I was amused in slightly odd ways by a report in The Guardian yesterday that suggested:
Liz Truss was among the headline speakers at this week's Conservative Political Action Conference at the National Harbor in Maryland [USA]. CPAC is billed as the biggest annual gathering of conservatives in the US but has in recent years embraced Donald Trump's brand of nativist-populism.
In Wednesday's opening session, an “international summit”, the ex-PM sat side by side with Nigel Farage, former leader of the Brexit party, both with small union flags on the table in front of them.
They then noted:
Not for the first time Truss … sought to portray herself as the victim of bureaucratic forces. “I ran for office in 2022 because Britain wasn't growing, the state wasn't delivering, [and] we needed to do more,” she said. “I wanted to cut taxes, reduce the administrative state, take back control as people talked about in the Brexit referendum. What I did face was a huge establishment backlash and a lot of it actually came from the state itself.”
She continued: “What has happened in Britain over the past 30 years is power that used to be in the hands of politicians has been moved to quangos and bureaucrats and lawyers so what you find is a democratically elected government actually unable to enact policies.”
She went on to list the Environment Agency, Office for Budget Responsibility, Bank of England and Judicial Appointments Commission. “There's a whole bunch of people – and I describe them as the economic establishment – who fundamentally don't want the status quo to change because they're doing quite fine out of it. They don't really care about the prospects of the average person in Britain and they didn't want things to change and they didn't want that power taken away.”
Truss added: “So I think that's the issue we now face as conservatives. It's not enough just to will conservative policies and say we want to control our borders or we want to cut taxes or we want to reform our welfare system because we have a whole group of people now in Britain with a vested interest in the status quo who actually have a lot of power.”
So why was I amused, in a slightly off way? That was because Truss is, to a very large degree, right. There is such a body of power in the UK that is trying to preserve the status quo. I am not sure that she was right to name the Environment Agency (although she might well be), but without a doubt, the Office for Budget Responsibility, Bank of England and Judicial Appointments Commission do their utmost to maintain the existing hierarchical power structure of the UK that greatly favours some (the wealthy, privileged few) in society at cost to the vast majority of people. So, I agree with Truss on that.
Of course, what I do not agree with her about is that this power structure is left-wing, woke, or anti-market. It is anything but those things. It exists to reinforce prejudice, maintain the interests of markets and undermine the role of government. Truss gets all her analysis totally wrong.
But she's right: political economy matters at least as much as economics, and political economy is all about hierarchies of power that can be used to allocate resources within any society. We have such hierarchies of power and they are dangerous. They, admittedly, might keep the politically deranged like Truss at bay. But they also maintain the power of an elite in our society. And that is why they are a threat to the general well-being of this country, but for precisely the opposite reason that Truss thinks.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
What I find bizarre is that the party of the establishment, funded by the owning class can not only fail to attract a higher calibre of MP’s than the current shower but has put two people so entirely unsuitable for office into the job of PM
John
May I just bring to your attention that in such a state that what you actually need is people who can only see to the end of their nose and less.
And that is what have a lot of in parliament John, and explains where we are now.
You don’t need high calibre people in a ‘client’s state’ like the UK John. You just need unquestioning obedience, no or low principles and self interest. And we have buckets of it.
Two people? Johnson, Truss, Sunak, at the very least
Starmer pressuring the Speaker by pretending the Palestinian cause was to blame for attacks on his MP’s was a classic example of insidious forces in the UK. Sadly few voters will recognise this insidiousness in operation.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/22/despicable-british-palestinians-react-to-commons-chaos-over-gaza-ceasefire
Indeed. It’s the political ‘centre’ that is the ideology of the status-quo. It’s creed goes something like: things are not too bad, change is risky, best just to tinker a bit. It sees this position as rational, and what it defines as ‘extreme’ positions (of ‘left’ or ‘right’) as irrational in various ways – but not in terms of values or ideas, but in terms of the extent to which they advocate change – divergence from, precisely, the status-quo.
The interesting thing is that this centrist position can indeed be rational – historically, sometimes has been. Radical change really is risky; revolutions don’t have a great track record. But now there’s a reality that completely alters that ‘conventional wisdom’: climate-ecological breakdown. Now, the rational position is actually in favour of radical change – because without it our societies will collapse in chaos anyway.
The right-wing advocacy of fascism – best understood as ‘the continuation of capitalism by undemocratic means’ is rational in its own terms – protect the wealthy and powerful, maintain order by force in the coming breakdown. Their fear is that the centre, the establishment, the ‘deep state’, will break the other way, embrace a post-capitalism settlement that’s inimical to current wealth and privilege.
