I posted this thread on Twitter this lunchtime (other work having got in the way before then):
The Truss government is failing. Extraordinarily it has only been in office a month, with the shutdown resulting from the Queen's death included in that period, and yet the evidence of failure is so compelling that it's indisputable. But what are the consequences? A thread…
After the evidence that the Tories can now impose change on Truss became apparent yesterday, with more threatened for today as Kwarteng is forced to bring forward his budget, it is clear that the Tory coalition has failed. They are at war with each other.
The Tory infighting is now so clear and strong that three things are clear. The first is that Truss cannot govern. Second, nor could any other Tory. Third, that means we have, in effect, a hung parliament. A zombie Tory government might exist but not really govern.
The good news inherent in that might seem to be that the damage Truss and her crew might seek to deliver will be mitigated. As example, Rees-Mogg's plans for employment law reform have been already been abandoned as they are too extreme to get parliamentary approval.
But even if the more extreme measures that members of this government might seek to introduce on behalf of Tufton Street might not happen, the danger will still be real. That there is a government in the UK so out of control will be damaging, in itself.
That the Tory party, which liked to claim it was the most successful political party in the world, has fallen so far is emblematic, in itself, of failure. The certainties that were once thought to exist have gone.
The revelation that this is the case is the most important aspect of the current chaos. It is pure coincidence that this is happening weeks after the Queen died. And yet, at the same time, the coincidence is symbolic. If she was continuity, we now don't have it.
Critically, the erosion of the institutions on which society depended is now the most important issue that any new government will now face, because the UK's national decline is directly related to the failure of those bodies, which can be closely associated to neoliberalism.
Where to start with the chronicling of this decline is hard to decide. It would be easy to begin with privatisation. That undermined the cohesion of the supply of essential public services, almost all of which are natural monopolies. The logic in the process was clear.
First, the aim was to split cohesion so that erosion of standards was less obvious. Second, the aim was to make profit a higher priority than service availability. Third, exploitation was permitted, of people, planet (especially) and communities. The aim was to undermine commonality.
How was this achieved? Largely by offering people a bung when privatisation took place. There was no ideological support for these plans: greed bought sufficient people into them.
In other areas, different mechanisms to undermine cohesion have been used. This is most especially true in the NHS in England (Wales and Scotland have different systems).
In the name of supposed efficiency, the NHS has been ‘marketised', with vast amounts of resource wasted in admin to create the appearance of a market. The intention was always to privatise healthcare, and that is happening.
The introduction of academy trusts in education has always had the same goal.
So too has the outsourcing of vast ranges of services.
But the consequence is an economy that is obsessed by contracting, admin and the slicing of profit out of budgets that should be set to deliver social benefit. No wonder productivity has fallen. Effort has been diverted to admin by government choice.
But these obvious issues are just the tip of the problem that we face. The range of other institutions undermined by neoliberalism is staggering.
Parliament has been undermined. The franchise has been limited. Executive powers have been taken without opportunity for scrutiny. Ministers now show contempt for parliament when announcing policy. Prime Minister's questions have become a farce.
The civil service had also been undermined. Permanent secretaries are sacked on political whims. Special advisers direct civil servants. Advice is obviously ignored.
The Bank of England has been undermined for differing reasons. Its current obsequiousness to the Treasury is part of that. But the purpose of making it independent was to secure wider opinion on policy making, and instead we have pure neoliberalism, which fails us.
The supposedly independent Office for Budget Responsibility has never been any such thing, having always been too optimistic in the government's favour.
Our tax authority has been fleeced of resources so that it hardly functions. Cheats prosper. Honest people suffer undue stress as management of tax takes far too long.
And the rot extends outwards. Charities that ask why the poor are poor are silenced. Those that ask whether it was reasonable to accumulate wealth on the back of slaves are vilified. The message is clear that charity must be neoliberal.
The BBC has largely followed the same line.
Big business has been allowed to fleece the productive capacity of the UK to boost the private wellbeing of directors, at cost to shareholders, those working for those companies, and investment in our national well-being.
