A theme emerged yesterday. It was of government and business indifference to real people.
P&O, backed by Dubai - which is a key government ally - sacked 800 of its staff on its ferries without any prior consultation. It could, because of Brexit. Its French and Dutch staff were not treated in this way. They had EU backed protection still. That P&O could do this was not an accident, whatever Tory MPs are saying: this is what they voted to deliver.
Elsewhere it was noted that Andrew Bailey, now boss of the Bank of England, but previously head of the Financial Conduct Authority fell asleep during a meeting about what would become one of the UK's biggest pension mis-selling scandals, according to people in attendance who were pressing the regulator to take faster action to protect those affected in the steel industry. He obviously did not care.
That was also apparent when the Bank of England raised interest rates yesterday. They seemingly do not care that this measure, which can have no impact on the rate of inflation, will simply push more households in the UK closer to financial breakdown. It's not a sentiment with which they are familiar, so they dismiss it.
And then there was news of Rishi Sunak's preparation for the Spring Statement next week. As the FT has noted:
An immediate EU-wide embargo on Russian oil and gas imports would send economic shockwaves throughout Europe and cause at least £70bn of damage to the British economy, chancellor Rishi Sunak has told colleagues.
Apparently, we cannot afford to help people being bombed in Ukraine. The words of appeasement drip like slime from the report.
But it's worse than that. The report continued, quoting The Treasury:
The chancellor is already struggling to address a looming cost-of-living crisis — including inflation and higher prices for food and petrol — with rising energy prices alone set to impose a £38bn burden on households by the end of the year.
Asked about Sunak's comments, the Treasury said it was already spending billions to help households with their energy bills and would continue to “monitor the impacts that Putin's invasion of Ukraine is having on the cost of living here.”
£38 billion, I would remind, is about the cost of the utterly failed NHS track and trace system.
It is less than 10% of the quantitative easing used to pay for that failed system and the rest of Covid measures.
It is less than 2% of what Sunak says the national debt is.
It's only a little more than the additional unexpected tax revenues Sunak will collect this year.
But, there's no suggestion that the £38 billion burden might be lifted to save the economy from recession. There is not even an awareness of the risk that we face.
As I wrote last night:
Danny Blanchflower and I are the Mile End Road Economists, and we cooperate to spread messages such as this.
Sunak is not listening. He just wants to balance his budget, on the backs of the people of Ukraine, and the UK. Nothing else matters to him but his dogma.
I will be writing more about this over the next few days in the run-up to the Spring Statement (for which I will be in the Radio 2 studios, with Jeremy Vine). What I am already fearing is a repeat of his March 202 statement, where he wholly misread Covid. Now he is misreading the cost of living crisis, because like big business and the Bank of England, ordinary people do not matter in his equation.
The trouble is, he's got all his sums wrong, and those ordinary people will, I suspect, be coming back very hard on him in the next year as his desire to balance his budget breaks the finances of millions of households across the UK, which is what I anticipate.
And Ukraine won't forget either.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
One could have written something very similar in the mid-1920s when another imbecile – Churchill – insisted on moving back onto the “gold standard”. That move screwed the UK’s recovery from WW1 etc etc.
As for Sunak, his actions will benefit his mates and perhaps that is the message that needs to be got across, all tory action, all of the time is aimed at making the tories (the ones that count – not the vote fodder/serfs that vote tory on the basis of crumbs off the betters table) richer.
Marx always thought that the Uk would be the place where the revolution took place. Current crop of Tories are working real hard to make sure that happens. & from Liebore? dead silence.
The Labour silence is worrying
I have said before, and repeat, SKS’s Labour Party are proponents of what I call “flat-earther” economics, wedded to the pre-Copernican view of things before the Great Financial Crash of 2008.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for Reeves to come up with anything sensible – she only brings the extra seasoning of thuggishness (under Ed Miliband she promised to be tougher on benefit claimants than the Tories!!) to her flat-earther delusions.
Sunak is totally out of his depth.
