I have never considered myself a Marxist. I came to adulthood at the end of the one, forty year long, period in the history of Western civilisation when there was a reduction in the chasm between the rich and ordinary people.
In consequence I believed that a tolerable society might be achieved by simple measures to ameliorate capitalism. I grew up with public ownership of utilities, natural monopolies and strategic industries, with free healthcare and medicines, free university tuition with good maintenance grants, schools under control of elected local councils, controlled fair rents including the private sector, significant public housing.
We thought it would last forever.
In 1973 I joined the Liberal Party. Much of the 1974 Liberal Party manifesto I could still believe in now. The above things like public ownership of utilities and major industries and free education were not in the manifesto, because they did not have to be – they already existed and were the basic structure. The manifesto added things like a basic guaranteed income for everybody in society, compulsory worker shareholdings in those industries not nationalised, workers’ councils, and a rent freeze in both public and private sectors.
I am not claiming it as a great socialist document – there were signs of right-wing thought creeping in, like a shift to indirect taxation. But the truth is that the Liberal Party manifesto of 1974 was at least as left as Corbyn’s manifesto. Some of its ideas were far ahead of their time – like the idea that continuous economic growth and increasing consumption are not sustainable or desirable.
Believing in essentially the same things now, I find myself on the far left – without ever having moved!
Here are a couple of extracts from the 1974 Liberal manifesto which may surprise you. This kind of language you will not hear from Keir Starmer’s Labour Party – indeed it would probably get you thrown out:
That Liberal Party is of course gone, along with the radical, anti-war, anti-unionist traditions of British liberalism. They were diluted by the merger with the SDP and finally killed off by Nick Clegg and the “Orange Bookers” who turned the hybrid party fully neoliberal, a doctrine with almost no resemblance to the liberalism it claims to reassert.
Those hardy souls who follow and support this blog are witnessing the last knockings of the legacy of political thought that was bestowed by John Stuart Mill, William Hazlitt, John Ruskin, John A Hobson, Charles Kingsley, Bertrand Russell, William Beveridge and many others, seasoned by Piotr Kropotkin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. I don’t imagine any further generation attempting to be active in politics will develop their worldview with those thinkers as their primary motivators.
But the point of this self-absorbed drivel is that I am not a Marxist and do not come from an organised labour or socialist background or mindset.
The key thought towards which I am plodding through this morass of explanation is this: I grew up in the one era when capitalism was sufficiently moderated by palliative measures that it seemed a reasonable way to conduct society. That ended around 1980 when the doctrine of neoliberalism took hold of the Western world. In the UK, that doctrine now firmly controls the Conservative, Lib Dem, Labour and SNP parties and is promoted relentlessly by both state and corporate media.
The result of this neoliberal domination has been a massive and accelerating expansion in the gap between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of society, to the extent that ordinary, once middle-class people struggle to pay the bills required simply to live. The situation has become unsustainable.
In short, it turns out Marx was right. The crisis of capitalism is now upon us. Neoliberalism (another word for designing state systems deliberately to lead to incredible concentrations of wealth amid general poverty) is coming to the end of its course. There are no palliative measures that will make the situation bearable. A radical change in the ownership of assets is the only thing that will address the situation – starting with public ownership of all energy companies, from hydrocarbon extractors like Shell and BP, through gas, electricity and fuel generators and manufacturers, distributors and retailers.
Nationalisation should be done properly, without compensating shareholders. If I had to choose between compensating the shareholders and imprisoning them, I would imprison them. I suggest we do neither.
That is only one sector and only the start. But it is a good start. I frequently pass the Grangemouth refinery and am amazed that all that land, massive equipment, all those chemicals and processes, go primarily to the benefit of Britain’s richest man, Jim Ratcliffe, who is considering buying Manchester United as his latest toy, while his workers protest at another real-terms pay cut.
This obscenity cannot continue forever.
Wars are not incidental to neoliberalism. They are an essential part of the programme, because untrammelled consumerism requires massive acquisition of natural resources. Constant war has the helpful side-benefit for the global elite of enormous profit to the military industrial complex. The cost in human misery and death is kept at a discreet distance from the Western world save for refugee flows, which meet with a response increasingly founded in the denial of humanity.
The promotion of continual war has led to the acceleration of crisis. Much of the current cost of living explosion can be directly attributed to the provoked, prolonged and pointless war in Ukraine, while neoliberal doctrine forbids control of the horrendous associated profiteering of the energy companies.
There is going to be public anger, come spring, of a strength and reach not seen in my lifetime. The ultra wealthy and their political servants know this, and therefore strong action is being taken to forestall public protest. The new Policing Act is only one of a raft of measures being brought in to clamp down on avenues for free expression of public discontent. Demonstrations can simply be banned if they are “noisy” or an “inconvenience”. The 2 million person march against the Iraq War in London, for example, could have been banned on both grounds.
I met and talked last weekend at the Beautiful Days festival with the admirable Steve Bray; we don’t agree on everything but his public concern is genuine. He is getting used to being removed by police from Parliament Square after being specifically targeted in legislation. I reminded him – and I remind you – that the Blair government had also banned protest near the Westminster parliament, and the Scottish parliament has recently taken powers to do the same. Intolerance of dissent is a feature of modern neoliberalism, as people in Canada and New Zealand are also witnessing – or as Julian Assange might tell you.
But in addition to legislative and state attack on protest, the neoliberal state is also ramping up its more subtle elements of control. The security services are continually being expanded. The media is not only increasingly concentrated, it is increasingly under direct security service influence – the Integrity Initiative, the Paul Mason revelations, and the barely disguised spookery of Luke Harding and Mark Urban all being small elements of a massive web designed to control the popular imagination.
The splitting of the political left by identity politics has been the go-to weapon of the state for several decades now. The replacement of horizontal class solidarity by vertical gender solidarity being the most obvious tool, epitomised by the notion that it was better to elect the multi millionaire, corrupt, neoliberal warmonger Hillary Clinton than the class politics espousing Bernie Sanders, simply because the warmonger was a woman.
A specific use of this tool has been the weaponisation of fake sexual allegations against any individual likely to be a threat to the state. You see this in the cases of Julian Assange, Tommy Sheridan, Scott Ritter and Alex Salmond (they tried it on me when I left the FCO but had to drop it because they could not find – despite massive efforts – any woman who knew me who would say anything bad about me).
Those in power know that the portion of the left who identify as feminist, which is almost all of us, are highly susceptible to support alleged victims due to the extreme difficulties of real victims in obtaining justice. This makes sexual allegations, no matter how fake, very effective in removing the support base of anti-establishment figures.
The propaganda narrative against Assange, Salmond, Ritter and Sheridan depends on the idea that at the very moment that each of these men reached the peak of a lifetime’s endeavour and posed the maximum threat to the state, they lost focus, lost their marbles and acted very wrongly towards women, despite no previous history of such behaviour.
It astonishes me that anybody does not see through it.
Rather quaintly, they use different methods on women. Brigadier Janis Karpinski was the chosen patsy to take the blame for the USA’s Abu Ghraib atrocities (entirely unfairly – she had no role or authority in the CIA controlled portion of the jail where the atrocities took place). Dismissed from her post, she was prepared to testify to a memo personally signed by Donald Rumsfeld authorising torture.
How did the US security services fit up a woman, not a man, who threatened the powers that be? Shoplifting. The day after her enforced resignation, Karpinski was “caught shoplifting”. Because of course, when at the eye of an international storm and under CIA surveillance, you immediately go out and steal some clothes.
The cynical weaponisation of the trans debate has taken the art of using identity politics to split the left to a whole new level, and in particular to alienate the younger generation from traditional left feminists. It has also been used successfully – and remarkably – to neuter the most potent current threat to the UK state, by driving both the non neoliberals and the more ardent Independence supporters out of the SNP.
Similar to the use of gender politics to undermine class solidarity is the weaponisation of accusations of anti-semitism. Just as accusations of misogyny, however false, succeed in alienating left unity, so do allegations of racism.
Here it is not so much that accusations were believed – the conflation of criticism of the crimes of Israel with criticism of Jews per se being all too obvious – as that the attack was so blistering, with the full weight of the establishment political and media class behind it, that people cowered rather than face up to it. The worst example of cowering being Jeremy Corbyn.
One lesson from both the “leaked report” and the Forde report is that Corbyn and his office believed that if they threw enough sacrifices to the wolves, betraying decent people like Tony Greenstein (son of a Rabbi), Mark Wadsworth and Ken Livingstone, then the wolves would be appeased.
Israel is the last large scale project of colonisation by physical occupation of a conquered land by European people. Ukraine and Israel are the two current neo-liberal violence projects, which it is not permitted to criticise. The banning of any nuance of opinion on Ukraine should frighten everybody who is thinking rationally. If you are thinking rationally, try this small antidote to the unremitting propaganda:
The Ukraine war is unusual in the attempt to enforce wartime levels of unanimity of narrative on the population, in western countries which are not only not combatants in the war, but not even formally allied to Ukraine. The United States was a party to the Vietnam War, but it was still possible for Americans to criticise that war without having all media access banned. Today you cannot criticise Ukraine in the state or corporate media at all, and your social media access is likely to be severely restricted unless you follow the official propaganda narrative.
This is the Establishment’s strongest method of control – the labeling of opposing opinion as “misinformation” or “disinformation”, even when there is no genuine evidential base that makes the official “facts” unassailable, as with Douma or the Skripals. To ask questions is stigmatised as traitorous and entirely illegitimate, while official journalists simply regurgitate government “information”.
Yet, despite this interwoven system of dampening all dissent from the neoliberal agenda, the Establishment remains terrified of the public reaction to the crisis that is about to hit. The controlled opposition is therefore used to attack actual opposition. Keir Starmer’s banning of Labour MPs from union picket lines is a clear example of this.
We are seeing for the first time in many years an assertion of the rights of organised labour in the face of the massive attack on workers’ real incomes. This is the first time many adults under thirty will ever have encountered the notion that ordinary people are able to defend themselves against exploitation – that is one reason the impressive Mick Lynch has been such a revelation, and is viewed by the “elite” as such a threat.
The Starmer line is that strikes inconvenience the public, which you will recall is the government excuse for banning protest also. Well, of course they do. So does the spiral of real terms wage cuts. The fractured workers of the gig economy are now showing interest in unionising and organising; this is too little and too late to avert the crisis that is about to hit us, but a useful indication of the will to resist.
