There are mornings when I scan the news, reflect on what is happening in the world, and then come up with no connection between what the news is reporting and what I feel is going on. This morning is one such day.
Some of the issues that I think are significant, from Trump's delusions to Orbán's demise and the void between reality and what the far-right political agenda is trying to impose upon it, are in the news.
The Guardian makes its morning feature of the day the growth in absolute poverty in this country, highlighting reports that are already months old that note the difference between absolute and relative poverty, and pointing to the government's failure to address the issue.
As evidence of that last point, the Financial Times talks about how Rachel Reeves is considering changing the UK tax system to lower the potential taxes of those who are now fleeing Middle Eastern states but who wish to continue to have the opportunity to pay little or nothing to the jurisdictions that provide them with the opportunity to accumulate wealth at cost to others, and the planet, without making any contribution in return.
And, everywhere I look, there is a surreal lack of political reality about what is really happening in the world, and what its consequences will be.
The fact is that military tensions in the world are rising significantly. The US threat to block shipping seeking to pass through the Strait of Hormuz by agreeing to Iranian terms of trade is real and significant.
Trump may be trying to sanction Iran, but Iran is not the aggressor in this war. Trump is, and there are, quite reasonably, many countries that will not agree to be bound by sanctions imposed by Trump when they never agreed to partake in his war, which itself was always illegal, as his sanctions are under international maritime law.
China, Pakistan, India, and many Southeast Asian countries are critically dependent on Iranian oil to keep their economies functioning. Without that oil, critical problems will develop in all these economies, and China in particular is not willing to suffer those consequences for the sake of Trump's vanity, delusion, aggression, Zionism and illegality.
If he persists with his actions, there is a very real risk of military conflict in the Gulf of Oman, spreading into the Indian Ocean and beyond. Look for mention of this in the media, however, and it is nearly absent. It is as if the West still cannot comprehend that it no longer sets the agenda, and that other countries have legitimate interests that the West must acknowledge. The conclusion is obvious: like Trump, the Western media is deluded as to the state of the world.
The same is true of economic commentary. The Financial Times reports that China had reduced exports in the last quarter, but did little to extrapolate that fact to what might happen now when the heavy diesel fuel used to drive the world's sea-borne trade, most especially from China, moves into very short supply, as it is already doing, a trend that will be exacerbated by what Trump is seeking to achieve with his blockade.
This is not just an issue for the Chinese economy. Our economy is heavily dependent on what happens in China. From cars to electronics to many of the small components that are absolutely critical in most manufacturing processes and can entirely disrupt them in a world built on just-in-time manufacturing, China is a major, and in many cases the sole, supplier of items on which the UK economy is utterly dependent. If these products cease to flow, the scale of disruption in the UK economy will be massive. Things will go wrong, and we will not be able to put them right. People will want to buy things, but they will not be there to have them. Those who make things will not have the components that they need.
I have focused to date on the massive and potentially catastrophic disruption to global food supply chains that I think this conflict will cause, and nothing has yet changed my mind on the priority of this issue. The absolute poverty that millions already suffer in the UK could get very much worse, very soon, as a result.
Yesterday, I saw a clip of the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, telling the media that we had better get used to the fact that, even if governments want to address the issues that arise as a result of this war, markets “will not let them”. It is possible to suggest that any comment from any Tory is now utterly irrelevant, so discredited are they as a party, but what he said does probably reflect thinking in the UK Treasury, the City of London, and in Rachel Reeves' mind. That is precisely why I talk of a coming catastrophe, and even compare it with the great starvation that happened in Ireland in the late 1840s. That event was wholly unnecessary. There was enough food for everyone in Ireland at the time, but there was a lack of political will to ensure it reached those who needed it. That is the situation that I fear we will face again. The likes of Jeremy Hunt will deliver that outcome.
Simultaneously, I am suggesting that the likelihood of a major economic breakdown due to the collapse of many complex, long-distance component supply chains worldwide, many of which emanate from China, is now high, and Trump is trying to ensure that this is the case.
If Trump's actions continue for only another week or two, the world food catastrophe will almost certainly happen. The fertiliser required during planting seasons will not be in the right place at the right time, and the consequence is that either crops will not be planted or yields will tumble, partly as a result of sailing at reduced speeds, which will guarantee massive shortages.
Food is, of course, fundamental to life. That is why I will continue to talk about it. But, at the same time, the ships that departed China before this crisis really began to emerge will soon be arriving at their destinations, wherever they are heading in the world. The risk is that others will, quite literally, not be following in their wake, and if they do, they will arrive late as a result of sailing at reduced speeds to preserve fuel, creating delays that will also disrupt production processes.
