I haven’t written about UK politics in a while,it’s hilarious but also incredibly sad, though there is hope that finally, at long last the British might just maybe slowly waking up to how awful UK governments an din particular the Tories [the Conservative party] are. So we’ve just had the shortest serving Prime Minster ever, but how did she end up as Prime Minister of the UK in the first place and what on Earth is going on in the UK?
A short stint as PM mainly because of the ‘mini-budget’ she put forward. The UK economy is not in a great state (the Tories have been in power for 12 years) we have a housing crisis, a cost of living crisis, rampant inflation and high levels of national debt. So Truss though it would be a good idea to enact £45 billion a year of tax cuts for the wealthiest in society and fund this entirely by borrowing more. The explanation and justification for this was to follow six weeks later with the promise of revealing a ‘growth plan’ and publication of the Office of Budget Responsibility statement. The markets did not react well, with interest rates on Gilts [how governments raise money on the international money markets} shot up, increasing the amount of governmetn revinue that has to be spent on serving debt, rather than investing in the economy. The UK became a lanthing stock, The Tories polling plunged to unprecedented below 20% figures and she was forced to resign.
It is obvious that both Truss and her chancellor Kwarteng have no understanding of economics. This isn’t a problem in itself, economics and politics are different skill sets. However politicians should be good decision makers and good decision makers will listen to experts to ensure what they are proposing is workable and likely to produce the desired effect. It’s fairly clear the Truss team decided not to listen to the experts and press ahead anyway. This is not a way to have a succesful government. There should surely be Sir Humphreys telling them politely but firmly that such things are just not possible.
I am a member of a political party. Political parties are made up of various factions with pet policies, such as a Green group or an anti-EU faction. There is a ‘greasy pole’ to climb to achive a prominant position within the party and the opportunity to stand for national elections and represent the party in legislative bodies. I don’t know how other parties operate but in mine any potential candidate is asked the question “Under what circumstances would you vote against the party?” If the answer is “None” there are barred from representing the party. My suspicion is that doesn’t happen in the Tory party, a party which seems to prioritise the party over the people and the nations they are elected to represent.
Climbing this greasy poll perhaps involved ideological purity, in particular for the modern Tories, a slavish devotion to the neo-liberal agenda, always seek to reduce taxes and regulation and reduce the size of government. Any economist will tell you that in some circumstances such measures are a bad idea, but that in others are a good idea. However I imagine an econimically savvy person in a party like the modern Tories would not get very far, be viewed as ideologically unsound. For surely pushing the mantra of ever decreasing taxes without any practical explanation is the position that will strongly help get you into the position to get elected for the party.
The upshot of this is that the elected Tory party consist of a body of people with no understanding of how national economys work. They are also a party where in recent times the Hard-Right Brexiteer faction has risen to dominance over the party. However Brexit isn’t going well, the government have been forced to spend more to deal with Covid and Putin’s willy-waving war on top of the Brexit costs, there is scant little left to cut in the UK economy without it causing a major economic crisis. The very last thing the UK needed was a disruptive management PM. But why didn’t they listen to advice?
Th simple answer is Brexit, not the actual leaving of the EU, but the whole campaign to leave the EU and the dominace of the Brexiteer ideology.
The Tories like the UK in general has always been a EU-sceptic place. There were the moderates who accepted that being a member of the EU was practical to ensure market access to the UKs biggest trading partner, the rest of the EU, and any gains from not being in the EU pale in magnitude from the costs of lost trade from not being in the EU. The Euro sceptics kept on grumbling, but the party and the UK in general accepted that EU membership whilst not ideal was probably the best compromise. Until that is Nigel Farge’s UKIP started beating the Brexit drum.
Then PM David Cameron was spooked by the rise of UKIP eating into Tory votes, yet he had just won the Scottish independence referendum by the skin of his teeth, but he was confident he could win referendums, so the Brexit referendum was promised and then came about.
Cue Brexit, a debate where the economics was never debated, the Brexiteers, canny campaigners having risen through the ranks on ideological purity had learnt every trick in the book to stifle debate. Leaving the EU would in theory give the UK parliament a little more control and be slightly more democratically accountable, however this one issue, of sovreignty was blown into the only issue, debate never got beyong the ‘Take Back Control’ mantra. Tory MP Michael Gove made a telling statement during Brexit “People have had enough of experts” to mean people don’t like being told what to do or what to think by people who have spent decades studying, testing ideas and thinking about issues. This was no longer important, your average persons on the street’s gut feeling was more important. ‘Do you agree that it would be better for decisions about Britain to be made in Britian rather than by other Europeans” 52% of the voting population said yes, ‘but it’s a little more complicated than that ” was drowned out.
So Brexit happened, however as there had only been this incredibly superficial debate, there was no plan for what to do after Brexit. I’m not joking, there was literally no plan for a post-Brexit Britain, none. Parliament couldn’t agree what to do. The Tories themselves split into various factions. There was but one thing to do, bring on Boris.
One Boris Johnson, an upper class ambitious bullying twit with Tory blood flowing deep in his veins, a man with no ideological ideas of his own beyond loyalty to the Tory party. Exactly who the Tories needed, someone flexible enough to keep the Tories happy and his tomfoolery would be a distraction from porr politics. His was elected on the simple mantra of just ‘Get Brexit Done’ no matter how badly it would be done, united the Brexiteers and his party and when no other option was left Boris would finally make a decision. That this meant that during Covid the UK has one of the highest Covid death rates and the longest periods of Lockdowns of any advanced economy, this didn’t matter, for he had achieved what Boris was elected to do, keep the Tory party together, his one and only glorious achievement.
Eventually the endless gaffs and stumbling idiotically from crisis to crisis got the better of him. But who to replace him with? The Tory MPs had now been selected for their loyalty to the idea of Brexit. A group of people now beholden to the idea of ‘not listening to experts’. In such a situation in became possible for one Liz Truss to becoem Prime Minister, a woman completely and utterly unsuited to be PM, someone even less suited to be PM than Johnson himself.
So as of today, we have Rishi Sunak as PM. How long he’ll last with the Tories in the UK parliament is anyone’s guess. He’s a subscriber to the neo-liberal agenda that has failed the British economy. He had a career with Goldman-Sachs, so has a good understanding of the finacial markets, but not of the wider economy. However it’s at least something more than Liz Truss had. We shall see how long he lasts.
The most hard-right, racist Tory party ever has elected a brown man and Hindu to be PM, mainly because there was no other relatively safe pair of hands available. The Tory party voter base is not entirely racist, but believe me, most of the racists in the UK support the Tories. There are no big easy wins for the foreseeable future as we head into a winter of high energy costs and a sluggish economy. He is leading a political party that has consistently put it’s own interests over those of the UK and there is scant indication there will be any change in this. With an increasingly angry public, we’ll see how long he lasts.
Squimple 