‘Ben' Couchen succeeded for the Tories, but with the aid of unrepeatable bungs from central government.
‘Andy' Street failed, if only just, in the West Midlands.
‘Rishi' Sunak is universally acknowledged as a political disaster who is bound to fail.
There is no one else.
All the attempts to brand the Tories as anything but what they really are - a nasty, openly racist, far-right party with contempt for the majority of people - are failing. The adherence to a culture of indifference to people, the planet, and anything that matters to a person who can think about more than money, has destroyed this party.
What now? Can it recover? Should it recover? And if so, what as, and what should it espouse?
Even if it did, should the twenty per cent or so of its true believers ever again have the right to control the political narrative of a country where most are repulsed by what the Tories think?
And to where should that majority look for ideas when it is clear that Labour is almost as bereft of them, which is the only thing that might still give remaining Tories hope?
Where now for politics that matters in other words?
Seeking to answer that question is why this blog exists, is my best answer.
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The Green Party made further progress in many places. They now control my local council after making gains from the Tories. Our deeply unfair and undemocratic first past the post election system will limit progress at the next election. All the evidence indicates that PR would condemn the Tories to oblivion for the foreseeable future and would most likely prevent Labour forming a majority government which is why they are opposed to it.
Both the Conservative and Labour parties have become the “Invisible Parties” that don’t actually meet the needs of the many but pander to those of the few whilst pretending otherwise. This should now be clear to anyone who takes an interest in economics and especially the monetary system aspect of it.
Getting elected as a councillor is easier as you require fewer votes than for an MP. Despite the low turnout, this gives an indication of people’s real affinities. Given the large number of new councillors outside the three main parties, the elections have shown how disaffected people are with the status quo, and I suspect a lot of those who voted Labour did so for fear of the Tories retaining control of their councils.
The only way to free national government from that status quo is PR. But none of the three will countenance it as it serves tham well for their own interests in Westminster.
Mark Harper MP has the answer on Sky News. The answer to every question about Conservative defeat this week? “I don’t accept that”? He sounds exactly like an ex-Post Office employee answering questions at the Horizon Inquiry.
That’ll work.
Or we’ve substantially increased the NHS budget when they clearly haven’t actually budgeted to meet expected demand! Complete con artists and Labour unlikely to be any better!
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/05/cuts-will-result-in-patient-deaths-hospitals-shed-medical-staff-after-being-told-to-balance-the-books
One of the oddest things about this election is the extent that since Friday the UK news coverage appears to be only about the Tories.
Possibly it is just about the news sources I use, but apart from the odd cameo from Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, etc it appears to be entirely about the Tories ever changing attempt to find a lie that will stick.
First the election was going to be all about the Tees and West Midlands mayors. Despite TV channels recognising it as just lying Tory spin, bizarrely they continued to give it prominence.
Next up was the fantasy that the London Mayoral race was going to be close.
Yesterday the circus had moved on to a hopelessly skewed poll from Sky dismissed by John Curtice as being highly misleading.
Now we are back to the old favourite used by Cameron and May that it will be a coalition with those mythical bogeymen the Scots.
In an honest world the news would be that the Tories are still trying to think up their best lie and we will let you know when they decide.
I’ll have a go at what needs to happen next (even though the Labour party seems disinclined to do what is necessary).
Many people think that much more investment and spending is required for many (most) aspects of public services. The question is how to resource it (I’m carefully not saying how to pay for it).
With every respect for the excellent and important work in the Taxing Wealth Report, it addresses how to pay for public expenditure, not how to resource it. To me, it plays the neoliberals at their own game. When they falsely say ” there is no money” the TWR says “there’s plenty of money, here’s how to get it”.
But taxing wealth, highly desirable though it is, does not really address the resource issue. Taxing wealthy people frees up few real resources. The wealthy have ample financial resources. Whilst they may whine piteously if they are taxed more, and a little more fairly, they will carry on spending unaffected (because they can). Maybe taxing wealth may affect asset prices, but it won’t free up a lot of real resources.
Fortunately we can resource change anyway. An interesting article, which exemplifies my argument, is in the Guardian yesterday (Spending cuts are often false economies that end up costing society dearly, by Torsten Bell). The article explains that closing police stations cost society £3 for every pound “saved”. There’s are so many other examples of such false economies, from bed blocking because of cuts to social care, to flood damage due to failure to build flood defenses.
What needs to happen, and what happened in the past, was that government spent the necessary money (for example creating the NHS after the war when “there was no money” because “the country was broke”).
There’s this thing called the “fiscal multiplier” whereby (in the right conditions) GDP increases by a multiple of government spending. Opening police stations, social care, flood defenses are all the right conditions, as are many of the things that need to be done. Even that right wing bastion the OECD agrees that the fiscal multiplier can be significantly greater than unity.
From a purely fiscal perspective spending money on necessary things INCREASES the tax take (if fiscal multiplier exceeds unity). That’s because (almost) all money the government spends is recovered through taxation (even with our current system). And because the government spending money increases economic activity.
