WHAT A STATE WE’RE IN!

16^th November 2022

WHAT A STATE WE’RE IN!

In the two months since I last wrote the state of the nation that is (n’t) the UK has gone from bad to worse in every way imaginable.  Truss’s politically ideological and economic gamble saw the UK’s economy trashed, relegated to the status of an emerging third-world nation.  Government borrowing rates increased massively, mortgage rates rocketed as the Bank of England moved to try to halt the rise in the rate of inflation by increasing their interest rate and pension funds were exposed.  If any good ever comes out of the disastrous Trussonomics and Kwarteng kasino gambling experiment it will be that it threw the nonsense that is neo-liberal trickle down economic planning on to its funeral pyre.  Her lunatic experiment, estimated to have come at a cost of £30 billion, has reduced the UK to a laughing stock and to what end?  She’ll never be brought to account for the damage she has done, for the futures she has destroyed and the lives she has wrecked.  At worst she’ll lose her seat at the next election, if indeed she has the chutzpah to stand, but she’ll still be eligible for a redundancy payment and an annual sum of something like £130,000 to fund her ex-PM’s office needs.  Oh, and a company Range Rover and keep her own Police bodyguard.  It beggars belief.  Just put it down as the price of failure – if any one of you reading this f****d up as dramatically and as costly as her you’d be sacked on the spot and then have to try to claim the meagre social security benefits the UK pays.

Her sacking Kwarteng and replacing him with Jeremy Hunt stabilised the economic disaster but at the expense of all her economic plans.  That sealed her demise and came with the sobriquet of being the shortest reigning living Prime Minister in history.  Unfortunately she was replaced by Rishi Sunak, so there we go – out of the frying pan into the fire.   He shored up his bid to be shoed in to power without having to face off Penny Mordant in an election with a couple of dodgy behind the scenes deals – both of which have come home to bite him on the arse.  Suella Braverman and Gavin Williamson both getting Ministerial posts again smacks of desperation on the part of a wannabee Prime Minister and Dominic Raab’s bullying is rearing its ugly head again.  I’ve said it before – Sunak would never have won if the choice had gone to Conservative Party members – the job would have been Mordant’s– unless, that is, if Johnson had chucked his hat into the ring as some expected.   Williamson has already gone and Braverman surely can’t last much longer given the absolute disgrace of the handling of asylum seekers.

The Tories – and for that matter what we call the Constitution – beggar belief.  Johnson won the last General Election (for worse or even worser) so had a mandate.  They booted him out and Truss was elected from within 130,000 or so Tory Party members.  Now I don’t believe that in itself is democratic enough to decide who is the Prime Minister – but them’s the rules of the game – but then she totally screwed up and the 1922 Committee devised a new selection process that was designed to keep the decision making process purely a matter for Tory MP’s!  So we went from 130,000 something down to 300 and something all only interested in trying to keep their seats when this government totally implodes and we have to have an election.  In truth, though the Tory 1922 Committee decided who would be Prime Minister – and that can’t be democratic.

It all begs a question – just how long can Sunak last?  The most significant threat to the planet – global warming – wasn’t important enough for him to attend the COP 24 conference – until his old mate Boris told all that he was on his way.  That was enough to cause an immediate handbrake turn and get Sunak pointing in the opposite direction.  He’s had the job a couple of weeks and it’s so obvious that he hasn’t got what it takes that I’ve got no doubt he’ll be struggling to fight off a challenge before Christmas.

