Something happened this week. I am not referring to an actual event, although there have been plenty enough of them. I am instead referring to a change in sentiment. We crossed a boundary. Things cannot be quite the same again. The sense that total irresponsibility based upon delusional levels of pretence might be the basis for right wing politics moved into mainstream thinking.
Those of us who have followed politics in more detail than is normal for the UK population have known for some time that the Tories and reality are unfamiliar with each other. Nothing about the world that the Tory supporter, let alone the Tory activist or MP, inhabits is in the slightest bit evidence based. Fantasy, prejudice and straightforward deceit (including denial of the lies they tell themselves) underpins the Tory worldview. We have long known that. But now it is becoming increasingly hard to hide that fact from the world at large.
Anyone with the slightest grasp of facts appreciated several things things about the Rwanda Bill this week.
The first was that it is about deporting a few hundred people from the UK, at most, when there are tens of thousands of refugees waiting for their asylum status to be decided, here in the UK. The whole Rwanda policy is, in that case, a distraction, or sideshow, or dead-cat policy. It solves nothing.
Second, in that case any government choosing to put it centre stage is either utterly unable to govern, or totally out of any real ideas, or is promoting an alternative reality that is completely politically irrelevant.
Third, the government has moved from pretending it will not lie to legislating lies into law. Rwanda is not safe. A law that says otherwise undermines the credibility of all our law.
Fourth, the government is willing to spend untold millions to promote this lie.
Fifth, this is just the tip of an iceberg. Once you realise that this government can pretend that Rwanda is safe then everything else it says has to be viewed in the same way.
So, Kemi Badenoch's claim that there is no structural racism in healthcare has to be seen as the exact opposite of the truth, and the straightforward denial of reality that it is. There is but one aim for that claim, which is to ensure that the discrimination can continue. Denying it exists will not eliminate it: the goal is to perpetuate it.
And the decision not to appoint a new disabilities minister when there has been one at Minister of State level for thirty years is not a recognition that the problems of those with disabilities have now been solved. It is instead part of the parallel universe strategy that emerged in the Autumn Statement that says that those with disabilities must be as economically active as everyone else in society or their existence will be denied and benefits will be refused.
Pretence is everything in Tory policy now. Whatever is said, the opposite is true.
Whatever action is suggested means something else is actually required.
Whatever promise is made, the opposite will be delivered.
Claiming Rwanda is safe simply revealed a truth long known, which is that right wing politics in this country has left reality behind.
Most of us know that.
The only trouble is that our electoral system will continue to reward this detachment from reality.
And the Labour Party is, by refusing to embrace proportional representation, is enabling these fantasies and those who will continue to seek power on the basis of ever more preposterous lies.
And so, I sense a change of mood that is simultaneously an acceptance that right-wing politics has moved into the surreal, coupled with an acceptance that nothing is going to be done by those with the chance to prevent those in possession of powerful delusions from ever getting power again despite the fact that the vast majority of people in this country want nothing to do with this form of political madness.
As a result we face Christmas in political despair. There seems no hope of ending this oppression by those too irresponsible to govern, whether they are currently in government or seriously expect to be so soon. Both the Tories and Labour are too wedded to their gameplay, that beneath the facade requires active cooperation with each other to perpetuate their combined hold on power, to act in a way remotely akin to the needs of the country.
We are in a political wasteland. And there is no apparent way out. That, I think, is what an increasing number of people now realise.
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It’s the lack of alternative that is really terrifying. Labour, with very few exceptions, is offering identical policies to the Tories. I genuinely fear for the future.
Here is an alternative which I thought was pretty good & well argued:
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2023/12/14/limit-wealth-belgium-ingrid-robeyns-can-you-be-too-rich-wealth-t/
Political parties everywhere would regard such a proposal as barmy – suggesting that such parties have lost touch with how most people live (and in turn in part accounting for the rise in fascism). “Wouldn’t it be nice”… paraphrasing a very old song, if society decided that this needed to be implemented.
I get the inheritance bit
But very large numbers of people in London with a house and a pension gave worth of £2 million
These limits are just way too arbitrary and impossible to apply
This country’s been in a “waste” land for centuries where balancing caring for self and others has to a high degree become a matter of vacuous statements by politicians and rulers rather than action. This is not to say that improvements for many have not taken place but it’s been a much slower process than it needed to be. This would indicate a widespread moral failure in British society as the source of this lack of process. Identifying where the lack or paucity of morals originates and emanates to do something about it is therefore extremely important.
Well, although it’s deeply unfashionable, I would point to the class system, that still permeates our society, as being partly responsible for our collective inertia. And then, I would follow the money.
In one sense this is true but for me underlying this is the widespread failure to understand that as highly prosocial creatures we really do need to recognise that central to being such creatures we reap enormous advantages from focusing on balancing individual needs with those of others including other human beings, other creatures and the planet’s needs. Indeed a new world-wide party called the Moral Planet Party would be apt allowing for the fact that there will always be others corruptly trying to dominant such a party for selfish ends and a pluralistic party system is always required for a healthy democracy to do this “balancing” work.
