I posted this thread on Twitter this morning:
It's indisputable that the Queen's death marked the end of an era. It also creates two empty spaces. The royal family must try to fill one. The Tory party has created the other, much more worrying, void. A thread…..
I have no idea what the royal family will do next. It is not my great concern. I will let others fret about that, sure in the knowledge that they will, and that there will ample nastiness to come. That is the way of the tabloid media, as we all know.
My great wish over the weekend was that neoliberalism might have departed with the Elizabethan era. That is not going to happen. We have Liz Truss instead, a prime minister of two weeks.
Politics has, supposedly, been suspended for most of that period, but that's not how it feels. It's likely Truss has already committed to £100 billion plus a year to support energy bills over the next two years.
And it seems very likely Truss will also commit to £30 billion of tax cuts, very largely for the best off, this week in a combination of reductions to national insurance and corporation tax.
On top of that, the Treasury is now very obviously laying trails for the creation of twelve ‘low tax zones' that considerably upgrade the ‘freeport' policy of Johnson and Sunak, with seeming near tax haven status going to the designated areas.
At the heart of this is dogma. That is astonishing. That's because we only have to go back to Cameron to find a Conservative PM, or in other words, a man without dogma willing to peddle any old story to perpetuate his party in power, but never believing in anything.
That's what a true Conservative is: a pragmatic defender of the status quo and the power relationships implicit in it. Via Brexit, the ERG, the decline of UKIP and the rise of Britannia Unchained, plus the drive towards kleptocracy, everything has changed in the Tories.
The far-right has taken a strong hold on part of the party. The Brexit wing is deeply xenophobic. Little placates it. Its aim was to divide, in the basis of exit or remain, but with the division going much deeper than that, and remains when Brexit has so obviously failed.
Johnson gave the kleptocrats a go. The residue of that group remains, with more maybe headed for the Lords. The aim was to divide, once more. There were those within the ruling elite, who gained enormously from Johnson, and those without. Mistrust is his legacy.
The old Conservatives have largely been expelled. Rory Stewart appears to be best chums of Alastair Campbell. The neoliberal compromise that has governed for forty years is out in the wilderness. The division between traditional Conservatives and their party is massive.
And now we have a form of hardcore Manchester School nineteenth-century capitalism that believes that so-called free markets, absent of government regulation, are the route to prosperity. This is where the tax-cutting and freeport mantra comes from.
This time the division is between rich and poor, with a profound bias to the rich, and those areas to be favoured as tax havens and those that will not. As ever in the modern Tory party the aim is division. All that changes is where the dividing lines are drawn.
Despite the massive changes in direction over just six years it is said that all these varying, deeply divisive, types of supposed Conservatism are capable of reconciliation within a single political party, creating the coalition that enables it to govern.
Bluntly, I doubt that. The only thing that ever enabled the Tories to rule was an absence of dogma. Without a belief system the party could always let its membership and the country project onto it whatever they wished that it might think, and that was the basis of its support.
But since 2015 the Tories have begun to think things. First, the xenophobes won. Then the kleptocrats. And now it's the hardcore free marketeers. No wonder we have been changing prime minister so often. But, more seriously, these groups really do not agree with each other.
There is little that the Brexiteers can really gain from Truss. She might taunt the EU over Northern Ireland. She may say something about migration. But the hard-core Brexiteers are unlikely to get much of a kick out of a low tax zone in Great Yarmouth. They don't do economics.
And whilst the tax cuts that are going to be announced and the tax breaks that freeports might provide should appeal to the kleptocrat class, they are available to all, in principle, unlike the PPE contracts that favoured only a few. So they're unlikely to buy into this agenda.
And, candidly, most traditional Tory supporters must be having nightmares about the policies Truss is proposing. That partly because they will rightly think she will be trashing the public finances. It's as if she was trying to lay waste to them.
And they will know the freeport policy is unsustainable because it will create administrative nightmares for tax, employment law, and administration, all of which most in business (the tax abusers apart) will hate, and wish to end as soon as possible.
As for the energy support package, it is already too late to likely save a great many small businesses. If this is what Tory dogma brings many who were previously willing to believe in Tory competence will now abandon a party seemingly intent on destruction.
