing the Franco dictatorship. Mr Sánchez called on modern Spain to strive to be “that welcoming, tolerant, supportive society that they would have liked to find”. 

Sadly, Mr Sánchez is a lone voice, and Orbán has gone from outlier to policymaker, as the EU retreats into “Fortress Europe” mode.  

Of course, the UK has, in recent years, been drifting closer to views of Orbán and Meloni. Both candidates for the Tory leadership are nationalists, and one, Kemi Badenoch, loves adding the culture wars to her proposals. 

Whilst Badenoch is no stranger to controversy, this week she has excelled herself, extending the culture war issues of the nanny state and the supposed decline of western civilisation to include neurodiversity and mental illness. The basic message fits with the nostalgic tone of post-Brexit Conservatism: pull yourself together and get on with it. ⁽¹⁾ 

Whilst the Tory media have championed this supposed British stoicism, but for a potential party leader to endorse it is something else, even by Badenoch’s’ shabby standards. This is all part of the 40-page “Conservatism in Crisis: Rise of the Bureaucratic Class” which she has endorsed. The paper majors on the supposed tyranny of “the bureaucratic class”, with claims about the disasters wreaked by a “new progressive ideology” that now dominates most of our key institutions and organisations. 
 

‘Within this there is the claim that people hide behind being fragile and unwell, rather than “building resilience”’

 
Within this there is the claim that people hide behind being fragile and unwell, rather than “building resilience”. One direct quote is: “Being diagnosed as neuro-diverse was once seen as helpful as it meant you could understand your own brain, and so help you to deal with the world,” the text says. “It was an individual focused change. But now it also offers economic advantages and protections.”   

My understanding of the 2010 Equality Act is that, if you are autistic and in work, your diagnosis is likely to be a protected characteristic, bringing rights to “reasonable adjustments”, and protection against discrimination and harassment.  

What I fail to understand is how anyone can claim that there are “economic advantages and protections” to be gained as a result of the condition. 

I have a relative who is autistic and I find Badenoch and her acolytes attitude deeply offensive. It endorses the fact that she is not fit for purpose. 

I wonder how far these people will go? If they know their history, there was “Aktion T4” in Nazi Germany, where there was a state sponsored campaign of mass murder by involuntary euthanasia of patients “deemed incurably sick, after most critical medical examination”. 
 

‘It endorses the fact that she is not fit for purpose’

 
Now we turn to the Liberals. 

This week the great and good in industry, banking, finance, and investment were in London for the Government’s Investment Summit. As a result of being wined and dined, and entertained by Elton John, some £60 bn of new FDI investments have been announced and 40,000 new jobs will follow. Or, so we are promised! 

One of the investors invited was Dubai’s DP World whose subsidiary P&O, sacked the 800 British crew that manned the Dover ferries which . It was a breach of every principal of UK law and employment rights. P&O replaced them with cheap, foreign agency crew with zero working rights. Actions, that even the then Tory government condemned. This was covered in “Britain is Open for Business”. 

P&O was condemned as a “rogue operator” at the weekend by the current Transport Secretary, Louise Haigh, which put her out-of-step with Messrs Starmer and Reeves who had the begging bowl out, as DP World threatened to pull a $1 bn port investment over the implied insult. Displaying our historic stoicism in the face of adversity we mumbled our apologies. 
 

‘Macquarie Bank, whose rape and pillage of UK infrastructure through minimum investment/ maximum dividends infrastructure deals, such as Thames Water should disqualify them’

 
Another dubious guest was Macquarie Bank, whose rape and pillage of UK infrastructure through minimum investment/ maximum dividends infrastructure deals, such as Thames Water should disqualify them.  

We are so cheap! 

During the summit the PM promised a Labour government of predictable sobriety, in contrast to the self-destructive, spasmodic rule of the Tories. Britain, he said, will go back to being the “stable, trusted, rule-abiding partner” it was once reputed to be, and so a worthy location for investment. 

Whilst this appealed to those attending, it is aligns with everything chancellor Reeves says about the essential pursuit of economic growth as a precondition for repairing the public realm, and the need for private sector capital to deliver it. 

