I admit that this post is not based on one of my ideas. It is instead based on my wife's reaction to hearing Rachel Reeves on Radio 4 this morning.
Her reaction was to suggest that we now live in a one-party state that exists to support the City of London.
When the debate on Brexit was at its peak, it was suggested that the real aim of the exercise was to create Singaore-on-Thames in which a one-party state is created to support a very particular form of capitalism that most in the country are destined to serve but not benefit from.
At the time, the existence of a Labour Party that challenged such ideas made it easy to dismiss that suggestion.
But now the Labour Party has been captured, has become Labour In Name Only (LINO) and the TCP (Tory Continuity Party) and the realisation that we now face an election as meaningful as any in Singapore, where a single party has ruled since 1959, is shortly going to dawn on the people of this country.
My wife is right: that's where we are now.
Welcome to Singapore-on-Thames, the chosen destination of Starmer, Reeves and Streeting.
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Yes.
Gets my vote.
And then labour will falsly claim it is the ‘Will of The People’, because they won a bogus election.
Let see what the ‘Will of The People’ really is by referendising all policy.
“Singapore on Thames” is an economic wet dream.
The UK is not a small, densely populated city state where 80% of households live subsidied state-owned properties. Even if we aped its strong central social control and low taxes and light business regulation, the UK is not going to become Singapore, any more than it might become Monaco or Gibraltar or Hong Kong.
But there certainly is a point about Labour assuming they will win the next election without needing to have any new attractive policies, and running scared of criticism if they show any differentiation from the Conservatives. Perhaps, but in that case what is the point. Assuming the Conservatives can reinvent themselves again, will that uncharismatic grey man and his apparatchiks win a second term?
Starmer is destined to fail, badly
I think we could see a hung Parliament, as I believe the Tories, and all parties to the right of them, will rally towards the election date. You have to remember their gerrymandering, command of the postal vote system, the media, and the massive war chest that finances individually targeted social media. I suspect they’ll go for very populist policies including death penalty for terrorist acts. Starmer and his puppet-masters have ensured that the people do not have a simple moral choice.
And its a long time till the end of the year. Watch out for a Reichstag Fire – probably a terrorist attack by non-white people known to the security services, which will fuel the illegal immigrant tropes, be a weapon to batter any remnants of left/centre opposition, and boost the death penalty policy.
As I’ve posted before, I believe the Tories will deploy what I call “The Left Hook/Right Hook
Left Hook = “You’ve broken every pledge & u-turned on every commitment, Sir Keir. Why should we believe a word you say?”
Right Hook – the Tories KNOW there’s a “magic money tree”, they’ve used it (think Furlough Scheme), so turn on the funding taps, to outbid Labour.
Another part of the Right Hook is to outbid Labour in policy terms, knowing Starmer is too scared to be bold and imagininative.
A hung Parliament is likely, and VERY welcome, as progressives must do all they can to prevent Starmer from becoming PM, I’m sure he’d be a disaster – untrustworthy and authoritarian.
A hung Parliament would offer the chance of the real Government of National Unity the current situation calls for – not surrender to the 1% that Ramsay McDonald fell for (see Ann Pettifor’s excellent article on this abour the “panicky Establishment” protecting its own, leading the politicians to make catastrophically wrong decisions)
Instead it could see a genuine coming together of the saner (actually, just sane!!) elements across the spectrum to be found in Parties, to exclude the crazies from the Tories (aka the Destructives as I now call them) and LINO (or the Fewer Party, as I now call them, since they’re in it for the 1%, and everyone else can go hang) both main Parties having undergone political nervous breakdowns, akin to fugue.
BBC Radio Scotland News, GMS is again headlining the claim that Nicola Sturgeon politicised the pandemic. So far it is quite clear from the evidence presented to the Covid Enquiry on that specific matter that it was Gove and the British Government that was politicising the pandemic in Scotland.
Why do I say this? The Enquiry advocate presented Gove’s own Cabinet paper presented prior to a Johnson visit to Scotland should politicise the British response to the pandemic. I saw no specific evidence submitted by Gove that there was Scottish Government politicisation from Gove advanced; save his own speculative innuendo – not independent evidence.
The Covid Enquiry must think the evidence advanced of Gove’s politicisation is clear; because this was first advanced by the Enquiry barrister in London, who presented the Gove Cabinet paper there. They have now presented it for a second time, in Edinburgh. This is the smoking gun.
The BBC in Scotland response is now clear; it ignores it, and doubles down on ignoring it. This is clealry and transparently political bias by the BBC. I hope some readers here, write in an complain. I intend to. This is intolerable.
Let me be clear, whatever else the Enquiry explores with the former FM today is entirely up to the Enquiry, but the BBC bias here cannot stand.
I have now submitted a complaint of bias against the BBC for GMS (BBC Radio Scotland) 31st January, and Reporting Scotland (BBC One), 29th January.