Popular resistance terrifies the elite and thus must be demonised. The political class is to be protected from insult or contradiction. You may recall in February it was headline news that Keir Starmer was “mobbed” in Whitehall as he walked down the street, by protestors shouting at him over lockdown and over his role in the non-prosecution of Jimmy Savile (and, less reported, in the extradition of Julian Assange).
In fact, nothing happened. Aerial photographs showed that the protestors numbered about a dozen, that they were heavily outnumbered by Starmer’s handlers and the police. The only, mild, violence was initiated by the police. There was no threat to Starmer other than the threat of being verbally opposed by members of the public on subjects he did not wish to be discussed.
This protection of highly paid politicians from the public, this claim that it is extremely bad behaviour for ordinary people to confront elite politicians with an opposing view, is an extraordinary assertion that the people must not challenge their betters.
We are going to see a great deal more of this in the coming crisis. There is currently the most extraordinary manifestation of it in Scotland where the Chief Constable has announced an investigation into people daring to protest against the Tory leadership hustings in Perth.
In truth, absolutely nothing abnormal happened. People protested. Nobody spat at anybody – there is no evidence of it at all, nobody saw it, none of scores of media cameras and people’s telephones captured it, none of the very large police presence witnessed it, not a single journalist claims to have personally seen this “spitting”. Yet the entire media reported it, to delegitimise the protest.
These are the “reports” the Chief Constable refers to – unevidenced media lies. That is the basis of policing today.
An egg – singular – may or may not have been thrown. Media showed photographs of a single broken egg on the pavement after the event. Again, footage of it flying through the air is conspicuously absent. Someone may have just dropped their shopping. It may even be a false flag egg!
Personally, I don’t care if somebody did throw an egg at a Tory. Egg throwing at politicians is a traditional expression of popular protest with hundreds of years of history behind it. It is not really dangerous – I am not aware of a single instance of a politician being maimed by a flying egg – and carries a comedic punch. Personally I would rather see the custard pie, but those crowd barriers…
But what really rattled the political class was the lack of deference shown to their agents of control, the client journalists. One such creature, the BBC’s James Cook, walked through the barriers dividing the journalist pool from the pen for the public, and walked up to the barriers to provoke a reaction.
The propaganda of the BBC is particularly unpopular in Scotland, so Mr Cook got the reaction he expected. He was shouted at, and called a “traitor” and “scum”. The most vociferous abuse came from one particular individual not known to local activists, who may or may not have been an agent provocateur. That the British security state employs such tactics is beyond dispute. But I do not enormously care if he was an agent or a genuinely annoyed member of the public.
The fact is this. Mr Cook, like Mr Starmer above, got shouted at. He did not get hit. He was not the victim of the great egg throwing scandal. Nobody spat at him. Mr Cook met with verbal disapprobation of his journalistic output, after approaching people specifically to that purpose.
Here is a photo of James Cook immediately after the “someone spoke rudely to me” incident, showing exactly how shaken and concerned he was:
The reaction from the controlled, neoliberal opposition in Scotland was off the scale.
The notion that the BBC does “not support any viewpoint”, particularly on Independence, is laughable. Also how much scrutinising of the Ukrainian government has it been undertaking recently?
Mr Cook has form in claiming that Scots expressing their opinion in the street amounts to some form of illegitimate mob or riot, when it is in fact perfectly peaceable.
A couple of days after the Perth non-incident, the neoliberal controlled opposition were joining in with the client journalists in their claims to victim status.
The interesting thing here is that these neo-liberal politicians plainly believe that it ought not to be allowed for people to call them or their journalistic enablers traitors or scum. The expression of popular protest is in itself illegitimate, according to their worldview. Politicians are using the verbal armoury of cancel culture – talk of “offence” and “safety”, as reasons to limit freedom of speech – to justify the suppression of criticism of those who wield the power of the state.
This extends to the suppression of free speech and popular protest under the guise of protecting employee rights. The neoliberal opposition quickly hit on this line on the Perth incident. Mr Cook should not have been abused because he was only an employee “doing his job”. Everyone has a right to be protected from abuse in the workplace.
As though voicing state propaganda is the same as serving coffee and as though Cook’s work is morally neutral. It is not.
Perhaps aware that journalists are not the most popular recipients of public sympathy, James Cook decided to spread the accusation of abuse wider:
Here James Cook is simply lying. I have very frequently heard extreme discontent at the BBC expressed by Independence supporters, both at public demonstrations, including outside BBC Scotland HQ, and in meetings. I have never once heard any anger expressed at staff other than the lying “journalists”.
In meetings I frequently express the view that upon Independence, BBC Scotland should be closed down and everybody made redundant (I last expressed this in Dunfermline last month). I have taken to always adding that this should apply only to editorial and journalistic staff and not to technical, clerical and industrial staff. The reason I always add it now is that, if I don’t, I am invariably corrected from the floor. There is no animus against these people.
Cook is making it up, which I suppose is his profession.
The resonances to wider cancel culture are not accidental. That the near approach of capitalism to its crisis is marked by both legal and social suppression of freedom of speech is not an accident. There is a strong resonance between the Perth incident and the cancellation of the Edinburgh Fringe show of veteran Glaswegian comic Jerry Sadowitz, for which the excuse given – accepted by a remarkable number of people on the left – was that the workers’ rights of the staff of the venue were affected.
This co-option of workers as state censors is remarkable given the complete disinterest in staff rights shown by the state in general, and by the large Edinburgh Fringe employers in particular. As food for thought, here is a 1987 transcript of Sadowitz’ act where he discusses the Establishment protected paedophile, Jimmy Savile:
“There have been serious allegations in the news of child abuse in Cleveland. Now to my mind there is only one way of finding out whether it is true or not, and that is to call in Jimmy Savile. You can’t afford to fuck about, bring in an expert. Am I right? Now a friend of mine reckons that Jimmy Savile is a paedophile, rubbish he’s a child-bender. That’s why he does all the fucking charity work, it’s to gain public sympathy for when his fucking case comes up. I’ve always known that. Aye, aye, well he may have fooled you, not fucking me, I am telling you that. He doesn’t fool this big-nosed Jewish bastard over here, I’m telling you that. I have always thought that if you took the action of a voice and turned it into a wank you would get Jimmy Savile wouldn’t you? (Savile masturbating impersonation).”
Read that with an eye to how many things in it could today have got Sadowitz banned, because somebody on the staff could have taken offence or been triggered. Pretty well every single sentence. Yet Sadowitz was one of a tiny number of people prepared to tell the truth about Savile.
I hope that puts you off the idea of canceling free speech “on behalf of workers’ rights”.
To sum up.
The 2008 banking bailout gave hundreds of billions of dollars straight to the ultra-wealthy, to be paid for by ordinary people through over a decade of austerity cuts to social services, real terms cuts in pay, and increased taxation. In the current crisis the plan is to advance money in some form to ordinary people, for them to pay off by a further decade of the same.
In neither instance was taking money from those with billions in personal wealth even considered.
The neoliberal phase of super-capitalism has run its course. The gap between the wealthy and ordinary people has become so extreme that, even in the West, ordinary people no longer can afford to live decently. Consumerism has desperately depleted natural resources and accelerated climate change. The policy of perpetual war has finally undermined the world economy to a fatal degree.
The situation is not sustainable, but the global elite have no intention to give up sufficient of their massive wealth to make any difference. They seek to control society through the propaganda model and through increasing state repression of dissent, allied to an assault on “incorrect” thought by censorship of the internet and by populist demonisation. “Left” causes such as identity politics and protection from offence have been weaponised to support this suppression.
There is no democratic outlet for popular anger. The “opposition” parties which people can vote for are all under firm neoliberal, warmonger control. Democracy has ceased to present any effective choice that offers any hope of real change. The revival of interest in organised labour and the willingness of young people to engage in direct action in the field of climate change offer some avenues for activism, but it is too little, too late.
Yet this will not hold. Discontent is now so strong, and public anger becoming so widespread, that change is coming. With no available democratic mechanism for change and a firm clampdown on the development of coherent radical programmes and on radical organisation, that change will initially manifest in chaos.
The Establishment response? They clutch at their pearls, twitch at their curtains and condemn the uncouth masses.
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Excellent (and surprising) post.
1. “I grew up in the one era when capitalism was sufficiently moderated by palliative measures that it seemed a reasonable way to conduct society.” The post-WW2 “wave” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave and https://www.amazon.co.uk/Long-Waves-Capitalist-Development-Interpretation/dp/185984037X) of prosperity (c.1945-1970) that convinced many that this was the “new normal” for Capitalism only occurred because it needed “all hands on deck” to out-produce and out-arm the USSR, but this effort (the final straw being the financial cost of the Vietnam War) ultimately led to the stagflation that neo-liberalism sought to “cure”. It did what it was designed to do (reduce the economic/political power of the (manual) working class and increase the profits of corporations) for the next 25 years, but reached its limits in 2007/08. Since then, massive central bank manipulation of the “market” is the only thing that has prevented the total collapse of Capitalism.
2. “There is going to be public anger come spring of a strength and reach not seen in my lifetime.” This is probably correct, but the problem is that, in the absence of any substantial political organisations genuinely fighting for the interests of the (manual) working class in the UK, such spontaneous, leaderless protests will wither and die just as surely as did the Occupy Wall Street ones. In this absence, the only possibility for partial success would seem to be a “general strike” involving not just a withdrawal of labour but also of payments to utility companies, provoking the State into (partially or wholly) ameliorating the cost-of-living crisis. However, this would only return UK society to a pre-Ukraine war state when “only” 2-3M were relying on food banks, and since such austerity did not provoke revolution before February 24th, there is no reason to expect it to do so after a return to those conditions.
Although such predictions have been made for many decades, it now seems likely that we really are witnessing the early stages of the end of Capitalism. Every facet of human existence is under threat, but those in power now doing all the damage will not voluntarily hand it over to the “adults in the room”. If there is no physical revolution against Capitalism in the near future, there will be a global-scale repeat of the fall of the Roman Empire which will probably include the destruction of all human life.
What little capitalism was left after the creation of the Federal Reserve has been eroded steadily since the ending of Bretton Woods. The final nail in its coffin was when central banks bailed out the finance sector in the GFC.