The autumn budget statement will kick it all off.  Don’t expect anything special from Jeremy Hunt.  He isn’t the saviour many think he is.  Yes he rolled back all the Truss and Kwarteng idiocy, but he had no alternative as the UK had tanked.  He’s a Tory, he believes in the small state, low taxes and the reform of supply side economics (for that read, for instance, cutting costs for employers with the slashing of health and safety legislation, slashing workers’ rights and environmental safeguards).  And just because he was a constant thorn in the side of government as Chair of the Parliamentary NHS committee don’t believe he’s the champion of the NHS.  He was the man who abolished bursaries for student nurses, so committing them to almost poverty while they trained for their degrees – and denied the opportunity to get part-time jobs to help subsidise the cost of their studies because they were used as a source of cheap labour covering the same 12 hour shifts as their qualified, paid colleagues.  When he was Health Secretary he resisted plans for a staffing and recruitment plan that would have focussed on keeping the NHS properly resourced with its most important asset – its people.  For all their bluster and lies the Tories are no fans of the NHS other than it is a prime target for insurance companies and the monstrous amounts of money they’d charge for private healthcare cover.  Already the use of private health care is on the increase, due to the Covid-19 backlog – but again you can fairly and squarely blame the backlog on Hunt and the Tories for that – it was they who let any preparation, planning and stockpiling of equipment for medical emergencies like pandemics wither and die, leaving the UK criminally unprepared.  We reaped the cost for that didn’t we?  Who amongst you, my readers, lost someone close to you as a result of Covid-19?  The death toll as a consequence of deliberately transferring elderly patients out of hospital and into a care home without testing for Covid-19 was nothing other than manslaughter, a criminal act in my book.  And the price Matt Hancock has paid for that?  Think about it for a little while.

You can rest assured that his budget will place the burden of the debt incurred by Truss on the country squarely on the shoulders of those least able to cope financially – just as the costs incurred directly as a consequence of the way Covid-19 and the banking crisis before that was handled.  The rich get richer, the big corporations get richer and richer and nurses are going to foodbanks or leaving the profession for better wages at foreign owned budget supermarket chains.  Think about that for a little while as well.

And don’t believe that the cost of living crisis is all down to Putin’s war in Ukraine.  It isn’t.  The UK economy is the poorest performer in the countries that make up the G7, all of whom are suffering because of Putin and some of them, especially Germany, were almost totally dependent on Russian gas and oil.  All of the West suffered as a result of Covid-19 and the costs it incurred.  All of the West suffered because of the effects of Covid-19 on the Chinese economy and that container ship blocking the Suez Canal for weeks hit us all as well.  The UK economy was badly exposed before all of those contributing factors hit the fan purely and simply because of the effects of Brexit – but are there any Tories prepared to hold their hands up about that?  We all know the answer to that one don’t we.

The depth of the cost of living crisis is all down to deliberate Tory policies, all driven by ideological, illogical, idiotic policies that at no time had the benefit of the UK at their heart.  I’ll not regurgitate the (my) Remainer arguments, not for fear of being labelled a Remoaner but because we’ve left the European Union and we have to try to live with it.  But the facts are now in, it was a massive mistake that left us ill prepared and less able to cope with the economic pressures outlined above.

Personally I consider myself a Returner but I’m without a political home as a direct result of the Labour Party’s spineless attitude towards the Brexit discussion and I can’t bring myself to ever vote for the Lib Dems – the unabashed pro-EU party – or the Greens, although I do intend trying to figure them out and see if there’s anything about them besides being ’green’.  My old Walthamstow MP – Stella Creasy – is Chair of the Labour for Europe group so I think I’ll drop her a quick line and see if she can convince me to re-join Labour.  We’ll see.

Sitting here in France watching the news every day it comes as no surprise that people are voting for industrial action with increasing fervour – and who can blame them?  Public servants, those we depend on to provide our social care, our health and safety have been battered by Tory austerity for over a decade, seeing their earnings decrease in value year on year as pay rises have been stopped or capped at sub-inflation rates. Meanwhile Bankers bonuses keep rising – the same Bankers we the public bailed out and which started the Tory austerity campaign – and Oil and Gas Companies are profiting enormously from the impact of Putin’s war  – but not getting taxed on their ill-gotten war profiteering.

