There is a very strong feeling of ‘do we have to go through all that again?' At the start of this week.
Last week brought chaos in parliament as anti-Scottish sentiment spread like wildfire amongst those suggesting that the SNP should not never have the right to offer an opinion.
The Tories went full-on Islamophobic and the prime minister has not got the sense to either acknowledge or address the resulting concern.
Labour claimed a victory secured by skulduggery and what looked like the active connivance of the deputy Speaker.
And MPs clutched their rosaries and said how worried they were about their security, as if people being angry about the collective indifference of both Labour and Tory MPs to the plight of ordinary in this country on whom they are collectively willingly to impose misery was totally unexpected.
How many times do we need to witness economic, regional, social and racial prejudice on this scale before the message gets through to the leaderships of these two totally out of touch parties that people have had enough of austerity and abuse from Westminster and want answers that both respect who they are and what they need?
Neither of our leading parties appears to come remotely close to comprehending that the problem with this country is not with its people, but the politics that they seek to impose on them via a system of government that long ago ceased to be remotely democratic and so representative of the feelings of the people they claim to govern.
A perfect example of the arrogance of this attitude from these parties is to be found in a suggestion from George Osborne and Ed Balls, featured in the Guardian today. These two are now best buddies and are suggesting that what is needed now is a twenty year cross-party agreement to deliver a single strategy for growth for the UK.
In other words, they wish to suspend democratic choice.
And as these two between them gave us Bank of England independence and austerity as well as total unpreparedness for two economic crises, in the wake of which they doubled down on the hopes of people even more, what is really on offer is economic despair without an alternative.
What is more, they are so out of touch that growth remains their answer to everything. Climate change never gets a look in.
The crisis that this country has is with its political leadership that self perpetuates its totally arrogant incompetence because two political parties, almost impossible to differentiate on the grounds of philosophy or policy and only slightly differentiated on the grounds of competence, have collectively decided that it is their combined task to deny people in the UK the government services that they need.
As a result, and precisely because markets cannot now prosper in the situation that this denial creates, they have also decided to deny the people of the UK any sense of well-being.
Of course people are angry as a result.
Politicians will react, no doubt, by trying to outlaw anger.
What they need to do is outlaw neoliberal thinking and first-past-the-post elections. Then we might have some hope. Right now, there is remarkably little.
The result is obvious: we will have another week something like the last because that's what those in charge are guaranteeing us, endlessly. As long as they say nothing can change and choice must be denied anger will be inevitable. People want a choice, and if they got it they would go nowhere near what is on offer now. And that's the one thing these egomaniac politicians in Labour and the Tories cannot face.
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Hear hear! Very well said. Thank you for articulating everything I have been increasingly feeling for the last 15 years.
Are you sure you really would like to live in a country where neo-liberal thinking was against the law? I know what is written and what is meant can be blurred when writing in haste, but what was written would mean thought crimes on the statute book.
I want it to be history, and to be consigned there by it being understood to be as wrong as the idea that the earth is flat is
But would making thinking about it against the law help achieve that aim? How many times in history have bad ideas gone away due to being made illegal. I can’t think of any. There are plenty of bad ideas that are almost completely dead, but that happened due to technology, education and experience.
We currently have fiscal rules threatened will make neoliberalism law
The Maastricht Teeaty did that
Is opposing such measures wrong?
Mr Gold,
“thought crimes on the statute book.” – the narrative put forward by assorted politicos and what passes for the UK media is that markets rule OK! and less government is good and the gov has maxed out its credit cards. (all neo-liberal/neocon “realities”).
The narrative is a lie, demonstrated by the lived experience of most people – but that does not matter – provided the rich get richer.
Are you in favour of lies? Are you in favour of memes/fanatasies such as “maxed out credit cards?”
Try reading “Late Soviet Britain” by Abby Innes – the neo-liberal lies are exposed for everybody to see.
In the current circs, this blog apart, it is impossible to have a discussion on neocon “policies”, & their impacts. There is no longer a useable BTL in the Guardian ditto many other outlets (Euractiv etc). The right winge media? propaganda.