You don’t rescue Capitalism by rescuing capitalists; the whole point of Capitalism is that risk takers win when they come up with a new product that satisfies consumer needs better than the existing suppliers, but also pay the price when consumers don’t want their innovations and they lose money.
Get rid of fiat currencies and central banks – both of which arise from government meddling in the supply of money & credit – and most of the ailments of the modern world go away.
Of course, governments require artificially cheap interest rates to bribe voters with the social welfare largesse that can only be paid via deficit financing (unless you’re an fossil fuel giant like Saudi Arabia or Norway). So the very social welfare schemes that economic ignoramuses like Craig (who I have enormous respect for on most other subjects) are calling for are what have enabled the finance sector and multinationals to hijack government.
If you don’t understand the monetary system, you’re just another person hacking at the branches of evil instead of its roots.
Obserever
” the whole point of Capitalism is that risk takers win when they come up with a new product that satisfies consumer needs better than the existing suppliers, but also pay the price when consumers don’t want their innovations and they lose money.”
Perhaps you are describing something which has never existed but which, as an idea, gives cover for what actually does exsist, a system of competing criminal groups using their control of the state to give themselves monopolistic control and free money. That’s what neoliberalism/conservatism has been all about. They won’t go without a fight.
“to bribe voters with the social welfare largesse”
What social welfare largesse?
“ Get rid of fiat currencies and central banks – both of which arise from government meddling in the supply of money & credit – and most of the ailments of the modern world go away.”
Don’t be ridiculous. Where do you think the currency actually comes from?
Clue: it comes from Government spending it into existence.
Without a central bank the country would entirely depend on private banks issuing credit for its money supply. I’m sure that’s not what you’d want.
Or is it? Maybe you’re a Rothschild… but I somehow doubt it.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Where do you think the currency actually comes from?
Clue: it comes from Government spending it into existence.”
I’m not sure what you mean by “currency”, but credit is created by paid work. Money is just the units of credit, much more so when cash no longer has any intrinsic value and is less and less used.
> credit is created by paid work.
Um, not really. Credit is created by someone lending money. Work and pay aren’t central to the creation of credit.
I do a day’s work. Until I am paid for it, I am owed the currency equivalent of a day’s work. That is a debt to my employer and a credit to me. Thus I have just created credit. No banks were harmed in the creation of it.
Bayard I think you are missing the broad point that currency is no different to credit.
In your example, you aren’t really creating credit. Your employer is, by creating the confidence that he will pay you. So, you are willing to do a day’s work to receive the credit of your employer. The ‘day’s work’ quantity doesn’t really have anything to do with it. You might have won a bet, or sold an idea, it doesn’t matter. If the employer gave you a transferable IOU, you could use that as an instrument to pay someone else – i.e., it is functioning as money.
From your point of view, you could send your employer a bill. But your employer can’t really pass that around as money.
You could create money by creating vouchers saying ‘a day’s work by Bayard’, and then offering those vouchers as an exchange for other things. Once you actually do the day’s work, though, should someone cash the voucher with you, the money would disappear as you take the voucher out of circulation.
MrShigemitsu
I’ve corrected you once before on your misconceptions about money creation.
Most of our money is created not by governments, but by the private banking sector when they make loans.
From ‘Money creation in the modern economy’, Bank of England 2014
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy
“This article explains how the majority of money in the modern economy is created by commercial banks making loans”
Squizzle,
Money is only created under license of the Government.
Banks can’t just set up and start issuing credit without such a license and they certainly can’t start printing cash – that’s the job of the Mint.
If they cancelled that Money there is nothing the banks could do. Just as they cancel old notes – watch the chaos as paper notes are stopped being legal tender this month for example.
The utter bollocks most still believe about Money and Tax is what keeps people stupid and keeps suckering them of all actual Wealth they create.
The coming rinse is going to be doozy and everyone will be told it’s all Russias fault (pure dogwhistle racism) just as the political imposed Austerity was blamed on the EU and immigrants to deliver a BrexShit.
The future generations are screwed. They will never own what our generation does. As it gets all taken away. We will own nothing and we will be happy – as a klaus has decreed at the WEF- and he ain’t a Santa.
Thinking you live in a bubble of 70 million people on an island apart from the majority of humans on the planet is the fairytale of the ages. We are not Exceptional; not more Cultured, Not more Educated; Not Freer; Not old Imperial guards and servants; not unipolarist.
The West is Not Best. Until you understand Money you will never understand Power and History.
‘money is only created under license of the government’
Well, companies don’t need a license to create company bonds, and prisoners don’t need a license to trade cigarettes. But aside from the broader question of what money is, and exactly what the nature of this license is (I don’t think you’ll find a ‘license to create money’), so what?
The reality is that private banks create the vast majority of the money in circulation, and they are getting a skim of pretty much the entire economy by doing so, with hardly anyone realizing. As a society, we are effectively renting our currency from the banks.
At any point it would be impossible to repay our debt to the banks, as we can only repay the debt with money that is loaned to us. No matter how hard society works. It is dastardly.
“If they cancelled that Money there is nothing the banks could do. “
I am trying to understand where you are coming from here.
The central bank created money does form a foundation for the system. But the banks only need a tiny fraction of central bank money compared to the amounts of their own credit (which is money) they lend out.
What we need to is stop the creation of money as debt by the banks, and replace it with debt-free money created by the state, there would be a transition period.
You are indeed failing to understand.
Corporate Bonds are just an IOU with a promise of interest and supposed settlement.
They are generally unsecured
They are often used in a Ponzi scheme.
When they don’t payout or go bust you are left with NOTHING.
——————
You fail miserably to understand what fractional banking is about – try again.
Whatever mass of Credit Money that is created under license of the Government by commercial bankers and credit card facilities etc is in the same way created by daily Government Spending – that is say for the PM and chancellor’s wages, wallpaper, wine … to the chauffeured transport, the Civil servants, the police protection … the soldiers, sailors and dead men flying…the doctors, nurses, teachers, the cleaners and shut shivellers in employment of whatever Public Body.
And all of that money is magicked into reality daily from a simple pen stroke by the Treasury instruction to the BoE, who deposits it into the commercial bank accounts of these before by paid – after deduction of taxes in many cases too!
What happens to that magic monied tax? Well it magically disappears!
That dear deluded squizzle is where all the nuts really are. So stop barking at the squizzle banks, their job is to pump the punters full of debt and then make them bankrupt and thus grab all their actual property and wealth.
The original debt gets written off, the bank doesn’t go bankrupt; it keeps all the interest charged, and sells off the property and keeps that as well!
The politicians get bought off and the government will be used to keep the poor from rising with such regular rinses.
You are spot on Craig. Amazing how the same old lies and divide and conquer tactics have remained the modus operandi of oppressive elites down the ages, and continue to fool enough of the people to prevent peaceful change rattling the status quo and interrupting the establishment gravy trains. The tools of oppression are also becoming ever more sophisticated from algorithmic manipulation of mass opinion by AI models to the new power of the biosecurity complex fear factory – there are far worse things than death after all, and our psychopathic leaders will be more than happy to threaten them. Will the people ever again be empowered to rise up and demand simple dignity and fairness and humanity? It is unclear. Evil is ultimately entropic, and grossly lazy and stupid, but in the past it relied on flesh and blood agents to promote its interests, and drones and robotics and mRNA reprogramming of the Species were dystopian nightmares in the minds of Sci Fi and Cyberpunk authors, not realities. Maybe we are toast? I prefer to go down fighting.
Cool viewpoint (with respect) but you are alone here. Bread and circus is the game and anyone not in it isnt truly human (a subspecies maybe, homo-post-sapien or whatever cool latin you can think of, but not us). Thanks for your sacrifice, but ‘muh kids’ are hungry and I need that 10% raise, why give a shit about some poor noobs (did I hit all the demographics yet?).
Saddest part is they will say ‘jump or nuclear war’. Guess what, the non-jumpers will be the devil (or insert other common antagonist diety). But no nuclear war has been, or will ever be, waged between nuclear powers. I can only assume we have a handful of nukes active (if even), or we would have annihilated our dumbasses by now.
The yes men are already in power, even they know nukes stop the gravy train. Ground war for the poor is too profitable to pass up.
And so what if we end in a nuclear annihilation? Existence either ends or you actually have some autonomy in your lives. Grow some balls, call their bluff, drop the nukes and sail your golden yachts.
Good unrelated quote from a crap movie (8 mile): Fuck the free world
In 1974/5 I was a manual worker in a factory in Scotland, producing supermarket trolleys and shelving from wire stock. In response to a request by the works committee for a raise to £1 per hour (not a raise OF £1!), the brothers who owned the company called all 200 of us to the works canteen, where they berated us: “a pound an hour! …if gorillas were socially acceptable I would have them doing your jobs!! If you don’t like it here, there’s the door!!! No-one moved. My only concern was that the time I spent in the “meeting” would cause me to lose productivity bonus, reducing my pay packet.
Notwithstanding this demonstration of raw capitalist power, Scottish style, my cynicism regarding the owners of capital continues to grow; I can even give credulity to some of the outrageous “conspiracy theory” comments below this article from Zerohedge which documents rising UK energy costs and the disastrous impact on people’s health.
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/uk-passed-debt-and-death-sentence-million-increasing-energy-price-cap-80
«my cynicism regarding the owners of capital continues to grow; I can even give credulity to some of the outrageous “conspiracy theory” comments»
https://medium.com/s/futurehuman/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1
“I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come with questions of their own. […] Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”
The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.
This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. […]
They were not interested in how to avoid a calamity; they’re convinced we are too far gone. For all their wealth and power, they don’t believe they can affect the future”
«below this article from Zerohedge which documents rising UK energy costs and the disastrous impact on people’s health.»
Strangely enough there is little talk how housing cost increases of 15% per year, way above consumer price inflation, are impacting people: with the average UK rent of 14,000 increasing to 16,100 the 2,100 addition to landlord income is quite a bit larger than the increase in the energy bills; and with the average property price of 300,000 the increase in price of 45,000 is much bigger than any cost of living increase. Both entirely paid for by renters and upgraders.
Rejoice! Rejoice! 🙁
There is no one perfect model – however some ideals might point the way.
If one argued that some basics to sustain life and limb accompanied by a living wage, education, health care and housing – how is that for starters? Inflation in the Western industrialised countries seems now to be putting a serious dent in the basics that are needed.
