Danny Blanchflower tweeted this yesterday:
In one of our many exchanges of the day, I replied;
Of my two suggested answers, the debt enslavement issue has been the biggest reason, I suspect. The fear of the credit rating agency is very real.
However, when people literally cannot pay this winter, because they will not have the means to do so, that stranglehold will be broken. The credit rating of millions is going to be shattered in the months to come. And once shattered the fear of it will be broken. Then I cannot be sure what will happen.
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There’s also quite a lot of new laws about “dissent” in various forms. Convenient that.
Rather than some lengthy opinion, all I can comment to this is that I think you have absolutely nailed this point Richard.
If I could pose a related question: why have there not been demonstrations outside the homes of MPs? Or Cabinet ministers? This would, to some extent, focus the minds of politicos (maybe even make them fear a bit). But for that to happen would require organisation & at the moment that seems to be lacking – although the means to organise via a wide range of communication systems seems to have broadened compared to 2011.
In the case of the 2011 riots, the organisation at least in London was done by (so I understand) various local gangs who “cooperated” to deliver mayhem. Ultimately this was counter productive & simply allowed the authorities to prosecute lots of innocent people (I recall one person being “done” for taking a bottle of water) – thus strengthening the pressure cooker – as it were.
Which leaves the open question: what will be the spark that gets things going? & how to make sure that this time around there is a result?
Hunger
Cold
Insolvency
Loss of homes
This has been my suggestion: picket outside the homes of MPs or the Conservative club to make it personal. I regularly write to Chope and do get a reply but I take great care to be polite and have fact based evidence. Mostly i don’t have the time or energy to do that.
When they realise that it is their position at risk they will think twice (I hope so anyway).
Throughout the last 500 years one of the actors most feared by the rich has been the London mob.
Hannah Arendt suggested that Fascism is the rich plus the mob.
In Britain and the West in general the rich have almost perfected the art of using their control of the media so that the mob is now much more likely to be unwittingly acting as their street muscle rather than as any kind of crude democratic vanguard..
In such circumstances you would expect riots against attempts at genuine democratic reform, but laws repressing political opponents or increasing inequality to pass without incident.
That appears to be where we are now,
2 questions..who exactly are the rich and wealthy. where is the cut off ? And do you not think the safety net in the U.K. to be decent compared to many countries around the world?
Try the top 10%
It’s really not hard
In terms of £ what is the wealth the top decile have? If it is all in houses, which will be likely for retired people in the south East would you force them to sell their houses? Also house prices and Stockmarket prices fluctuate massively year to year, would you just have an arbitrary date to calculate assets each year? Also much wealth is tied up in unlisted privately run companies including family businesses passed on through generations. Who is going to work out what they are worth? Who is going to work out the price of family chattels again often passed through generations? For consistency all wealth has to be calculated
I have done this to often and am too tired to do it again
See the work I did on wealth tax in April 2020. It is linked in the wiki
II hesitated to mention this on this thread but in view of Paul’s Arendt quote I think it might be pertinent.
The Mail is now running a story that there has been a witch hunt against Johnson and that the Privileges Committee that will investigate his partygate lies is packed with anti Johnson MPs who are determined to bring him down. This is, of course, a slur on the integrity of the committee but it seems to me to be of a piece with its infamous ‘Enemies of the People’ headline a few years ago. They are working on inciting their readers to distrust the institutions of government . We know these institutions aren’t perfect, but they are all we have to stand between us and anarchy. Government is by consent and once that consent is withdrawn there can be no government.
So, it seems to me that they are attempting to recruit ‘the mob’ to the side of what they perceive to be the ‘elite’.
Whether they will succeed is a different matter, given Johnson’s low poll ratings, but who is leading a counter offensive?
If there are to be riots, which is a distinct possibility, where will the sympathies of the rioters lie?
Your question is a good one
But it will;l not be Mail readers rioting, I suspect
Interesting question about where the sympathies will be. I don’t know if we’re at the point of overall public support for riots yet, but the rise of Mick Lynch, and public support for the RMT strikes, is quite something. Surveys from June show support for strikes being nearly 50/50 (less for trains, more for airlines). It’s hard to find historical data, but this feels like a big shift from the past couple of decades.
Brandon Lewis on radio 4 and sky, this morning. Gabbling on about tax cuts as ‘the right way to go’, not responding to the questions or points raised. We are weeks away from a real crisis and there is no leadership.
Gordon Brown , on Sky, was much more convincing, but not, of course, in power.
There is a very helpful item on the BBC website
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62435432?fbclid=IwAR33OEzXtKS9GR0oaDrfSKQz-3C97wX0Dxx2u3ExfdoA8OpsfMnv0Eu25rM
Basically don’t not pay your energy bills. There is even a section on what to do if you cannot afford to pay – effectively, make sure your bill isa correct and cut cinsumption.
I w3onder who told them to print that?
The problem is the harm straight non-payment could cause
I think this may happen, but a more intelligent campaign would be better – asking for insolvency arrangements to deal with this instead
Worth looking at. Looks like the organisation needed to make a change has arrived:
https://twitter.com/eiecampaign/status/1556551243765514240?t=ne6BbEjH0FlTKYbLv6eJuw&s=09
Liebore could have done this – it speaks volumes about them/their attitudes that they did not.