Thus thought crime (thinking of alternatives to neoconism and being able to discuss it with others) is a defacto reality. Implemented by the neocons.
I’m all in favour of exposing lying & in the case of neo-liberalism, those supporting it should be banned from office – since it shows that the thinker, is no thinker at all, but a liar and a fantasist. I am not offering a point of view – trying reading the above book – it eviscerates the neocons and their neoliberal lies.
Mr Gold: do you favour liars and fantasists?
I was watching a fascinating documentary on BBC 4 about ancient city states in Cambodia.
I should have taken notes but basically the ruler of one these cities under Buddhism made sure that there were free hospitals for everyone regardless of your wealth.
It amazes me that so many good ideas get lost. An NHS is not an original idea of the West. It has been done before.
What von Hayek, Buchanan and Friedman will tell you is that the politicians only get voted in for doing ‘the right thing’ and ‘pandering’ to the masses and that that is somehow wrong and invalid.
What this deadly trio was doing was actually sneering at a society that was built on obligations to each other – give and take, reciprocity, kindness, accountability, a shared world.
Yet in broad daylight, politicians are pandering to non-factual credos and the rich.
This works for the rich who get to inherit the world.
So why can’t it work for us?
Reason:- because we get outspent. We cannot feed the politicians greed for power.
Modern democracy is nothing but an exercise in election budgets and how big your wad is.
Money talks and we have sleep walked into letting talk it too much and drown everyone else out.
You have it all wrong, Richard. You may think Conservative Islamophobia is a thing, and Labour skulduggery was behind the Gaza debate debacle; but I can tell you what the real story is in Scotland, because BBC Scotland News is the fount of impartiality, and it has been headlining for days now the real story – the SNP Council Tax Freeze. It is a scandal, and what BBC Scotland tells me must be true; because they are the paradigm, the Gold Standard of impartiality.
The BBC Scotland News audience may have disappeared, but just because the BBC is paranoid about the SNP, doesn’t mean they are wrong.
Are you trolling me …. with silence Richard?!
No!
Eh, that was a joke, Richard …… I know writing this Blog can be stressful in a world of professional trolling (the political parties, incidentally are the biggest and most accomplished trollers of all, and they are hiding in plain sight) …. clearly I need to brush up my comic timing ….
No, I thought you were just fine
And yes, it can be stressful…
A week off is being planned
I did read, on social media, of BBC Scotland’s refusal to cover the Labour/Hoyle disgraceful plot. I wasn’t surprised, BBC Scotland certainly has form in ignoring important issues. It gaslights Scotland. Thankfully, there are other means by which we can fill in the Corporation’s blanks.
I gave up watching BBC Scotland output about 15 years ago because of the anti-Scottish bias. To my everlasting regret, I continued to pay for a TV licence for a further few years but in 2014 finally decided enough was enough and haven’t paid it since.
It’s seen as a joke in Scotland.
A C Bruce wrote “I did read, on social media, of BBC Scotland’s refusal to cover the Labour/Hoyle disgraceful plot. I wasn’t surprised BBC Scotland certainly has form in ignoring important issues. It gaslights Scotland. Thankfully, there are other means by which we can fill in the Corporation’s blanks.”
Thanks ACB, but it’s not just the BBC or the rest of the UK MSM: we’ve just seen Labour and the Commons Speaker exposed as having ignored established Commons procedures to prevent the SNP’s Motion for a Gaza ceasefire and then lied about it in an attempt to cover up their breach of procedures. In the uproar that followed, the rest of the SNP’s Opposition Debate Day (one of just three in the parliamentary session) was abandoned and Scotland’s majority voice at Westminster was silenced. Then Hoyle compounded matters by refusing to grant the SNP the opportunity of a re-run of the abandoned Opposition Debate Day.
It’s also not just Labour who go out of their way to negate the SNP at Westminster: we’ve seen perfectly legitimate laws passed by Holyrood refused Royal Assent because the Tory Government objected to them (such egregious highly political matters as Glassware Recycling and Trans-gender Definitions!). So how is the Scottish electorate to view its future if the only two UK parties likely to win a General Election treat Scotland, its politics, its culture and by extension its people with obvious contempt? James O’Brien at LBC has spotted this https://twitter.com/i/status/1760994201783673103 so why is it that the majority of Scots seem to think differently from the England and its political parties?
