I have just posted this thread on Twitter. It actually began life as a blog post, but then I realised it suited both media, so it's gone there too:
It has to be said that things have a habit of not going to plan at present. I could not have guessed how 2020 would progress at the start of that year. I am expecting 2022 to be the same. A thread….
I began the year without a lot of optimism. But I did not really expect war in Ukraine, although the risk existed. I hung to the hope that Putin was not that callously stupid, but he was.
I similarly hung to a hope that the Tories would not really want to create a recession. I was wrong on that too. They are increasing interest rates, which is so absurd when it is obvious that demand is already being crushed, whilst Sunak's indifference to the crisis that is so obviously coming will do for him even if his own family's affairs do not.
Maybe I will be wrong on Le Pen as well, where I retain hope that the French might vote for Macron even if they do not like him, much.
And then there is Covid, where we are not, as someone said yesterday (and I cannot remember who), so much living with Covid but are instead living with an ideology of denial with regard to the reality of Covid.
Around the world populism is far from crushed. India, Hungary and the States prove that.
None of these are good signs. This government has contributed to all of them. It aided and abetted Russia and its oligarchs, and let Putin undermine democracy here just as Johnson wanted.
Brexit has encouraged Le Pen and made her toxic politics seem more plausible when they remain as offensive as ever.
But it is the UK domestic situation where in some ways I am most shocked, which is saying something given what is happening in Ukraine.
I did not expect a UK government to turn on its own population in the way that this one has done.
Despite years of preparation for the final assault of neoliberalism on ordinary people I simply had not anticipated that those in power in the Treasury and the Bank of England really cared so little.
What we now know is that they are willing to destroy the well-being of millions in this country to feed their dogmatic beliefs in a small state, balanced budgets and the power of markets to solve problems, for none of which is there any evidence.
I cannot predict the outcome of war in Ukraine, except that it will continue for much longer than anyone expected and with many more casualties, and refugees, which his government will continue to resist helping.
I have no clue what will happen in France, but the risk that it will go the way of Hungary looks to be real at present, and profoundly worrying.
I think I can safely predict that the Democrats will be trashed in the mid-term elections later this year and that will help no one.
I know Covid will not go away. When one in twelve have it, and reinfection is happening on a regular basis now with massive potential long term health impacts, the irresponsibility of the government on this issue will be one for the history books.
And what I am also now sure about is that the February GDP figures are not a blip: they are the sign of the recession that is to come. Frightened families are already cutting their spending as they face bills they do not know how to pay, and this can only get worse.
At first this will be called a cost-of-living crisis.
Then it will begin to be an unemployment crisis as the lack of spending begins to hit the leisure sector, first of all.
Then there will be a debt crisis.
And a housing crisis as both those with mortgages and who rent begin to lose their homes.
After that there may be a banking crisis.
All of which will be because the government has chosen to do nothing to help people facing the biggest economic crisis to hit families in living memory, and well beyond.
Sickness, homelessness, poverty, hunger, and the loss of hope are things I hoped we could avoid in the UK this year. But I now do not think that we can, all because of government decisions to impose them on millions.
None of this was necessary. But it's going to happen because the Tories want it to.
And what will they say in response? They'll claim there is nothing they can do about it “because we have to balance the books”.
Martin Lewis has said there might be civil unrest this year. I would never want that. But unless this government learns very, very quickly that it has to tackle this crisis that is of its own making by refusing to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, by letting Covid run riot and by increasing interest rates then I think Martin is right.
What will happen then? I do not know. But with an authoritarian government in power I am worried about their potential reaction.
The world beyond our borders is very dangerous right now. But it's grim here too. 2022 is already turning out badly.
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I’m just off to the roof…..I may be gone a while…
Richard, please counter this with something a little more optimistic
What?
A reference to “Don’t Jump Off The Roof Dad” by the late and great Tommy Cooper.
I can see the same old mantra being called upon. “The best way out of poverty is work.” and it’s still believed despite plenty of evidence that it isn’t.
Add to this list of woes the collapse of the NHS and Social Care ( though perhaps the Leisure staff made redundant will be forced to become carers with the new even more punitive work requirement). As for the opposition to all this and hoping for any sort of better future – Starmer now tweeting that XR protesters should be arrested and injunctions imposed to stop disruption.
I wish Labour could see their role is not to be nice Tories
… and to think that when I got up the sun was shining and all seemed well with the (my tiny) world.
Unfortunately, you are right; 2022 is already grim for many and will get grim for many more.
Sorry
Quite nice here too
Blossom looking good
It’s hard to disagree with what you say. People starting to cash-out pensions to raise cash for ‘essential expenditure’; very bad. And then we add demographics to the mix. This piece from March https://edwest.substack.com/p/children-of-men-is-really-happening?s=r is very interesting/worrying.