The party itself may not even tolerate this for long, most especially in the Lords, but quite possibly on the back benches of the Commons as well, to which Truss has sent so many potential enemies with the experience to counterattack.
In summary, the Brexiteers hijacked the Tories and have created mayhem at enormous cost. The kleptocrats have destroyed faith in the integrity of government and now the Truss faction of hardcore free market dogmatists are in charge. They will try to wreck us too.
But what they will leave is a void in politics. The coalition that is the Tories cannot survive these continual reinventions for much longer when each has left a core of bruised remnant of members angry that their own coup attempt has failed.
The greatest challenge facing the royal family is trying to remain the glue that holds an incoherent and illogical Union of nations together.
For the Tories the greatest challenge will be trying to hold the Conservative Party together when it has its fourth leader in a row intent on destruction of value as their primary modus operandi.
The failure of the Union is quite possible, and is now widely talked about, as if the countries of the UK are already trying to come to terms with the inevitable.
Sometime soon the imminent collapse of Tories will become apparent. But when it does occur it is not clear who, how, or what fills that void. And that is deeply dangerous because how English politics works without the Tories is unknown.
But as serious, if Labour continues as it is then the majority who now believe in rejoining the EU are left without a major party in a two-party system that they can support. Nor, in England, the Green's apart, is there a left-of-centre party. Labour has abandoned that role.
So when the Tories collapse, as they likely will, the void is even bigger. That means are in a dangerous era with the most dangerous PM of my lifetime in charge.
Of course, we could see a democratic revival. We might get a Labour government intent on genuine political reform to prevent fascism. We may see new parties emerging with the same intent. There is no sign of either, as yet.
Alternatively, the rump of the Tories may pick up the fascist reigns. That is entirely possible. Voids get filled, often undesirably.
The post-Elizabethan era is going to need a lot of luck. Politically its pathways, at least in England, but much less in the other nations of what for now is a Union, look very dangerous.
It will take co-ordinated action by all real democrats to save England. One has to hope Labour might do its duty. If not, we need to worry, greatly.
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A radio discussion of the far right party in Sweden – mentioned that most European countries have them – and ‘and we had UKIP’. Didnt follow through with the fact that UKIP is now in government with a Tory label. Am not as optimistic as you that Tories might implode – hope they do but…if the Garter King of Arms is still in post after 600 years – not sure.
You say that the historic Tory key to success is to have no ideology. Labour now seem to be trying to do that – except , as you say they are still slaves to neo liberalism in economics.
If only they could simply say – if we can to that brilliantly organised funeral we can do the same with the NHS – and challenge the country – and the government to take inspiration from how brilliant we can be at organising and delivering if we really want to… Instead it will probably be ‘ oh look we arranged a spectactacular funeral so we we must still be very special and still great power, so everything must be ok as we are’ .
The British Conservative party has been dragged to the nationalistic right by UKIP entryism, and Johnson’s defenestration of traditional Conservatives before 2019. But in Europe the nationalistic right is a threat in many places other than just Sweden, unfortunately. Macron beat Le Pen in the French presidential election again this year, but she gathered millions more votes than in 2017, and she leads the second largest party in the Assemblée nationale behind Macron’s Renaissance. The weakness of the traditional more centrist French parties makes the former National Front a significant treat. The AfD have more than 10% of the seats in the Bundestag, and they have significant regional representation, particularly in Saxony and Brandeburg. Vox have more than 10% of the deputies in the Cortes Generales, Giorgia Meloni may lead the “Brothers of Italy” to significant electoral success this weekend. And that is without considering the dominance of the right-wing nationalist governments in Poland or Hungary.
Freeports create a trade barrier within a countries border. Instead of freeing business from the burden of the state it is just another layer of bureaucracy. These special regulated zones restrict british consumers from buying goods that they otherwise would be able to buy. For some reason exports need to be boasted (insert joke about Truss, pork markets and cheese here), which means that British consumers must (by state force if necessary) stop buying British goods.
It is good old fashioned mercantilism mixed in with Manchester style laissez faire. When traditionally laissez faire was opposite to mercantilism. It seems they are allies. For how long? Not long – I hope.
Agreed: the last five or six years have already sounded with echoes of the past and as we’re driven down this eerily familiar path, the potential for real disaster feels increasingly possible. And it is very much an English problem. Ironically, the growing interest and support for independence amongst the other union members seems to owe a great deal to the actions of the Conservative and Unionist Party of Great Britain.