The output of our politics is most definitely hazardous to health.
The input from the Tories though is surely the most mendacious for some time. Chaos is their vocabulary.
And as for Labour, all they can promise is doing the wrong thing righter.
“doing the wrong thing righter.” That is a perfect summation of Labour policies.
Might part of the current « political waste land » be also the responsibility of the main stream media, including the B. B. C., and some places of tertiary education?
It’s very sad,
I hear people recounting these lies to each other over their pints in the evening and they genuinely believe it all.
{last week one sage said Braverman was sacked as she was the only one who was brave enough to tell the truth}….. Jesus wept I ask you really!!
The levels of self delusion and cognitive dissonance are truly hard to believe.
To a man all these people are white retired or enjoying a high paying job which provides for a very wealthy lifestyle.
They too have long left reality behind.
They are lost to reasoned discussion or demonstrable facts placed before them and I Fear that the ensuing failure of labour to deal with the very real problems that unfettered neoliberalism corruption and a near universal right wing media have wrought upon us will lead to a truly fascist right wing government in 2029.
The need for the Labour membership to wrest control of the party from Starmer and Streeting is urgent and paramount but I doubt it will happen. The green party of which I am a member needs time and money both of which are in short supply I really cannot see a silver lining to this god awful dark cloud.
Private Eye page 7, BORDER FARCE
Since the start of 2022,according to the Home Offices own figures,the UK has granted asylum to 12 Rwandas – 8 on first application and 4 on appeal.
Can I recommend this article by Prof Sean Danaher
http://www.progressivepulse.org/brexit/how-do-we-fix-this-brexit-mess
The prescription is one I suspect you will agree with. The only surprising thing about it is the apparent denial that any of it is necessary.
Sean has been conned by the Resolution Foundation.
Otherwise, much to agree with.
Danahar reads well until you try to find the subatantive solutions. This is all he has to say about devolution: “Decentralisation: Far too much power is concentrated in Westminster. There is devolution of varying degrees in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. England is also too dominant, with c. 85% of the UK population. The current structures don’t work for Scotland and NI in particular. Far greater federalisation is needed”.
He doesn’t tell us where, when or how that dreamy notion of federalism for Scotland is ever going to happen. It is very easy to argue it simply isn’t going to happen. What does he think the Scottish Devolution settlement was for? Not to serve the Scottish people: it was a clandestine union of Westminster Labour and Conservative Parties exclusively for themselves; to “Dish the Nats” (it didn’t work, but, hey – this is Britain – nothing works anyway), and to ensure that if Scotland managed by some miracle to improve anything even with a settlement of budget balancing (that Britain couldn’t aspire to achieve), and set out higher standards of aspiration; Westminster could always set off the well laid booby Traps in the legislation; like Section 35.
An application to return to the EU Danahar has kicked down the road with all the other cans, to a second Labour term; so you can say – it is ten years just to reach the starting gate, if you are lucky. That isn’t a solution for Scotland, which needs to act now. Inside the UK Union, Scotland has far less chance of rejoining the EU than Ukraine has of joining.
Danahar analysis is full of the hopeless, limp thinking of British liberal minds; endless analysis, and no way out of the current, destructive, deepening crisis we are in.
I would nit say this is hopeless, but the points you make re Scotland are fgair and the Resolution Foundation reference is in my opinion wrong: they are offering no solutuon at all
Maybe it is intentional. What it is saying is that power is all that matters. By saying and doing stupid stuff they are sending the message “You are powerless”. The class war has been won, we can do what we like. We have just proven that power Trumps money, money trumps the environment and power and money trump you. You didn’t revolt or resist so you are now defeated.
The people, as they did in Cuba, will be forced into guerilla action.
“And the Labour Party is, by refusing to embrace proportional representation, is enabling these fantasies and those who will continue to seek power on the basis of ever more preposterous lies.”
Well, it is interesting because it looks like the Labour leadership want and need the survival of the Tory party and the traditional two party politics of FPTP. We know that the wider party has voted for PR. What I would like to know is how many current Lab MP’s support it? How many of the next new intake and likely Lab majority Govt are supporters of PR?
There does appear to be a view with some Lab supporters that PR will only be addressed if they get a second term (at least, I think that is what some are hoping for). I think it is more likely that if Lab are winning under FPTP it won’t be addressed, because the party in Parliament will take the view that things are going fine. The trouble is FPTP does keep the Tory Party, this vile version of it alive and waiting for another chance. I sometimes wonder if Starmer and others in the Parliamentary party understand what is at stake? The stake through the heart of the Tory Party is PR. Does he want to keep them going? I’d really like to know if Starmer understands what electoral reform does to the Tories?
In one sense I find it ironic. The Tories will have Labour to thank for their survival if PR is quitely dropped. Labour, by sticking with FPTP keep the Tories alive to do even more evil in the future. You couldn’t make it up.
The disabled actually are as economically active as many others in society. Of necessity we spend the money we’re given, increasing the velocity of money and encouraging investment leading to greater employment and increased economic activity overall. That’s why society has social security in the form of a state pension and sickness benefits, because it’s society itself which benefits.
