In the face of the most incredible health crisis this country might ever have faced we are this morning facing complete uncertainty as to the government's response.
Yesterday's cabinet meeting appears to have failed. It could not decide, in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence, to take any action at all to prevent avoidable deaths in the UK, which will now happen.
It would seem certain that the triumvirate of those demanding action, comprising Johnson, Gove and Javid, were opposed by a lunatic fringe comprising Sunak, Truss and the lesser known Grant Shapps and Stephen Barclay.
I have little doubt that talk of resignation was in the air. Of those holding out against action few doubt Sunak was in the lead. He likely claimed the issue was cost. We do, however, know that this is absurd.
The money required to support the UK economy now can be created costlessly and without inflation risk. Anyone who disagrees has not been paying attention for the last decade.
What is more, we know that unless Covid is beaten the cost to the economy is going to be much higher than the net cost of intervention, so any prevarication on these grounds would also be a sham: that argument does not exist.
There do then have to be other reasons why these ministers wish for people to die unnecessarily. Those reasons are not hard to find.
First, for Sunak and Truss this is no doubt to cement their appeal with the far-right in the forthcoming leadership election. People will die so that they can get their dream job.
Second, people will also die because these people would rather that than admit that the government can create all the money we need to tackle this crisis.
Third, that is because they have to, in their opinion, maintain this line to have an excuse for austerity. Since this had already caused considerable numbers of deaths a few more weigh little on their consciences. Those deaths are, as they would say, ‘built in to the policy'.
Fourth, we have to also accept that these people really are not clever enough to comprehend exponential growth and its consequences.
Add all that up and we have Sunak leading a faction, supported by Truss, whose foundations are callous indifference to the well-being of the people of this country for the purpose of appealing to the Tory right-wing who will, they think, select the next Prime Minister.
This is the depth to which UK politics has now sunk.
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Anything we can actually do we can afford. Keynes, 1942.
“We can’t afford it” (the refrain of the extreme right) was de-bunked 80 years ago…… it is not mainstream thinking, it is just a catchphrase to justify a cruel policy designed to crush the weak for the benefit of the powerful.
Agreed
The difference with Truss is she has a battle to bury her past as a Remainer, during which time she made robust, eloquent argument against Brexit. Sunak has an unblemished record of nasty, ultra right orthodoxy. Nonetheless, we may be assured that appeals to the white, elderly male dominated Tory membership plus the Covid Recovery Group will determine the reality of government policy for the foreseeable future. Bloody hell (factual statement, not expletive).
And yet, despite all of this, despite all that has happened since 2010, there will be those who will continue to vote for them even though they and possibly family and friends have suffered terribly during that period.
What will it take for everyone to wake up and see what a bunch of incompetent, psychotic, nasty, evil, lying bunch of rattlesnake bellies (apparently, you can’t get lower than a rattlesnake’s belly I was told) the Tories are.
The only good Tory is a lava-tory.
Craig
Your analysis seems very plausiblbe – given the various leaks , reports etc.
If this isnt a failed state – what is? Essentially deliberately killing its own citizens.
This is the logical conclusion of their whole approach to the pandemic. It was run as a political campaign from day one. So now when the politics fractures into a factional power struggle the pandemic response collapses entirely.
And this on top of their triumphalist ignorance – about the meaning of an exponentially growing but time- delayed infection/hospitalisation process – meaning their ‘wait and see’ is precisely what not to do – and they have been told that.
The virus can just run wild.
A Christmas TV horror movie.
“We need more evidence” or words to that effect. OK, so we go for the “Precautionary Principle” because maybe, just maybe all those scientists are right and the murderous malcontents in the Party may be wrong. If the scientists are wrong, we can unlock in a couple of weeks, but if they are right….
I still maintain that what Keynes saw was the Government fighting fascism during WWII by printing and spending money and decided quite rightly that Government could also wage war on poverty, ill health, poor education etc., within its own borders.
It’s an eminently sensible view devoid in my opinion of any political colouration because it gets to the truth of the matter – an inconvenient truth however if you have read too much Ayn Rand, like private monopolies or just want to be left alone to roam the land like a bandit stealing from people.
This is only one explanation however for this state of affairs in politics. And it is money. These people are where they are because of either their wealth or connections to wealth, and their utility to wealth. Ability has nothing to do with it. Any of us here would be better.