During all this, private debt has risen, enslaving millions who face lifetimes where they might never achieve any reasonable degree of financial security as home ownership, decent pensions and being debt-free become near impossible goals for many.
So what is all this, which Truss is intent on exacerbating, all about? This is the politics of isolation. Neoliberalism is all about the destruction of community. It focuses on the individual alone, and their supposed success or failure.
The intention of neoliberalism is to make identification of failure possible. That is one of the most corrosive ways in which it seeks to divide the world. And by creating hierarchies of success or failure it deliberately fails to reward most so that their anxiety remains.
Instead of living in community, where strengths and weaknesses can be compensated for, neoliberalism demands division and attribution of blame. This prevents real risk-taking.
Again, the cost to society is apparent. It is not only evident in the lack of investment in real productivity. It is is also apparent in the shift in focus in the private sector.
This used to try to meet customer need, and so make a profit. The aim now is to exploit any contractual arrangement to skim profit out of it. So, we have eventually reached the point where we have companies specialising in shifting contracts between energy suppliers.
This might make a little sense if the energy suppliers themselves added value, but they only sell energy others produce. And those producers can't sell without profit being skimmed by distributors and many many others.
The very concept of business has been hollowed out to the point where the actual business of meeting customer need is the preserve of a few, mainly lowly paid, people. Dar too many other people are employed to game the system.
And this gets worse when this process is imposed on the state sector via the casualisation of teaching, nursing and so much else.
Why make these points? My purpose is to suggest that whatever the next government faces, it will not just be a financial mess that it has to deal with. It will have to face one of them, for sure. But the real problem it has to address is the corrosion of our society.
Neoliberalism has set out to destroy the mechanisms that make society work. They have tried to destroy society, and what made it work. Participation has gone: isolation remains. We are a lonely, sad country as a result.
And we are nearly broken in so many ways. The fact that six million are waiting for NHS appointments is symbolic of that, but those in the NHS are not to blame. Their job has been made nigh on impossible, deliberately.
The NHS, like so much, has been set up to fail so that another state revenue source can be skimmed for private gain, and this is now how much of our supposed state and private sectors now interact.
If any government comes into office in the UK sometime soon failing to recognise this then it too will fail. A bit better management of the existing structures within society cannot save us now from the mess we are in. Restoring a participatory economy is necessary to do that.
The whole ethos of government has to be different in that case. People have to be persuaded that a fundamental change in direction is required, and is possible.
We have to move away from isolation and back to community.
We have to move from privatisation to sharing.
We need to focus on delivery of services, and not value extraction for private gain.
Business needs to invest in people, products and plant and equipment, not share buybacks and directors' bonuses.
The construction of a common good in which we can all partake through our own participation in society is vital.
And communal funding for this has to be found.
Talk in that case of ‘making Brexit work' and ‘managing better' is of no benefit, because what we have does not work. Doing something well when it is wrong in itself does not make it right. It's still wasted effort.
And all this will cost money, which it will be said we have not got. Except, that as the experience after 1945 showed, we can deliver when we do not apparently have money. We can do so again. But to make that spend worthwhile we need a big idea.
I believe that the time has come to reject the isolation of neoliberalism and to replace that with a participatory, supportive and inclusive society. That is the big idea that should underpin charge now.
Unless we start from that point of change, with a new direction that it gives then a replacement government for the one now have would still be doing the work of the far-right think tanks. That will not do.
A new economics for a good society needs a big idea. Sharing is that big idea. Working together is the solution it suggests. Breaking down isolation is the demand it imposes. Focus on delivery for the common good is what is required. This is what we need.
The question is, who will deliver it?
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Well Richard, Compass, along with other progressive pressure groups are trying, that’s for sure. Trying to get Labout to see sense on PR, and collaborating with other parties to defeat the right even with FPTP in operation.
And in the meantime, I’ve written to my MP, very angrily, complaining about the tax giveaways for the already wealthy and the contrast to that in the treatment of the public sector, including the CS of which I’m part.
And my electricity is going up by double, my gas by 2.7 times, even after the government’s price ‘capping’ plan.
