Regular readings of this blog amy be aware of my continuing journey to trying to understand why on Earth people in the UK still support the Tories, or how people completely unsuited to be in positions of government like Boris Johnson and Donald Trump managed to win elections. Especially in the context of a series of economic crisis they have no answer for or even an apparent understanding of.
I’ve written about how I am not a Tory or Right Wing inclined person, I kind of get the principles behind Thatcherite Reaganite laissez-faire “free market” economics that have dominated the Western world for some 40 years now. The principle that capital is king and labour and government are economic pillars to be kept weak. The idea being that with lots of capital being available to rich individuals, investment banks, and pension funds, they provide capital [funding] to entreprenurial start-up businesses and establashed busineses to invest to improve their economic productivity (new machines, better IT systems, staff training etc). This then feeds into an increasing productivity of the economy as a whole and economic growth.
Ok, I have issues with this [like shouldn’t more than a tiniest bit of thr wealth go into at least maintaining infrastructure and standards of living of the populace] , but it is a system that kind of worked for a while. The issue is that now, and for the past twenty years have seen mean wages stagnant and more recently falling in real terms. This was perhaps caused by the banking crash of 2008 and more recent economic shocks of Brexit, the Covid pandemic and Putin’s war on Ukraine. However with interest rates at near zero, according to theory this should have encouraged investment in the economy. However this hasn’t happened, and labour and government are too weak to replace the investment provided by capital.
All the capital, the wealth, still exists, but it isn’t going into economic investment. It’s doing what capital seeks, the best possible return on the wealth. Capital has found this in land and property markets, capital now gets a much better return from renting out land rather than investing in the business sitting on that land. This is a huge problem, as lands cost continue upward, it makes that business less competitive as not only is it not growing, it’s costs increase as it’s rent to the landlord exceeds the general rate of inflation. Not only that but the employees or workers also have to pay more and more for their housing, labour gets more expensive without increasing workers disposable income. The effect of this is lower productivity and less consumption (less people buying the products of the business), two things that are vital to economic growth, because people not only have less disposable income to spend in the economy, their poverty makes them less less productive at work, for example by having a longer stressful commutes from there just affordable housing all the way to the place of work reduces their energy for work.
So why are people, the electors, not up in arms about this, or at least switching their votes to centrist or left-wing political parties? It’s not that most people have a very poor understanding of economics at a national economy level. It’s perhaps the Authoritarian Disposition.
The Authoritarian Disposition was a theory espoused by Adorno et al back in 1950. It’s another spectra, where as individuals we exist somewhere on a line between ‘freedom loving, open-minded lovers of diversity at one end and on the other those that like and respect Authority figures, value conformity, tradition and whom accept simple explanations of complex phenomena. These authoritarians fear change, the unknown and most importantly threats to their status. work on the theory suggests that around 40% of people are towards the authoritarian disposition end of the spectrum. a 40% that will prove crucial later.
Human Beings are a social species and as such have developed personality traits that have enabled us to survive to pass on our genetic and cultural inheritance. The authoritarian disposition is biologically useful to a population. In a bronze or iron age community, having advocates for improving defences against attacks from neighbouring tribes or roving groups of bandits was useful. Useful because those on the other end of the spectrum would more likely advocate improving agricultual systems or developing better tools as more useful than building soemthing with no real economic value such as a bigger wall. The tribes that get the decisions wrong will either starve to death because raiders stole their winter food supplies or starve to death behind their gargantuan walls.
Western society has largely managed to eliminate these existential threats by simply having huge military forces and banded together to make an invasion or robbery of national resources unthinkable. I mean noone is about to invade and take over the United Kingdon or the United States are they?
So how have the Authoritarians like Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin managed to secure positions of power? The argument is that they use psychology: they play up the importance of the established dominant culture (a white Christian heterosexual patriarchy) that then plays into the fear of this dominant culture losing it’s privileged status, by creating threats, even if none exist. Threats such as brown people, people with a different religious faith, people who speak a different language, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, labour (trade unions) and government itself (bureaucracy). We’re all a little bit authoritarian, we still have primeval fears of monsters under the bed or losing our hard earned social status. In FPTP (First Past the Post) electoral systems you really only need about 40% of the electorate to back you to gain power (or to put it another way the vast majority of those with the authoritarian disposition).