Rishi will be aided in his attempt to maintain the austerity narrative by articles like this from the Torygraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/16/rise-interest-rates-has-shattered-delusion-lockdown-free-lunch/ although not much admittedly with anyone remotely economically literate. The problem is though, so many aren’t, not even slightly, and they’re influenced so much by what they’re told repeatedly, the brain confusing repetition with truth as it sadly does due to the illusory truth effect, a side-effect, I think, of mankind’s early wisdom being handed down in the form of stories.
Perhaps you should debunk the article!
I exchanged with Jeremy Warner on that on Twitter
Even Chris Gil;es from the FT mocked him for it
Another reason is that the people who tend to die from COVID-19 are disproportionately the poor, disabled, sick, and elderly, i.e. the “economically unproductive”. We have seen various regimes throughout history put forward the view that the “economically unproductive” are more expendable and can be sacrificed for the sake of the economy or even that their deaths are a good thing as this will overall improve the performance of the economy. And these groups mostly tend not to vote Tory. Ethnic minorities are another group who are disproportionately affected and while these might not be so “economically unproductive” they are not exactly the Tories’ favourite group either for other reasons.
There is ample evidence this is true in SA right now
After reading Craig Sykes response this morning, I felt compelled to come up with this, with full apologies in advance. My only excuse is that I have too much time on my hands.
14 WAYS TO DESCRIBE A CONSERVATIVE
Considering the attributes of being a Conservative
Is it not extraordinary,
They all end in the word TORY
DilaTORY – Admiration of a government that is chaotic
BigaTORY – A tendency to be unreasonably prejudiced and intolerant
PredaTORY – For oneself at the expense of the poor
DeregulaTORY – Change the rules to their advantage, and for the advantage of friends in the City of London
DiscriminaTORY – A hate of outsiders
AdulTORY – Love of a leader who cheats on his wives
SupposiTORY – Up each others arses
LavaTORY – Out of the EU flushing away the economy
ExageraTORY – To the point of lying
CremaTORY – Where many sent by bad decisions
RackeTORY – Happy to support sleaze
PurgaTORY – Where we are now
DefamaTORY – Of those against them
InvenTORY – Happy to tolerate lies
(excuse the odd poetic licence in spelling)
Very good
I have done my best to be humane to the Tories over the years because the intellectual and humanistic bar on this blog is quite high and also it does drag one down when even out of frustration you are sometimes reduced to being defamatory.
However, having watched this lot since 2010 and the obvious glee they have displayed as they have hurt people, hurt the reputation of the country and hurt democracy all I can say (using a derogatory term from my own East Midlands) is that the problem with far too many Tories is that the best part of them ended up either on the bedsheets or a tissue on the night they were conceived.
It’s quite a disgusting thing to say I agree and I am not proud, but their lack of self-disgust with themselves, at their conduct, lack of humane morality, decency ,democracy etc., for me warrants it.
In point of truth the Tories we have now are actually totally ridiculous as a Government. Yet, they have no self-awareness at all at just how BAD they actually are. If they did, they would pack up and go home.
Anti-Austerity activists and groups have warned of suspected democide by Government policy since the early 2010s.
I also recall this blog releasing a chilling review document that had been issued by J P Morgan in 2013: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/
That document contained descriptions of structural change which would cause death.
Unfortunately, the ample evidence that has mounted up between 2008 and 2019 has not been interrogated by the media in such a way as to make the wider public desire a change of Government enough to vote for it.
Take the plight of disabled people fighting for their survival within a benefit system that has killed many of them via benefit denial since 2010. The matter has largely gone under the radar. And it points towards reasons as to why the British may be so tolerant of what is happening during this pandemic; endemic attitudes which include fatalism, nihilism, ablism, racism, Malthusian ideas, Social Darwinist ideas.
Keynes was right to link the fight against fascism to government expenditure levels within structures of social rights and support. However, within Capitalism such expenditure only serves to hold back the tide of barbarism for a time. That time ended sometime during the 1970s. We’re seeing the endgame of a near fifty year drift towards fascism in this country because this is a complacent nation that felt it defeated the Nazis in 1945, but which failed to defeat the Nazis and the fascist ideas which lurked within its own population.
Indeed, the country failed to eliminate the fascist ideas that circulated among the well off especially. And as you say, it has become more prominent recently. Defeating the Nazis and defeating their ideas are two different things. I think it has been convincingly argued that the Brits could not have defeated the Nazis without the assistance of the US and the USSR, and Stalin’s army was assisted by the weather. Unfortunately, the job was left uncompleted, as you note.