As The Observer reports this morning:
Ministers are resisting demands to rush through measures to block Elon Musk from handing millions to Nigel Farage, amid a growing clamour for an overhaul of Britain's political donation laws.
Of course, they're resisting the call.
They're too spineless to act.
Too witless to recognise the threat.
Too unprincipled to recognise what it is.
Too keen to suck up to wealth to ever say no to it.
Too indifferent to democracy to care about its future.
Too careless about the people of this country to bother.
Of course, they're resisting the call. They're so frightened of governing they don't even know it's addressed to them.
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Or hoping for some sort of billionaires politics funding arms race they benefit from?
That sort of money going to Reform might scare the living daylights out of a lot of ‘mainstream’ donors and make them cough up more to Labour
Another unnecessary arms race.
Thanks, Labour.
I suspect the ‘mainstream’ donors are so outgunned by the modern global world of multi-billionaires, they are more likely to decline the opportunity to burn their money.
Modern democracy, in which only money counts, now exacts a price so high to compete with money, so punishing to the mere voter, and so obviously corrupting of the mechanism of democracy; our democratic system is operating like one sprawling Rotten Borough; with one difference: it is the Political Party that is bought; until 1832 the candidate bought the vote from the (sometimes as few as eight or ten) electors with a vote. Now? The money ignores the elector – and buys the Party, and the modern ciphers who lead them.
I wish we could spend less on politics and more on government.
Might they be acting as, and showing themselves to be, local leaders loyal to the unstated empire of the U. S. A.?
As well as limiting donations they should also require political parties to be mutual societies wholly owned by their membership. Allowing privately owned limited companies to control a political party is dangerous.
Things are awful, aren’t they, in so many ways? Society, public services, politics, economics all in a mess. We hope and wish (and vote?) for better and don’t see it even on the horizon. We are living in a version of Narnia, where “it’s always winter, but never Christmas”.
It needs to block all -or as much as possible-of donations from corporate interests. Otherwise, Reform will claim they are such a threat the govt is running scared. It needs to be part of wider reform of how politics is financed.
Maybe the collateral damage is that we’ll be able to see which sneaky swine have been funding Laboured? Maybe that is why it might be so ‘inconvenient’ for them to take this action (the word ‘inconvenient’ is just the sort of word Mandelson would use BTW).
Democracy and neoliberalism are antagonists to each other. One interferes with or inhibits the other.
Former human-rights lawyer and Trilateral Commission member Sir Keir Starmer has a choice to make: Neoliberal government (fixing black-holes, balancing lop-sided books)r or ‘The Crisis of Democracy’
The clever money – Richard Murphy et al and over 200,000 former members of the Labour party – ALWAYS knew on which side he’d fall.
I’m not sure I can say more than such a sharp, pithy and spot on post.
I will say that Starmer and perhaps the real person running things – Morgan McSweeney – are utterly clueless about politics. Steve Richards always say that all politicians need to be – are required to be (it’s non-negotiable) – political teachers, explaining to the public and teaching.
Thatcher was brilliant at it explaining (at a time when people were open to hear it) that ‘the national finances are just like a household’s’ (which as we know is nonsense), but she was a skillful teacher, and to this day that opinion is a very hard myth to slay.
Blair was a skillful teacher acute to the zeitgeist of the times – ‘New Labour, New Britain’, ‘Britain: a young country’ – at the start of his government. (It didn’t last of course.)
Starmer is far from a political teacher, and this may well undo him (will he be replaced by this time next year??), as all he know is to sway with whatever McSweeney says that the ‘red wall’ and ‘hero voters’ want to hear.
What would be going with the grain of the zeitgeist today (and not pandering to over 60s retired ‘hero’ or ‘red wall’ voters) would be to proclaim loudly and repeatedly the benefits of public ownership of utilities – and act on it, to get considerably closer to the EU, to tackle the vested interests in the media, challenge the military industrial complex, amongst many other things. That would be teaching, acting, and it would be genuinely popular too. But it won’t be Starmer who does this.
I agree: Starmer is no teacher.
Or thinker, or communicator.
Or even politician.
Nor any good with money, apparently, given he doesn’t have sense enough to manage his earnings sufficiently to buy his own clothes.
Without his millionaire friend’s largesse, I fear the PM would appear before us at PMQ’s in the scud.
“I agree: Starmer is no teacher. Or thinker, or communicator. Or even politician.”
Yet he climbed to the top of the legal system and then climbed to the very top of the political system without patronage. To suggest he is devoid of ability is just silly.
Without patronage?