So, the government can spend much of what’s needed to restore our sadly degraded country. In doing so, by reversing years of false economies, real resources will be freed up. Certainly taxes may need to be adjusted (to prevent excessive consumption of some types) but, with the resulting expanding economy, this is politically achievable.
A government just needs to get on with it. Sadly, this might take while given our current political parties and politicians.
Much to agreed with Tim
What tax does is provide the power to reallocate resources
There be many reasons not to reply to this which is of course fine by me. But I would be interested in knowing how taxes reallocate certain resources if you could find time to explain please. I must admit that I read “resources” as primarily “people”. As I understand it, we have near full employment, so to allocate person a from (say) a parasitic, highly personally lucrative but exploitative job to one which is far more useful to society and other people, but of lower status and remuneration is hard to imagine at all – and even harder to imagine how tax does this? How exactly does that useless think tank “employee”, paid highly to promote nonsense become a good STEM teacher in a ‘left-behind’ school (other examples are available)? In order to get that better and more courageous society you promote so ably, there has to be a destruction – wholesale – of some types of ‘jobs’ and re-allocation of people into other ‘jobs’ – and I am under no illusion that this would be against the will of those re-allocated? I am also under no illusion that I myself might require to be so re-allocated by the way! Even though I work as an engineer in a company manufacturing medical devices so am marginally useful. Sorry if this question is an intrusion – I don’t mean it that way.
What you are really asking me, I think, is whether or not fiscal policy can work.
The terms fiscal, and fiscal policy, are almost universally misunderstood, or not understood at all, in the population at large. There is a glossary entry on fiscal policy, as there is a monetary policy. However, if I summarise, fiscal relates to taxation revenues and fiscal policy relates to the balance between government expenditure and fiscal revenues.
The government influences the allocation of resources in its decision-making on what to spend money on, in its taxation policy, which either encourages or discourages certain activities, and in its regulation to achieve the same effect. Physical policy is not, then, simply about raising revenue. It is about raising revenue with the deliberate intention to change the way in which society works, including by tackling inequality, addressing market failure and by encouraging what the government sees as good and bad economic activity, either by spending more on them, or by taxing them more or less.
Given the sum involved, government spending and taxation both have the power to re-allocate resources within society. That is what I am talking about.
It’s resource planning and management that opens up the opportunities for solving real world problems, the ones that affect our daily lives, and which we quite reasonably expect government to manage efficiently, from mending potholes, to ensuring prompt NHS treatment for acute conditions.
This is where politicians need to educate themselves in systems analysis and management. All of them.
If I wanted to reduce waiting lists for, say general surgery, the first thing to look at is the capacity in the system and then throughputs. If a consultant has two senior registrars, two senior house and two junior house, then that team will be able to deliver more procedures than if the team is only four persons and not six.
Currently, in my health area, consultant teams are smaller than they were 20 years ago, and work outputs per team are commensurately lower.
(This is based on a discussion with my GP whose brother in law is a general surgeon)
If one is planning to expand delivery of general surgery, and increase the number of junior doctors in each team, then, apart from increasing funding, you either need to increase the immigration of qualified medics, or you have to start training them, or both.
The potential flow of qualified medics depends on a series of issues like the numbers of science students at 18+, so secondary education, then medical school capacities, and sufficient recruitment incentives to attract applicants to the medical profession – student grants, working conditions and adequate pay scales.
Externals such as the cost of private renting also act as constraints.
(Glasgow is desperately short of student residences, for example)
One also might try to divert from other medical specialities, but that will only create problems elsewhere.
Of course, I’d need to look at capacity in essential related resources, beds, anaesthetists and nursing care too.. and then there’s retention…
It is all possible through comprehensive systems analysis and planning..
Now, as any fule kno, if there is little elasticity in the system, there will be timelags measured up to a decade to train up the required number of medics – well beyond the electoral cycle, let alone the shelf life of Health Ministers. So. we have problems of political continuity from the outset.
But, heyho, there are always the options of “reforming the system” which, by itself, adds diddly squat in the way of resources, or by using private hospitals.
Surprise, surprise, these are staffed by persons trained up in conventional state funded medical schools, and often already working close to full time in the NHS, so the scope for increasing outputs is heavily constrained. There is huge overlap.
Eat yer heart out Wes Streeting.
I note the first long term workforce plan in England was only published in June 2023 alongside the blurb…..
“The first comprehensive workforce plan for the NHS, putting staffing on a sustainable footing and improving patient care. It focuses on retaining existing talent and making the best use of new technology alongside the biggest recruitment drive in health service history.”
So WTF have health policy makers and managers been doing for 75 years ?
(Effective workforce planning in Scotland has been somewhat neglected, in my view, but I think we are well ahead of England, as there is still an attempt to co-ordinate services).
I suppose this is where we enter the arena of the quality of the political class, its political will, its managerial competence, venality, and problem solving abilities – call it praxis.
