The UK does not need a government run for the benefit of the wealthiest. But that is what it has got. It needs a government run for people in need, which is the exact opposite of what Labour is delivering. Is that because it's frightened of wealthy people?
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This is the transcript:
Are politicians frightened of wealthy people? It's a relevant question because I think they are.
I think the evidence that they are is overwhelming. They run frightened of them whenever they come into conflict with people with financial power.
We can see that in one sense, very clearly in the last week. Farmers were allowed to completely block roads in Whitehall without the police arresting anyone.
If Just Stop Oil had done that, the number of arrests would have been significant. And the same law applies to both groups.
Were the farmers noisy? Yes, they were.
Did they disrupt traffic? Yes, they did.
Did they prevent ambulances getting to a hospital? I think they most certainly did, because the route down Whitehall is on the way to St Thomas' Hospital, which is one of the major teaching hospitals with one of the biggest accident and emergency units in London. I know the area well.
So, undoubtedly, they did all the things that the wealthy have claimed that oil protesters have done to them, and they got away with it, completely and utterly, as if they had the complete right to block Whitehall with impunity. Why did they have that right? Simply because the politicians were too frightened to take them on, too frightened to take them on to say that actually this is a bunch of very wealthy people who are demanding the right to not pay tax when there are people in the UK who need support, which the farmers don't.
But the point I'm making is broader than about farmers protesting.
The government is running frightened of the City of London. Rachel Reeves went to Brussels to say, in the last week, that Brussels should open the doors to the City of London again because they need the City, apparently.
There is no evidence that the rules blocking access to the City of London from Europe have done the European Union any harm since they came into place, post-Brexit, of course. But Rachel Reeves wants a special favour for this particular, very wealthy group in British society.
Why? Because she is desperate to keep in with them because of their wealth.
And why is that? Why has she called the City of London the “jewel in the crown” of the British economy when actually working out what value it adds to our society is exceptionally difficult because, frankly, it doesn't really add a great deal of value to the British economy at all, which is what I suspect the European Union has now realised?
Why does she do that? It's because they have got money.
They have got access to the media.
They have got access to PR machines.
They can criticise Labour.
They can create the noise that makes it obvious that Labour is not doing very well, as clearly it isn't.
And Labour is vulnerable to them, as are all neoliberal political parties, whether they are Tory, Labour, Liberal Democrat, or, I will be candid, the SNP, because they have no alternative story to tell.
I keep coming back to this point. Unless you've got your own strategy and your own policy that makes it clear that you are biased in favour of another group in society for good, moral reasons, such as children in poverty, or pensioners living in fear of winter cold, or those people who do not have access to housing - and we have seen this week that the number of homeless people in the UK has now reached 360,000 - then if you do not have that story in favour of those groups who need help, you're vulnerable to the wealthy because they will claim that they're the people who pay for all of government and therefore if they don't get what they want they will withdraw their cooperation and your government will fail. And you haven't got a counter-narrative to explain why you need those people to make payment to you, come what may, because others require the funds that the market has given to them as inappropriate reward for the activity that they have undertaken.
This narrative is missing from British politics.
It's also missing, by the way, from US politics, and it's missing from politics across a lot of Europe because this fear of the wealthy is commonplace. Forty or more years of neoliberal politics, which has said that finance is the most important part of any economy, has led to the point where those with wealth call the tunes.
And the cost has been to those without wealth. And in our society, there are millions, well over half our population, who have no significant wealth at all, who have no savings sufficient to cover an unexpected bill, who have nothing to fall back on in the event of a rainy day.
Those are the people that a government should be serving. It is their narrative that Labour should be promoting.
It is in the interest of those people that it should be standing up to wealth and saying, you must pay because we need a fairer society, and if we had a fairer society, you would benefit from the increased activity that would result inside our economy, as a consequence of those people having money to spend.
But Labour doesn't understand that narrative. And instead, they run away from it. And the consequence is all too obvious. The wealthy will get wealthier, which is exactly what they want because they're terrified of losing their wealth. And those who are in need will become needier because Labour is doing very little for them.
And that's what's wrong with our politics.
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Regarding the farmers protest in Whitehall, they had permission, the road was closed and traffic diverted.
