I posted the following thread on Twitter last night, and reproduce it here even though it clearly attracted little interest there.
I am incredibly worried that the scale of the crisis that we are now facing in our economy is really not being appreciated, and that as a result people on the left, as well as the right, are bringing their dogmatic biases to suggestions for addressing what people are still referring to as a cost of living crisis.
We are not facing a cost of living crisis. We are facing the risk of mass poverty.
And the consequence is not just that people will both starve and freeze, whilst others will have to choose between the two, but that we face a massive recession as well. That will happen as households close down all their discretionary spending with enormous knock-on effects in the economy, from job losses to business failures to debt crises, and then a banking crisis as rents and mortgages go unpaid.
Of course, I may be wrong, but I cannot see any way that millions of households can meet the costs they are going to face in the next year unless the government spends £50 billion or more supporting them by cutting the cost of domestic and road fuel. And so wide is this need, that to suggest that no policy should be pursued if anyone better off benefits or if a single litre of carbon fuel gets a subsidy as a result is, in my opinion, to be as indifferent to suffering as Sunak is being.
So, this is what I wrote:
I'm seeing some confused comments from people on the left of centre on appropriate reactions to the current cost of living crisis. It's OK to be green, of course (I am) and to want to beat inequality (I do) but in the short term we have to beat inflation. A short thread….
I am troubled that some obviously green commentators are saying we should not be subsidising fossil fuel prices right now. Trust me, I want to cut emissions. But I don't want people to starve, freeze, lose their livelihoods, and collapse into debt, so subsidies are essential.
That's because it's not green to persecute people for the profit exploitation that is driving up all energy costs right now. Instead we have to buy time to put in place policy to beat that exploitation whilst also proposing all the green remedies needed to wean us of fossil fuels.
We can only buy that time and keep most households out of crippling debt and prevent the worst recession in a lifetime in the UK if we subsidise fuel prices now. And given we weren't going to transition to sustainability in the next year anyway, that's a price worth paying.
But, I stress, it‘s only a short term fix. Of course, it is. It solves none of the structural problems. And it is no excuse for kicking the can down the road. We have to make a rapid transition to a Green New Deal and sustainability in the time this buys or the money is wasted.
Wasted how? By simply rewarding the energy companies for their abuse, of course. And we need an energy strategy that ends that for good – which is why one part of controlling prices now has to be a policy of ending the fake energy markets we have which have cost a fortune.
Again this takes time – and let's not pretend otherwise. No problem of this scale was solved in a day. Keeping people out of deep poverty whilst we address it is fair, isn't it? So why are people of green persuasion saying we must not subsidise fuel whilst we do that?
Again, why are people who want greater equality saying we must do nothing that helps the better off when the inflation they will tolerate as a consequence will always hit the poorest households in the UK hardest? Almost three times harder in my data analysis.
Being ‘pure' and saying the rich mustn't benefit is to say we mustn't tackle the generic cause of inflation that is price increases. Given there's is no level of benefit or tax change big enough to beat this inflation for anyone in society by itself we have to subsidise instead.
So, being ‘pure' on this issue is another way of saying we'd rather spite the least well off just to make sure the richest gain nothing – which is absurd. In the face of a crisis like this some solid down to earth pragmatism on the policy recommendations to be made is required.
And since I reckon 75% of UK households are going to be hit pretty hard by energy price changes and knock on inflation – and that's before recession and job losses kick in – pretending small changes to NIC or universal credit solve this is totally wishful thinking.
I'm not saying principles do not matter. My desire for a sustainable, fair, accountable economy in which all pays their taxes drives all I do. But for heaven's sake, in the face of a crisis on the scale of the one we're facing let's not let being perfect be the enemy of the good.
Right now I want people to be able to heat their houses enough, and feed themselves and their children, enough. I want them, to have some pleasures in life. And I want an economy that is not crippled by people having no money to spend on anything but energy.
If we do not achieve the goal of keeping the economy going for the time being by subsidising energy prices so we can beat inflation first and solve the problems that caused it immediately thereafter we do not care about the vast majority of people in this country.
Instead all we will care about is dogma, and that puts us in the same place as the Chancellor. And it also makes us tacit supporters of the only people who will survive this coming crisis without support – and that is the wealthiest 10% or so in the country.
So, let's face this crisis by showing that we can be pragmatic and that the wellbeing of people matters to us more than anything else – and then we might win the support of everyone, which will be needed to deliver sustainability and greater equality.