Please pull the other one.
Are you really stupid enough to think that?
Is it envy? what have you ever achieved by comparison? You were Jeremy’s play thing for a couple of months and that’s it!
Just go and read my cv
I am sure that his membership of the Trilateral Commission helped, as did his willingness to commit to being a 100% unqualified Zionist. I can never forget the pictures of him making a speech to Labour Friends of Israel, 22/09/2020, with Ruth Smeeth stood a few feet to one side, keeping an eye on him.
https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/in-full-keir-starmers-keynote-speech-to-labour-friends-of-israel/
video see 1m 36s – https://www.facebook.com/labourparty/videos/338017760645852/ note 1m36s (apologies for the facebook link, use with care)
The search engine selection
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=ruth+smeeth+starmer+speech&ia=web
gives a feel of what his Labour leadership pitch was about. It certainly wasn’t his political acumen or his passion to bring about economic and social justice in the United Kingdom – it was the complete and ruthless mendacious political destruction of Jeremy Corbyn and the politics he stood for.
Of one thing I am absolutely certain. He had plenty of patrons. Remember he only became a Labour MP in 2015 and he got handed a safe seat for that election, at the first time of asking, when Frank Dobson retired. That needs powerful friends in the Labour hierarchy.
“Is listening to one “type of person” the reason why Starmer is behaving like a civil servant and not acting like a real leader??????.”
I thought this quote hilarious!
I struggle with the characterization of fright. Neoliberalism has bred politicians prostrate to the desires of the wealthy.
The Silicon Valley mob are a particularly dangerous faction of the super wealthy. If you pay attention to a sampling of articles regarding their thinking, you quickly come to understand that these gentlemen are members of a sociopathic cult. Everything they embrace is tinge sensibilities that are dystopic.
They embrace the perspective of James McGill Buchanan, that true human nature is sociopathic and sociopathy is highest virtue. This outlook underpins many different aspects of the hatred for government and people as a whole and why they think any organization they don’t control is out to destroy them..
“Each person seeks mastery over a world of slaves..”
Buchanan was loathsome and his legacy toxic.
Fundamentally I agree.
But there is a kernel of truth there of Buchanan’s observation like there is in Carl Schmitt’s observations of the weaknesses of liberalism.
Schmitt and Buchanan do not speak for all humanity but for sections of it. My questions is, have we really dealt effectively with their challenges?
I tend to think not.
I agree, we have not.
Buchanan, I understand came from a Southern farming community, and a family farm that experienced very hard times. He despised Eastern elites. It is a familiar theme in the US and it has finally come home to roost. What we need to remember is that it is “liberal” politics that failed to defend the alienated and deprived in the US, especially after 2008; and Labour that failed to defend the alienated and the deprived in the UK; and it is clear that in spite of its own culpability, it is neoliberalism that has more successfully exploited the political vacuum in the US; and Labour that has lost the plot in the UK. I have watched “liberal” or “left” politicians offering impractical, badly conceived solutions, plain weakness and a penchant for intellectualised waffle for thought or action, all my life (and an incapacity to compromise because of some vain ideological commitment*); or simply being overwhelmed by the status quo ante, and their own inadequacy. Both liberal and left have been utterly useless; and seem incapable of learning anything – or even face looking directly in the mirror.
* I despise all ideology. Every idea is contingent and provisional. The only things that matters are outcomes – and compassion for humanity in pursuing them.
Buchanan’s Übermensch – Even if a single Bill Gates were the only sociopathic billionaire that grew out of Buchanan’s dystopian economics, Richard’s incisive assessment of him would still be under-play.
https://off-guardian.org/?s=Bill+Gates&submit=Search
Labour’s governing by focus groups seems to be a deliberate policy to ignore taking the hard decisions needed to drastically improve the provision of education, health, jobs and so on for the majority of the UK population.
Doing this will defeat parties like Reform now. But do not expect Labour to do anything that might improve the lot of the non favoured mass of the population.
Instead no steer Kier is being brave taking the tough decisions like cutting the winter fuel allowance and not paying the women pensioners that were discriminated against.
Why does Labour run scared of Musk? Because he is, for now, a super friend of Trump.
And Labour do not want to upset him or Trump.
If you want to see how Muck disregards business and other norms when it does not suit him read the New York Times International Edition’s Friday 20 December 2024 article about Musk.
The way for the UK to deal with Trump? Make him Lord Trump he would love that.