This is different to Just Stop Oil who didn’t have permission.
So why did they get permission?
and how many farmers were using red diesel to travel to this protest?
All of them, most likely.
Just Stop Oil do liaise with the police about routes for marches etc.
For tractors to get to the centre of London they have to travel the roads to get there causing significant delays to the traffic- JSO protestors travel on the underground / buses / foot causing no problems.
Seems there is 2 tier policing – in favour of the rich .
I’d also suggest two-tier attitudes. Normally Crispin Flintoff is OK. However, this report (on farmers) only provided one (whining ) point of view – that of the farmers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-r3I2b6vCU
The snivelling by people owning millions of pounds of land was amazing. Furthermore, no mention of the supermarkets and the way in which they squeeze all the profit out of farming. Starmer & Co are fine going after “the left” but they are unable to rebut over-priviledged whingers (who of course are backed by the UK press). This points to a worrying inability to identify the problem which boils down to (supermarkets causing low profitability in farming – the current fuss about inheritance tax is a symptom.
Would be interested to hear your thoughts on Polly Toynbee’s article today.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/17/labour-keir-starmer-low-carbon-energy-prison-reforms-housebuilding
Where’s the help for the child in poverty?
Or the young person facing a life in debt and rented accommodation?
Or the pensioner dying of cold, waiting transfer to a trolley in hospital, where they will be treated for days.
Nothing matters whilst those things persist.
Or help for the child being smacked (beaten up) by his/her own parents. Headline from the Independent today:
“No plans’ to ban smacking children despite concerns over Sara Sharif case, education secretary says” and
“Despite Sir Keir Starmer in 2022 calling for a smacking ban in Wales to be extended throughout the UK, Bridget Phillipson said the government has ‘no plans to legislate’ to do so”
The practice has been banned in Scotland since November 2020 and in Wales from March 2022.
As you say, nothing matters whilst these things persist. Labour, as the Tories before them, are concerned with all the wrong things. All they see are £ signs.
I regard Ms Toynbee’s journalism as government stenography, and interpret it in that light.
When she is wheeled out, it is because Starmer needs her help. Even her “criticisms” should be interpreted as stenography for Starmer or those who pull his strings.
I wonder if she will write again about WASPI women? Here she is 5 years ago… https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/28/labour-policies-benefit-millions-waspi-women-pensions
Still campaigning Polly? Or have the orders from Liz Kendall changed your stance?
I increasingly share your view.
What I know from experience is she has few ideas, and lifts her columns from lengthy briefings. She is also terrified of anything left of centre.
I recall Polly T suggesting voters, appalled at Tony Blair’s actions supporting Bush in the latter’s Iraq invasion, should still vote Labour but with a peg on their nose. I gave up on the Guardian years ago but I doubt very much she would have suggested voting for Corbyn, even with a peg on your nose. There are clearly certain Labour politicians that should be voted for come what may, and others never, in Pollyworld.
My favourite moment with Polly was when I told her the trouble with John McDonnell was he was just too right wing in his economics (which I stand by). I am not sure she has called since.
Thank you.
I’m banned from the Grauniad after a few offences, the last pointing out her multiple hypocrisies. This was a decade ago.
I’d put that on your CV.
Here we go – as predicted – the anatomy of a stenographic U turn. Toynbee dumps the WASPI women, with all the official Labour excuses.
1 – “WE CAN’T AFFORD IT!”
(Yes, we can, Polly. The government has a central bank and a fiat currency.
2 – “The compensation is not means tested so even Theresa May would get it!!”
(Er Polly, Pensions aren’t a means tested benefit in the first place, even Theresa May gets one, but if you are worried, we can always reduce some of Theresa May’s pension tax reliefs & other rich person’s tax reliefs – but Labout aren’t doing that).
Toynbee’s article is a disgraceful piece of calculated shameless hypocritical stenography. But then she knows that. It’s also utterly unconvincing.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/19/waspis-state-pension-labour-compensation
I hope at least 100 or more Labour MPs are disgusted enough to rediscover their backbones and rebel.
I remember a review if a biography of MacMillan.