The best that comes to mind for a decent society seems to be the Scandinavian countries and more specifically – Norway. A high taxation model accompanied by a very high social welfare safety net seems so far to be working.
So, what will the UK do to build and/or restore a decent society? My guess – resort to austerity, repressive legislation and impose cuts to social welfare. A perfect formula for civil unrest.
Dear Courtenay, Norway doesn’t have a high standard of living because it has high taxes.
It has a small (5m) population and a huge foreign export surplus (oil and gas).
So huge in fact that it can’t repatriate all its export earnings without overheating and inflating its domestic economy – so it is forced to offshore its earnings into a sovereign wealth fund, and can only repatriate around 1% of it annually!
Nice position to be in; like people, some countries are just born lucky!
Of course Norway doesn’t need its export earnings to enjoy a good standard of living; its government creates as many Krone as it sees fit, clearly motivated to provide a good standard of living for its citizens and make optimum use of its real resources (Labour, materials, energy, land, etc) and taxes at whatever rate and scope is necessary to prevent inflation.
Its oil and gas export revenue permits increased imports, which might otherwise incur govt deficits without those earnings, which is perhaps why (ironically, considering the provenance of the wealth which bought them!) the streets of Oslo are notably plastered with top-range Teslas.
Like I said, some are just born lucky – but it helps if your govt and rulers are prepared to share the love! If I didn’t hate the cold, and the long winter darkness. I’d move there like a shot!
So how did the US stop Norway from privatizing the nation’s resources? How did they escape getting bombed and razed like everyone else (by the free world)? They must have made a deal with the devil, maybe only sell for USD? I assume a ton of backdoor deals have been made for Norway not to have been labelled the next Belarus. No other option seems logical at this point. Norway, a lowkey US vassal?
Hmmm, interesting point!
Post 1971 and the abandonment of Breton Woods, all oil contracts were denominated in USD, though there have been some departures from that agreement in very recent times.
The Norwegian govt stake in Equinor (formerly Statoil) is currently 67%. I guess that allows for some private sector activity. But I’m not an expert in the Norwegian energy sector and its history, so would defer to someone who is?
I suspect Norway having been a member of NATO since its founding in 1949 must be considered a factor as to why it wasn’t on a hit list. Probably plenty of subcontracting opportunities for private corporations too, despite state ownership of the national oil company itself; but as I said, I’m no expert!
Yes. Norway has agreed to buy a substantial number of expensive US F-35 planes – a plane which is commonly recognised as a complete turkey, slow, unmanoeuvrable, short-ranged, hard to service and with low usability rates – it has not yet, after decades of development, been passed by the US armed forces as ready for front line service. But Norway does as it is told.
«offshore its earnings into a sovereign wealth fund, and can only repatriate around 1% of it annually! Nice position to be in; like people, some countries are just born lucky!»
They also have a gigantic overproduction of electricity that makes them fully self-sufficient.
«Of course Norway doesn’t need its export earnings to enjoy a good standard of living; its government creates as many Krone as it sees fit, clearly motivated to provide a good standard of living for its citizens»
Norway used to be a poor country, because it is a cold mostly barren country. People cannot eat Krone, cannot drive Krone, cannot live in Krone. Standards of living are provided only by a high level of extraction of natural resources or a high level of production of goods (and some services), not by creating Krones.
Too right. There is no one perfect model. I think most would agree with that.
However where we are now is that the so called neo-liberal economic framework does not work. It does not deliver the hallowed free enterprise rootin-tootin competition-driven value for money. Bandit competition, or should we say bandit oligopolistic abuse, the large corporates and the financial magic men, have made an art form of extracting money, have made a success of taking control of countries’ and continents’ resources.
And to be quite objective, the latest cycle was commenced by Thatcher and Reagan whereas previously much had been nationalised due to earlier failures of the free market system. We thus seem to be on the end stage of the cycle, and an end stage as unpleasant for the many, if not more unpleasant, as in Victorian times. Largesse, utter largesse for the few, misery for the many. And with it ever more Orwellian population control.
Meanwhile, and whilst we are told otherwise, Russia and China power ahead, China especially. These last 50 years China has moved from being a backwater paddy-field economy to one eclipsing the USA. Missions to the moon, super computers, new cities, industrialization on an a huge scale, they are pushing forward where the USA and its tired wee brother Great Britain are failing. Britain especially so – and there can be no greater example of this than a) the Great British navy having ship-fiasco after ship-fiasco – the multi-billion pound nuclear sub running aground on Skye and, b) the laying up of the new fleet of billion-pound-plus a pop Type 45 destroyers, each and every one built with defective engines and now c) the latest breakdown of Britain’s pride-of-planet prince of Wales aircraft carrier as it left Portsmouth. It’s certainly not a good look, the clown service in fact, and a reflection of private corporate British engineering rotten to the core.
But it’s the economy too. Where, oh where, has the vaunted Brexit Bounce gone. Britain was once again going to rule the waves, and here we are, in a state of economic chaos and collapse as living standards and the economy descend down the pan as quick as a toilet flush. The London / Washington economic model, riches for the few, hee haw for the many, and second-rate delivery from our failing economic system, seems baked in.
And over in Cowboy Country their big show to try and keep up with the Chinese has just had the wheels fall off due to rocket malfunction. Built by the same so-called neo-liberal free market model that built the disastrous Boeing 737 3 series aeroplanes, it’s not difficult to see why the so-called nigh tech is failing as surely as the once great American car industry, or steel industry. And let us not forget which country was first to put a man into space, and which country along with their Sinai friend now look ready to win the economic war that is so crippling to our economy.
Yes, it all goes in cycles and there is no one model. But one thing for sure, this one isn’t delivering.
The only reason for existence of “public ownership of utilities, natural monopolies and strategic industries, with free healthcare and medicines, free university tuition with good maintenance grants, schools under control of elected local councils, controlled fair rents including the private sector. significant public housing. We thought it would last forever. ” is the shadow of USSR.
Without USSR, you do not need free healthcare, free tuition, and so on. Natural monopolies obviously must be privatized and produce huge income for rich people.
Look up https://anlazz.livejournal.com/ – in Russian (and blocked in some countries), or with automatic translation into English here. He explains it in detail.
“The only reason for existence of “public ownership of utilities, natural monopolies and strategic industries, with free healthcare and medicines, free university tuition with good maintenance grants, schools under control of elected local councils, controlled fair rents including the private sector. significant public housing. We thought it would last forever. ” is the shadow of USSR.”
I would disagree. As far as I can see, these things existed for two reasons:
Firstly, Britain had just fought a world war and not long before that, fought another one. A large proportion of the population had faced death day after day, both at home and abroad. That sort of thing makes you adjust your priorities.
Secondly, a slightly smaller, but still large proportion of the population has been trained how to use weapons and had killed people. Many had kept firearms as “souvenirs”. Such people are not so easily clamped down as a disarmed and untrained populace.
It is surely no coincidence that all the repressive measures mentioned in the post and these comments have only been brought in as the generations who fought in the world wars have become old and died off.
I agree, it went with the warfare state written about by David Edgerton in Warfare State, Britain 1920-1970 (2005). The wartime generations’ voting power, attenuated by the fascist electoral system, waned faster with old age and death, their memories stopped motivating younger generations (I was a Tory in the 70s[!?!]). The bruited “realignment on the left” took a little time to occur but the enfeeblement of the USSR was as obvious then as that of the USSA now. The sharks were circling from the late 60s and pounced in 1976, the real beginning of Thatcherism.
Unfortunately the “general good” seems to be an obsolete concept.
«the “general good” seems to be an obsolete concept.»
The “general good of Middle England property owners” is far from an obsolete concept, their living standards, entirely redistributed from the lower classes, have been rapidly rising for 40 years.
Powerful piece Craig, thank you – though I was left with the feeling that perhaps you needed an added final paragraph joining the dots and providing a big-picture conclusion. Maybe that big-picture conclusion is a little too unpalatable at this moment. (I might attempt a dot-to-dot later – it’s not pretty.)
However, it should not be forgotten that Corbyn demonstrated in 2017 that if someone stood up and presented a serious remedy to the situation you describe then it would secure wide support. Of course the full-spectrum media assault, the opposition of the (former) Labour Party right wing, the antisemitism smear campaign and the Starmer-led exploitation of the Brexit factor, along with some of Corbyn’s weaknesses, ensured that that remedy was never allowed an opportunity to be put into action.
If a strong leader and party were to stand up today and offer a serious solution I’m sure they would receive wide support again – but it would need a very strong leader because s/he would be bound to be met by the full-scale Establishment assault that landed on Corbyn.
Sadly there is no Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the current (former) Labour Party. Andy Burnham appears to me to be the only remotely plausible candidate. He has grown in stature since his last tilt at the leadership, when he was clearly a boy among men/women, but obviously he is not at present in the PLP and there is no vacancy.
Mick Lynch is proving to be a great leader in his current role – but he has no party.
So where does that leave us?
It leaves us with Liz Truss about to become the Prime Minister and a situation where James O’Brien asked with conviction this week whether the UK is becoming a failed state.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPduUCpjkNE
And I didn’t even mention the war.
I think it’s important also – while agreeing with everything you say (mind you, I’m a Marxist and have been since the 70s) – to distinguish between the genuine conspiratorial actions of the state – such as with Assange and many more – and the moves by particular parties and individuals running those parties to use the same divide-and-rule techniques. Sturgeon clearly used the Salmond allegations to neuter him – trying to get him imprisoned and out of any conceivable rivalry – and you too of course. But the trans movement was also utilised by her as what we used to call “left cover” – a stance or support for something which did not itself threaten the status quo, or the class balance as it happened to be at that time, but which looked good to liberals, the bourgeoisie, the Guardian and such. I am not arguing for or against the GRA changes here, but pointing to its use politically. It was very noticeable that the more extreme members of the trans lobby (associated in many cases with Smith it seems), were virtually prodded into vitriolic outbursts (in some not all cases), and then when Salmond was acquitted but Alba still failed at the polls, they were largely abandoned. No rivalry; no threat; no need. This was not I think initiated by the shadowy forces of the state, but by Sturgeon herself. Her own relationship with those forces I do not know about (but I bet you do).
Is it possible that Sturgeon is merely the front person for ‘shadowy forces’ like, for example, Jacinda Ardern (New Zealand) and Justin Trudeau (Canada)?