I cannot foresee the Labour Party under the auspices of Starmer (or some similar scion of centrist neoliberal ideology) having either the personal wherewithal of necessary talents to affect sufficient change and attract voters or possess the understanding and acceptance that neoliberalism is now a proven failure for the vast majority of people. Sadly this deluded belief remains unchallenged amongst most of the PLP membership and the party’s officers. The best outcome that I think we can reasonably hope for is that of a hung parliament with a sufficiently large minority of partners in coalition with the Labour Party. On their own, the current Labour Party seems incapable of achieving much useful in government and at best would merely delay the arrival of that void. A focused and vocal minority could force the Labour Party’s inertia aside on a couple of vital policies, such as electoral reform and at least some increased public ownership of utilities giving hope for the future.
However, that all still ignores the British mass media. I cannot imagine any event that would sufficiently diminish the power and reach of this entity before the occurrence of the next general election that would allow such a contest to proceed on the grounds of administrative competence and efficacy of proposed policies. With that in mind the only solution (that I can come up with) is for the opposition parties working together and in good faith to counteract the potent partnership of the Tories and mass media. Checking the results over the last few years it can be seen that the Greens have often taken local seats from the Tories where the electorate have become thoroughly disenchanted with the Conservative Party but cannot bring themselves to vote for Labour. Standing the candidates from the party most likely to defeat the Tories is going to require a massive dose of humility. I’m far from convinced that such a frank discussion is likely to be considered by the Labour Party let alone consider the outcomes. And of course none of this accounts for how to approach the electorate with such an alliance.
When things are so serious, one has to make an effort to be cheerful.
This letter in Saturday’s Guardian raised a little cheer.
Is Liz Truss a Lib Dem mole, deep undercover and pursuing policies – fracking, bankers’ bonuses, junk food etc – to ensure Tory unelectability (Liz Truss to lift fracking ban ‘despite little progress on earthquake risk’, 15 September)? Steve Kibble Rudyard, Staffordshire
Also in desperation I have felt compelled to write this.
THIS ENGLAND – PROUD TO BE TORY
We shall have sewage on our beaches.
We shall have sewage in our rivers.
We shall give to our corporate friends with growing confidence
and growing strength to satisfy their rapacious appetites.
We have nothing to offer except destitution, hunger, homelessness,
cold, corruption, cronyism, blood, tears and sweat
We have surrendered,
To our billionaire corporate backers.
(Apologies to Winston Churchill) – I missed the original speech by about 2 years.
(Forgive my efforts at doggerel. What do you expect from a retired agricultural engineer?)
🙂
Both parties will do what they always do, surely?
The Royal Family will continue to serve – delighting monarchists and dismaying republicans in the process – first with King Charles III and the Queen Consort and, when he dies, with King William and Queen Katherine.
The Tories will continue to focus on staying in power. Rather than pursuing neo-liberal policies they will favour expansionary fiscal policy which will no doubt lead to a volte-face from the Bank of England that will return to monetising government debt in 2023 (and probably reversing their current round in interest rates rises).
Isn’t that the “natural order” of things in the U.K.?
No
Your assumption is wrong
“The Royal Family will continue to serve” that’s a funny way to spell ‘take’.
The small clip of Australian commentators who didn’t recognise Liz Truss was amusing.
If Liz Truss had put her profile out there in a bigger way during the previous week then they might have known.
But I think the only events she attended with the new King were the church services in SCO/NI/WAL and she did not visibly attend the related events that the King was doing in those places.
Labour doing its duty is fulfilled by Labour getting elected. If Labour gets elected the Conservatives don’t, and the Conservatives will be banished from power for a long time, perhaps for ever, and they might even disappear.
Starmer is passionately pro-European and the only reason he is not saying anything about Europe is because there is no mileage in doing so for him. Because everyone knows Starmer is passionately pro-European. It is a fact that could not be better known.
And to say Starmer’s Labour Party is not left of centre is to disregard the facts. Starmer is in favour of public services and against kleptocratic redistribution. Was it your opinion that Blair was not left of centre? A lot of socialists think Blair was very right-wing. But was it better to have Blair in charge than, for example, Johnson?