It works. See the article by Robert Kuttner in the New Year Review of Books, 19 December 2024 edition and how China played Trump last time around in the tariff wars.
an interesting article by Mike Wendling on the BBC News site today “Elon Musk’s curious fixation with Britain” –
Owen Jones noted that Starmers advisers are, mostly, ex-student poltics people, more focused on fighting “trots” and “the left”.
Musk does not loom large in the calculations & if it does Musk = an it – he had no recognisable human qualities), it is probably along the lines; can we get money out of him to fight “trots” or “the left”.
You listed ther “qualities” or lack thereof. You missed one: corrupt to the very core – both morally and intellectually.
Pick somebody, randomly from the street, pick a homeless person – either could make a better fist of things than these imbeciles.
Richard, when people disrespect you, your work and your extensive knowledge, as in post at 3.55pm and your reply at 4.34pm – remember these words – I quote “Pay no attention to toxic words. What people say is often a reflection of themselves, not you.”
But I will explain to people why I feel they are being unreasonable.
yes – please do – I know you will come up with reason- thank you
Spot on, Richard!
Starmer is not a leader and never will be.
A straw man. Labour need rid of him in short order – so do we. He’s incapable of making decisions on his own and relies on those around him to advise him. (See Geoffrey Robertson’s Guardian article – revealing) His advisors are low grade folk like McSweeney. He must be gone in six months.
George Osborne and Oleg Deripaska
Remember this?
As reported in Wikipedia
“Osborne’s school and university contemporary, financier Nathaniel Rothschild, said in October 2008 that Osborne had tried to solicit a £50,000 donation from the Russian aluminium magnate Oleg Deripaska, which would have been a violation of the law against political donations by foreign citizens. Rothschild had hosted Deripaska, Osborne, Peter Mandelson and others at a party in his villa in Corfu. The alleged solicitation of a donation occurred on Deripaska’s yacht during the party …”
If we want to defend democracy we have to limit donations to political parties to something like £500 per person, including membership fees and outlaw all corporate donations, including the provision of staff or services to a party.
At the same time we need to control lobbying and find away to give open democracy within parties more power. For a start all candidates for Parliament must face open re selection before they can have a party nomination. By open re selection I mean that any party member can put themselves forward for selection removing the dental parties power to control selection procedures.
Is the regulating of political finance not the work of the Electoral Commission (see https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmpubadm/462/report.html) on the advice of the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL)?
If this is still so, then wouldn’t the PM be seen as short circuiting the parliamentary process if he preemptively acted on this, without this issue being considered by these bodies?
The most recent CSPL report was 2021 (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/regulating-election-finance-report), and perhaps the new Committee (CSPL) should be tasked with a reconsideration of the issues now arising with funding (and overseas-placed advertising in social media) in light of the threats to democracy that you identify Richard?
Politicians govern
Others advise
John Warren’s observations on ideology are spot on and set us up for 2025 and onwards I feel.
‘The only things that matters are outcomes – and compassion for humanity in pursuing them’.
Much to agree with
Richard – as much as I value your stance on and analysis of the declining world I am more concerned with the effect that this focus on all that is failing may be having on you. It may be that all we see is this output and you find joy privately and it is undoubtedly fuelled by my own awareness of the ‘doom loop’. I trust that you are looking after yourself.
Trust me – I am not feeling down.
There is a doom loop – but I can still find plenty to enjoy. And I assure you, I do enjoy life.
I also have the considerable good fortune to have never been depressed or suffer the mental ill health that worries so much in others.
Doom loop – no!
Looking at problems squarely in the face and not putting our heads in the sand – Yes!
It is because we know how wonderful life is that we are concerned enough to keep it that way.
My recommended Reading over Christmas is “Free to obey “-How the Nazis invented modern management by Johann Chapatout
Its no accident that the Labour Party are being tied in knots by adopting Managerialism.
It explains the policies of Donald Trump to the letter.
And the threat to democracy.
Richard
Your comment about Labour being frightened of governing has similarities with recent comments made by the US Congresswoman, Ayanna S. Pressley, a prominent progressive Democrat.
In the twilight of his Presidency, Joe Biden is coming under pressure to exercise his powers of clemency. With the prospect of Trump reintroducing Federal executions, he recently commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 Federal prisoners on death row to life imprisonment.
Pressley and others have been seeking clemency for those imprisoned under outdated laws relating to drug offences. She argued that choosing not to take action on clemency would pose a political risk for Democrats.
“The Demcrats on more than one occasion have tried to make the case that we’re the adults in the room* but the American people don’t always think we’re the fighters in the room. And that’s often because we have the power but don’t use it. Scared power is no power at all.”
* Where have we heard that phrase before.