I so agree with you JSW – its long since the BBC went ‘impartial’ and ‘balanced’ instead of the Reithian ‘educate and inform’ -. They dont see themselves as investigative journalists curious to find the truth – but just follow the weekly agenda set by govt, and balance ‘opinion’ vs fact – to sound as if they are objective or impartial.
They admitted getting phone calls from Downing street almost daily.
They are largely to blame for the twenty year delay in people understanding climate change – platforming Nigel Lawson denialism, and endless Farragian programmes leading to Brexit etc etc – .
Its more subtle than Pravda or RT but very little different – all the components of an authoritarian state being assembled in front of our eyes.
The problem with the BBC is that the constant threats and coercion of the Right-wing press and their Tory lap dogs has worked and the BBC’s idea of the truth is a clear case of Stockholm syndrome. They appear sincerely to believe whatever is claimed by their captors.
The view from the south is that in the past, for the Tory media and party, covert support for Salmond or Sturgeon was seen as the best way of destroying Labour in Scotland. Now with job done it is all about preserving the Tory ownership of Scotland and its resources.
The BBC is complicit, but at least part of the problem is a fundamentally flawed concept of impartiality. How does the BBC measure its impartiality performance on a daily basis? The only independent measure it has outside the licensed or chartered media, is to refer itself to the standards of the press. Thus the British press, biased, rancid, owned by powerful vested interests establish the news agenda covered by the BBC as the authentic template, and from that very narrow, ideological range of opinion (no statistically ‘normal distribution’ here) is able to establish a fixed point for impartiality from a grossly skewed smple of british opinion, that is itself largely being led up the garden path.
And that is why billionaires throw money into a printed press market that no longer has a business model that passes a decent test of profitability. The billionaires invest for the purely political returns from directing the news agenda, and the legitimate parameters for public debate on any issue: within extremely narrow, right-wing, neoliberal ,ideological objectives.
Along with JSW will make a comoplaint to BBC – much good it will do.
Mr Broadbent,
Perhaps, but in the standardised reply I received from the BBC complaint, which is to respond within ten working days, yhr BBC said this: “We’ll normally include your complaint in our overnight report to producers and management. This will circulate your complaint (with any personal details removed) together with all the other reaction we receive today. It will then be available for the right team to read tomorrow morning”.
Clearly they respond to “the other reaction” they receive. In that sense, it matters.
I suspect the main problem at the BBC is underfunding. It’s far cheaper to regurgitate the Government line, and add in a few vox pops than to do serious investigative journalism. The harsh reality is that the BBC simply cannot afford to do its job properly.
Maybe…
But questions of the sort Kay Burley and Sophie Ridge ask on Sky don’t cost any more than bland ones do
I share your concerns.
I think we all know the
B establishment BC propaganda will continue as long as we allow it to. The answer in Scotland is obvious.
The Covid enquiry will yield no real benefit for relatives of the bereaved but it will stir up hatred of the Scottish Government so, job done.
The only addition I would wish to make to your excellent description of the mechanism that the BBC uses to justify its coverage and your second paragraph on the vastly under-reported mystery of why so many right-wing billionaires are fighting over a dying newspaper is a brief bit about the monetary advantages that being a Tory supporting newspaper owner brings.
In Murdoch’s case starting with his entry into the UK newspaper market featherbedded by a Tory Establishment desperate to keep the News of the World out of the hands of Labour supporting Robert Maxwell.
However, the license-to-print-money Jackpot business payback came when he was allowed to have the monopoly of English live football coverage.
In the 1950s great care was taken to try and ensure the plurality of the new Commercial TV companies, a carefully regulated degree of competition and unbiased news coverage. By 1990 his major contribution to Tory election victories was such that all that was swept away.
Even today, in the USA, Murdoch appears to have decided that the advertising and subscriptions that endlessly repeating Trump’s lies brings in far exceeds the $750 million dollars he had to pay Dominion for lying about their computers.
Best to think of the country as Scammer Land. There’s all the parties constantly repeating the lie the government has no money of its own. Starmer breaking every pledge he made to obtain the leadership of the Labour Party with the grifter Peter Mandelson whispering in his ear that he can get away with because the English voters have nowhere else to go.
If the price of democracy is eternal vigilance where are the voters making the effort to realise they are under constant scam attack which is very often indirect distracting them away from remembering or forgetting how things were better run or the big negatives of over fifty years of Neoliberalism especially those of running down the public services.
To quote Len Deighton, eternal paranoia is the price of liberty, vigilance is not enough.
Never heard that Len Deighton quote before but very close to the truth in this failed Neoliberal land. The Thatcher legacy as paranoia. Didn’t she do well!
Intel founder Andy Grove wrote a book titled “Only the paranoid survive”, something leaders and electorates would do well to remember, especially if they forgot Shakespeare’s dictum, “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.”
Congratulations to your wife for her very accurate and succinct analysis.