“to distinguish between the genuine conspiratorial actions of the state – such as with Assange and many more – and the moves by particular parties and individuals “
Since the state and its powers are legally defined then if some officers of the state do something which is beyond those definitions, is that still a state action or is it a guvvy job using their employees time and facilities? If such people are co-ordinating with other political parties and individuals then they are co-conspiritors.
Great article. I’m glad to see it. we don’t all agree on the current situation in Ukraine, but we have a common interest in somehow escaping the stranglehold of this late stage cancer version of capitalism.
God Almighty!! There I was, nodding along, murmuring agreement with every sentiment, until the very last sentence, when the sheer arrogance of the sentence stunned me.
Being a member of the SNP disqualifies me from being non neoliberal and an ardent independence supporter???
That is one of THE most arrogant statements you’ve ever made, Craig. I don’t agree with you about the SNP leadership, so my entire belief system is suspect and corrupt? You just accused every SNP member of being insufficiently anti-Tory!!
To hell with that!!
Alright, calm down, there’s no need to overreact. Here’s Craig’s (offending) remark:
“It has also been used successfully – and remarkably – to neuter the most potent current threat to the UK state, by driving both the non neo-liberals and the ardent Independence supporters out of the SNP.”
It doesn’t imply that everybody who is still a member of the SNP is gullible, selling out or abandoning their principles. It was clearly intended to highlight the purging process, not to cast derogatory aspersions on all remaining SNP members.
On an alternative reading, the process could still be ongoing: i.e. some SNP members who haven’t been following the nitty-gritty of the SNP’s internal politics may not yet realise the subterfuge. (Have a look at Craig’s Twitter feed to see some of the dirty tricks that Sturgeon and her acolytes got up to.) And members who either don’t care or are otherwise generally compliant with (what they believe to be) the leader’s overall strategy wouldn’t need to decamp at all: they might decide to “wheesht for Indy”.
Also, Craig didn’t say “every” – that was your own imposition – and ordinary statements don’t need to be universalised to express a truth (which you might read as implying that you’re wrong to universalise each and every statement ever made by anybody – but that interpretation would be wrong too).
The other tenuous implications you think you have detected (e.g. “insufficiently anti-Tory”) are similarly imposed by an overly-critical mindset. Have a cup of tea, listen to some music, and try reading it in a more sympathetic frame of mind.
“The first minister said renationalisation of energy companies “should be on the table”, but Scotland did not have the power to do that.”
She may have been drinking the Neo-liberal, Neocon Kool-Aid, but this is a positive intervention made in the past week. It’s almost heresy to the big Westminster parties of course, judging by the frenzied right-wing press reaction, with their denouncements and rejection.
All the other proposals ‘on the table’ seem to involve handing the energy companies a huge financial bung to hold down prices – a £100bn govt fund they can borrow from has been mooted. Then allowing these companies to claw it back over 10-15 years, the poor old energy customer being boiled slowly without noticing, like the famous frog apologue. Happy to cream off huge profits in the good times, wanting the govt to step in in the bad: privatising profits (shareholders) and socialising losses (society as a whole – via the govt).
The argument for those staggering multi-million pound CEO pay awards and bonuses at these natural monopolies, was always that these people carry the can; that they’re out if they fail (though, even then not without grabbing a so-called ‘golden parachute’). Left to ‘the market, if the average energy bills being suggested are realised next year, these companies would surely fail – people wouldn’t be able to pay £3,000+. They’d go bust, and then the govt could renationalise them for nothing! The govt are planning on stepping in purely to protect the public view of privatisations, and to protect shareholders – it’s Tory ideological dogma, their whole belief system, that’s at stake.
https://skwawkbox.org/2022/08/28/norwegian-energy-users-are-being-charged-only-6-of-uk-variable-rate-on-a-fixed-3yr-deal/
from the piece :
“We are being ruled by criminals – and the so-called ‘opposition’ is part of the same gang wearing different rosettes to create an illusion of choice while the Establishment laughs all the way to the bank.”
Couldn’t agree more. And think of those smug unionists, telling everyone in energy-rich Scotland, that Scotland would be nothing without London’s munificence.
Well, the British Empire is an ongoing criminal enterprise ruled by the winning organised crime family from feudal power struggles, so yes. If you want to see where they and their minions fear being held to account, look to their immunities.
> They’d go bust, and then the govt could renationalise them for nothing!
I think your analysis is mostly correct.
“The shareholders”, who lose their shirt in your story, include nearly everyone who has a pension fund. Nationalising energy companies doesn’t give the pension-fund managers the whipping they need; they get to carry on investing in broken businesses.
I’m not sure which is worse….Craig’s arrogance or your condescension.
I HAVE been following the “nitty-gritty” of the SNP’s internal politics, and I have come to a different conclusion about it than Craig, and the rest of the SNP haters. I’m probably somewhat to the left of Craig’s political stance, and I feel no need (unlike Craig) to abandon the ONLY VEHICLE capable of getting me and my family from under the yoke of the Tories.
You seem to be saying that, because I haven’t abandoned the ONLY VEHICLE (repetition of caps deliberate) capable of getting me and my family from under the yoke of the Tories, it’s because I’m too stupid, or blind, or both.
Craig and his henchmen are asking me to give up the ONLY VEHICLE, to join a bunch of single issue nutters and dreamers, who have not ….. once …. outlined an alternative plan to that of the SNP, which doesn’t involve some kind of UDI BEFORE a plebiscite.
Stuff THAT for a game of soldiers!! In a few months time, I honestly believe that Craig and his band of SNP haters will be proven decisively wrong.
Each one of these people has a personal grudge against the SNP. In Craig’s case, it was rejection as a candidate. I have not heard one cohesive argument, supporting their wild accusations about the direction that the SNP is taking us, and, until I do, I will continue to read Craig’s blog, tempering his more “excitable” assertions about the SNP, with the knowledge that they are those of a bitter man.
My family will soon be out from under Tory rule, and Craig Murray and his cohorts will deserve no thanks from me, having done nothing to help the effort.
If you want to swallow the garbage that Craig, Campbell, and company churn out, then you carry on with your sheeplike behaviour. I’ll not be joining you…..
Re: ‘In Craig’s case, it was rejection as a[n SNP] candidate.’
The four-month stretch he had to serve in a Covid-ridden Saughton last year might have had something to do with it as well, Alex – though I believe he still voted for the SNP constituency candidate in the Scottish Parliament elections a few months earlier. May I ask if it was both votes SNP for you?
Re: ‘My family will soon be out from under Tory rule’
Here’s your chance to make some money to celebrate with, courtesy of the know-it-alls on Betfair – and, for a chaser, why not put a tenner on Rishi to be the next PM while you’re at it?
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.166577732
Yes, I’m sure that he blames the SNP for the recalcitrance of the Scottish penal system, and his judge in particular. However, to my mind, Craig has now gotten to the stage where the weather is a direct result of Sturgeon’s perfidy, and nothing will persuade him that Sturgeon wasn’t behind his conviction.
I would certainly HOPE that Craig voted for the SNP in the constituency ballot! Who the hell else COULD he vote for? As for myself? I live in NE Scotland, so I voted SNP/Alba, because I agreed with James Kelly of “Scot Goes Pop!” that Alex Salmond was the only candidate with the political clout to have a chance of “bucking the system”. Sadly, the vote he gathered was pitiful, way below what was required to win the 7th regional seat.
I’m not a betting man, and I’m uninterested in anything the bookies have to say, on just about any subject. However, I feel confident that, at last, we SEEM to have a clear path to independence. If each of us yessers, instead of prognosticating failure (as you seem to be doing), were to talk to our no-voting friends, to try and counter the MSM propaganda blitz, we MIGHT – just might – get a majority vote, either in a referendum, or a plebiscite election.
If that happens, then nothing can prevent us from becoming independent. Independence has NOTHING to do with the Supreme Court, or Salmond, or Sturgeon, or Turdo, or DRoss, or Truss (it’s going to be Truss, because Tories haven’t yet become enlightened enough to vote for a brown man), and EVERYTHING to do with the number of no voters we yessers can persuade to vote yes.
We have a clear plan now, and all the negative vibes from folk like yourself will mean nothing, if enough of us get off our arses and talk to our neighbours.
Thanks for your reply Alex. Is it any wonder that our excellent host blames Sturgeon – or if not her, then certainly senior figures within the SNP (possibly in collusion with the British security services) – for his having to pleasure Her Maj for four months for alleged crimes of ‘jig-saw identification’, when several journalists have published or broadcast material after the court order was made – most of which is still available online – which allowed one or more of the Alphabetties to be identified? Of course, they weren’t trying to expose a conspiracy to fit up Alex Salmond. If any political party had done anything similar to me, I certainly wouldn’t be voting for them.
Well done on voting for Alba in the regional list. If every SNP voter had done the same, the Scottish Parliament would look very different. I couldn’t vote for the SNP or Alba as I wasn’t living in Scotland at the time.
To my mind, there are only two possible pathways to Scottish Independence within 10 years. The first arises if the next General Election produces a hung parliament in which either Labour or the Tories need SNP support to be able to able to form a government, the price of which should be another Indyref towards the end of that parliament. Neither of the unionist parties wants that of course, but they’re both arrogant enough to convince themselves that No will win. Starmzy has gone on record saying he won’t do a deal with the SNP, but then as we’ve seen, he lies / changes his mind about most things.
Failing this, the second is if polling consistently shows 65%+ support for Independence, reflected in the levels of support for the SNP, the Greens and Alba at the next General Election and Scottish Parliament election, which will make it difficult for a UK government to refuse another referendum. It’s going to take a lot of work to get the necessary 15% of voters to switch from No to Yes – as well as convincing people they’d be a lot safer in an independent Scotland without Trident, you have to make the economic case for independence which is a harder sell.
LA:
“…for his having to pleasure Her Maj for four months for alleged crimes of ‘jig-saw identification’ …“
I think you’ll find he _had to serve at her majesty’s pleasure_ for four months, rather than having to _pleasure her majesty_ for that duration.
A small, but not unimportant distinction.
Thanks for your reply Glenn. It was a crude attempt at humour – in the sense that, according to the well-known terminology, the fact that wrong-doers (as well as putative ones) are incarcerated in her prisons is supposedly a source of pleasure to Her Majesty – to leaven an otherwise serious subject.