We also need a highly qualified and competent Civil Service, or we will be reduced to outsourcing systems management to some newly qualified bean counting consultant or other from the Big 4. Tory hollowing out the CS has been a disaster, and will take a long. long time to resolve.
You can rinse and repeat across all government services, and as has been pointed out already in other threads, resourcing HMRC has to be pretty high up the priority list, just to ensure optimal operation of the tax system.
Thanks
It is hard to disagree with what you say Tony.
I also think it is important to take a high level view, and not get mired in managerialism.
All you say about looking at the capacity of the system, training requirements etcetera is doubtless correct. But it more complex than that. Just looking at how we may increase capacity can be a little dispiriting because of the time lags. I’m more optimistic that improvements could be made more swiftly by looking at the wider picture.
Continuing your example of NHS services, waiting lists etc, we need to look beyond the bonds of just the NHS, we can do more. For example, I previously mentioned bed blocking, which is well known to reduce NHS capacity but is outside the NHS per se. So capacity (beds at least) could be improved in a modest timescale by improving social care. Then demand could be reduced by rolling back the many Conservative policies that unnecessarily make people sick. I need hardly mention the vicious assaults on “benefit scroungers” by reducing benefits on those who need them. Such assaults lead to much ill health. Reducing them would improve health and reduce demand on the NHS (as well as improving people’s lives). I could go on and on. What about reducing support for pharmacists forcing too many out of business. Whilst we undoubtedly need to train more medical staff there are quite a few who trained, were skilled in their jobs, and forced out by (physical) resource cuts. Even the humble road pot holes have a role to play because they slow down ambulances.
As I said rolling back the many false economies over the past years can free up resources, some of this at least can be achieved in a shorter timescale than training more doctors.
So let’s not get too caught up in too much managerialism. Our politicians need to be taking an overview, not getting caught up in minutiae.
the ‘National Equivalent Vote Share’ (NEVS) used by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher of the University of Plymouth, provides a psephological assessment of national political opinion applied, for example to Local elections. Thresher appeared on Sky News this morning to provide a NEVS take on what the local results implied for Labour in a General Election. The conclusion appeared to be that NEVS shows that while Labour benefitted from a 7%-8% move from Conservatives last week, it will need a 14% swing, even for a small majority. That is the problem FPTP sets. FPTP’s principal beneficiary is the Conservatives, and the real truth seems to be that the Conservatives know it, are hanging on to it, and trying to gerrymander and legislate (ID cards) to preserve their position even if votes by the electorate falls below 20% of the electoral population in the country. FPTP only works for Labour over a narrower set of circumstances and a larger popular vote, but are terrified of giving up the fragile position it has. That, it seems is the real electoral position. I am not a psephologist, but I draw the conclusion that FPTP is slowly killing democracy, and destroying our politics – and our economy. The guilty party? Political Party; essentially Conservative guilt on all charges; Labour, guilty of some. Party? They are essentially corrupt. They do not care about you – they care about themseveles; and fall to the entryists with the money or ruthlessness to take advantage of it.
“All the attempts to brand the Tories as anything but what they really are – a nasty, openly racist, far-right party with contempt for the majority of people – are failing.”
You have nailed it with saying that – but the Tories will try to go lower and more right wing (if that is even possible) – que Braverman in today’s Observer (I didn’t have the courage to read the full report, as it is even more disgusting and repellent as no doubt she wants things to go).
The brightest spot was Khan winning in London with a much increased vote share, against a truly awful Tory ‘mini Braveman’ candidate. The Tory tactic of briefing that it was ‘close’ and that they were ‘utterly convinced’ that Hall had won before the count was made, was an interesting Tory tactic (expect more like this in the GE from the Tories).
Extra special and wonderful was Count Binface beating the fascist from Britain First!
Ipswich back in the PL was brilliant – people round here (Bury St Edmunds) have a real spring in their step at the moment!
Why did the BBC put Braverman but not a Green on this morning?
No doubt Tice will be along soon, way before a LibDem too
I am hoping the the GE result will be to catastrophic for the Tories that the Lib Dems or SNP form the opposition, which will compel the media to ‘defer’ to Lib Dems or SNP and ‘ignore’ the Tories.
I’d love to hear the phrase ‘Tory – who?’ more in the future, as they will be so irrelevent.
Hope rather than expectation!!
I had reason to be trawling some tory sites this morning – David Gauke on Conservative home was damning on the topic of the choice/calibre of the candidate for London.
Don’t feel that you have to publish this one, but the main links (the large images) on your Mastodon go to this blog’s front page, not the specific posts. Not sure how that’s happening, since the ‘proper’ link is in the message’s main text, but it’s something you might want to look at.
Annoying
I will have a look…
Thank you
“Seeking to answer that question is why this blog exists, is my best answer”
& thank goodness there is this blog (& a few other outlets) that allow discussion.
I have a sense that the ability to question or even bear witness is being closed down.
This the most egregious example: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/04/uk-surgeon-who-described-gaza-massacre-denied-entry-to-france
Worrying times, with some small lights in the darkness.
Thanks
Your other favoured places are?