For starters there’s History (for much of which Scotland was defending itself against English aggression), native languages and cultures, education systems (around the time of the Reformation there were 5 universities in Scotland compared with 2 in England), fundamentally different Established Churches, different legal systems etc etc, so historically Scotland is very different from England. Since the 1707 Treaties of Union these differences have been eroded by the power of Westminster and the overwhelming numbers of English MPs. But there’s also a fundamental difference in the way people think which results from how politics is framed and conducted.
In England the concept of the sovereignty of Parliament and the outdated electoral and political conventions that underpin it is supreme. In Scotland, however, the Claim of Right Act, passed in 1689 to depose James VII and II, affirms the existence of an enforceable, Scottish constitutional arrangement where the sovereignty of the people limits the power of government. The Claim of Right was reaffirmed by the Scottish Constitutional Convention in 1989 ahead of devolution, then reaffirmed by the Scottish Parliament in 2012, again in 2016 and then affirmed (for the first time) in Westminster in 2018. These fundamentally different concepts of sovereignty underpin the political friction that exists between Scotland and England, Holyrood and Westminster and that’s unlikely to change, other than Scotland achieving the independence it needs to realise its potential. The alternative of remaining in the UK will only result in being outvoted on everything by Westminster, being subjected to laws and policies which the majority of Scots don’t support and the continuing exploitation of Scotland’s resources without adequate recompense, which is precisely where Scotland stands today, so it’s past time we did something about it.
Apologies for the length of this post, but Ah’m fair scunnert.
And fairly so
“What they need to do is outlaw neoliberal thinking”, if I may, an “angle” from the EU.
Draghi (ex ECB, ex Goldman Sachs etc) has been tasked with producing a high-level report on the EU’s competitiveness.
Draghi stressed the necessity to channel European private savings, because “public money will never be enough,”.
ok.
This is what he said in 2016 (I hope we can agree that any money created by the ECB (a public body) is “public money”).
Draghi, was asked the following question ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fF3pNTtmfc ): “Can the ECB ever run out of money”? His response was: “Technically, no… we cannot run out of money…. we have ample resources for coping with all our emergencies.” (The italics reflect exactly what was asked and exactly what was said in response).
So the ECB can never run out of money when buying bonds from bankers (“open market operations”) but when it comes to funding the EU to address the myriad of emergencies it faces – its a case of “oh dear we don’t have enough”. Neolib eral thinking writ large – UK, EU – makes no diff – bankers all think the same – be they in the ECB or Goldmans. The problem is politicos don’t know enough and have been captured. Democracy only exists in the moment of citizens (serfs?) marking a ballot. It then dissapears and “normal” service resumes.
Agreed
Reverse dominance now beginning to assert itself. Looking back the turning point will be Starmer’s attempt last week in Parliament to scam the country in regard to its morals:-
https://fractalenlightenment.com/33122/issues/reverse-dominance-the-secret-to-a-healthy-tribe
Hence, Electronic Voting/Democracy. ‘The People’ get to vote on all policy.
It is possible now. People just need to know to use it.
Petitions would work if enough people voted. 30million?
There are also Email-Votes
TO: hcenquiries@parliament.uk
Subject: The Goverment must resign now.
YES.
Votes not Riots.
Thanks
But this is not the way to run a democracy so I will not be posting more of the same
I don’t think that electronic voting would be a good thing in the current conditions. The MSM has brainwashed a significant portion of the voting population into agreeing with ideas which are actually against their better interests. A significant change in this would be necessary for people to be well informed not indoctrinated.
More democracy yes but not this not now.
I absolutely agree with what you have said but feel compelled to point out that with the ‘open season’ on the funding of political parties that has been allowed, most if not all our politicians are listening to their rich paymasters and not us.
It is as simple as that.
The growth in wealth has found its way back into the political system that created it.