“I feel no need (unlike Craig) to abandon the ONLY VEHICLE”, “I haven’t abandoned the ONLY VEHICLE (repetition of caps deliberate)”, “asking me to give up the ONLY VEHICLE”
So that’s “Wheesht for Indy”, then. (Or rather: “WHEESHT FOR INDY!”, as you still seem all shouty and hot-headed.)
The majority of criticism from Indy dissenters was that the driver wasn’t moving the ONLY VEHICLE forward fast enough, to the extent that many prominent Indy voices doubted whether it was even pointed in the right direction. (See Campbell’s patchwork quilt of front pages of the National promising Indy next year, every year, come on, just one more majority, we’ll do it next time, honest.) The message was “get a f**king move on!”. In other words, they wanted to speed up your political goal of being permanently separated from Tory rule at Westminster.
Sturgeon’s 2023 referendum pledge (definitely not a “vow”) and plebiscite threat was a game changer. If you remember, Craig urged his readers to get behind it. That’s hardly a call to “abandon the ONLY VEHICLE”.
ALBA’s election strategy advised people to give the constituency vote to the SNP. So they didn’t want to abandon the VEHICLE either. Instead they got out to push, while yelling at the driver to keep focused on the road ahead.
It’s clearly nothing to do with abandoning the vehicle. It’s about criticising the driver: a driver who seems to have orchestrated a nefarious campaign to silence her predecessor who had already moved that vehicle closer to the destination than anybody else, ever. (What threat was she trying to remove? That he’d do it again, this time getting it over the line, as he promised?) It’s fair to say not everybody is convinced of her good intentions.
Indy-supporting critics of the SNP think that Sturgeon is principally utilising her political clout to impose ideological agendas that have nothing to do with independence, and in the process, burning up good will and splitting the movement. If you’ve been attending to her social media pronouncements, you’ll have noted that she doesn’t tolerate much dissent on those issues. Maybe you can appreciate how other people have formed the impression that she isn’t primarily focused on the independence cause.
But, hey, “wheesht for Indy”! We must put our blind faith in the driver, even though allies of her more successful predecessor warn that her route leads through a neo-liberal (i.e. not very left-wing) and woke-infested swamp.
ALBA provides a refuge for independence supporters who can’t sign up her other agendas. Their single uniting issue is independence, not subjugating it to a host of socially divisive issues.
Craig’s sentence that so offended you was a lament that the movement is being weakened, not a celebration. It certainly wasn’t a condemnation of those who, like yourself, keep focused on the cause.
No, it’s not a “wheesht for indy”. After having watched the polls closely since 2012, and reading just about every word written about independence since then, I have come to the conclusion that I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed, that Sturgeon hasn’t moved too quickly.
I’ve watched in amazement as a faction of the yes movement have acted like bairns in the back of the car whining “How much LONGER? Are we not THERE yet?”.
They do this, in spite of the evidence (available to us all), that the polls have indicated that the Scottish public is split right down the middle.
Last year, the electorate were asked a simple question…..”Do you want another referendum?”. Now, if the bairns in the back of the car were right, and a majority for indy was “in the bag” and the only thing stopping independence was Sturgeon a REASONABLE person would have expected at LEAST a 60/40 split in that vote!
50.12% said “yes” to that question, and 49.87% said “no”. Any sane rational person would be NERVOUS about the prospects for a referendum, NOT be calling for Sturgeon’s head, because “she’s the problem”!!!
The wilful blindness by some yessers to the FACT that Scotland is NOT Norway in the beginning of the last century where 99.95% votes yes, simply amazes me. Obviously intelligent people like Craig et al seem to be able to ignore the fact that Scotland resembles Quebec, more than it resembles Norway and I really can’t understand their willingness to commit political suicide by throwing out the SNP, and putting their hopes with the tiny rump of Alba, which doesn’t have a cat in hell’s hance of getting elected. Two elections now, and the yes community gave Alba an erse-skelping, yet folk like Craig, and other highly intelligent folk like Alex Salmond, keep doing their Don Quixote comedy impression.
It beggars belief….
Have I got this right, Alex? Only 50.12% of Scots surveyed want another referendum, but ‘in a few months time…Craig and his band of SNP haters will be proven decisively wrong’ – presumably when Sturgeon asks for Indyref2, the Truss-led UK government grants her wish, and then there’s a decisive vote for independence.
Lapsed Agnostic….. yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. Sturgeon will hold either a section 30 referendum, or a Supreme Court referendum, or, failing those two options, turn the next GE into a plebiscite on independence………something that Craig and his minions have been saying she will NEVER do, and that WILL prove them decisively wrong.
Having said that, I am not at all confident that the result will be a majority for yes. I fervently hope it DOES result in a yes majority, in which case, independence will be ours in very short order.
I have looked long and hard at the “evidence” of Sturgeon’s perfidy, and I would hope that such evidence would not be sufficient to convict anyone in a court of law. It certainly wouldn’t if, like in Alex’s case, a jury is involved……not so sure if a judge was sitting alone, as in Craig’s case.
Craig (rightly) trashed the “evidence” that was levelled against him, but I can’t help smiling at the irony of him and his cohorts using weaker evidence to convict Sturgeon in their own minds.
Thanks for your reply Alex. I doubt very much that the UK government will agree to a Section 30 request, or the UK Supreme Court will agree to another referendum being held when the case is put before it in October. Sturgeon may declare the next General Election to be a plebiscite on Independence but whatever the result, the Electoral Commission will surely affirm that it is nothing more than an election to elect MPs to the Commons.
I’m not 100% convinced that Sturgeon was part of conspiracy to fit up Alex Salmond, but some of her behaviour vis-a-vis the whole affair is odd to say the least. She claims that the first she knew of the allegations against Salmond was on 2nd April 2018, but Salmond’s former Chief of Staff Geoff Aberdein swore under oath in the High Court that he had a meeting with Sturgeon on 29th March in which they were discussed. She initially told the Scottish Parliament the meeting with Aberdein never happened, but later said it did occur but the allegations against Salmond weren’t mentioned and it was so inconsquential that she forgot all about it. In the subsequent inquiry as to whether she deliberately lied to parliament about it, Aberdein was not called as a witness and his statement was not made public. Make of all that what you will.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I’m aware our excellent host has never called for Sturgeon to be charged with being part of a conspiracy against Salmond – he just wants his contempt of court conviction to be quashed and for at least one of the Alphabetties to be charged with perjury.
Lapsed Agnostic, I agree about the section 30, but I’m not sure about the Supreme Court. From everything I’ve read, it could go either way, IMO. As to the plebiscite election, it doesn’t matter what the Electoral Commission says. If the SNP write a one-sentence manifesto, declaring that they will declare independence if a majority of voters vote SNP, and a majority of voters vote SNP, then it IS a plebiscite on independence, no matter what the Electoral Commission, or Truss, or DRoss or Sanwar, or anyone else says.
If there is a majority for the SNP, then that is a majority for independence, and Sturgeon will attempt to initiate divorce negotiations with Westminster, if they refuse to engage with her, then she will declare independence, simple as.
Now, if at that point, Sturgeon DOESN’T attempt to start talks, or DOESN’T declare independence after they refuse, THEN I will accept what Craig and his henchmen have been saying about her. At the moment, the ball is rolling…..
What I find really intriguing is …..at what point in the process (if it goes as I’m suggesting) will Craig and his henchmen cease and desist from accusing Sturgeon of being a traitor to the cause?
Thanks for your reply Alex. The thing is that Sturgeon doesn’t have the legal authority to declare independence outwith a greater-than-50% Yes result in an official referendum – and neither would Alex Salmond if he ever comes back as First Minister. In the unlikely event that the UK Supreme Court sanctions another referendum, I’m sure that, in spite of what was done to him, our host and his ‘henchmen’ (whoever they are) will be right behind Sturgeon and the Yes campaign.
Lapsed Agnostic, nobody ….. in any country which has declared independence from the U.K. has ever had the “legal authority” to declare independence. When it comes to a country declaring independence, there is never a “legal route”.
We hear phrases such as “Westminster will never let us go”, but in the last fifty or sixty years or so, there is absolutely zero evidence of Westminster “refusing to let a country go”.
All of the evidence is to the contrary. Once a country decides that it wants to be independent of the UK, the U.K. meekly accedes to the demand for independence.
Once a majority of Scots voters indicate that they want independence, that’s it….. the game’s over for the Union. There might be a lot of noise and kerfuffle, but pretty soon after the affirmative vote, the Scottish MP’s will be withdrawn from Westminster, and a grand assembly will declare independence. Westminster’s sole choice will be whether to sit down to negotiate a divorce settlement, or watch helplessly as the Scottish parliament/assembly declares UDI, and Scotland sets off on its journey as an independent country, free of any debt.
“SNP haters”! Is that a new species of political scapegoat? You don’t seem to have read the article. Is the SNP to be made immune from criticism? Maybe you’d like a law passed?
Apart from anything Craig may or may not have implied, I can tell you that as an ex-SNP member, I’ll be very, very surprised if the present leadership even tries to get any kind of independence for Scotland. The ‘Wee Liar’ is only out to feather her own nest.
I would classify someone as a “SNP hater”, if they have swallowed the shite that Craig, Barrhead Boy, the truly awful Stu Campbell and others have been spewing out as “evidence” of the perfidy of Sturgeon and the rest of the SNP leadership, and then dutifully repeat it, pretending that it “proves” the case, when it does nothing of the sort. These folk are no less gullible than the”Sturgeon worshippers” who blindly accept everything that comes out of the woman’s mouth. I believe the the truth exists somewhere between the beliefs of those who blindly swallow everything Sturgeon says and the beliefs of the sheep-like acolytes of Craig, Barrhead Boy and the rest.
“You don’t seem to have read the article”? You obviously haven’t read my initial comment.
Is the SNP to be made immune from criticism? Absolutely not! Are Craig, Barrhead Boy, Stu Campbell and the rest to be made immune from criticism? Maybe YOU would like a law passed?
Apart from everything Craig may or may not have implied, I can tell you as someone who voted Alba in 2021, I will be very surprised if we DON’T hold a referendum or plebiscite vote in the coming months. I will be even more surprised if the SNP haters EVER admit that they’ve been wrong.
Sturgeon is not perfect, but the hatred that she gets from folk like you is, IMO, ridiculous. She is an arch politician and for politicians, legacy is everything. The idea that she wouldn’t want to go down in history as the woman who won Independence is just daft….