Every day Karen and I see stories of nurses using food-banks, teachers and schools providing breakfasts for kids who are going hungry – and this in 21^st Century Britain.  What the fuck is going on?  We see stories of Police failures to chase down criminals or not even responding to crime reports other than to give people a crime number – and all they do that for is satisfy the Insurance Company so you can put in a claim.  And then we hear ever increasing stories of Police corruption and instances of appalling behaviour.  No wonder confidence in law and order in the UK is vanishing – but who’d b a Bobby these days when you run the risk of getting tarred with the same brush as the bent ones?

There’s only one message really:

• If you voted Tory don’t complain about the lack of action when you’ve been mugged, burgled or worse, don’t complain about the time it takes to get offenders to Court (if indeed they ever do) – you voted for the b******s who deliberately cut the funds and the plans needed – so suck it up!
• If you voted Tory don’t complain if there’s a shortage of your favourite salami or cheese at your local European deli – you voted for the b******s who conned you about the benefits of Brexit – so suck it up!
• If you voted Tory don’t complain about NHS waiting lists being too long – you voted for the b******s who deliberately cut the funds and the plans needed – so suck it up!
• If you are a farmer who voted Tory and is now complaining about rural crime or the collapse of your market or are unable to find seasonal workers to get your crops in – well what can I say – you voted for the b******s – so suck it up!
• If you’re a ‘Red Wall’ Tory voter don’t complain about the decimation of your High Street, the closure of your Libraries or the state of your kids school – you voted for the b******s – so suck it up.

If you’re suffering from any of the above or any of the other examples of the damage being caused by deliberate Tory policy decisions then surely it’s time to start protesting.  Never mind that causing a ‘nuisance’ by protesting could see you facing a 51 week prison sentence – yes really, this lot have made it a crime punishable by a year in nick for disagreeing with them – there aren’t enough Police to enforce this law. There aren’t enough Courts to process offenders, there aren’t enough lawyers to prosecute or defend the accused – and there aren’t enough prisons – or if you’re also a channel crossing asylum seeker – enough old RAF camps to lock you up in.

There’s a perverse contradiction in the Home Office using Manston as a detention centre – and no I don’t give any credence  to it being described as a ‘processing centre’ for asylum seekers.  In the summer of 1940 RAF Manston was in the frontline of Fighter Commands desperate struggle to keep Hitler’s Nazi regime, with all its racism and xenophobia excesses, at bay.  That Britain won the Battle of Britain allowed western democracies to regroup and ultimately defeat the powers of darkness that had overtaken Europe.  To see Manston now being used to detain and demean innocent people, men, women and children in such an obviously nasty, racist manner is a slur on what I thought was a fair and welcoming society and the memory of all those who served, survived or died.  Given that we’ve just remembered Armistice Day I wonder what those who are left and the ghosts of those who didn’t come back think about the value of their sacrifices?

At the end of the day we get the government we vote for and the public services we are prepared to pay for.  Years of Tory governments have deliberately chosen to starve those that need the help of that support in favour of helping the already rich get richer.

And for those of you wondering why I think I can shout like this when I live relatively comfortably here in France well just remember that I worked solidly for over 40 years and even in retirement remain a UK taxpayer – even though my right to vote in UK elections will end after 15 years abroad – so figure that one out – the Tories will take my money but won’t let me vote.  They won’t let you protest and they are busy manipulating Constituency boundaries and voting regulations to even better protect their position as the ruling political party.  Meanwhile the country is in steep decline and global warming is accelerating the end of the world as we know it, all on our watch.

Maybe some of you back in the UK should be shouting a little louder.

Was it Ernie Bevin or Nye Bevan who called all Tories ‘vermin’?  Whoever it was they were right then and it remains true today.  Come the revolution brothers and sisters you show them to the wall and pass me the rifle – metaphorically speaking of course – bullets cost money and the money’s better spent repairing the damage they’ve done.

Thursday will be interesting – BBC Parliament will be covering Autumn Statement live – I’ll be watching, will you?

TTFN

Jem