To suggest that we are heading for a period of economic chaos is not, in that case, to be sensational, but to be realistic. Without a miracle (and, to be honest, I do not really believe in miracles, least of all those performed by Donald Trump with his own form of divine power), that disruption is now inevitable.
Is anyone, however, discussing this in the media this morning? I cannot see that they are. Rachel Reeves is, as I have noted, more interested in attracting exiles than in putting in place the measures required to ensure that people in this country have food and that the prospect of a functioning economy is maintained.
Quite literally, small-minded people like Reeves find it impossible to comprehend a system breakdown of the sort that we are likely to face as a consequence of the actions of Trump and Netanyahu. They sweat the small stuff instead. We are all going to pay a heavy price for that.
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I studied permaculture and my permaculture teacher did comment that the destruction of oil assets in the Middle East will kickstart the transition because it wouldn’t be worth rebuilding them. It is scary how out of touch our current government is. Rachel Reeves and Starmer really haven’t a clue.
Maybe a leader who was bereated for suggesting we should no longer rely on NATO because Donald Trump was not a reliable ally and a deputy leader who has also studied permaculture and loves gardening are no longer such a joke? We need our European allies more than ever and food growing skills and the ability to cook healthy meals that are less meat based could be very useful.
We do live in genuinely scary times and for those used to more affluent lifestyle this will no longer be possible, but based on Covid I have confidence in the British people to pull together and adapt. Our biggest problem is the growing levels of absolute poverty particularly amongst young families and this must be addressed. We cannot have a government more worried about the bond market than it’s own citizens.
Re: wondering what on earth is going on, I see on BBC that Lord George Robertson is set to give a speech, warning about there being a choice between necessary increases in defence spending and increased spending on welfare. Mention is also made of delays in implementation of the Defence Spending Review plans being due to arguments about how to fund it. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns!
Senior Management Team
= SMT
= Small Minded Thinkers.
That is what we have in government and in so many other places.
All people like Hunt can do is threaten with a loss of prestige but offer nothing but less to deal with it.
Agreed
I do wish people would stop calling these tax-dodgers “expats” and start using the more appropriate term “economic migrants”.
This ‘madness’ imho, *is* the plan (with the US imagining itself emerging strongest from the resulting collapse).
I would suggest that there needs to be a very strong hint from Government that markets are there to meet the economic needs of the UK & if there are threats or evidence of attempts to cause them to collapse it will not be taken kindly
I wonder what the experts and politicians saying the markets “won’t allow” the government to do certain things might have said in 1939 and 1940. Sorry prime minister, businesses think they will be better off trading with Germany rather than opposing it, so we’d better let them do what they want in Poland and France?
I’d like to understand how France – similar in many demographic, geographic, economic and historical respects to the UK – can provide its people with good social benefits and pensions and health and social care, and operate a full sized aircraft carrier, and its own properly independent nuclear deterrent. But the UK can’t afford any of that.
I’ve been reading about the Russian Revolution. The reformers pushing for the abdication of the Tsar in favour of a democratic government were entirely unprepared for the tsunami that was about to crash over their heads and sweep them away in an orgy of violence. When people get desperate enough, things can change, suddenly, and not necessarily for the better.
The Tim Watkins blog (Consciousness of Sheep) also explains this potential collapse across multiple systems. I find both of you excellent communicators via the written word. As an aside, Tim’s January 27th entry this year (Echo of a Distant Past) raised a smile this morning with me – although a very rueful one. The importance of the small stuff – in his example, trees.
Interesting article on the Irish Fuel Blockades here
https://forlouth.medium.com/the-blockade-is-the-message-20eb93493849
Richard, you had a video about primary and secondary markets, and some other stuff.
Jeremy Hunt – even if governments want to address the issues that arise as a result of this war, markets “will not let them”.
Just what is it that this mostly secondary market, that just buys and sells secondhand shares, can do to bring governments to heel, silence democracy and control the economy?
The market seems almost like an entirely pointless construction that society could live without.
Yet it is ‘the market’ that is God.
I don’t get it.
With regards to food, disaster is already baked in. As always, with regards to global staples, the price that will be paid for this year’s crop was contracted last year – the global corporation decides on the basis of their spreadsheets, and the farmers have to hope that whatever happens in the world between then and harvest time will at least allow them to make some sort of profit. They now know that they are looking at enormous losses, regardless of whether they get any fertiliser or not. Hence, short of the world’s government waking up to what Trump and Netanyahu have done and coming up with a plan to save the world from disaster by the end of the week, the only way they can survive is by laying everyone off, not growing any already-priced crops, hoping for leniency from the banks, and that they can negotiate a big enough price for next year’s crop.