Being told that you’re being a fool or a fraud isn’t nice but the record of the Snats doesn’t bear scrutiny.
Being told that you’re a fool or a fraud isn’t nice, especially when you’re neither. The record of the SNP does bear scrutiny, but only if you haven’t altready made your mind up, before examining the evidence.
The evidence which supposedly condemns Sturgeon and the rest of the SNP leadership is open to interpretation, and you have to have a closed mind to interpret any of it in the way that the haters do. There is no “smoking gun”, no matter how loudly the doubters howl at the moon.
It IS possible that Sturgeon is acting for reasons of selfish ambition, but nobody’s proven that. Much more evidence exists for the fact that Alex Salmond has given up on his own golden rule, namely that the electorate don’t vote for divided parties. His selfish ambition is now clearly what motivates him, but Craig and his cohorts ignore THAT evidence, and give Alex a free pass. I don’t. In my eyes, he has gone from political hero to being a big disappointment. Alex’s contribution to the Indy movement when he threw in his lot with Alba.
Come off it, you’ve colonised the institution.
More and more people, groups and trade unions are organising, coordinating and taking action. Strikes and other industrial action are proliferating. Passengers and staff on the trains are discussing their shared discontent. It is no longer rude to start political conversations in public with strangers; almost everyone knows we are in crisis, and talking helps. Many people are angry. Many see no one in politics and nothing in the media as trustworthy. It is time to organise.
I hope to be helping with a big three day public occupation at Marble Arch, London, 10 to 13 September. Please come 🙂
– “PHASE 2 – September 10th-13th
– From the 10th-13th September we invite everyone to join us in London for a 3 day occupation in a green space. On the morning of Saturday 10th, meet us at Marble Arch. We will occupy a site and build it together from the ground up, filling the space with music, art, direct democracy and the tools and ideas of resistance and regenerative culture. From there there will be trainings in community mobilisation, and how to speak to people about Citizens Assemblies.
I should have quoted what I was replying to, lest my comment look off-topic:
– ” The situation has become unsustainable. […] In short, it turns out Marx was right. The crisis of capitalism is now upon us. Neo-liberalism (another word for designing state systems deliberately to lead to incredible concentrations of wealth amid general poverty) is coming to the end of its course. There are no palliative measures that will make the situation bearable.
– There is going to be public anger come spring of a strength and reach not seen in my lifetime.”
Clark,
As I said:-
“So, what will the UK do to build and/or restore a decent society? My guess – resort to austerity, repressive legislation and impose cuts to social welfare. A perfect formula for civil unrest.”
So – let see how it plays out.
Thanks Clark;.productive and forward-looking.
«More and more people, groups and trade unions are organising, coordinating and taking action. Strikes and other industrial action are proliferating.»
Years of strong, public, popular “Yellow Vests” protests in France have had almost zero effect, in France. As to the difference between France and England, Orwell wrote already in 1932 in a review of a book about french culture:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jJj0NgA08SUC&pg=PA244&lpg=PA244
George Orwell, “Review of The Civilization of France by Ernst Robert Curtius” (1932):
“In England, a century of strong government has developed what O. Henry called the stern and rugged fear of the police to a point where any public protest seems an indecency.
But in France everyone can remember a certain amount of civil disturbance, and even the workmen in the bistros talk of la revolution – meaning the next revolution, not the last one.
The highly socialised modern mind, which makes a kind of composite god out of the rich, the government, the police and the larger newspapers, has not been developed – at least not yet.”
That has not changed much…
Craig, to the Policing Act, you can add:
Every one of these things takes power away from people and gives more power to the State (because they’re benign, right?).
Protests will indeed become more difficult than they are already. The overall effect is chilling.
Bob (not OG)
I’m glad someone is keeping a list of these things.
I watched Stewart Lansley’s talk and while agree with him, he left out a vital component, i.e. propaganda, or the battle for control of the public’s mind.
The reason the ‘good bit’ (from ~’45 to ’79) ended was that groups of very wealthly US bankers, industrialists etc. got together and came to the lunatic conclusion that they were being gypped by lefty unions, lawyers, universities – basically the whole of society.
They then formed slush funds whereby they all covertly donated money to various pro-business lobby groups and think tanks, aimed at reversing all laws and regulations in place to protect or help citizens (because they perceived such rules as attacks on the ‘free market’).
They funded universities to get academics to lend their selfish ideas an air of respectibility. They bought the media, they funded politicians, and still do so. The result is the mess we see before us today.
(There is a very good book about all this called Dark Money by Jane Mayer, which is well worth reading.)
“The reason the ‘good bit’ (from ~’45 to ’79) ended was that groups of very wealthly US bankers, industrialists etc. got together and came to the lunatic conclusion that they were being gypped by lefty unions, lawyers, universities – basically the whole of society.”
Depends what you mean by “gypped”. If you mean “being prevented from making as much money as they could make, were things different”, then I would agree, but not that it was a “lunatic conclusion”.
you seem to be tangentially alluding to the Powell Memorandum, a letter written by a lawyer and submitted to the US Chamber of Commerce as a strategy for the foreseeable future;
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/assets/usa-courts-secrecy-lobbyist/powell-memo.pdf
the guy who wrote the letter;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell_Jr.
it’s not a conspiracy theory when you have the documents!
“groups of very wealthly US bankers, industrialists etc. got together and came to the lunatic conclusion that they were being gypped by lefty unions, lawyers, universities – basically the whole of society. They then formed slush funds whereby they all covertly donated money to various pro-business lobby groups and think tanks”
But by far the biggest thing they did was to gain the support of 20-40% of voters by engineering a huge property price and rent boom, creating a large voting block that gives a blank cheque to right-wing governments that can keep housing cost inflation booming.
The real political and electoral problem is not the ultra-wealthy, it is the large block of upper-middle class voters that have made a lot of money with property, e.g. a commenter on “The Guardian”: “I will put it bluntly I don’t want to see my home lose £100 000 in value just so someone else can afford to have a home and neither will most other people if they are honest with themselves”
Also:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/25/george-osborne-britons-economic-cannon-fodder
«housing-market heroin: the special high the Brits get when property prices are really taking off and Sarah Beeny is on the telly explaining how we can all cash in. Thatcher was the first PM to really push housing-market heroin with her right-to-buy programme and her Lawson boom but, with their love of aspiration and Home Ownership Task Force, Blair and Brown knew its potency, too.»
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/29/how-right-to-buy-ruined-british-housing
«I spoke to Phil Salter, a 79-year-old retired carpenter in Cornwall, who bought his council house in Devon in the early 80s for £17,000. When it was valued at £80,000 in 1989, he sold up and used the equity to put towards a £135,000 fisherman’s cottage in St Mawes. Now it’s valued at £1.1m. “I was very grateful to Margaret Thatcher,” he said.»
“I spoke to Phil Salter, a 79-year-old retired carpenter in Cornwall, who bought his council house in Devon in the early 80s for £17,000. When it was valued at £80,000 in 1989, he sold up and used the equity to put towards a £135,000 fisherman’s cottage in St Mawes.”
I’d like to bet that the fisherman’s cottage was smaller than the council house. The sale of the council houses at undervalue was a stroke of political genius which generated a nationwide delusion that it is possible to have cheap houses to buy but, at the same time, always have house prices going up, something that the land speculators, sorry, developers, have exploited to the hilt.
“compulsory worker shareholdings in those industries not nationalised,”
That may seem a minor thing, but in fact many of the failures of the joint-stock company model, which is most companies in the UK are the result of the owners’ i.e. (the shareholders’) indolence, indifference or impotence. This also affected those nationalised industries where nationalisation left the joint-stock company model unchanged and simply replaced private shareholders with the state. Any organisation tends to end up being run for the benefit of its senior management, with the shareholders a poor second and the rest of the employees nowhere in sight. Even if the shareholders do take an interest, it’s very seldom beyond whether the shares are going up in value or a dividend is being paid. Very rarely do they concern themselves with what the directors (who are supposed to be running the company on behalf of the shareholders) are doing.
Now, if the bulk of the shareholders are the workers, they know how the company is doing and the senior management can’t pull the wool over their eyes, in the way it can to shareholders who turn up once a year to the AGM. The workers know that the CEO’s six-figure salary increase is coming straight out of their dividends. Hardly surprising that this idea sunk without trace.
Many years ago when a student nurse (RNMH), I read a management textbook by Charles Handy and was a bit miffed to read that beyond the second level of management, the overt central purpose of the organisation becomes less and less important to the individuals who have keys to the executive toilet. Thirty years later I can only agree with him; fools, frauds, pimps and perverts the lot of them. Not that I’m bitter, mind….
Yes, in any organisation that tends to attract enthusiasts, people genuinely interested in doing that kind of work, like nursing, you will find that all the enthusiasm is at the bottom. The higher up the hierarchy you get, the more the job is just a means of earning money, which is one of the many reasons their shouldn’t be a hierarchy in the first place.
I saw an interview with Yanis Varoufakis. He said (maybe not the exact words) when we lefties were young, we dreamed of destroying capitalism. We never dreamed it would destroy itself.
But that seems to be happening.
Bob (not OG):
“The reason the ‘good bit’ (from ~’45 to ’79) ended was that groups of very wealthly US bankers, industrialists etc. got together and came to the lunatic conclusion that they were being gypped by lefty unions, lawyers, universities – basically the whole of society.”
Hence the ‘Powell Memorandum’, which was in fact titled by Powell (a future Nixon appointed US Supreme Court judge), “Attack on American Free Enterprise System”, which he sent it to his neighbour, Eugene B. Sydnor Jr., the Education Director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, on August 23, 1971, a week after Richard Nixon ‘closed’ the convertibility of paper $ into gold window.
A ‘Guide’ for their actions described by Bob (not OG) @ at 20:44 August 27, 2022.
https://law2.wlu.edu/deptimages/Powell%20Archives/PowellMemorandumTypescript.pdf
I am delighted to see Mr Murray concede that, in essentials at least, Karl Marx was substantially correct.
I have never been a Marxist, a Communist, nor – until very recently at any rate – a socialist of any kind. I used to vote Conservative on the grounds that they were relatively experienced and less likely to muck things up really badly. (A “small c” conservative philosophy of minimising damage).
Since I retired and started learning about the real world – including the wrongness of much that I was taught at university and since – I have been thinking along much the same lines as Mr Murray outlines in this article.