And as my total energy bill was over £2500 already, I’m not exactly feeling cheerful.
Thanks tories. And thanks too Labour for enabling this.
I think the Compass team do a good job
Richard
Hi Richard, I’m an organiser for the Don’t Pay campaign and have been finding your regularly published insights into the current parlous state of the UK economy, especially as it pertains to our chronically mismanaged and exploitative energy system, of immense value in cutting through the obfuscation and clarifying our messaging.
To that end, I was wondering if you could direct me to some further reading regarding your claim in this article that ‘we have companies specialising in shifting contracts between energy suppliers’ in order ‘to exploit any contractual arrangement to skim profit out of it’.
One of the greatest challenges I’ve found when questioned by the MSM on our strategy and aims is the claim that energy suppliers are simply passing on the excess costs from the wholesale price of LNG to consumers and thus, as a campaign our target is misguided. I have been referring to the regulatory failure of Ofgem and resultant collapse of many energy providers and mutualisation of these costs to counter these narratives, but obviously this only addresses part of the issue. Hence, further insight into the inner workings of energy company profiteering and how it has contributed to our current predicament would be greatly welcome to help calibrate our messaging!
Once again, thank you for your work. I look forward to hearing from you soon!
Right now they’re failing – but a whole industry of money-saving websites grew up doing this, surely?
Sorry, I don’t quite follow – I was asking if you could direct me to any further reading about the “companies specialising in shifting contracts between energy suppliers” you mention in this article. Sorry if I wasn’t clear!
I haven’t got that
I was noting they exist
I think Richard might be referring to this type of thing?
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1014214/dragons-den-look-after-my-bills-scheme-saving-money/amp
(Link is to Dragon’s Den winners whose company “Save My Bills” would automatically switch customers onto the most competitive tariff)
Franklin,
The emergence of ‘middle-men’ companies are everywhere. It may be that you are looking for some large scale industry wide entity, but at the consumer level think of all the comparison companies – money supermarket,u-switch, compare the market etc.
I would have thought in you media engagements you would have highlighted the unfairness of pricing systems through Ofgem, of which there has been plenty of discussion here.
Indeed, who will deliver it? Labour is so timid, where are the big ideas and vision for a better future? I remain in despair.
A depressing thought keeps occurring to me. I’m a Labour supporter – and while I’m glad the media’s attitude to Labour is thawing – while slowly cooling towards Truss et al – I’m wondering about a downside.
Chomsky saw the media as manufacturing public consent to attitudes – and by extension voting choices – that favoured the markets and their profitability. He viewed markets as profit driven and indifferent to political affiliations and concepts such as right-wing and left-wing unless they adversely affected profits. Could it be that the markets and the media now prefer a party and a leader who won’t “frighten the horses” and trash the pound but who will sedately carry on with a less flashy neoliberal agenda, to their ultimate benefit?
Yes, probably
You’ve written the best speech a so-called political opposition leader of this blasted country will NEVER deliver.
But it’s enough to read it though – so thanks.
Thanks
Amen to that. And it is a chilling summary of the current affairs.
Really excellent article – thanks Richard. I have re-joined Labour and am going to a meeting tonight. Though our council is split between Lib Dems and Greens we have a Labour MP and I will forward todays blog to him. I’ve done this before but had no response.
I was thinking today about the “trickle down” effect – that Liz Truss argues is an inevitable consequence of life in a free market economy – that while there’s no evidence that material benefits seep down towards the less well- off – there’s plenty of recent evidence of what does trickle down! Not only long NHS waiting lists, a shortage of doctors, dentists, nurses, teachers and broken public transport but a spreading demoralisation, exhaustion and despair in 90% of the population.
Good luck
“Where to start with the chronicling of this decline is hard to decide. It would be easy to begin with privatisation. That undermined the cohesion of the supply of essential public services, almost all of which are natural monopolies.”
The grid is a natural monopoly. So are water and sewage pipes. Other than that it’s difficult to think of natural monopolies out there. Maybe you can enlighten me?
Railways
Gas
But also education, the NHS
Let’s get real here
“the supply of essential public services, almost all of which are natural monopolies”
Examples?