In Starmer and Reeve’s world, growth satisfies an appetite for rising living standards and decent services. It proves that moderate, democratic politics works, thereby healing social division and neutralising populism. “Growth leads to a country that is better equipped to come together,” the PM said. “[Growth is] the key ingredient of that ‘great moderation’ we became accustomed to before the financial crash but which together, in partnership, we now have to earn again.” 

There was a concession to changing times, with the acceptance of the needs for government intervention in markets, industrial strategy and enhanced workers’ rights that was highly unfashionable prior to the GFC and Covid.  
 

‘In Starmer and Reeve’s world, growth satisfies an appetite for rising living standards and decent services’

 
Their theory is based on providing the foundations for long-term investment, a more secure workforce with higher wages and lower NHS waiting lists, the electorate will be less angry, and less amenable to recruitment by extremists. 

There is nothing wrong with their theory, and I desperately hope it works only looking across the Atlantic shows it isn’t that simple. US experience growth has been robust throughout the Biden years but it hasn’t diminished the support for Trump and his fascist politics. The explanation is simple, its inequality; there has been insufficient distribution of the wealth created, made worse by inflation. If you add to this the paranoia and hyper-partisanship created by Trump, many now refuse to believe in a healthy economy whilst Democrats inhabit the White House. This was covered in greater detail in “Left Behind, Inequality, and Why it Matters part 2”. 

Labour’s message in the election was “change”, yet his growth orientated policies appear to be a continuation of Tory ones. In 2014 the Treasury, placing a premium on “investor confidence” set aside £40bn in public cash guarantees to help those projects that struggled “to access private finance”. A 2016 National Audit Office report criticised such schemes for transferring “risk to the public sector”. Last year Rishi Sunak unveiled £30bn of global inward investment. This year Labour claim to have doubled that amount. 
 

‘What we require is bold, transformative policies that put the country above private profit. If Labour can’t do that, what is the point of the party’

 
Due to the lack of well-funded state intervention and robust regulation, privatised industries, parts of the NHS, and even children’s homes have become the assets of private investors stepping-in who then siphon  taxpayer funds offshore. Rather than changing this Labour seem content to let asset managers rebuild Britain. Their argument is that the state has insufficient funds to fix our broken infrastructure therefore we either go cap in hand to the private sector, or we return to austerity, or raise the funds by increasing taxes. 

This is our opportunity to reshape a country that is dominated by private capital and their selfish interests, which has served only to enhance their wealth, and allow them  disproportionate influence. If Labour is to be true to their principles which are based on championing  the workers, they must reassert the government’s role as a mediator between workers and capital, rejecting corporate dominance.  

What we require is bold, transformative policies that put the country above private profit. If Labour can’t do that, what is the point of the party. 

“But you say to go slow but I fall behind 

Time after time after time (after time, oh)” 

 
 
Notes: 

1. Neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism and ADHD are not mental health conditions. However, neurodivergent people can sometimes face mental health difficulties and struggle with their emotional wellbeing. 

 

‘This ended up almost being part 3 of the past two inequality articles. Everything seems to lead back to that, but the government isn’t able, or prepared to see it.

Labour’s hesitant start to life in government and freebiegate, have been gleefully jumped on by the Tories and their fawning media, who in Trumpian style deal in accusations of incompetence, lies and falsehoods. This seems to be the general level that politics has sunk too. No one seems to be seeking to improve the country, and are seemingly content to ensure the other parties are unable to do so.

As I have said so often before, thinking big, and dwelling on former glories isn’t sufficient. We are, in effect, small, increasingly irrelevant, and so down trodden by thinking “we can’t afford it” that it has become our reality. As a result we face increasing inequality, which, as I have written ad nauseum, leads only to increasing poverty.   

The Tories are displaying that they do have at least one area of competency; undermining their rivals by shouting louder, for longer, and rubbishing everything. It is just more confirmation that they are becoming fully fledged populists.

One thing I have noticed is how quiet Farage and Reform are. They just seem to be waiting for the two main parties to exhaust themselves….

Lyrically, it’s all about the 80s; we start with Frankie’s “Two Tribes”, and finish with one of those often overlooked classics, ”Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper.

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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