At least the temperature is warmer outside.
Phew………………………………….!
In France, in many ways I would like to see Le Pen win if only to rub the rest of the French pro-Thatcherite elite’s noses in it.
France has been at war with so-called Neo-lib modernity (there’s nothing modern about it by the way, its just a charter for the return to medieval fiefdoms) for some time and I cannot but feel that they are being ground down slowly bless them as are the Germans. Good luck to the French – I do hope that they keep their revolutionary principles – minus the guillotine of course.
Indeed the only answer lies in some epiphany in the world elites that the Neo-lib way is plain wrong and counter productive and does not actually work. It is divisive .
Markets are just extractive the way they are set up now – they are not solving problems as the Neo-libs insist – not even the artificial problems like this idea that we never have enough money to invest and improve things when obviously the money is needed from somewhere.
But you are right to centre on the domestic crisis caused by the Government. It is the further acts of self harm that will have people reeling this time and we can only hope it will be enough to put the Tories at risk at the next election.
But then again I remain deeply worried that the world we are entering in the UK is one of cold, cruel orthodoxy of want.
And this can only ever beat people down.
However, as long as markets pretend that everything is OK and still advertise themselves silly trying to sell us stuff, this where Neo-liberalism will possibly undo itself because they are going to make so many people feel unhappy and inadequate as they grapple with the cost of living crises and keeping up. The haves and have nots will be polarised and anger might surface as Mr Lewis surmises. The idea of being a ‘aspirational society’ might end up working like a failed dam – at first a few chinks here and there open up then the whole thing will collapse under its own weight and…………….fail.
This could really cause some problems for the Tories and society as a whole.
As for Covid, I think that the risk remains of another version at some stage catching us out.
But the big risk is the human capacity for endurance and putting up with things and accepting our lot. Remember – this is what led to religion did it not? A coping mechanism in the face of the faceless forces of unfairness.
And finally my thoughts on war and the Ukraine.
Russia has made me think a lot. I think the West has been suffering under a self delusion that has lasted from WWII that there has been peace in the world.
This is total bollocks.
We’ve had so many conflicts around the world since WWII – too many to mention – yet somehow we’ve deceived ourselves because a lot of the conflicts have not taken place in America and in Western Europe (although America in particular is implicated in offshoring its wars).
We’ve taken our eye off the ball I think and tended to look at the world from a position of relative ignorance, comfort and superiority. But the signs have been there for some time that all is not well – remember Yugoslavia?
But also we have conflated capitalism with democracy and used capitalism as we would use a sticking plaster on a gangrenous leg to kid ourselves that the human race, democracy etc., is advancing. Rubbish. Delusional.
The real issue with the world is human history – the constant reforming of maps, territory, raw materials and what remains in human memory (often painful) afterwards waiting to be exhumed by unprincipled politicians in cahoots sometimes with corporations and exploitation.
The world never stopped being a powder keg after WWII. That’s the problem. Just because this latest war is near Europe does not make it worse. It was ALWAYS bad whoever was suffering – Vietnam, the Congo, Yemen – God! – the list could go on and on.
Consider therefore that the Ukraine situation is normal – not exceptional.
Ukraine is not a ‘European nation’ OK? History will not let it be a European nation.
Remember folks – we are in a Neo-liberal age – and Neo-liberalism negates history ( such as everything we learnt as a species about monopolies, debt and the abuse of money-power) – we chose to ignore history and proclaim Ukraine as European as we have done many times over with other countries on the continent.
There is a superb documentary by Werner Herzog called ‘Into the Inferno’ about volcanoes. And the end of it (it is stunningly filmed and remarkable how many of them there are around the world) he mediates on lava, earthquakes, eruptions and pyroclastic flows.
His conclusion is that the peace, harmony, tranquility of the planet’s surface can only ever be considered as transient, momentary and at the whim of deeper historical geological and physical forces beyond our control and even comprehension, deep beneath the planet that have been there since it was first created. What he saw made Herzog look again and reconsider reality and re-evaluate what is important perhaps? In actual fact, the basis of the world is malevolent destructive forces held at bay and finely balanced.
There is a lesson there somewhere. We have also chosen to ignore the subtleties of human history and lessons learnt from mistakes on the earth’s surface for far too long because we have been manipulated by agendas too often aimed at short term gains called ‘money’.
We’ve chosen instead to walk the earth like Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden thinking that we can just help ourselves to whatever we like because it has been provided for us to exploit and forgetting about that bit about the apple and things called ‘consequences’.