How else can they bare facedly ignore the pain and suffering we have endured at their hands?
What cannot be ignored is the prospect of need for self-defence by working people and those who cannot work from these undemocratic forces.
So, we need unions like never before and the ability to stick together like never before – safety in numbers, because we will always outnumber THEM.
Fascism will try to prevent that and will remain a huge challenge but he emssage needs to get out that either:
We Are As Mad As Hell and we Are Not Going to Take It Anymore or The Pitchforks Are Coming.
Message received….
Your best and most relevant rant ever, Richard.
I especially enjoyed the line, “Politicians will react, no doubt, by trying to outlaw anger.”
Dismantling the neoliberal mindset/obsession – I will not say ‘consensus’ as that supposes some element of voluntary acceptance – is probably the biggest task of our unhappy era.
But – providing climate change does not get us first – it will pass, like the globe centred universe, the flat earth and every other tawdry empire. Keep going; these people are the detritus of history not its masters.
A pertinent recent blog from Simon Caulkin might help explain much too.
He writes:
“The new techno-authoritarians
Corporate dictatorships are on the rise – and their imperial heads wield more power on the world stage than many a national political leader.”
You’ll need to subscribe to his blog to read the rest – it’s equally damning in what you’ve written, Richard!
His web page is blocked by my spma filters for being buggy…a shame
A very pertinent echo of your concerns in this article on Social Europe, with Poland struggling to recover after years of a right wing government which enacted undemocratic measures in law, and appointed right wing advocates to crucial posts. Just like Trump’s takeover of the US judiciary with partisan appointments. It will be difficult for us here in the UK to undo the harm done by the Tories, and that’s assuming there is the will or desire to do it.
https://www.socialeurope.eu/poland-from-populism-into-the-unknown
“The problem is that government is run by political parties with ever less public input: they have become ‘cadre’ and ‘cartel’ parties, with few members and loyal voters. They treat citizens as consumers, subject to refined instruments of opinion testing. Detached from any social base, parties are ignorant, arrogant and self-serving. This is the case across Europe but it proves particularly problematic in Poland.
Although the new coalition government claims to be restoring democracy, it has so far chiefly restored the power base of the liberal party cadres. Senior and junior ministerial posts have been stuffed with party officials rather than genuine experts. The heads of the public media and enterprises have been appointed by the parties with little public consultation or competition.
The government claims that this is only the first stage of a long democratic transition, but one wonders whether a meaningful public input in governmental affairs will ever take shape. If not, we shall have a new elite in power, with citizens unable to transform their vote into a voice. In time, this will generate frustration, not just with the party elite but with democracy as such.”
Jan Zielonka
Jan Zielonka is professor of politics and international relations at the University of Venice, Cá Foscari, and at the University of Oxford. His latest book is The Lost Future and How to Reclaim It (Yale University Press, 2023).
Thanks
Good stuff, albeit very concerning
I see there is being circulated an interview with Sir Chris Bryant, MP for Rhondda, where he admits delaying the SNP motion on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. If you haven’t seen it, he confirms a Labour conspiracy to delay the debate for as long as possible. He agreed to do the dirty to talk nonsense for as long as possible. He thought the whole thing was funny. He’s a former Anglican Priest, for God’s sake! He doesn’t appear to have been strong armed into these tactics but, who knows, maybe he’s been offered a front bench position after the G.E. I guess it’s not his family who’s being bombed into oblivion so that’s alright then.
As for the Labour Leader Starmer, former Director of Public Prosecutions and Human Rights lawyer. He doesn’t think human rights should extend towards people in Gaza and didn’t blink an eyelid (literally, did you see his wide-eyed denial?) when asked about threatening Hoyle.
We’ve had the Tories for years, God help us, and now there’s going to be 5 years, at least, of Labour who are no better and may even be worse.
Does anyone foresee a better future for the UK because I can’t.
He said he was not proud of what he did, with a smile in his face.
I was deeply unimpressed.