I will be signing up & I will be donating.
Signed up.
Emailed my contacts and asked them to pass it on.
I remember Sharon Graham of Unite saying during the union’s leadership campaign that people should not look to any political party for redemption (or words to that effect) and I remember thinking “hmm is she limiting herself and the union to just the economic battles?” (Back then I supported Howard Beckett.) Looking back I recognise that she was admitting she had lost faith in politicians and the political process, including Labour, to fight for the interests of working people. The implication is that workers must fight directly for their interests themselves. She has since been much more openly critical of Labour and its complete lack of vision or policy on workers’ rights eg to a decent wage, decent housing, decent education, decent health, or even just food for their kids – and justifiably so. Unions and Labour are clearly re-assessing their relationship – and about time.
People really just can’t go on like this. Parliamentary party pantomime politics, as I like to call it, is over. The whole system is just completely f***ed. Politicians – your time is up. It’s the turn of PEOPLE to represent themselves directly, to organise and act. Here’s hoping this union and community-led campaign truly sticks it to this utterly venal and thoroughly corrupt neo-fascist government and all its works.
Richard, your blog both terrifies me (the crisis IS real and it’s NOW) and fills me with hope of change (alternatives DO exist). Thank you for all your hard work.
we can’t be far off when stuff like this is happening…
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/08/city-workers-get-double-digit-wage-rises-while-lowest-paid-see-1-increase
Yet where is the moral outrage from MP’s about this? Where is the posturing about embedding inflation? Which are Tory donors? I suspect it’s not the RMT.
I remember reading an article some years ago in New Scientist that historically civil unrest doesn’t immediately follow the initial shock – there’s invariably a lag of some years. My recollection is that this is to do with the consequences of the shock taking a while to filter through to people’s lives. This was written after the financial crisis, suggesting we’d be waiting a while to appreciate the full consequences. Are we now doing so?
Maybe we get the stress from 2008 now
I agree that markets do have that affect – they (with the use of credit) make people feel better off than they are.
But, there is another side to all of this and it can be named: Shame.
People don’t want to admit they are struggling; that they are not winners, that they are on the losing side. We are supposed to be ‘aspirational’ (I doubt it exists as a real word) – we tolerate the rich because we are supposed to be like them and we’re no good if we are not trying to be like them.
What once was something that bound people together, is now divisive and embarrassing. Which is why we swallow the lies of certain politicians and ideologies wholesale and hero-worship the very thing that makes us poor – wealth.
‘Fucked up’ does not even begin to describe this.
Pilgrim
I think you have a point. When I was still counselling I went to a great conference in Dartington Hall in Devon, entitled ‘Neo-liberalism and the cult of managerialism”. I had certainly seen the cult in action. People referred to counselling as they were struggling emotionally-often for not meeting targets or being in a team of four reduced from six, but expected to do the same amount of work etc
One of the Speakers was Paul Hoggett , a former professor at Bristol in the field of social policy or sociology but also a psychotherapist. A balance of the personal and the social context. He said, ‘I found I was seeing people for therapy for which my training and experience had not prepared me for. When he said that I paid close attention. His conclusion was that the system was using shame as a method of disciplining an educated work force.
While I don’t think that was the case everywhere, it made a lot of sense in relation to the people I was seeing.
As an historian I can see parallels with control in church dominated societies or even the Soviet bloc.
And in our own history the workhouse ( abolished in 1929 by Neville Chamberlain ) sought to instil a ‘work ethic’ so that people would do all they could not to be a burden on the rates.
As a teacher I saw kids being bullied for being poor basically. Indeed experienced some myself. I think there is a cultural link to the time going to the workhouse was a disgrace.
Thanks
I think you are right. You have summed up the attitude IDS brought to the situation, the attitude underlying Universal Credit. It is designed to make middle class “aspirers” out of working class “skivers”. And it shames those who do not measure up, punishing them with a poverty assumed to be deserved.
The goal of the ruling elite has always been to keep the working class so busy treading water, with long working hours, low pay, and financial insecurity, there is little time or energy remaining for insurrection.
Maybe, although I actually doubted that for a long time
I even doubt it of business now
But I no longer doubt it of politicians
Politicians and most of big business are not very aligned thee days
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/first-step-towards-a-general-strike-enough-is-enough-campaign-launches-331884/
Mick Lynch is on it. On the other hand Simon Jenkins in the Guardian is saying the economists have gone awol. Time to put him right, Richard? Although I do like his point that both Truss and Sunak must have studied the same economics at university. So what happened?
My big hope is that the demands become more specific
At present they are far too general
I think this is down to how Oxford university has taught economics. “Pretty, but unimportant.” All economics courses at undergraduate are a BA. A BA in economics is not the same as a BSc. And economics at oxford usually comes in a course like History or PPE. They are taught how to ignore economists and follow their instinct.
Few do the E in PPE
There is maths in it and they don’t like that
I’ve linked this before but no better time to repost it as it’s well overdue.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/England_riots