My appeal is simple: if the left is to matter please put people first and let's stop putting dogmatic posturing into short term policy recommendations that if adopted would lead to untold misery for millions, all to make us feel a little purer about our left-of-centre selves.
This is the time to care above all else, and with longer term thinking we can show we're the owners of the arguments that can solve this crisis. Dogmatism is not the basis for any of those arguments if they're going to work in the real world. Pragmatic caring is what is required.
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If you’re a neofeudalist though, yearning for the days of oligarchs and peasants, lords and serfs, mass poverty isn’t a problem, it’s a positive outcome. It’s a sign your policies are working. If you’re going to create Charter Cities around manufacturing centres and within these you want manufacturing done so cheaply it can compete with China, you want people to be so badly off they’ll gratefully accept the new workhouses. Given his previous behaviour, I doubt we can expect any help from Sunak.
Yes, you are right.
It is “price” that alters behaviour. In normal times we need to raise that price through taxation to alter behaviour that has a damaging impact on others/environment.
But these are not normal times; prices are sharply higher and they are already be choking demand. To raise taxes (and without action, taxes would rise in cash terms) would add insult to injury.
Fuel taxes are there to bend people not break them; if the Left/Greens look on at the suffering without compassion they will pay the price at the ballot box and ultimately damage their own cause.
That’s my fear
Holding onto high principles during a time of crisis would be a mistake. However on the left it is largely academic as this isnt where power and policy direction sits. If we are to avoid the levels of pain and economic disruption that you predict then those on the right have a key role to play. They need to adopt some of your proposed pragmatism and apply pressure to those in power. At the moment we have a government that simply doesn’t listen. Instead it relentlessly pursues an ideology deliberately intended to push us all towards economic hardship and insecurity. Changing this is what matters most.
Well said. There needs to be a practical route to a principled end to greatly reduce the forthcoming economic turmoil.
My solution remains as always, but with constant review and update, a decent UBI + Green Deal Sustainability + Resource Security (greatly reduced reliance of imports and increase resilience in the energy, food and housing sectors) all under an MMT lens. But security and resilience must come first coupled with a practical plan to ensure everyone survives (and even thrives) in the meantime.
My concern is wider. The greatest poverty of all is the political leadership of this grotesque, distorted Conservative Party, a sewer of narrow, neoliberal self-interest and political false-flags, propagandised by a client media, now found-out; all held in the grasping hands of a Party funded by who knows where the money comes. They even think they can still win the next election. Here is a brief list. You can add your own Conservative failures to the list.
1. We have a PM whom everyone knows is unfit for office. But the war in Ukraine provides the Party with the cheap, opportune excuse to claim the crisis makes it dangerous to change leader in a crisis. This is not true, especially of Conservative history. If it was true Churchill would never have replaced Chamberlain in 1940, the darkest crisis Britain has ever faced. Modern Conservatives, following their own logic, would have stuck with Chamberlain. Hoist with their own petard, they not only blame everyone else for failing the country in office, but claim their failure makes them the only people competent to find the answers. Whats not to love?
2. The PM claims to be the leader of the opposition to Putin. He also claims that Britain’s ‘heroic’ Brexit shares important features with Ukraine’s resistance. Ukraine wants to join the EU, but in Conservative-land, this is a mere bagatelle. Conservative hearts swell with pride. Alexander Stubb, a past PM of Finland, a country with a 700+ mile border with Russia, and that lives ever ready for the worst under the shadow of Putin has this blunt, brutally frank view of Conservative Britain: “This idea about ‘Global Britain’ is as true as ‘peaceful Russia’,” according to Stubb. “Simply utter rubbish, to put it diplomatically. To claim that Boris Johnson ‘has taken a lead globally in standing up to Putin’ is an illusion only possible in Brexit la la land.” Ah, British Conservatism: Whats not to love?
3. The PM, the Conservative Party and Britain all have a serious problem with the degree to which Russian oligarchs and the degree to which they have established their power and influence in the culture and even key institutions of the State. The Conservative Government was slow to sanction the oligarchs. The connections between the Party and oligarchs are yet to be adequately scrutinised in a public arena. Whats not to love?