It pointed out that his generation had been scarred by both WW1 & the Russian Revolution, and said that his main political ambition was to ensure that he and his class didnt end up hanging from lamposts.
The bottom line is that there are a lot more poor people with little if anything to lose, and that The Security Forces are drawn from the Working Class so when push comes to shove I suggest that relying on them to keep the poor from the rich might be a bit optimistic.
I understand that during the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia sections of the Security Forces said that they would not act against demonstrators and there have been a few ‘interesting’ goings on here as well.
I wonder if perhaps the current ruling class might think about these things?
I see Starmer is off visiting soldiers again. Last week it was RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, this week it’s those on the Russian border wirh Estonia.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/dec/16/keir-starmer-to-visit-british-troops-on-russias-border
I find it difficult to forget images of UK uniformed troops using pictures of Corbyn for target practice and a senior Army officer, talking about the army removing him from power.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3241904/We-won-t-stand-Army-brass-warn-MUTINY-Jeremy-Corbyn-Prime-Minister.html
Well we had a good look at that in my neck of the woods during the 84/85 miners strike .
The very easy solution for the ruling classes was to simply give working class police offers huge pay rises and masses of overtime to get them onside and help destroy the very communities they came from .
Every man has his price .
Things have changed considerably since then. The Police have been badly treated (as have other public services) by successive Governments, especially when May changed the pension rules and backdated the changes by 20 years. Ordinary officers haven’t forgotten this.
They are afraid that if they offend the rich they won’t get all the lucrative jobs, consultancies, seats on boards etc when they leave office.
Or indeed huge disproportionate advances from publishers for their post-political office memoirs, most of which tend to go straight to the remainder bin.
The Government isn’t frightened, except perhaps of being afraid of only one thing – being found out:
“‘The government and the water regulator broke the law by allowing sewage to be discharged outside of “exceptional circumstances”‘, according to the green watchdog.
Outlets called combined sewer overflows (CSOs) are only meant to be opened on rare occasions, such as during very heavy rain to stop sewage flooding back into homes and businesses.
But the Office for Environmental Protection said environment department Defra, water regulator Ofwat and the Environment Agency failed to give guidance, permits and enforcement for the use of CSOs in line with the law.” (Sky News)
Who is the whistleblower? The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) “helps to protect and improve the environment by holding government and other public authorities to account” (OEP, Gov.uk). What makes the OEP a little independent from the over-politicised rottenness of government is, perhaps due to the fact that the way it operates, the “OEP is an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs” (OEP, Gov.uk). It may be that this is sufficient detachment in the right hands, to act independently from the conspiratorially dead hand of government.
Just remember. The government in Britain is not acting, or representing – YOU.
John
The issue with regulators in the UK is that they have legal immunity. In Europe this is not the case and politicians and regulators can be held accountable for failures.
This is one of the reasons for the antipathy to Europe amongst the UK ruling class.
Labour could take away this immunity but it sees itself as the ruling class now.
The British Government response to the failure of the regulator (inevitable because from the consumer’s perspective the regulator is always designed to fail them badly; they are there to serve the industry they regulate), once the catastrophic extent of the failure cannot be hidden or ignored any longer, is to terminate the regulator; and create a new one, and we go round in the same circle, repeating the farce, over and. over again. It doesn’t matter who is in power.
I have no idea why the public puts up with this; but they go on voting for the Single Transferable Party.
Mr Steer,
May I offer this in response to your point, which I felt obliged to check:
“The Supreme Court has held that private citizens can bring actions under the laws of nuisance or trespass in respect of polluting discharges, even if there has been no negligence or misconduct. This is a seismic decision and one that will mean private law will have a crucial role to play in protecting the rights of private landowners from being infringed by sewage companies.” (Leigh Day, july, 2024).
I speculate that would apply ‘a fortiori’ to all responsible parties if negligence or misconduct was involved.
In a nutshell the problem with basing your politics solely on the idea the main deliverer and mechanism for well-being in a society comes from market capitalism is that it very often lacks compassion.
This is odd if you bother to think about it given psychologists and psychotherapists tell us that for infants to become well-adjusted adults able to cope with whatever life throws at them they must first experience a great deal of compassion from their primary caregivers. Even further it’s now believed that such compassion adapts the brain to permanently lay down pathways both for useful coping mechanisms as well as passing on a compassionate nature from the primary caregivers. See Daniel Goleman’s book “Social Intelligence.”