I am not at all convinced this position is centrist
It is clearly centre-right
Sit down you’re rocking the boat.
Inertia and stasis are self reinforcing in many systems and organisations.
The aim is to maintain power and control in institutional frameworks, both individually and hierarchically. Sustaining personal privilege is another factor.
This is the way we do it because this is the way we have always done it, and I’m the boss.
This is particularly true of the climate change situation where corporates, and especially fossil fuel interests, have lobbied government intensively for the status quo or snails pace incremental change. This is Newton’s 3rd Law, as institutionally active.
It isn’t even a question or respoinding to an existential threat.. Inertia dominates.
Yet below the iceberg’s water line, things are more complex.
1. There are patterns of behaviour in responding to events.
2. There is the system structure itself.
3. Then there are the reinforcing beliefs and mindset that militate against change.
For 3. these will include education that only reinforces conformity, such as the Oxford PPE.
Reportedly, Cambridge had no Keynesian module on offer in its undergraduate economics course when the 2008 crisis broke, being entirely neoliberal in emphasis.
Then, hardly anyone had even heard of Minsky, let alone have any familiarity with his theory. It was simply ignored in economics teaching.
I don’t believe there is much ideology involved in much so-called liberal institutions, more unthinking observance.
Truly liberal ideology would require commitment to something akin to Rawls’ prescriptions in his theory of justice, for example, which are far, far too radical for those who are content with the status quo.
Totally agreed.
Truss reads like a Nazi. It’s full of the offshoring of blame.
But this is how neo-liberalism asserts itself and in the shadow of Carl Schmitt ‘makes the exception’ and gains sovereignty by telling everyone that others are committing what are THEIR crimes.
So all we have is another iteration of letting the rich inherit the earth.
What is worse is that the Left is so ideologically confused in this country it has no retort and talks of cosying up to the bank sector where there be dragons – rich ones.
All the talk is about giving the rich more and not about what has been taken away.
And that is why they are a threat to the general well-being of this country, but for precisely the opposite reason that Truss thinks.
I don’t think this is really what Truss thinks (- in the sense that it’s irrelevant, Truss can have many opinions depending on what suits her best at a particular moment) .
Truss has found a lucrative niche in the US trumpian far right and is exploiting it now. Books, speeches for US market – she’s trying to make a good buck – and probably succeeding – she knows where the money is.
There is no ‘left’ in this country as Starmer and the MSM have been agents to hollow out the democratic socialist and green part of the spectrum, leaving the lumpen authoritarian right (Blair epitomises this) and irrelevant fractions on the left (including a pal of mine who is a genuine Lenin fan).
We are no longer a democracy. That’s why Starmer and every Tory PM ruled out PR.
There is of course a neo-liberal economic establishment, comprising the Treasury and the Bank of England and indeed most orthodox mainstream academic economists and think-tanks such as the IFS and the constellation around the IEA in Tufton Street. It is increasingly apparent that its views are more based on assertion and belief than evidence.
Truss conveniently forgets to say that she had no mandate for any of the policies she tried to implement. The government she temporarily led was elected in 2019 on the back of Johnson’s “oven ready” Brexit deal. When Johnson was at long last finally ejected and Truss stood for leader, she was supported by less than a third of Conservative MPs in the final ballot – only a few more than Penny Mordaunt and significantly fewer than Sunak. She was supported by just 81,000 people in the members ballot – less than half of the electorate (about one in six did not vote) albeit 20,000 more than Sunak. And a few weeks later Sunak was crowned as her successor, unopposed when Johnson did not stand and Mordaunt withdrew.
Like many politicians, she appears to want to make decisions that cannot be reviewed, delayed or gainsaid by any independent person or body. Not least it seems she wants politicians to select the judges. She and her ilk pose a threat to democracy and the rule of law.
Did you not notice, as Truss and Farage failed to notice, that the union flags they were seated behind were both upside down? It is a recognised sign for distress. Very true.
I will take your word for it
I could not spot an upside down Union Jack
The half of a flag nearest the flagpole is called the hoist (the other half is the fly)
Look at the white saltire in the hoist.
The Red saltire of Ireland is in the lower half.
I won’t go into why-it is to do with heraldry.
You’re welcome !
Isn’t it something to do with the union with Scotland coming first, so St Andrew comes before/above St Patrick?
As this page prosaically explains: https://www.forces.net/news/union-jack-do-you-know-correct-way
“When flown correctly, the fat white bar in the top corner of the flag, closest to the flagpole, should be along the top edge of the flag, not the flagpole edge.”
But apparently less than half of the people know that.
And I will never bother to recall it
Sorry, but some things just do not matter