If Boris Johnson makes a comeback, it will make the General Election much less of a walk-in for Labour, leading to the possibility of a hung parliament. The Lib Dems are likely to take many seats off the Tories with or without Boris, so in a hung parliament scenario they might just gain enough leverage over Labour to be able to demand and get PR (that is, proper PR this time – STV or preferably the more proportional AMS – and without a referendum) as the price of their support or cooperation. With PR at the 2029/30 General Election, and climate change having got so much worse and so much more evident to the average person:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_ve5IvG1Ts&t=309s
……the Green Party could sweep into government alongside a green-leaning macro-economically literate social democratic alternative to the authoritarian neoliberal rump Labour Party (which, like the Tories, will split into it’s constituent factions under PR). Then we may just have a chance to avert the slide into fascism and mitigate the worse impacts of climate change on this country!
I live in hope – just.
Mr Bruce, I have written a piece on the Gaza debate debacle on Bella Caledonia, and what do I find on the Labour troll-fest below the line? Ignore the facts and spin a case that has the advantage of both covering-up a Labour political scam; and places the blame exclusively at the door of the SNP. Even I am surprised at the depth of the Labour neurosis about the SNP; they have learned nothing whatsoever from defeat. They are completely lost in their own, private obsessive-compulsive disorder.
The SNP are as weak as any other Party, but this is simply pathetic. It is pathological; I find myself having to make a up new political neurosis to describe its deeply disturbed nature: ‘politicised anosognosia’.
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2024/02/24/losing-the-plot-reflections-on-the-gaza-debate-debacle/
Thanks Richard,
I did not intend to plug another blog, it seems inappropriate; but the desperation of Labour apologists in Scotland to avoid their Party and leader from being ‘found out perpetrating a grotesque, self-serving political scam is ugly and repellant.
The Speaker has now retracted his offer of an emergency debate to the SNP. It never ends. Insult added to injury; but delivered with the effortless inconsistency of Rufus T Firefly.
Is there any point in Scotland electing MPs to Westminster, pray tell; except for the endless comic possibilities of being tricked or tripped? Ah, the joys of slapstick …
Keir Starmer as a Human Rights lawyer? Very selective in the clients he took on I would think!
I would like to say it one more time, please Richard.
There is a way to channel this anger.
Into voting for Independent candidates.
There are Independent local councillors in nearly every constituency working really really hard to make things better for people in their “patch”.
They know this anger well. This is how they get elected.
I know very well that in the past FPTP has prevented even medium sized parties winning seats.
But 2024 IS DIFFERENT.
The anger is against BOTH Conservative and Labour. (and there is no evidence yet of a mass shift to other parties. None of them appeal.)
Voting for a local person to go and “fight for us in Parliament” is, I think, a message that could gain traction as we go through weeks and weeks of nasty and destructive electioneering.
Work like mad now to get a candidate onto every ballot sheet, get people who support Independent local councillors mobilised (especially if the election is at the same time as the local elections), keep all campaigns local and very very visible.
(I’ve ideas of how it would work if there were a few hundred Independent MPs in Westminster. But those who get there will work it out. )
But for now – “Anyone but the Tories and Labour are no better” needs to change to “Vote for Jim to fight for us!” (other slogans are available!)
If anyone here thinks the same please ask Richard to put you in touch with me (and other like-minded folk).
Thank you for letting me post this Richard.
I am very, very angry, and I want to offer something to vote FOR, not vote against.
It breaks my heart to hear people say I won’t vote X so I’m going to have to “hold my nose and vote Y.” Knowing Y is no different. And no better for the country.
Plus my impression (well, “belief” but not enough data to say “certainty”) is that neoliberal economics will get short shrift in any Independent-heavy new administration.
There seems to have been a lot of ex-religious dudes – the drug addict board member who worked for the Co-Op, the woman who runs the post office – who seem to have …well…..let their hair down rather too much in their new, money grabbing careers.
Obviously being ‘good’ has gone out of fashion. It does not pay it seems.
It’s not just about getting angry, it’s about getting ill too.
I’ve just listened to a radio item that depression and mental health issues are worse among those in their 20s than those twice their age. We are creating a generation that feel they have no hope and few prospects.