Water
Electricity
Gas
Railways
Re list goes on…
I happened to listen to a world Service programme the other day. It commented that Argentinia used to be a rich country, but is currently facing 80% inflation ! DO the Conservative idiots driving this car crash not think it could happen here?
(Inflation in the 12 months through August hit 78.5%, while prices were up 56.4% in the first eight months of the year. A central bank poll recently forecast that Argentina would end the year with an inflation rate of 95%, while some private analysts predict it will hit 100%.14 Sept 2022
https://www.reuters.com › markets › argentina-inflation-n… )
“He was also guided by a belief in repetition; over and over he would convey to employees and friends a version of the same idea; if you say something often enough, it becomes true”
Maggie, Haberman, “Confidence Man” (2022), on Donald Trump.
Spool forward to the Conservative Party conference this week:
Kwasi Kwarteng: “I get it. I get. it.”
“deliver ….. growth…..deliver…….growth…….deliver…….growth”
“strong economy…….strong economy……..strong economy”.
“fiscal plan…..fiscal plan”
“Get Britain moving …..Get Britain moving…..Get Britain moving”
Therese Coffey, Health Secretary: “Delivery. Delivery. Delivery”.
Absolutely every single Conservative in Birmingham: “We are focused on growth”.
And lo, I say unto you – it was true.
Is he using NLP?
Neuro-linguistic programming? No idea, I have not studied it.
I am prima facie inclined to think of Kwarteng as a glib, superficial communicator, assisted by a memorable voice, and a delivery that lends his opinion an authority that the content rarely justifies; so far nothing exceptional in that. That opinion is based on my short, recent public acquaintance with his political views, that his relatively short senior political career provides; and I readily confess an unimpressed, but only brief, dipped-in, casual acquaintance with two books he has written (they looked to me as if they were no more than the calculated addendums to an ambitious cv). In any case his approach is astute enough to work the system; sufficiently effective to propel him on a fast-track up the greasy pole of British culture and politics. Still, little exceptional or especially noteworthy in these outcomes.
“There is no such thing as society.”
Remember?
Richard, no surprise that I agree with your diagnosis. I also agreed with your earlier one that we need a revolution. Like one of the other commentators on this thread I am a member of Compass. I share your question; who will deliver a different vision?
First I note the very muted calls for an election from opposition parties; I find my self in the very strange position of agreeing with Nadine Dorries – if its not in the manifesto there is no mandate for it.
Second I agree with another of the tories attack lines – we don’t want a coalition of chaos. My biggest worry (nightmare) is that tactical voting delivers the but the resulting government fails.
It can fail in three ways
(1) Labour has a big majority and re-runs 1997, then it just tinkers with a broken system and is overwhelmed by how broken it is reverting to austerity lite – I see no sign of a vision either of cooperation or the radical change needed. It needs a 12% swing, I’d have said its the least likely option until this week.
(2) There is a hung parliament and Labour tries to manage alone using a confidence and supply arrangement – same result as above
(3) A coalition, some observers say there are signs that Starmer is dealing with the Lib Dems but he’s trying to shaft the Green Party, Labour actualy stole the conference strap line. There is hope here as the bottom line from the Lib Dems will be PR, the danger is that’s it delivered half heartedly. Like Blair’s constitutional reforms delivered to ward off problems but without real conviction.
Compare the above to what we need; the constitutional change that brings in not just PR, but participatory democracy and economic reforms that amount to what Will Huttton (and others) call stakeholder capitalism. The trouble is that that in itself requires an acknowledgement of how bad things are; that we are at a generation change moment when new conditions can be set out. John Macdonel was trying to do some of that. Labour at the moment is stuck in the mode of Churchill’s 1950 government (they accepted what Atlee’s did, Blair accepted and took forward what Thatcher did: looking at Starmer’s close allies it is they who are back in control).