It is rubbish to suggest that Labour are so right-wing that there is a gaping void in British politics that can only be filled by an authoritarian nationalist. If the Tories disappear, which on your analysis is possible, it will be because most people have found them revolting. Which of course they are. They are implementing policies which hardly anyone wants and nobody voted for. Nobody is going to vote for an avowedly authoritarian nationalist party. Which new party is going to sweep to power on the tide of support for Brexit and plutocratic enrichment?
Labour are going to win the next election which I think is going to be astonishingly soon.
So tell me, what will Labour do different from Cameron given they are obsessed with balancing budgets? You seem to know a lot, so please tell us.
It depends if you mean Cameron then or Cameron now.
If Cameron were prime minister now he would be in the same bind as every other conceivable Conservative leader. And so he would try and ameliorate Brexit without being defenestrated by the headbangers. We know this is impossible.
Starmer would be different – he is going to go right out and cosy up to Europe. He will do nothing to diverge. Of course he will have to face up to the impossibility of Brexit implementation. He knows full well that a hard Brexit, as agreed by the Tories amongst themselves at least, would either split the UK or destroy the Good Friday Agreement. Starmer, if he has any sense, and if he has big enough balls, which I believe he does, would say that to improve the health service he would need to increase tax receipts, and the best way of doing that would be to align with the European economic institutions. He could, and perhaps would, put a bill before parliament making some reverse ferreting, and it would either pass or fail. If it fails he would be driven to call another general election. He would ask the people for full-hearted permission to rejoin the single market and customs union. And I bet he would get it.
It sounds a bit bold for Starmer. But he would be the greatest prime minister, for doing this, of the last seventy years.
Cameron would do none of this, of course. He is an irredeemable midget. And so might Starmer be. The difference is that Starmer has no difficulty marshalling his own party.
The Europe question has to be resolved before the country is destroyed. Don’t you agree?
I agree that Brexit has t be resolved, but not much else you say
An interesting post posing lots of questions.
The modus of our times though has already been set: from barefaced rule breaking and lying, this iteration of the Tory Government has now gone onto barefaced profiteering as an answer to our problems.
We have yet to see how Truss – with the very autocratic Rees-Mogg driving from behind – will continue to subvert the vestigial machinery of democracy we have left in this country.
As for yesterday – what was supposedly a funeral was to me at least a rampant display of power, and a throwing down of a gauntlet by the unaccountable to a country which is on its knees anyway after 12 years of bad management.
‘Challenge us if you dare’ – that’s what it said to me.
I have a full time job and children to get though university.
But I am also looking for work as a democrat-citizen who is subject in his view to NOTHING but the law, democracy and fairness, no matter what any Royal Lowness/Ordinariness thinks and NONE of what I avoided on the TV yesterday and in the papers this morning.
I’m tired of the pretence of it all.
The facts about our country are simple and a profanity upon democracy.
We have a monarchy that is used to legitimise an executive. Nothing more.
Even if the monarch felt strongly and cared that the people who plead fealty to him or her and with genuine affection, the monarch of these lands cannot be seen disagreeing with that executive or even disagree at all!
That executive – because of weak constitutional checks and balances – is open to undue influences from vested interests which work against the monarch’s subjects and even the country itself.
Instead, the opportunity is taken to effectively bribe the monarchy to shut up by granting it grace and favours not available to the monarch’s subjects, and indeed the monarch is encouraged to use the arrangement for their own benefit instead, creating a toxic culture of inter-dependency between monarch, executive and whoever the executives backers are at the time.
Thus all the ‘high social order’ interests are aligned and bollocks to the rest of the country!
That is what post-Lizzie Britain looks like right now. That’s what she left behind in truth. Her 73 year old heir knows it too. Or will.
We are living in a farce.
But as we know, for real people it’s deadly serious. And so the merry go round continues.
It amazes me that people don’t see it thus. Even one royal historian is talking about being captivated by the ‘magic’ of ‘royalty’ in today’s Guardian.
From what I know of the practice of magic, it is the art of deception – is it not?
Most apt.
And Charles? Will the public forgive him over Diana? Have they? It keeps coming up in conversations I have.
Richard,
It has been reported that each ‘Investment Zone’ area will have a bespoke deal, and that cuts to personal as well as business taxes are being considered.