It’s not just about directly boosting the economy, it’s about giving young people the confidence that their efforts will bear fruit, and on whom a vibrant economy is totally dependent.
Young people are quite reasonably very worried about the world that they are being forced to live in
Osborne and Cameron were partly responsible for implementing austerity, following on from Thatcher who seems to have believed that “there is no government money, only taxpayers money”.
This is the foundation of neoliberal, and the mistaken belief that for every pound spent by the government in a pound lost to to the private sector. Hence all the myths that the private sector is “more efficient” than the government sector, etc.
We see that Starmer’s Labour party of been bought by private healthcare, having received over £500 million in “donations” making it difficult to accept that their motives are for the public. See https://skwawkbox.org/2024/01/17/labour-front-bench-takes-650k-from-health-privateers-more-than-tories/
The last 14 years shows us that neoliberalism is an utter failure for the public, the only beneficiaries being the CEOs, shareholders and certain MPs.
The result of us are suffering from crumbling schools, raw sewage in our rivers, a broken NHS, and the defunding of councils and public services with the view to privatising them, selling them off and profiting from them, until they need bailing out by the public. Not to mention the highest energy prices and rail fares in Europe, student loans (university education used to be free), broken denistry… the list goes on and one.
“Politicians will react, no doubt, by trying to outlaw anger.“
If there’s one thing that needs to be banned it’s the Tory Party. As you and others have said it is a fascist party, a party of islamaphobes and racists, a party of sociopaths who despise the poor, the sick, the asylum seekers, the unemployed and accept millions from oligarchs and others of dubious provenance, and is a danger to 99% of the population of the UK, as it feeds the rich and allows public services and infrastructure to crumble. They will be back in five years to take up where the Continuity Tory Party, which is only slightly less of a danger, left off to complete the neoliberal mission of destruction.
Recently I have been motivated to reflect on the last years of both my father and grandfather. They were both very active lifelong members of a political organization that had at its heart an idea that was enshrined in the original draft of ‘Clause IV’.
Towards the end of their days, I fear that, despite immense progress, over the 119 years that their lives spanned, by that party and affiliated Trades Unions, their mood was probably best characterized as somber.
Many of the gains that had been hard won seemed, to them, to be subject to significant erosion and worse still, the rising tide they welcomed hadn’t floated everyone free from the muddy bottom, it may even have drowned some of those it was intended to save.
Their drive to participate in local politics was founded on their lived experience, which included the hell of two world wars. Their optimism was based on a shared belief that societies that could be imagined could be created. Their energy to keep striving was partially down to a recognition that Rome wasn’t built etc., but also that desired states of being require permanent input to survive. Their faith in that fairer future was mostly based on their belief in the power of education and the shared commonality of needs and rights of people.
Education was central to being able to understand the key facts that would persuade a majority of the potential of leftwing ideologies and policies. My grandfather was fond of reminding me that the victor wrote history and if the Left could secure the platform, then the common narrative would more accurately reflect reality, for the long-term betterment of society. I don’t subscribe to the idea of a post-truth age, truth has been disputed since the dawn of storytelling, but what is abundantly clear is that defining history is no longer the privilege of the victor alone. The vanquished relate their story with even more ferocity. Trump’s account of the 2020 US Presidential Election has enjoyed more airtime than the Democrats’ rebuttal. This change is a huge problem for any movement that wishes to shape the future.
Neither were naïve individuals; both, self-educated, were extremely well read and well-travelled. However, neither fully understood nor willingly accepted that there are forces of resistance to the creation of equitable societies that exist beyond the obvious suspects. Corporations, Governments, the MSM, the Elites and the wealthy are not the only barriers to changing the hegemony of wealth. They are significant obstacles but as I have previously commented on your blog, I see mankind’s inability to agree on ‘What good looks like’ as great an impediment, if not greater.
Steven Covey implores us, if we wish to succeed, to ‘Begin with the end in mind’. Until such time as the majority have a collective agreed vision of the end, I fear that the ‘Groundhog Day’ you articulate is here to stay.
I am wondering whether it is time for another book…..