4. Britain has failed either to understand or challenge Russia’s developing strategy, effectively to re-establish the outline of the Warsaw Pact in Europe, that now threatens Eastern Europe. We complacently did nothing in 2014 (Crimea, then Donetsk); in 2008 (fought a war with Georgia; in Britain 2006 (assassination of Alexander Litvinenko by radio-active polonium in the public lounge of a Mayfair Hotel- with scarcely any serious consequences); or the dress rehearsal for Mariupol, 199-2000 (Battle of Grozny). We had clear evidence of the nature of the Putin regime, and did nothing. Instead we invited in the oligarchs, and anyone with £2m for a Tier 1 ‘Golden Visa’. Whats not to love.
5. Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe has already made clear that she should have been home from arrest in Iran six years ago. She said the Iranian’s made clear to her “in week three” that she would go home when the British paid the £400m back to Iran for undelivered armaments in 1979; and kept their promise. She was less forgiving of the British for telling her she would soon be home, and left her there for six years. Could the payment of £400m to Iran have anything at all to do with the Ukraine war, and the oil and energy crisis? Of course not. Whats not to love?
6. We have an energy crisis in Britain that has demonstrated that our whole energy strategy is inadequate and not fit for purpose. We do not have a robust, efficiently planned solution to the problem consequent on our failure to resilience plan, because the British Government has been asleep at the wheel. Johnson has been too busy attending parties and oligarch networking events. The PM’s solution to the energy problem is nuclear energy, which has a known difficult, long term security and waste risk, and a cost that makes it so expensive, over so long an unplannable period, it is impossible fully to cost the disposal solutions, or even determine best method of long-term secure disposal. On future nuclear, Hinkley Point C was first planned in 2008, construction began in 2018, and power will begin (if no further delays) in 2026 (nearly two decades from first to last – at best). This is not a form of solution fit for this crisis. We therefore have nothing substantive from the Conservatives but bluff; they are groping blindly for an energy policy ‘on the hoof’. Whats not to love?
7. From the early 2000s the Post Office, turning from its splendid history as a great national service that was trusted by all, into a typical Conservative ‘free market’ operation, managed to prosecute over 700 workers for fraud. Decent, respectable, ordinary, people were imprisoned, found guilty, bankrupted, ruins, reputations destroyed; all over the country in serial prosecutions, without anyone, anywhere challenging the corporate legitimacy of the Post Office, or its defective computer software. Nobody in our legal system noticed the strange pattern of verdicts emerging; because we no longer have anyone, anywhere scrutinising anything. There is no profit in it. Nobody in Government either noticed or cared. In 2022 the mess is still being cleared, and in many cases compensation for ruined lives has still to be paid. The Post Office cannot afford the cost of its free enterprise disaster. Nobody has yet been prosecuted for the catastrophe, all of it done essentially in the name of ‘market forces’, free enterprise and the privileges automatically gifted to corporate business in Britain today. It is the worst scandal of its kind in history that sullies the reputation even of the law, that served the egregious failures of this gigantic corporate fiasco. Whats not to love?
8. In 2017 the Grenfell fire destroyed a tower block in the heartland of Conservative Kensington and Chelsea, because of defective external cladding. We didn’t have this problem in the 1960s or 1970s, when most tower blocks were built, but when we still had some viable, functioning building regulations. In 2022 we still do not have proper solutions for the Grenfell victims, or any answer to the issue of responsibility for the state of our building regulations, or the cladding potentially on thousands of multi-storey properties in England. The journal ‘Inside Housing’ (2020) estimated in England, that there were 274,000 high-rise flats and up to 657,000 people affected by serious cladding issues. So far there is no clear financial solution to those in many of these flats. They face the risk of fire, or potential bankruptcy to repair the problem; a dreadful dilemma. This is quite obviously an abject failure, not least of the ‘free market’, but ultimately of Government. The victims of this failure are still paying the price. How does this happen? Free marketeers in Government have exploited the media and reduced all regulations, however vital to all of us; under the principle that all ‘Red Tape’, must be a mad excess typical only of the EU. They are still writing-up ‘Red Tape’ stories now, under the shadow of Grenfell. We don’t need building or any other regulations. We are British. We are free. Whats not to love?
I shall stop here, not because the list is complete, but because it has scarcely begun. Sonnet 43 provides the bizarre heart of the affection which elderly or misled Conservatives have for their Party and Government, no matter what; literally, no matter what. Conservatives still voted for Chamberlain, even in 1940.
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…..”: I have given eight reasons, but you can surely find your own. Whats not to love?
Thanks
Very well, and powerfully, written, both John and Richard.
an excellent evisceration, thank you!
Points 3,4,6,8 all relate to complex systems – which can & do fail (as you have shown).