This has led me to believe that Truss may use these zones to target personal tax cuts and other financial inducements in those seats that the Tories won in 2019 and now need to hold at the next election.
If she is brazen enough, Truss may well be able to target swing voters in these areas with bespoke tax benefits designed to benefit those upper working and lower middle class voters that always decide elections.
This will be much cheaper than wide-ranging personal tax cuts across the whole country. Tories have always liked to buy votes!
Thoughts?
Tell me how this will work?
People who live in these places (in which case massive pressure on residence claims will arise) or work there?
And can you imagine the resentment whichever is used?
Plus the admin nightmare?
Nearly impossible to administer, I suggest
6 Years after your side lost the Brexit vote, you’re still continuing with the xenophobic / racist nonsense?
Will you ever learn? Until you try and understand those that have different opinions to do, rather than simply lie about what your opponents think, you’re destined to make the same mistakes again and again.
There is no other explanation
Only xenophobia works
Neil Jarvis
Oh – but we DO understand your position, Neil. We understand that:
BREXIT was predicated on lies. Lies like the NHS funding and Danial Hannan’s assertion that we would not leave the single market and damage the economy.
The biggest lie was that EU membership was causing us to lose money and putting our public services under pressure when it was actually austerity and government underfunding that was causing the problem. All those problems were caused by domestic policy – not EU wide policy as the Tories took out their frustration of the Blair years on the country.
And all it did was open up a political divide in British politics that had existed since the concept of the EU was created. And showed just how stupid our politicians are.
The list goes on: We were told that there would not be queues at our ports – and there are! That everything would be OK in Ireland – it isn’t. And where did that money come from that enabled Vote Leave to outspend Remain?
Fair enough – you won – which in your limited sphere of intelligence is all that matters.
But as soon as you won – you lost. No! Actually, WE lost – all of us. The whole country. And we still are.
You won the vote (big deal) – but you’ve been had. Those of us who voted to stay, lost – but we’ve not been had and in the long run have been proven right. And the evidence is all around you – although you ‘won’.
You BREXITeers were used, and you still don’t get that do you? Used and now chucked away like evidence after a crime.
As for you – I don’t even know why Richard allowed you to post because you are plain and simple, – along with your BREXIT mates – a numpty. Which is a sort of cuddly way of saying that you are nothing but stupid Neil.
I just do not have the patience with human lemmings like you anymore.
Agreed entirely, Pilgrim. Brexit was also largely an English madness: Scotland and NI voted Remain (62% and 55.8% respectively) and in Wales, although the vote was 52.5% for Leave, even if every Welsh voter had voted Remain, the English Leave vote would still have carried the day.
[…] Cross-posted from Tax Research UK […]
” the former National Front a significant treat.” – a most unfortunate typo (I hope!)
Hey ho….they happen
My apologies. Unfortunate typos do happen, I am afraid, far too often.
I can’t edit it now, but I hope you can work out what I mean to say from the context and tone.
Not that relevant to this post but I’ve seen today the RBA in Australia has declared insolvency from its losses from QE, and will now print money to bring itself out of insolvency. So why is monetisation so taboo for European and North American central banks? AUD is stable, this stuff works!! Like to know your thoughts
I have seen nothing on this
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/21/reserve-bank-of-australia-rba-reports-loss-plans-to-cut-treasury-dividends-review-bond-buying-purchase-program
The Reserve Bank of Australia bought bonds in the pandemic, and now finds itself in a “negative equity” position. But that is ok as “the government provided a guarantee and the bank itself could also print money to meet its obligations, and “so it is not insolvent”.”
They say it will impact the Federal budget, as they will not pay dividends until the bank’s capital is returned to a positive position.
This is all nonsense
The BoE could also have negative equity on this basis soon, but the reality is it’s QE operation is wholly indemnified by HMT, which is why the company doing it is not consolidated with the BoE as it is actually under HMT control
Ever since I was a teenager in the 60s’ It was apparent that the Tories always projected fear toward the working class and in the 60s and into the 70s it also became apparent to me that the vast majority of the working class in the UK was terrified of taking any kind of responsibility for their lives.
I think the Frenchman who penned these words was spot on and nothing has changed since the 19th century – sadly.
The masses have never thirsted after truth, whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master. Whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim – Gustave le Bon.