I will pass that on
Reeves suggests million pound bonuses are the key to boosting our financial services when everyone knows thats part of what led to excessive risk taking and the 2008 crash .
Labour just refuses to engage with any serious analysis at any level – as John Harris noted recently in the Guardian – unless this changes they will fall at the first hurdle even if they do win the election.
Oligarch money? Corrupt money? – is that her vision of Singapore on Thames?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/21/butler-to-the-world-by-oliver-bullough-review-bent-britain-at-your-service
She / they are just stupid
I started to read the item in the Guardian,gave up in anger,and looked to see your comments.A great summary.
We need to get rid of these Tories and the best option in my area is to vote Labour.
It’s the first time ever that I’ve felt unwilling to vote for them.
Then I congratulate your wife on a neat and plausible summary of the situation.
But a new dark age beckons………………………
If I was had to defend Reeves, I’d note that she is just another Oxford PPE-er whose main jobs before becoming a politician were at the BoE and HBOS. With this grounding in economics, it stands to reason that she’s bloody clueless and doesn’t want to upset bankers. I’d imagine most of her friends work in the City.
If it were up to me, I’d bar anybody who studied PPE at Oxford from working in politics or any aspect of public life – especially from the Labour Party. They all seem to be utterly clueless or perhaps just simply inept. They tend to do very well for themselves, it must be admitted, but I’m more interested in how the rest of us do…
Agreed – we are on the treadmill of blind orthodoxy and more of the same.
“Nicholas Joicey was appointed Department for Work and Pensions Finance Director General in July 2018.[3] He serves as Director General of the Cabinet Office’s Economic and Domestic Secretariat.”
Do you think she discusses work with her husband?
I dont think you need a PhD in the bleeding obvious to realise that Singapore is culturally and politically very different to the UK and you cant simply transplant it to the UK
If you’ve been to Singapore you will have seen the ferocious work ethic that drives Singaporeans to perform and the ‘dragon mothers’ cramming education & discipline into their offspring.
Not like the UK at all!
I intensely dislike the Singaporean influence in education, which is all about rote learning of easily testable skills bit not on understanding. I question whether it is even useful.
I missed off the reference to the Anne Pettifor article.
Here it is.
http://www.primeeconomics.org/articles/labours-panicky-establishment-referencing-the-wrong-period-in-history
Unfortunately Ann appears to have exceeded her bandwidth so I cannot reach it
Not exceeding bandwidth now, but impossible to read as it appears to have been tabulated.
Grrrr
What is Ann up to?
The article is now both accessible and correctly formatted
https://primeeconomics.org/articles/labours-panicky-establishment-referencing-the-wrong-period-in-history/
It’ also worth reading
Thanks to Ann for correcting this
‘Just seen Reeves on C4 news.
Oh dear.
Time I got my coat……………….see you later.
I think you do Singapore a dis-service. At least things work in Singapore!
This article sums up beautifully why I will struggle to find a party to vote for at the GE.
Stroller, I think the same having left the Labour Party because of Starmer, and living in a redwall constituency which is going to disappear. All I know about my new constituency is that Kevan Jones is the MP. He has been working hard for years to get restitution for the Post Office managers. Apart from that he seems to have voted with the party line on most things this parliament.
https://winasone.org.uk/about/faqs/
Here’s how you find out who to vote for in your constituency, if you want to vote.
My dad was a Labour Councillor and I vividly remember sitting on his knee as he drove around with the loudspeaker strapped to the car roof canvassing on election day. I was a party member from the Kinnock days until resigning in disgust in 2003 over Iraq
I rejoined in 2015 the day after Ed Millibands defeat and did my share of door knocking and leafleting having been massively enthused by the admittedly flawed Corbyn. Resigned again before I was expelled for being a Crosslandite Democratic Socialist shortly after Sir Kid Starver lied his way to the leadership.
My local MP is a good person and a member of the Socialist Campaign Group but there is no way in hell I will be voting Labour in the next election. A vote for the Tory Continuity Party is a vote for Fascism, perhaps not straight away but a clear step along that road and I refuse to be party to that. Mandleson and his nowhere else to go can kiss my arse, to paraphrase Kruschev -I see no difference between a Red Rose and a Blue Torch
Rachel Reeves is my MP. I left Labour when Corbyn was pushed out. Fortunately (I think) due to the boundary changes I won’t have to think about her in the next election. My hope is that Alex Sobel will be deposed by a Green MP – his constituency covers Leeds University, Otley (a quiet hotbed of Green Socialism), and now Kirkstall. I can only hope…
And the only way is ………..?
Last night I was on a zoom call with a group called Win as One. I got to it through a link from Jamie Driscoll who was part of it. I hadn’t realised it was organised by Compass.
Anyway, here’s a link to it.
https://winasone.org.uk/about/
Lots of them in the group last night were still Labour Party members, which I couldn’t understand.
If we want to get rid of the tories and Starmer’s labour, is this the sort of group we should join?