Rishi Sunak was interviewed by Trevor Phillips on Sky News this morning. He was petulant, pedantic, defensive of his record and simultaneously aggressive towards Phillips, whilst also being inappropriate and evasive. Apart from that, the interview went well.
I do, however, wish to ignore all those points and pick up an issue which he did not, of course highlight. Nor did Phillips.
Sunak's claim was that we have to increase defence spending in the UK as part of our programme of defending our borders. It's all very Trumpian.
Simultaneously, he was adamant that we have to ‘stop the boats', and that those words should be interpreted in accordance with their plain meaning. In other words, he was saying that there should be no more of what he describes as illegal immigration, even though the vast majority of people crossing the Channel do so legally, meaning he entirely misdescribes the problem.
In all this Sunak downgrades the significance of any measures to tackle climate change. He has no interest in doing that. Trump does not believe climate change is real, so nor can Rishi. In doing so he does, however, miss the glaringly obvious point, which is that the biggest threat to our borders comes from climate change.
We face the threat of serious inundation of large parts of the country from floodwater, whilst anyone who pretends that climate change will not create refugees in record numbers is straightforwardly in denial of a glaringly obvious truth that is staring us in the face.
That is what Sunak is now doing.
Unfortunately, it seems to be what Labour is doing as well.
We have a particular problem there seem to be no grown-up thinkers in UK politics right now who can look at the underlying long-term causes of the issues that we face and base policy upon addressing those issues so that we might anticipate and even prevent problems arising. They prefer short-term posturing instead.
It would really help if we could have politicians who could think beyond their need for instant gratification right now, but Labour and the Tories (at least) do not seem capable of providing them.
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“Sunak was ….petulant, pedantic, defensive of his record and simultaneously aggressive” So entirely normal for a Tory or LINO politico when asked difficult to answer questions.
Stats on refugees indicate that two very significant countries are Iraq and Afghanistan – a direct consequence of 40 years of failed policy Afghanistan and 30 years for Iraq. Depressing discussions with various note that a multi-year failure of the monsoon will lead to lots of people from the sub-continent looking for somewhere else. Bolt in Africa & what we see at the moment is a trickle which will turn into a flood. It is likely that humanity faces centuries of distruption & given humans, destruction (they are real good at that). Sunak is a neo-lib cipher expecting him to have the capacity even recognise that something needs to be considered is like expecting a dog to recite Hamlet – functionally impossible.
“It is likely that humanity faces centuries of disruption & given humans, destruction (they are real good at that)”
Climate Change is definitely the the major root cause of increased migration from Central & South America to the US southern borders.
” It is likely that humanity faces centuries of distruption & given humans, destruction”
I wish I had your optimism. I don’t think humanity has 2 centuries left, let alone several!
I wonder if this is why efforts to deal with climate change are met with indifference, at the least, or outright hostility and refusal? Humanity is not capable of believing that the planet may soon be unable to sustain human life. People seem to genuinely believe that it won’t happen. Even knowledgable and intelligent people like you Mark, assume that humanity will survive.
I’ve seen an estimate of 300m enforced migration due to climate impacts by 2100.
However, as we are heading for well over 2°C, not 1.5°C, the figures could easily be higher, especially given the vulnerability of the heavily populated great river flood plains and deltas.
I think that a serious underestimate
Trevor Phillips thinks Sunak is a very good “problem solver”, who cannot do the politics. I am struggling to identify what problems Sunak has “solved”; except the triumphant “eat out to help out” ……the virus; as Sir Christopher Whitty had the wit to understand, but appears to be beyond Phillips. Sunak is a functionary, a crude operator of an ideological manual. Sunak solves problems by the simple technical expedient of transferring them. Transfer wealth by extraction to a narrow vested interest, and transfer the costs, the poverty and the problems to everyone else. That really doesn’t take much essential “problem solving” talent. Phillips is grossly overselling.
I tend to agree
“Sunak’s claim was that we have to increase defence spending in the UK as part of our programme of defending our borders”.
The real problem with this position is that it was Government’s in which Sunak served in senior positions which reduced defence spending, cut the size of the army, and we should recall Boris Johnson turned up at a Select Committee to justify the run down and claimed the next war would be fought in cyber-space. Within weeks Johnson was in Ukraine telling Zelensky what Britain could do; with an army bereft of soldiers, no strategy for a land war in Europe, and insufficient equipment for the challenges Britain actually faced.
It was all very reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain. The Conservatives have a long, long history of leaving Britain bereft; and trying to solve the wrong problem. There is an endemic intellectual weakness in Conservatism, it follows them like a plague. Salisbury, trying to make it all sound like a light-hearted witticism, rather gave the game away for the duplicitous, fake casualness of Conservative thinking, that actually highlighted the vacuum at its heart, when he described his general approach: “to float lazily downstream, putting out the occasional diplomatic boathook”.
John’s last para sums up the incompetence thoroughly, but I’d like to add the overweening stench of entitlement and supremacy in dealing with other nations, which I put down to certain elements of the English education system: the kind of place that prides itself on producing large numbers of future government ministers and other high officials of state and society; the sort of place where the offspring of the rich and entitled can ensure that their offspring will meet the “right kind” of rich and entitled contemporaries to ensure a promising and well-rewarded future.
Last weekend we had a lunch for 7 of the former Labour members of our constituency who are still mates. There are two uni lecturers, three teachers, a former Whitehall civil servant, a retail manager. Only one quit the party because of Corbyn, one defected to the Greens, and the rest due to the demise of democratic procedure.