What seems to be the outlier for this theory is Climate Change, surely the greatest threat to humanity we face. Even the freedom loving liberals are scared about Climate Change. However the Authoritarians seem less concerned by this existential threat. this seems to refute the whole argument. Until that is, that it is not Climate Change that is feared, instead what is feared is the solution to Climate Change, a radical shift from capitalism to green economics. Those with capital who benefit from ever increasing wealth in the current system will likely lose the power and status they have, this is their greatest fear, so powerful it trumps the destruction of most of humanity.
It seems I have a new theory for why Authoritarians have gained power and why England still votes Tory, how does this affect Wales, or why even bring Wales into this discussion at all?
I’m Welsh and what I really fear most as a Welshman, rather than Climate Change as a human being, is the destruction of my culture, Welsh culture. Someway somehow, Welsh culture has survived being part of the largest Empire in the world , survived speaking the language that became the world’s lingua franca, English whilst keeping our own language, Welsh, alive. We’ve survived being culturally distinct from Englishness, despite numerous attempts across our history to integrate us into the dominant English culture. The English television presenter, Richard Osman, summed up how the Welsh have achived this ‘because the Welsh like to be left alone to enjoy themselves’. This means that when Wales was threatened we have fought back, but once that is done, we’ve gone back to being ourselves with no desire to impose ourselves on other cultures. It is a glib potted summary, but kind of explains where and why Wales is now.
When the UK regime tells us that immigrants, brown people or transexuals are a threat we are confused. To the Welsh the one and perhaps only theat is dominion by the culture of the English elite. The Tories in recent times as part of their Authoritarianism frequently have attacked Wales and this gets our heckles up. Everytime this happens we see a surge in support for Welsh independence, such as the current threat of a Liz Truss UK prime ministership pushing support up from 25% to 30%. We do, sadly, very much have racism in Wales, but my point is we don’t view people who are different to us, or don’t have Welsh as their prime identity as a threat. In fact we often view them as fellow minority communities under the dominant English regime in the UK who have it harder than we do. The Welsh national movement thus finds support from both Authoritarians and Liberals with any cultural identity, the prospect of a united nation next door to a bitterly divided one.
The entire modern history of Wales has been as a fairly willing tolerant member of the United Kingdom. For most of that time the London regime hasn’t directly threatened Welsh culture, the upper stratus of Welsh society has been welcomed into the UKs corridors of power. Wales has provided the coal, the steel, the soldiers for the British Empire’s wars. I believe we see England as our neighbours, friends and allies, yet that threat has never entirely gone away, not a threat from the people of England but those they put in power. The reason we never support an English team on the sporting field is because we sense that it diminishes our support for Welsh teams. When Wales plays England in any sport, those games are always the most intense and passionate, perhaps because we feel an instinctual need to remind England ‘Yma o hyd’ [We’re still here], don’t forget about us, don’t assume that we’re the same as you and then join up with our English pals for a pint or two after the game is over. It’s a complex relationship.
However with a UK regime pushing these Authoritarian threatening buttons, it’s hard not to just see it as empty electoral rhetoric, that they might just be crazy enough to action these threats, to attack Wales because there is a logic to it.
The Tories do not need a single vote from Wales to remain in power, nor do they need one from Scotland or Northern Ireland for that matter, it means Wales has no real influence over the ruling regime. However as long as Wales isn’t threatened we are relatively and perhaps paradoxically content with this arrangement. However the Tories are clinging on by pushing these alien Authoritarian agendas to gain support in England. The demographics show that the young, the under 50s (I know this isn’t ‘young’), I mean the children after Thatcher, who aren’t triggered by the threats suggested, they need to do something to keep those percentages up as their supporters die off and an assault on Wales or Scotland to rouse the forces of patriotism in England may be a way to do it. They are fingering those buttons right now. It’s scary.
Of course the alternative would be to set Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland free, it would make imposing the dominant English culture on England only and winning power easier, allowing them to hold on for a further decade or two, which would be terrible for England, a nation built on diversity.
We don’t yet know what will happen, but I do sense a rising of tensions between Wales and the UK regime in these troubled times and it is concerning, especially as this Authoritarian agenda seems to care so little for Britain or it’s economic future to insist on pushing these cultural war buttons of conform or die, not realisng that such threats only work on 40% of the populace.
Squimple 