We have forgotten – or perhaps never appreciated as a species – just how finely balanced everything is – the earth, human societies, the environment. We’ve been complacent because of some weird ideas we have about progress and rate our abilities far above what they actually are. I think it is called ‘hubris’.
In short, we need to be able to learn how to look at reality again and deal with it properly.
If only the simple point – that this disaster really is goverment’s own choice could be generally understood. Even the opposition parties havent fully bought into the idea and seem to go along with the culture of denial on covid and ‘balancing the books’ mantra on spending.
Richard
Take some time off, go and have some fun and have a laugh, touch base with your family and go cold turkey for at least a week with the news. Have some time to yourself we all appreciate your dedication to a fairer more hopeful world but it’ definitely not a good idea for your mental well being to worry all the time about the problems of billions of strangers and quite often we cannot do much about it.
I do all those things anyway
Why does everyone think I work all the time?
I don’t by a long way
Opinion is devided on the subject;
You say you don’t work too much,everone else says you do.
Take Care
You have not the slightest idea how hard or much I work
I know you are opinionated on matters of which you have no knowledge
I don’t think you always work as you’ve made it clear over the years that you have interests – railways, poetry, a wind instrument, walking – all of which require time.
But it let be said please Richard: you crank out a lot of work – good work at that. If it wasn’t any good you’d have not been granted any professorships for example. Good work is hard work usually, especially when one is ‘swimming up stream’ against a tide of lazy orthodoxy.
Having said that, if people think you are doing too much or that it is getting to you, it forms a basis to undermine you and that’s not welcome.
And the other matter is indignation. Who in their right mind at the moment cannot be really feel something at this time – anger, despair insulted even – that’s how I feel.
If this was another age, I’d be inviting Johnson and Sunak out onto a hidden common somewhere at some un-Godly hour with a rapier or flintlock pistol and having my satisfaction Sir!
It’s amazing that too many expect others to be so calm about the abuse of power that we are seeing in plain sight at the moment by this ‘non-Government’.
Agreed
I may do a blog on this
We have a Government with a whopping majority elected by a minority of voters. An official opposition, which despite the support of the majority of Labour members, does not believe our voting system is massively flawed, and thanks to Patel, is getting worse (Mayoral elections revert to FPTP). A (more or less) united Hungarian opposition failed to defeat one of the World’s most horrible populists, this, after Orban rigged the election system in his favour and controlled all the messaging. Democracy is already dead in the US, if it ever existed. Witness even today’s Guardian piece on how Republicans want to impeach judge for not letting them fix boundaries in their favour.
It’s clear that Neoliberalism and democracy do not mix. But whilst neoliberals work hard to undermine and destroy democracy, ‘democrats’ barely challenge the neoliberal hegemony (Blair, Starmer?). Whilst this continues, progressives will continue to be locked out of democracy.
So along with Carbon lock-in we have neoliberal lock-in. We have to change tack before its too late. This could be permanent.
I’ve no easy answers but I’ve all but abandoned working for my political party (the Greens), having stood against Nicky Morgan in 2017. We simply have to align ourselves for the fight above all others – to get a Government which represents the people – ALL the people, not the oligarchs, not the non-doms, not big oil.
So here’s a positive – we could win the next general election, if, like during the worst of COVID, we worked together. And here’s an ‘urge’, please visit, and support the work of Compass, GetPRDone, Labour For A New Democracy, Unlock Democracy and similar internal groups within the Greens, LibDems, Plaid and SNP.
And have Hope. Thousands do – let’s connect, get the job done, get PR done.
Keep up the good work everyone.
As someone who’s been disenfranchised by FPTP my entire life I wholeheartedly agree. The only election where my vote ever counted was to the EU Parliament, only for the Green party MEP I helped elect get removed less than a year later thanks to the UK’s exit from the EU due to the brazen lies of the Leave campaign.
The only chance is for progressives to work together electorally to defeat the corrupt, cynical Tories who are busy rigging the voting system to ensure they are always in power. And then enact PR.
If Labour refuses to do this then they will prove once and for all that they are not a progressive party at all.
On a technical point, what is meant by ‘The Treasury’? We’re always being told ‘The Treasury’ won’t wear this or that. Are we talking about ministers or civil servants? This government likes to tell us that the civil service is a hotbed of socialism and works against it all the time (I realise the ideology involved in these statements), yet ‘The Treasury’ ‘s view on most things seems to be as right wing as they come. I covered the government’s tax policies for many years as a journalist, yet I could never work out what ‘The Treasury’ meant.
The Treasury is a euphemism for a worldview that says the books must be balanced, money must be saved, gold reserves must be preserved, government must be small. Markets know best, the state must not back winners and on and on….and it infects almost all who seem to work there
The same worldview appears to have affected those in the Home Office in recent years too.
Agreed