They depravity of Johnson's political claims is becoming ever more apparent. The latest is that he is heading a Rooseveltian New Deal.
This is pure rhetorical nonsense. As Larry Elliott and Heather Stewart note in the Guardian, the announcement to be made today will simply relaunch existing plans: there will be no new money. What that means is that plans announced in the budget in March - before anyone in the government had any comprehension of the scale of Covid 19 - are now being deemed to be an adequate response to something they were never designed to address.
I said at the time, rather publicly on Radio 2, that Sunak's plans were a wholly inadequate response to what was coming our way from Covid-19. That remains true except we now know, and I admit I underestimated this, the demand for action is vastly greater than anyone could have imagined then. To describe the plans as hopelessly inadequate is, then, to be generous.
Second, these plans are not only not a New Deal, they're also quite emphatically not the Green New Deal we need. I am quite sure that Cummings has deliberately band-wagoned the New Deal metaphor because the Green New Deal has become the appropriate rallying call for change. In doing so he is copying Cameron in 2010. He relabelled a pathetic programme of boiler upgrades as the Green Deal. But it wasn't anything of the sort. Now Cummings has relabelled his equally inadequate plans as the New Deal. And it isn't. Planting trees to offset EasyJet's emissions is not a Green New Deal. It's welcome, but so far short of what is required it is absurd.
So, this is a government out of ideas that it can only relabel its already inadequate responses.
And it is a government that will not do enough: as economic crisis overwhelms this country it is now apparent that it will just sit and watch.
And it is an administration that will spin until the appreciation that there is no substance to that spin overwhelms it, as surely it will. Like a Ponzi scheme - which is very much what the Johnson approach to government looks like - the time will come when no more hype will persuade anyone else to buy, and then the whole edifice will come tumbling down as people realise that there never was anything to the whole supposed plan behind the Cummings scheme for reform. It has always been campaign and no substance. And the campaign has always been about opposition, and not about building afresh.
But opposition is not the role for government: there is an opposition to do the opposing. The task for government is to build. And we have never seen a plan for what is supposedly on its way.
What is more, the opposition in this case is to the best interests of the people of the country, as will be apparent when Brexit and mass unemployment bring us to our knees very soon.
Unless, of course, breaking us for the next stage - the end of democracy stage - requires that reduction to our knees stage first of all, that is.
I can't rule that out. But maybe, just maybe, that is the plan, after all and it's me that's being conned into thinking something else. In which case I'll put on record my awareness of this now just in case it's true, which is at least plausible.
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That Dominic Cummings is reported to have dismissed improving the efficiency of the housing stock (a cost effective decarbonisation measure that would create jobs in every constituency) as “boring old housing insulation'” says it all. Spin over substance, yet again.
Johnson is increasingly revealed as a simpleton of the sort more normally catered for by care in the community than elevation to high office. He should be muttering to himself in a farmyard somewhere with a straw in his mouth, a harmless fool, his ambitions and grand ideas about himself a source of merriment to the locals. One can only wonder at the power and complexity of the system of privilege which spares him from this obvious destiny to make him their catspaw in government. Without that privilege we’d never have heard of Boris or Cameron or Osborne. No good railing at them though, ire is better directed at the system which made them. That, incidentally, is why I voted (first time voting at all ever) for Labour as Corbyn’s policy was to stop the production line of such malovelences by ending the environment which produces them, the public school system.
Agree regarding the economics.
However, I’m not sure we can expect the population in general to recognise government/ideological failures and take action to improve things, at least not any time soon. People are no more rational actors in the political sphere than the economic, probably less so. And due to the many systemic failures of mass media, people are not even getting to make decisions based on good information or intelligent debate. Why should this change?
The cry of ” Who’s going to pay for it ? ” is surely imminent. Is this the totally unexpected opportunity for MMT to go mainstream ?
I hope so
Johnson is delivering Cummings’ speech at the moment in some factory or other. I note in one of the photos that there is a Still forklift next to him, these forklifts are manufactured in Germany, France, Italy, China and Brazil. Which neatly illustrates all that is wrong with the UK at the moment; we don’t make anything so have nothing to sell (apart from complex financial instruments).
Whatever Johnson says we can be sure that:
1. It will be inadequate
2. It will primarily benefit Conservative and Unionist party donors
3. It will spaffed with lies and half truths
I’m afraid I disagree with you on your premise that the Conservative and Unionist party have a plan, they are merely lurching from one incompetent response to a crises to another. But whatever they do will covered by the neat jingoistic umbrella of Brexit, of which the No Deal/WTO version will be set in stone tomorrow. Then we may see some response from the bond markets
I dipped into the “FDR” speech this morning (for as long as my stomach would take). I have finally realized that Johnson brays rather than speaks. Any other animal analogies out there?
Maybe there is a big idea and its just plain old disaster capitalism – never let a good crisis go to waste.
Many politicians and their funders are in a unique position to benefit when the dust clears unlike the average man in the street.
This seems to be the way in which are operating these days.
‘I can’t rule that out. But maybe, just maybe, that is the plan, after all and it’s me that’s being conned into thinking something else. In which case I’ll put on record my awareness of this now just in case it’s true, which is at least plausible.’
I think we might all be being conned Richard! I have no hard info, all conjecture and possibly even of the ‘conspiracty theory’ order, but I’m just watching events as they unfold and trying to knit the threads together. I’m trying to keep my eyes on a bigger picture as to this ‘Government’s’ (I use the term ‘Government’ loosely) machinations. I’m looking at the changes, in no particular order, to the (unwritten but established by practice) Constitution, attacks on the Civil Service, the attacks on the Judiciary, the handing out of massive contracts to the private sector without due process, the headlong dash towards a ‘no deal’ Brexit, the pursuance of an ‘us and them’ narrative and the news priorities of the, largely compliant, MSM. There is something afoot and I would hazard a guess that it is not for the good of the people.
“there is an opposition to do the opposing”
That would be the “Tory-lite” group led by Mr Starmer. Taking us back to th halcyon days of Mr B.Liar, foreign wars and off-balance sheet accounting by Mr Broon. Leaving the only question to be answered who is Broon 2.
I wonder who will “speak for England”. Certainly nobody on the Tory-lite front bench.