The tories for perhaps 40 years, have preferred simplistic/ideological approaches (usually dressed up a “common sense”) to these complex problems. The tories also do not like “experts” as the tory imbecile Gove said.
So, one thus has an almost never ending list of tory disasters. Thing is, the disasters only ever affect Uk peasants, not the tories (& their meeja supporters). So nothing changes.
As for Churchill, yet another imbecile, the man that saved the UK in its darkest hour was Dowding & true to form, he was sacked less than two months after the Battle of Britain. (Len Deighton’s “Fighter” describes the whole remarkable story).
Like
I will face the brunt and it’s terrifying..
High functioning aspergers wrecked any chance of a career let alone ability to hold down a ‘normal’ job
I’m not feckless or lazy I’m above average intelligence and failed entirely because of aspergers..
Now reaching middle age I cling on to a deteriorating privately rented property (it’s not maintained above the minimum legal requirement, why bother!) at a currently affordable price, because there is NOWHERE to rent in my area for a single person under £800 per month
Not a single suitable property for miles in any direction!! A mortgage for the same amount would equate to some very nice properties
The fear of homelessness and poverty is thus ever present, permeates every moment of every day of existence
Like many many others I’ve arrived at the mindset of.. well if I hit a fork in the road, there’s alwas the escape route of suicide
And many many have done so, or starved or otherwise taken themselves out.. the government is trying to bury all evidence that it’s happening, and the culture they have developed of poverty x fear (eg see benefitsandwork news, or DNS)
Like a sanitised Holodomor, the government is committing genocide through attrition..
I’m not being dramatic.. look at the T4 Aktion program – the pre-cursor to the holocaust. It’s startling to compare the parallel in numbers who’ve died through austerity and attrition in the UK in recent years..
So this approaching tsunami of poverty really caps off 12 years of Tory hostility and indifference to suffering
For me one hope to escape the trap is to get into higher education – not without its own risks. Richard I may probe you for suggestions on which economics course to pursue
And godwilling there is an election soon and this disturbing and corrupt regime is replaced!
Paul
I am so sorry to hear this – and of your stress
Higher education is an option – and as a mature student you have a good chance of getting in
Is economics the right course though? It’s so far removed from the real world. Is politics or accounting better? It depends on what you want to do with it.
Go well
Richard
Sorry for the doom and gloom, just putting it out there for how it is for many, many people in Britain today. One of the richest economies in the world.. so they say!
WRT undergraduate courfes I’ve a natural affinity for math and economics, and a personal ethical ‘vision’. Would love to have a voice influencing policymaking however tangentially (‘social media influencer’? haha.. or within academia). Do worry that post-grad quals funding might be needed to get any traction with it at my age..
Courses considered to date have academic direction fron LSE delivered by Uni of LDN. Economics Bsc (likely + Politics)… Data Science and Business Analytics is another interest. Will look at Accounting.
Thank you for the kind words and being on Team Healthy 🙂
Paul,
I hesitate to give advice (what do I know?), but your remarks were heartfelt.
You are never, ever too old. Go for it. My third, post-grad degree was taken at the age of sixty-five, after I retired from a business career in the madhouse that was/is commercial Britain. I would strongly advise only; if you can find an advisor who is ‘sympatico’, it makes a world of difference to the enrichment of the process. Not easy to find, but at least worth seeking; especially in your circumstances. Whatever you do, make sure it is something you are passionate to do, work hard and express what you believe, against the tide if need be, albeit at times choose your words with care and prudence.
Good luck.
John your advice is appreciated, listened to and fully taken on board.
Thank you very much for your kind wishes and encouragement!
And I have progressed things with my very good admission counsellor who is very ‘sympatico’ and supportive.
PS going against a bad tide is something that comes naturally (I think it’s an ‘aspie trait’), but cautiously. Including when formerly working for large corporates : I had a few gigs in key positions at a younger age to observe corporate culture and behaviour including at the core of a high street bank HQ and a big pharma. Some of the stories I could tell.. and sometimes do..
Well, we can certainly add a ninth reason to the excellent list above for the Tories to love our times – the rampant price gouging that is coming about from the energy sector and just about anything else.
What a time to be rentier or a monopolist? Conditions are just about perfect I would say – they are green lit all the way. Our only reason to exist is to fill the pockets of others and not quibble about the price. Neo-liberal market authoritarianism has arrived as it was always going to do, because that is all it ever was in the first place.
Will someone please give Richard Murphy a column in a national newspaper?
I have one, in Scotland