None of us could identify a viable alternative to the four neoliberal right wing parties in England (Con, Lab, Lib, Ref). We agreed that climate was the crucial issue, but even the Green member felt disheartened by their performance and profile.
Really worrying….
Tackling climate change seriously will impact the bottom line of many mega-businesses, because doing so would fundamentally change human behaviour and spending priorities of governments and individuals. And so they lobby against, and fund propaganda tanks to disseminate disinformation, “donate” to politicians and parties, flood the airwaves, capture global forums where they can. What chance has the green lobby got?
Government has the power to effect change, but most are compromised and have short term objectives of staying in power, and the ruling parties need the money from big business to do so, while some even seem to be climate deniers. It’s not looking good.
Starmer has abandoned the pledge to provide £28 billion for Green projects. Is he following the orders of those who are funding the Labour Party? The oligarchs who own corporate businesses and don’t believe in climate change. Those making obscene profits from fossil fuels and armaments And ,of course the Israelis who seem to be running the world.
I think a Starmer government will very likely move leftwards once in government and begin to seriously tackle climate change and economic inequality whatever noises it is making now. Why?
1. The HOC is about to change dramatically in its composition. Nearly 100 MPs, most of them Tory, will not be standing again. More will lose their seats. So, the 2019 intake which was disproportionately composed of climate change denying, neo liberal Brexiteers will be replaced by a younger, more left leaning cohort. The greater the landslide the more pressure there will be on Starmer and Reeves from their own back benches to move away from left over Tory economic policies and attitudes.
2. If there is a landslide the expectations on the goverment will be huge. The general aim amongst voters now is just to get rid of the Tories, but once the Tories are defeated, especially if it is a near extinction level defeat, as seems possible, then there will be no pressure from the right on a Labour government. The pressure will all be from the left and from the daily reality of climate change dangers.
3. So, if he can deliver a knock out blow to the Tories this time, the threat to Starmer’s majority in 2029 will not come from a resurgent, immigrant hating, climate denying right. It will come from the Greens and the left and the increasingly undeniable threats we face.
I like your optimism. I wish I could share it.
Unfortunately Starmer has been busy ensuring that no left leaning people are standing as prospective Labour MPs, only fully signed up neo-lib Labour Zionist supporters are allowed..
I do wonder if this discussion obout migrants/refugees is really incomplete? The birthrate in the UK is around 1.6. To have an adequate replacement of the existing population would require 2.1. From what I understand about the progression of populations the difference could lead to a very fast reduction within a few years. I also seem to remember such a reduction would have very serious consequences for any economy in a very short amount of time.
From what I can see from the current numbers the EU is around 1.5, so even more pressing than the UK.
Perhaps, given the effect of Climate Change and the projected migration numbers someone should be working on a better strategy than just so-called “fortress developed states”?
You raise a completely valid argument that is being ignored by our politicians
Mr Brian:
of course this would dilute the white anglo-saxon race!! & we can;t have that can we?? (irony alert).
So the UK, so much of western Europe. Italy, native Italina population declining by … 1.2 million per year (source: Eurostat). (catholic) Poland 0.25 million etc.
I would like to offer something positive. Genetic diversity. The most genetically diverse human population resides in … Africa. Genetic diversity is good. Humans outside of Africa (= us lot – including the Chinese & Indians) come from a group that probably numbered a few thousand – we are vastly less genetically diverse than Africans. Thus migration does have positive aspects – genetically. Amusing fact: significant parts of the Swedish pop came from … Syria, admittedly a long time ago (ref: “My European Family. The 1st 54,000 years”). Which leaves the open question: how to cope with migration? The neo-lib idiots (Sunak) would rely on markets or the military (or both), which leaves the open question: does humanity rise to the challenge … or do the drawbridges all go up? Keep in mind: genetic diversity is a positive, its reduction a negative. Always.
Mike, yet another very valid aspect of this issue…
It’s interesting that so many voters if asked whether they care about others would answer in the affirmative and rightly so because as a species we have benefited enormously from caring for each other. Ask them too if we express this caring by widely if not exclusively engaging in transactions using money and again by dint of sheer logic they would have to answer again in the affirmative. Then ask them again if the government they vote for can create its own money to provide collective caring suddenly they are all at sea, confused as to where on Earth this transaction medium actually comes from. All you can say is this is bizarrely irrational, even label it as a cognitively defective flaw in the human species. After all if you want to care wouldn’t you want to know how the means to do this, the money mechanism, really works rather than vote for “lip service” politicians?
Wow, Mr/Ms Schofield
hits the nail on the head.. commercially-created bank money
why are we paying over and over again for homes already built at multiple prices FOR THE LAND AS WELL as Treasury/Bank of England “wring their hands” [reportedly] over inflation. Yet the “commercial-bank money causes 95% of it, we as young people need it to buy – and property-price inflation [hidden inflation and what some have described as tax] rips the heart out of the any who end up as criminals, mental cases, addicts (thinking they cannot cope).
and accountants partly complicit, along with govts thinking “must balance the tax books ” – as Mr Murphy has described? [well we do need to reduce consumption, true, grow more of our own, less sedentary stuff..]
I told them about this pushing up property prices at PAUL MOXEY’S ACCA end of year event once and they said its perfectly clear. so whose job to fix? Accountants can be part of this movement..
1. a one-third charge on all commercially-created money, starting with that issued as 20-year money (screen-created commercially) at 1.5% for eco-fit if thorough and including solar-thermal
2 in due course this could be extended to all house-price uplift money (one-third of repayments both interest and principal sum) on “loans” – the screen-created, as described by Bank of England under “modern money” and used to fill the local authority shortfalls.. a figure from land registries.