It is just two weeks since I wrote this:
Today Sunak is back at the Despatch Box, announcing the replacement to this scheme.
This is getting pretty repetitive. On March 12 I described his budget as dire, and badly misjudged. I said he would have to go back and revise it. He had to do so.
And now the loop is being repeated.
And this is supposedly the person who has had a good crisis, sufficient to put him in line to be replacement prime minister. Really?
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Do you think this behaviour is deliberate and that Sunak is trying to nudge the Tories down a road they really do not want to go? How else do you explaing this quite his behaviour?
I think it is his own reluctance to believe the state has a role
He is being dragged by events
The suggestion that Sunak might want to do more, but needs to bring the party with him, is intriguing. But is this Sunak’s policy, or is he just following orders? (If you recall, Sajid Javid resigned because he wanted to maintain some independence, whereas Johnson and Cummings see the Treasury as an extension of the PM’s office.)
See my post from Susie Dent – I think she is suggesting the answer
Unexpected source, but spot on, I think
Sunak believes in “free” enterprise and that the market will “adjust” to the economic conditions automatically without state “interference”. Brought up by only private banking experience to go on, even knowledge of traditional Keynesianism is well beyond his limited horizon. His only option (in his mind) is to please his fellow Tory MPs. No other economic strategy is possible for him if he follows relentlessly this free market anti- state trajectory. He is completely at a loss, victim of the braying Tory backbenchers, let alone his “leader”.
When I look out of my window, I can see Govan – an area of Glasgow that was decimated by the loss of the shipyards and other heavy industry in the 80s. The idea at the time was that free enterprise would step in and find a use for all the skilled labour available.
It didn’t happen, of course.
Instead people lost their jobs and their hope and Govan because notorious for crime and addiction problems (Rab C Nesbitt anyone?). 30+ years later, the area is only just getting back on its feet… just in time for the current government to take us on the same ride once again.
I just hope that one day soon someone with enough power will understand that this cycle of destruction has to stop and that we can have a successful economy that cares for people.
Thanks to the work Richard and others are doing, this idea is gathering momentum. I take heart that at the start of 2012 Scottish Independence was a fringe idea but within 2 years it very nearly happened because people realised they can build a better society and the risks are worth taking.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks
I will keep trying
Ship building expertise would be ideal for constructing wave power generation of which the UK has in abundance. This could also reduce the damage to coastal infrastructure. But of course the government chucked it away just like UK’s nuclear energy expertise (they do not have enough now even to write a contract to build one).
Ben, if there had been demand for tidal and wave energy In the 80s then perhaps things would have been different. These days all that workforce is well past retirement if they are even still alive.
@Adrian
“I just hope that one day soon someone with enough power will understand that this cycle of destruction has to stop and that we can have a successful economy that cares for people.“
Your ‘someone with enough power’ is ourselves, the electorate, the public.
We are that power.
We, individually, have to understand that this cycle of destruction can be stopped. That we can have a successful economy that cares for people. That our government is not powerless to improve society. That it is not burdened by its own debt.
We, collectively, have to then make this cycle of destruction stop. Keep demanding better quality of life for all from our politicians. If they don’t deliver, vote them out. Keep voting them out until we get a government we deserve.
I wish for Scottish independence. That doesn’t mean I don’t wish for a better quality of life for people in England, or Wales, or Northern Ireland, or indeed any other country, anywhere in the world. We must all be thankful when quality of life improves, anywhere in the world, and we must then seek to emulate and improve the same in our own societies. We must not give in to populist madness, destructive fascism, subversive communism, or radical extremism.
We can create a better quality of life.
We are that power.
‘All of us first’
The original Rab C Nesbitt was very funny indeed – I remember it well.
But the tragedy of Thatcherism must also never be forgotten.
A bit off the discussion but interested in your location in relation to Govan. Viewed from North or South of the river?
Send him a copy of Kelton’s book
Rather than “eat out to help out ”
more
” digest it to arrest it “
🙂
Why don’t you simply publish the same headline very day – it would save you a lot of time:
“Centre-right government does something which I (as a supporter of the hard left) disagree with, yet I am still seemingly surprised.”
Why do you come here then?
