Nobody expected a shortage of bed linen in hotels to be a consequence of Brexit. But along with shortages of food, cars, blood testing bottles and HGV drivers and an excess of pigs it apparently is.
But then so too is the denial that all this has anything to do with Brexit another consequence of Brexit. A brave face in the breakdown of politics and the economy seems to be the order of the day. I noted one commentator in the FT this morning saying:
The US economy today is about as strong as it has been in generations, with the tightest labour markets and highest inflation rates seen in decades. That is even accounting for a recent moderation of growth driven by the spread of the Delta variant of Covid-19, reflected in Friday's disappointing August jobs data.
It seems that there is a collective denial going on. Evidence is being swept aside. A collective pretence is being presented that if we just hang on all will be well.
Even the government is doing it. Put up with a couple of years of chaos, it is saying, and all will be fine. Except, it has no basis for saying that, because it simply cannot know. And as for the US economy? Add in Covid, a crisis of international confidence, climate change and threats to the US constitution arriving via state abortion and election legislation and the last thing its prospects look like are rosy.
The reality is that in a remarkably short period of time considerable change has taken place. The route from social democracy to authoritarian populism has been steady, beginning in 1947 with the creation of the Mont Pelerin Society by Hayek and Milton Friedman, but with growing momentum since 1980.
During the 80s that movement might have been honest about its intent. Before and after then it is very hard to think that it has been: subterfuge as to its vision has been normal because it's very hard to say that your aim is the limitation of democracy to serve the interests of very few in society, and yet in Trump and Johnson (and others, elsewhere) that is very obviously what the ultimate aim has been. And it has succeeded, by and large, in delivering just that.
The underlying threat to society at large may be even bigger than that created by inequality though. It does not take much to read a eugenicist approach into Dominic Cummings rants on the rights of the 0.01%. It is much easier to see that Rushi Sunak has a decided bias against those least well off, as had Trump. The aim is to oppress.
But, to achieve that goal something had to give, and that something, it now seems, was order. The order of trade. The order of international relations,. The order of the rule of law. The order of parliamentary sovereignty. The order within the media, and its right to question. The order that lets routine happen and markets function, and supply chains operate. And into that already chaotic scene Covid was thrown, by accident, but with revelatory consequences by showing how the new order of government was to work for the benefit of a few.
The result is not strong economies, or strong anything else. The consequence is weak government, shown to be without an agenda beyond destroying constraints on their own action, but without apparent knowledge of what action they desire because that, they claim (conveniently) is for markets to decide, even though those in the markets clearly do not wish for that choice.
So where are we? In chaos, it would seem, with no route out. The dogma without substance that has gripped popular politics has no answer to any question except how to increase short term inequality.
The question is, his long can this situation last? What will the tipping point be? It's still not clear. But there will be one. Either democracy will collapse, and that is possible in the chaos that is developing, or there will have to be a backlash to save it. The mess we are in has nothing within it that suggests it meets any of the needs of society. So society has either to be suspended, or resume its role. What is not possible is that current chaos might continue, because at some people will have had enough. It's just a matter of when.
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My reading of the trends we are is that sufficient numbers of the UK population prefer a simple authoritarian narrative to a complex questioning messy environment to ensure continued Tory hegemony.
So, the boiling frog syndrome of steadily worsening public and private services will be accepted via the excuse that the polls are “doing their best”. Hollow laughs all round.
Alan the only part of government rhetoric that I believe is that they are ‘doing their best’. But, wherever you look it isn’t sufficient to the task. Boris cannot grasp the concept of consequence whether direct or indirect. I said elsewhere so many chickens coming home to roost they are colliding with each other.
I’m really not sure how we can separate the Brexit and Covid effects at the moment. Both will be having a large effect on the economy. I suppose it is inevitable that those who are most opposed to Brexit will say any problems are due to that. Those in the other camp will say that they are mainly Covid related and point to similar problems which have arisen in the US and elsewhere. It’s just human nature to select the best arguments to suit.
On the plus side, many of us aren’t too unhappy. We positively welcome that the working classes are making up some lost ground by using their extra bargaining power to improve their wages.
Put the Afghanistan MOD/Foreign Office fiasco into the mix and the Tory polling vote may drop again, fingers closed and drop again by a couple of points, it has already dropped from 42 to 40.
I’m of the opinion the nation state here will become simply a nest to be taken over by cuckoos in the form of the Freeports, soon to evolve into Free Private Cities (plenty of info on them on Youtube). Work towards this seems to continue apace, witness today’s National Insurance Contributionjs Bill and its promise to employers setting up in Freeports that they won’t have to pay employers’ NI. More on that here https://unravellingtheratsnest.org/politics/parliamentary-process/
I think they will go nowhere…
But I could be wrong
They are another point were populism will fail
The current chaos is a direct result of the end of the postwar covenant that gave the majority of the population thirty years of raising out of poverty and levelling down of the aristocracy (the super rich) and the progressive taxation of the high earners (90% was a bit of a imposed own goal by BOTH shades of party through the years to build a clearly unfair totem that couldn’t be justified).
The ending of the trente-glorious across the waters is part and parcel of that grand plan to destroy public services , welfare and social housing.
Our bs rush to get into Afghanistan was planned by Thatcher and Co and the dysfunctional and bankrupt FO of that era desperate to regain their old powers. It was a plan that Blair delivered on as he did on the rest of the privatisations and loading teenagers up with debt for education unfit for any other purpose.
It is as some of us realise a Class War aimed at restoring the prewar privileges and to return a large part of society to the poor servile pool of disposable workers – the old order.
The way to do that is to get the majority into fighting each other as opposed to collectively ‘punching up’
A three stooges eye gouging, slap fest that destroys any unity of purpose or any collective political organisation.
As is clearly demonstrated by the current Labour and SNP leaderships attacks on their own memberships and radical representatives fully supported by a lying bunch of stenographers in the MSM happily working the Crown States agenda.
Links which inform my opinion:
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-09-04-how-mi6-backed-right-wing-religious-fanatics-in-afghanistan/
https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-owen-jones-justifies-labours-purge-socialists/33831
https://wingsoverscotland.com/as-it-is-and-when-it-was/
As the Afghan bullshit resistance by the CIA’s Saleh melts like a mist as it certainly was bound too. These frothing at the mouth loudest are the Tories and Blairites who gained so much by it.
As BrexShit bites – these whining the most are the talk show kippers who are finding that their wages haven’t increased, their jobs are still zero hours, they don’t want to pick vegetables and kill pigs and work in abattoirs and the councils haven’t suddenly got large numbers of houses which were being taken by EU workers families – the weekend saw the idiot gammons at my social club actually complaining that these Afghans they were so caring about last week as the MSM was trying to get us to get back into putting boots on the ground are now going to get the council housing that they or their kin will never get!
Yup they really are thick as mince stooges – there is only way forward a grassroots rise by – A new Jarrow – A new General Strike – the public needs to rediscover the us and them really exists and stop believing ‘there is no such thing as society ‘ as much as ‘taxes pay for services’.
I think a lot of us of had enough already.
We’re just waiting for the rest of them to catch up.
I used to think that Johnson and Co were just incompetent and not very intelligent – but with recent events I now think they are actually nasty selfish evil people – and the idea that they are there to serve the public for the common good has disappeared