Starmer’s whole strategy to ‘remake’ the Labour party was to curry favour with big money – to attract their funds and to get rid of thousands of members and their subscriptions.
He and his party are not ‘afraid’ of big money – they simply accept that that’s where the power lies – so thats how to achieve power – by lining up with the money.
We have to accept that politics here is corrupt – as both main parties and many of their MP’s are funded by ‘donors’ – and until that is outlawed there is little chance of eliminating child poverty or improving the lives of the majority of the population.
Labour have appointed ‘Lady’ Margaret Hodge as anti corruption tsar.
Will she start by investigating why Ed Miliband and Starmer did not disclose to the Parliamentary Accounts Committee – that they have promised to guarantee £bn’s of potential losses from the disastrous CCS and gas power station project on Teeside which is subject to a legal challenge, as its go ahead was granted without taking into account the downstream CO2 emissions over its lifetime.
In TINA-land aren’t fear and respect are actually the same thing? Our politicians don’t fear the wealthy, they cherish and respect, nay LOVE them.
They have to be because the economic system says that EVERYONE who isn’t mega-wealthy
i) acts out of fear,
ii) seeks only self-improvement and more wealth,
iii) never trusts the goodness (i.e. irrationality) of others, and
iv) judges everything only by the pecuniary gain it provides to me and mine.
Point is, if we accept the neoliberal definition of ‘self’ which is promulgated aggressively by the MSM, auntie BBC and every media channel that seeks to be mainstream, we can’t claim to be rational or utopian ( (i), caring or socially-orientated (ii), trusting or kind (iii), or ethical (iv).
Of course politicians pursue the interests of the wealthy Few in contrast to those of the pedestrian Many – because, let’s be honest, we, the people, pedestrians to a person, never effectively challenge or reject the neoliberal nihilism that says we are steaming piles of self-interested, dishonest, selfish/toxic crap!
No wonder Europe listens and gives votes to the far-right – even if they are systemic liars and exploiters, they at least say something positive and hopeful about the human race. Neoliberals never quite manage it without sounding – and being – insincere.
Might our current government, like the previous one, be delivering policies which please thé “deep leadership” of the unstated empire of the U. S. A.?
Maybe.
But I don’t think that’s anything but a way of saying they’re both deeply neoliberal.
Thank you to Richard and all commenters.
With regard to comments from Martin and Steve, I have on three occasions during the credit crunch observed UK regulators prioritise / favour US banks when making policy, drafting rules and, unlike the German government, not pursue US banks for compensation. I have also noted how UK and EU officials tend to join US firms, whether mid or late career, especially, or on upon retirement. They soon “glam” up.
Lots of good answers here.
I’m sort of with John Warren but I see the problem presented as politicians ‘worshipping’ the rich.
Like those who worship in certain religions where for example if you do not worship you will not be saved and go to hell or be cut off from a religious community etc., fear plays a role in worship too.
It could be fear of their power – I imagine befriending someone like Rupert Murdoch is like taking a man-eating tiger for a walk thinking that you can control him; or it could be the fear of losing their big opportunity to end up like Tony Blair or Mandy.
Or simply the fear of losing your sponsor – the money in particular.
There are different sorts of fear.
Fear for your life: Gaza, Kyiv, an Israeli detention centre, Abu Graib, a hurricane (if you are poor), Congo, Yemen, Nigeria if you are the wrong religion, Southern USA if you are black and being arrested, Myanmar – its a long list… Also included the rich and powerful in 1917 for a few years.
Fear for your loss of privilege & prestige: any dictator losing control, most MPs in the UK, rich people just after the 2017 election, Netanyahu for many years now, those running our main institutions most of the time. Results in corrupt unjust immoral governance decisions. This is now the default state of the UK & other countries in the West.
Fear of loss of home, job, ability to pay bills, stay warm, look after your children/parents – an increasing number of low-middle income families. This is the state the rich and powerful INTEND us to be in, it keeps us passive and docile (unless things progress to the first category, in which case we stop being passive).
Much to agree with