The fall-out from all this will last for years. How big the disaster will be depends on meaningful action by governments on an international scale. Either the neo-liberal order is finished with, or we are.
I read that there is a farmer near Manchester who is considering selling his stock of fertiliser rather than planting crops.
I remember being told that if the UK elected a Jeremy Corbyn led government the money markets would react adversely and call for his departure.
In the US we have a President who compares himself to the Son of God working closely with a man who takes inspiration from the slaughter of the Amalekites. The destruction of a civilisation that gave birth to homo sapiens itself is threatened.
And the markets? Well, yes, there may have been insider trading but so what.
Money creation, fiscal rules, regulatory propriety how will these be reconsidered as the world spins into chaos?
Well Lord Robertson thinks that the fiscal rules are sacrosanct and the poor should suffer, benefit payments should be reduced to allow us to advance our ability to kill more (evil) people. Of course who is evil and who is not should be determined by a man who likens himself to the Son of God and one who has a direct line to a vengeful deity.
We desperately need a moral dialogue not an economic or one attuned to the niceties of foreign policy or military tactics.
Much to agree with
What seems so obvious to all who read and write here, seems to be a totally remote foreign land, sufficiently divorced not to be going to affect the UK. Yet we have a defence review that is publicly highlighting how unprepared the UK is. We can all join the dots, and we write and talk about it here. But the MSM aren’t seeing it as a story they wish to run.
Is there, perhaps, another reason; “Don’t say anything until it’s absolutely necessary because, in acknowledging the problems and our likely future, it gives substance to it”. (Think Schrodinger’s cat). Result? a run on on the shops for essentials. Also our political leaders will have to have a programme, and it will need to be costed. They know that using the current neoliberal paradigm which hog-ties them, they will walking into a minefield, and looking like headless chickens.
As a result, I listen to the news, wondering if it will be the broadcast where the gaff is blown.
Is the following of sufficient interest to publish?
Above, you have written:
‘a coming catastrophe, and even compare it with the great starvation that happened in Ireland in the late 1840s. That event was wholly unnecessary. There was enough food for everyone in Ireland at the time, but there was a lack of political will to ensure it reached those who needed it.’
At that time, one of my great grandfathers was a ‘tenant farmer and carrier (horse and cart business probably) in the Londonderry area of Northern Ireland. He was made bankrupt and moved to Cumberland where he worked as a mason. A while later he wrote to Ireland inviting a woman to marry him. I still have two of her replies. The first includes: ‘Dear Joseph, If I may call you by that name … Looking forward to meeting you in September not to part till death.’ The second starts with ‘Dear Joseph.’ She had received permission! ’ [Like me, he was called Joseph Burlington.] A couple of years later my grandfather, Robert, appeared and started work at the age of ten.
Meanwhile, another of my great grandfathers, John Bright, became an MP and, by travelling widely and speaking frequently against the Corn Laws, contributed their abolition. He had asserted, I suppose, that they were ‘wholly unnecessary’ and had led to the ‘great starvation’ that you refer to.
Returning to family history, though Bright had a legitimate family, one of his servants gave birth to a girl who, years later of course, became my grandmother by marrying Robert. He was a labourer at a printer’s. Some years later he founded a printers, news agency and book shop – which my father inherited and from which I benefitted hugely – though my father died when I was five.
Those laws did, indeed, contrinute to the great starvation.
You have a fascinating famiily history.
My great geat grandfather was an Irish schoolteacher near Tullamore in the starvation. He survived as a result.
I wonder what Adam Smith would have said about comments like Jeremy Hunt’s?
In modern parlance, it might not have been polite
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/apr/14/iran-war-global-recession-imf-uk-growth-forecasts-oil-prices
An example of how appallingly out of touch with reality our economic pundits are – this article is an example of all that you mention above. Real people are hardly mentioned, just damaged “growth”, businesses, interest rates and inflation, with a warning against wasting money on “untargeted measures” which are “poorly targeted and costly” (might help relieve real human suffering).
I felt like screaming out loud as I read it.
Please keep up the good work. Eventually these shortsighted callous fools will fall.
Even the Spectator seems critical of discussions to allow expats tax exemptions if they return. Lisa Haseldine suggests that we might adopt the US system where the only way to avoid US domestic tax liability is to renounce your citizenship. She talks mainly about the expats moral obligation to contribute to defence spending…. But also makes the more general point that making them pay should be popular with a Labour voters….. https://spectator.com/article/reeves-should-tax-expats-to-fund-britains-defence-spending/
If we had a direct phone line to the treasury, presumably we might also ask them to prevent people bringing lots of untaxed wealth into the country because of its inflationary effects…..