And why do so many other right-wingers do so?
You do somewhat disprove your own argument
> Centre-right government does something which I (as a supporter of the hard left) disagree with
Yes, Brian, that’s the general theme. We come here to get an alternative viewpoint to the “centre right” media
> yet I am still seemingly surprised
I think if you read the posts you would find that Richard is more often annoyed than surprised
In what universe is this a “centre right” government?
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uk2019
Since December, it has only got more authoritarian and economically right-wing, corruptly funnelling government money to its free market cronies; undermining and underfunding the NHS and local public health bodies in the midst of a pandemic; flouting international law; giving the security services and other government agencies the right, with impunity, to torture and murder those who dissent;
I despair. What level of stupidity sees that as “centre right”?
Centre Right! In comparison with genuine Tories of the past they are off the scale. The behaviour is more like the Mafia than a Government.
Just a bunch of rich spivs without a moral compass.
If the core Libertarian belief is “nothing is really connected to anything else” then a belief that “market fundamentalism” or the “free market” cures all allows one to ignore the squeals of pain of those adversely affected by the “cure!” In truth propagandising this “cure” works very well to mask the fact inequitable power is being wielding in the marketplace!
https://evonomics.com/why-free-market-ideology-is-a-double-lie/
In practice when those who hold marketplace power are adversely affected by a crisis and most of all likely to lose money and power because of a major crisis suddenly a “Financier of Last Resort” is wheeled out, but better not call it MMT that would give those we oppress ideas above their station and especially ones that compromise our power!
Helen,
Can provide a link to where a core Libertarian belief is “nothing is really connected to anything else” – Or have you just totally made it up?
For heaven’s sake, just read Ayn Rand
If you support them at least understand it
@ Richard Varkis
Here you go Richard. Here’s where the phrase came from:-
“The contemporary right has one central principle: nothing is really connected to anything else, so no one has any responsibility for anything else, and any attempt to, say, prevent a factory from poisoning a river is an infringement on freedom. They reject the evidence of climate change and other scientific realities on the grounds that it displeases them by undermining their ideology, rather than on the evidence. Freedom as they uphold it is the right to do anything you want with utter disregard for others (and taken to extremes, to believe anything you want, as they have about climate). To smooth over the ways this is amoral requires disassembling cause-and-effect and, ultimately, denying the systemic nature of all things.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/08/trump-coronavirus-pandemic-dishonest-cruel#comment-144368523
I thought of that well-know American Libertarian Libertarian Rand Paul after I read Rebecca Solnit’s article who though a doctor by training appears to have allowed his Libertarianism to cloud his judgement about Covid-19:-
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/23/anthony-fauci-rand-paul-coronavirus-response-420602
So no link to the ‘core beliefs’ to support the claim, just a vague reference to someone else entirely. Yet another straw man?
With respect, Ayn Rand is not peripheral in this debate
@ Craig Mcgiugh
Do wake up Craig! To deny “inter-connectedness” in life is disproved by human scientific analysis. The classic example is something as fundamental as human DNA. When this was analysed at the beginning of this century the scientists were surprised to find that some of this DNA had been cannibalised from parts of ancient viruses that had attacked the human genome. You can’t get more inter-connected than that when you incorporate a useful functioning part of your enemy! To pretend as Libertarians do that freedom is outside of any consideration of connectedness with other humans is childishly shallow fantasy thinking.
Sunak says he has a has a “sacred responsibility” to balance the books for future generations. Another myth that need debunking in a video.
Future generations would be better served if we leave them a healthy economy and one that looks after the environment, rather than one hobbled by a useless dogma about refusing to create some virtual numbers in a central bank computer,
It is on its way…
The Sunak quote you highlighted the other day kind of gives the game away:
“If instead we argue there is no limit on what we can spend, that we can simply borrow our way out of any hole, what is the point in us?”
-What he appears to be saying is that if stripped utterly of its neoliberal monetarist fallacies there really is no raison d’etre remaining for a Conservative party, therefore the appearance of strict monetary and fiscal discipline must be maintained at cost: even if the actuality is quite otherwise.
If he is an actual true believer then he’s a fool, but if not it still remains to be seen if Sunak has the legerdemain to carry off the deception.