It’s the same old same old. After all he’s only an ex-commercial banker.
Let’s hope its Tory MPs baying for his blood and their careers who bring him down to reality.
It’s the only way I can see this changing – especially if they get their new above inflation pay rise and no doubt pension contributions too.
It still astounds me though that people will tolerate this. Because you know, they might. Why?
Maybe it’s because we live in a society dominated by money. We celebrate it when it is plentiful and feel shame and inadequacy when we’ve not got enough. We have this cost of living crisis, Covid etc, and all it does is create fear which supresses critical thinking because everyone is wondering who will be the next P & O worker?
People will keep their heads down and hope they don’t attract unwelcome attention.
That’s how the ‘fear society’ we are in works.
PSR, ex-hedge fund manager. I have yet to see a hedge funder, except one who quit, understand macro issues. Tories seem to think that, if you understand micro, you will automatically understand macro. Nothing could be further from the truth. Being a hedge fund manager seems to make it even more difficult.
Agreed
The only get out clause I have on my factual inaccuracy Larry is this: do any of them (hedge fund or commercial banking) know anything about micro, macro and fiscal policy?
I don’t think they do, yet they’re portrayed as knowing better and being fit for purpose time after time.
There is no I in macro so they are not interested
Not to be pedantic but I think of commercial bankers as those who used to lend money to real businesses to allow them to invest, innovate and grow. They at least had some understanding of how real businesses worked. They all got exterminated in the 90s as the ‘investment’(ironically named) bankers took over with no interest in or understanding of how real business work. I saw it happen close up. The current lot only know how to buy and sell and make a margin for themselves. And sod the consequences.
Sunak comes from that school.
I saw that too
Baking changed completely
Those who knew price but not value took over
PSR,
Fear is the key, fear and insecurity. If you keep people scared enough that will put up with anything. Keeping us fighting with other, as with Brexit, has helped to keep us looking the other way whilst pockets are lined and rights diminished. In parts of the civil service massive redundancies happened in parallel with the decimation of facility time and the introduction of aggressive management styles, all to little opposition as all feared redundancy.
I imagine that the cost of living crisis will see yet more homes being repossessed and then become available, cheap, for the landlords and the renting market. Am I right in thinking that those who lose their homes to this unpleasant merry-go-round often still owe mortgages?
Spot on…
Regarding the P&O development. Of course the Tories are lying about what they knew & when they knew it. That said, this blast from the past suggests that the union was also culpable: What follows comes from a BTL in the Guardian:
In an email to union members, RMT leader Mick Cash voted urged union members and their families to : “….ignore the scare mongering of recent weeks and vote for hope over fear.” In the letter RMT General Secretary Mick Cash says: ” Millions of trade unionists and working people will be voting leave because they want the hope of a better future at work and at home.””Hope that we can be free to develop our industries and public services free from EU driven privatisation and deregulation.
The RMT was in favour of Brexit, one supposes some (many?) members voted in favour – & with the loss of some EU employment protection, said workers are now enjoying the “benefits” of “deregulation” which Mr Cash was/is in favour. Liebore and its unions need to take a long hard look at themselves and ask the question: are we really “in it” for “the workers” (or citizens) or are we in these positions cos it makes us feel good &…..(hat tip Mr Warren) allows us to spout:
“meaningless banality, where nothing means anything at all; a perpetually recycled box of stock sound-bites and slogans; shuffled and re-booted to fit the passing moment’s needs or convenient glib evasion, before moving on to the next event, safe in the security that every single word is so empty, so pointless, so bereft of substance, nobody will remember any of it by the time of the next newscast – or care” –
I’m looking at you Mr Cash & your recycled solgans – don’t look so good now do they? – tell me – how do you look your members in the face?
Mr Warren in his short piece was pointing at the tories – Liebore and the unions are mostly as bad. Pathetic politicos and union bosses parroting 2nd hand nonesense, all of them, all of the time.
Lexit was always a terrible idea