The problem Badenoch and her colleagues have is that their compact with their corporate masters depends on them supplying them with a ready supply of serfs happy to go down their mines and up their chimneys to make money for them. Increasing sickness in the community coupled with the age demographic means those days are gone and unless the relentless attacks on the NHS cease or an endless stream of immigrants are allowed in to replace the sick and old and also care for the sick and old, those days won’t be coming back. Both those options are politically impossible, one as it will lose them financial support and the other as it will lose them votes. In reality the likes of Badenoch no longer have anything to offer anyone and face the end of their careers. Capitalism as we’ve known it is over, and so are they.
Anyone who has read Eagleton’s book on Starmer, followed David Evans’ career (partly in Private Eye, under Croydon and nepotism), understood the nature of right wingers like Akehurst, read the Forde Report (commissioned by Starmer then hidden as it exposed the reality) and come up against the regional machine run by the Right – will know that Starmer is quite literally a ‘tool of the establishment’. Both he and Evans are total autocrats, that neither are close to centrists, let alone socialists.
Starmer and Evans opined that Conference (that voted overwhelmingly for PR) is only sovereign when in session i.e. literally giving Starmer carte blanche to make it all up himself – as he has done. The admission that Labour Together had plotted for 5 years to get Corbyn unseated and Starmer as fuhrer should tell you that – short of some unlikely revolution – ‘Labour’ as Labour is dead.
For many at regional level, power is all, and many scores with left wingers have been settled by suspension and leaving the member concerned in limbo – hence cases like Nick Brown’s.
Without PR, we are stuffed.
@John Griffin
I fully agree wirh you about Starmer and Evans – I call Starmer (amongst many other things) “little Keef Stalin”. Evans, however, I call David “Dzerzhinsky” Evans, because under little Keef Stalin’s misrule of the (Faux)-Labour Party, he has resurrected the CHEKA.
Little Keef has all the makings of a dictator, or certainly a highly authoritarian PM (see Peter Oborne at https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/uk-labour-starmer-authoritarianism-alarm-bells-ringing for a discussion of his authoritarian reflexes).
I believe he, and his Party/clique/gang/cult are “a clear and present danger” to democracy and decency, and must be opposed at every turn by anyone claiming to be a progressive.
Corbyn was every bit against PR as Starmer is. The only chance for Labour to end its disgrace is for someone who is not a party-first automaton to win leadership e.g. Andy Burnham.
Agreed
Corbyn did not want PR
That shocks me to hear that – I hadn’t realised that, Stephen, so thank you for that information, which lessens my profound respect for Corbyn.
However, you forget, as does Richard in his answer to you, that Corbyn was, and is, loyal to Conference and its decisions (unlike preposterous Starmer and David Dzerzhinsky Evans, who hold that Conference is only supreme while its sitting – for all of 4 days!! After which, the Leader – more like Il Duce or Der Fuerher – can do whatever he damn well likes), and Conference voted clearly for PR. So, whatever his views on the matter, Corbyn would – does – loyally support its decisions, and so would push for PR.
You see, he believes in democracy, where Starmer clearly does not, any more than Sunak does.
To paraphrase Henry Ford, under little Keef, “You can have any policy you want, so long as it’s what I want, and my policy”
Starmer hardly ever says “The Labour Party”, but usually says “My Party”, as if it belonged to him, as in a way it does, since it is his creation – degktmation, actually – in all its inglorious infamy!
This tragic chaos being created by the political incompetents in the UK is, yet again, revealing the fact that turning a blind eye to a little corruption in high places will eventually make the entire society both blind and corrupt.
Better the devil you know is still the devil.
After more than 40 years of increasing criminal behavior and leadership in all UK’s institutions the only way back to order will now need outside intervention and aid. However, I fear we still have years of disaster capitalist predators picking over the dying ruins and potential rising civil violence ahead.
Our lifestyles in the West have relied for about 500 years upon development over here achieved through the exploitation of their resources and deliberate underdevelopment and suppression of our colonies and global South suppliers. A system that is coming to an end meaning that we have to replace those stolen goods with alternatives that few politicians are interested in working for.
Improvements in the life chances of the West’s underclass have mostly come as a result of
1) practical requirements of the ruling elite – slightly better education, housing, health etc for more resilient and compliant industrial workers; same to quell returning war conscripts’ rebellious streak; and
2) the unfortunate example of better education, housing, health etc available in the Soviet Union that gave the West’s underclass an idea of what was possible.
Hence the necessity of the deluge of negative press about the USSR and the plotting since the minute the 2nd WW ended to bring it down. Once the USSR was defeated both internally and externally, all sense of alternatives to elite power were buried as deep as possible.
In the West for the most part, and increasingly everywhere else, the electorate is viewed as mere consumers by politicians who view themselves as salesmen and saleswomen of whatever policies it takes to gain and keep power, while the mainstream media is the advertising and PR for the policies on offer ensuring that alternatives that might benefit the many are kept hidden or ridiculed.