There is a group called the Trades Union Socialist Coalition (TUSC) – it proposes to bring “socialist independents” into parliament, it was formed in 2011 and stood in 2015. It stood down rather than fight Corbyn so I guess it is likely to appear again. Whilst I like the idea of a group of independents I don’t much fancy sectarians – in my book if you preach with cooperation and collaboration you have to proactive it. The usual suspects seem to hate other progressives as much as the Tories. I suppose this could threaten Labours’ ability to win outright but I don’t think the targeting will be well funded or savvy enough.
As a sign that Labour is too cautious by far I see inspiration in the Enough is Enough campaign. I also note polling that shows an appetite for public ownership.
It’s taken since 2008 to get this far, and we do now seem to be facing a once in a generation moment. How sad it is that at this moment that all we can realistically hope for is just getting rid the tories and a bit of competence. It’s so much worse than even your economic summary of GB’s perilous state, we also have dire international relations and a looming climate crisis.
I dont know the answer, I stick with Compass, at least it practices what it preaches – cooperation, collaboration, engagement with the facts and the need to go in doable steps. As Churchill said “just keep buggering on”.
You will see I am doing an event with Compass soon
Your fears are justified
A thread is coming soon
I live in France and watching the UK news on the BBC,Sky and Al Jazeera the ordinary UKer when interviewed makes me cringe – inarticulate, totally clueless about anything important and they just don’t care.
I don’t think any of you are prepared to take on the State but the State is definitely prepared to ‘deal’ with you.
They keep you doped with religion, sex and TV and you think your so clever and classless and free – but your still fucking peasants as far as I can see – John Lennon 1971. Let’s see if Richard posts this or deletes it.
So, you’re trying to be abusive and clever simultaneously
Now try suggesting something positive or you are just a troll by any other name
I’m not being abusive or trying to be clever. If you think that there is any appetite whatsoever for revolution you are totally out of touch with the average Brit.
Facts – that get in the way of student rhetoric. All police recruits are vetted to make sure that no single one gets accepted if they are even remotely centre, never mind left of centre. Since 1968 they have special units that inflitrated any organisation that the Establishment considered even a remote threat to their authority.
The British army like all others in Europe is a mercenary organisation. It has been used for decades to support dictators and business interests. The army like all other military units is controlled almost entirely by a public school officer class. At the end of the 70s’ there was very good programme in which this same officer class left no doubt that if the ‘lefties’ ever attempted to take power they would order their troops to exterminate them – perhaps you never saw it.
Truss and Co. are deliberately goading the left to take to the streets, that will be their moment to use the right wing police to enforce their will. If it finds it difficult they will use the mercenary army and the ordinary squaddie has been well trained/brainwashed to obey orders. The cold blooded murder of the Brazilian boy on the Metro is a classic example of their impunity – they knew he was unarmed and the order to murder him came from Cressida Dick.
Starmer was head of the CPS and he saw nothing to charge these cold blooded cowardly killers with. There has been two excellent programmes from Al Jazeera which expose the reality of the Labour party. He has absolutely no intention of doing away with FPTP. With pure PR no single party would be able to govern alone.
So where are you armchair warriors going to get support for your revolution. In France the ordinary French from the provinces – the gilet jaune/yellow vests out of now where came together to frighten the ex banker Macron. The Gendarmarie had until that moment the complete support of the French people but when the TV showed them beating up old men and women and using agent provocateurs it was all thrown away.
On the brightest day a shadow hangs over the very rich, it’s the shadow of the guillotine. What the French have done once they can do again. Discussing politics with the ordinary French who are very articulate people is always interesting – the English just don’t care and even if they did have you seen the physical condition of 80% + – they aren’t ever going to put their lives on the line and Truss and all the rich in the shadows behind her no this. Can you see yourself on the frontline Richard I don’t think so.
By sheer chance with a friend we found ourselves in Pamplona, Spain on Mayday 1968. I’ve seen Fascism up front and real close and was lucky to come out alive that day.
I’m reminded of the words of Marcus Garvey – some shall rise and some shall fall but man never know himself until he’s back against the wall. You mean well Richard but will we ever see you on the frontline?
I note all you say and thiunk that society is riddled with millions of social democracts
It is hardly revolutionary to say so
And I happen to think I am not the slightest bit out of touch by thinking so