I would like to add a strong recommendation to read the works of Michael Hudson, possibly the only important economist living.
Tom
I have just finished Hudson’s latest book. He gives a good explanation of the modern world. He is not the only one worth reading.
Richard Murphy’s daily blog – Tax Justice UK – is worth a read too. So are Stephen Keen, the Australian who predicted the financial crisis, and Stephanie Kelton on Modern Monetary Theory. But I agree about reading Hudson.
Hudson gives a sympathetic portrayal of China which I think is accurate and not what we usually read. However, there is another side to the country which we would not wish to have here. I think he gets it right about the sort of economic system we have in the West but the advantage of our flawed democracy is that we could change it given enough support.
The present situation is a crisis. I used to be a counsellor and people change if bored(!), in crisis, or can see a new way to live. I have noticed commentary does show a wider acceptance of new ideas than a few years ago. We are certainly in crisis and it concentrates the mind. Not given but very possible.
the Liberal Party manifesto of 1974 was at least as left as Corbyn’s manifesto.
Actually the Tory Party manifesto of 1974 was at least as left as Corbyn’s manifesto. That is the measure of how far the British political environment has lurched to the right.
So was Richard Nixon’s….
No, it wasn’t, not even close.
The Tories in 1974 were OK with most big industries being in public ownership. Actually, even Margaret Thatcher didn’t privatise the railways, she left them nationalised. The National Health Service gave free health care to every citizen, and back then, the NHS was properly funded and staffed.
In all the hullabaloo over comments made by Emily Maitlis in her recent lecture regarding Tory insiders on the BBC Board and Dominic Cummings lock-down breaches, the media seemed to ignore the main thrust of her lecture, which was the rise of populism in politics and how the media should respond. I was particularly interested in her view that Populists aren’t interested in Left wing or Right wing politics. Rather it is power they seek, preferably unfettered. She used Donald Trump as her example but could equally have used the more subtle but equally populist Boris Johnson and his sloganeering ‘Get Brexit done’, ‘Levelling up’ and his attempted (and in some cases successful) dismantling of the checks and balances of Government due to the power that his large majority gave him. We are seeing the same tactics being adopted by Liz Truss in the Tory leadership hustings. She will probably ditch many of her pronouncements if she becomes PM but hey-ho, job done and she (and the ERG) will have achieved their main objective, which is power for its own sake. Maitlis’ Left wing, Right wing observation fits Truss well as she seems to have been a political gadfly, from Lib Dem to Tory and recently remainer to hard Brexit.
Maitlis’ denunciation of “populism” is telling. Why is populism inherently beyond the pale? Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum were “populist”, do WE consider this unacceptable? Maitlis apparently does. Just because populism can be hijacked by right-wing snake-oil salesmen (or women) shouldn’t render it toxic for us. For Maitlis and the elitist, upper middle class, Oxbridge commentariat, the workers should have no say other than the faux choice between two neoliberal, managerial factions posing as political parties every four or five years.
Isn’t populism the same as democracy just in Latin rather then Greek??
@Pigeon You may have hit upon something there.
Don’t think Jeremy Corbyn or Momentum are populist (which in Maitlis’ terms means seeking power for its own sake rather than any political / democratic ideology). Both Corbyn and Momentum are clearly left wing socialists who want to see a re-distribution of wealth.
Corbyn wasn’t a populist.
Boris Johnson is.
I see a populist politician as I would see a teacher who wants to be liked by the class at all cost – including the pupils’ own wellbeing and careers. A teacher who’d tell the class that there’d never be any homework, that they could watch videos all lesson long, and muck about as much as they liked. They’d soon be the most popular teacher in the school – and everyone would want to be in their class.
Until exam time, and when it came to leave school… at which point the pupils would realise that they’d been deceived by a lazy, insecure, self-serving charlatan, who just wanted an easy life, lots of fans, money for doing nothing, and who had a callous and utterly selfish disregard for those who were unfortunate enough to have been under their charge.
That’s Boris Johnson (and Donald Trump, Berlusconi, Bolsonaro… etc).
Liz Truss, on the other hand, is the thick, but mean, teacher, from whom you learn nothing – but who gives you 400 lines on the flimsiest pretext, just so you know who’s boss. She also wants to be popular, but with the head, the parents, and the governors (i.e. the establishment and the oligarchs). We, the pupils, are unimportant.
Corbyn was the decent, long-serving plodder, who wanted the best for his pupils, tried to keep an unruly class in some kind of order, and did his best in an unkind system to get as many through as he could. Ultimately the school management let him down and, as he never quite fitted in or played the game, he was pushed into early retirement.
A couple of points:
1:, there is NO way on this Earth that I could remotely be described as being rich or well off. However, I take the view that capitalism is the system that we have now so rather than work to abolish it, people should work with it and that’s why I consider myself an advocate of ‘Compassionate Capitalism’. Capitalism is no different to any other system in that it’s open to abuse, which is what we’re seeing nowadays. I do agree though, that it has to change.
2: I’m surprised there hasn’t been any attacks on the RMT leader, Mick Lynch yet. I fully expected him to be facing allegations of ‘sex pest’ or ‘Anti-Semite’ by now. The fact that he hasn’t suggests to me that their dispute is just a big game whereby the Establishment will take the RMT and other unions to the brink and suddenly at the last moment, pull back and concede to their demands. If Mick Lynch or any other union leader was considered a threat to the establishment, the allegations would be coming thick and fast, but they’re not.
Mist001
You’re right about Mick Lynch’s easy ride, he even gets to finish his sentences when he’s being interviewed. And then there’s the other strikes that seem to be getting a more neutral coverage than usual. A fabbit off there methinks.
Perhaps capitalism can afford less and less compassion as its built in self destruction approaches.
If you think that “that capitalism is the system that we have now so rather than work to abolish it, people should work with it” then you don’t understand the basis of the capitalist system. It’s a system based on exploitation and the hoarding of wealth, created by others, by an oppressive class structure. Further information is available.
Of course if you don’t mind being used and exploited, don’t bother.
Great piece: clear eyed and fearlessly honest. The antithesis in other words of every state of the nation article that appears in mainstream media. Confirms yet again you inhabit a different intellectual and moral plain to those designated journalists by Lady Dorrian. (Not least the deep establishment neoliberal and comedy radical Emily Maitliss).
I was just saying to a friend who, like me, grew up in the 1970’s that if we could have glimpsed our future world of 2020’s it would have seemed like dystopian sci fi or a mad alternate universe.
You mean it turned out as was predicted?
“Soylent Green” is looking less and less fantastical by the day!
This omits an ingenious and relatively recent innovation.
The plutocrats and oligarchs required a permanent managerial class to administer their perpetual plunder of the commonwealth.
This permanent managerial class is derived from the exponential growth in humanities courses (particularly those with Politics in the title) at universities.
Middle class apparatchiks indoctrinated in just the type of identity politics described. Folk with zero inherent empathy for the workers.
They leave university to glide seamlessly into political research or SPAD positions and then to elected Politics or the Civil Service. They have all the bases covered. A self sustaining, perpetual Mafia that recruits and promotes from their own closed clique.
They ain’t slummin’ it either. The Dugdale / Gilruth hoosehold is grossing something north of £250k pa..
@Viv, I’m a humanities grad (1986) and slipped seamlessly onto the dole after I graduated. What happened to my ticket for the escalator of privilege, did it fall behind the escritoire?
You omitted being taught at Eton before you went to Uni.
Craig, one of the confusions of previous times, before the advent of the scientific method, was that people lived in a world based on belief in the irrational. Medicine was based on the summoning of spirits, placating angry gods and so on without any idea of symptom, cause and effect.
So, it is with your article about capitalism. There are no dark forces, inherent contradictions in capitalism or any such thing suggested by Marx.
What is happening now has a simple explanation, unpalatable perhaps.
So, let us work our way through it.
Capitalism began as a radical endeavour – the replacement of the feudal class, inherited wealth, economies built on land with manufacturing. It was the joining of engineering and capital to create the world that we live in.
Or, more accurately, the world that we lived in until the late 20th century.
At that time, there was a new ideology, which was implemented by Thatcher and Reagan. Whether they understood what they were doing is highly debatable. Perhaps, Milton Friedman, the leading ideologue, regarded them as useful idiots. We cannot ask him, but he left plenty of evidence of his thinking and motivations – more so on video than his writings.
The core idea was to change these economies by allowing financial intermediaries to take control of industries. Hence, the role of the corporate takeover, leveraged buy outs, hedge funds and and so on.
The old, established power structures were replaced by a new financial class, which had all the power. Using other people’s money, they were able to control the assets that others had built, assuming power for themselves.
That is why the UK is in such a mess – industries such as energy have now been financialised.
As for Jim Ratcliffe, he is an industrialist who has played the financial game and won – winning on his own terms. His ambitions in football are, I would suggest, to be the one UK owner of a big four club and have a blocking role in a foreign-owned Premiership.
So, Craig, I suggest you have misdiagnosed the situation and see demons, old prophecies, where you should be seeing men.
Craig diagnoses the situation perfectly. There is nothing nebulous about the omnipotent ideology of the past four decades. Neoliberalism is quite simply the political ideology of the rich.
The intention of every feature of it – not just financialisation but trickledown, privatisation, deregulation, deunionisation, liberalisation, globalisation, ‘free movement’ of labour, structural reforms, austerity, the ‘streamlined’ state, and so on – has been to decisively concentrate wealth in the hands of a few, to the historic disadvantage of everyone else. And it has been astonishingly successful.
Real wages have been stagnant in our country for four decades; poverty has more than doubled; and successive governments have diverted public resources to the wealthy. The UK is now among the most unequal societies in the developed world, having returned to Edwardian liberal levels of inequality, and social mobility has virtually ceased.
It is also worth nothing the success of the neoliberal revolution in neutering dissent in the realms of pop music, drama, comedy, academia, etc, now virtually dominated by the privately educated unlike in the egalitarian, social-democratic postwar decades.
“drama, comedy, academia, etc, now virtually dominated by the privately educated unlike in the egalitarian, social-democratic postwar decades.”
I guess you didn’t live through those post-war decades, or you wouldn’t be saying that.
By the end of the ’70s there was in the UK a thriving, energetic, critical, challenging and largely working class independent music sector.
Thatcher, and particularly Norman Tebbit I recall, frequently made points about wanting to be rid of the decadent and degenerate “’60s culture” that they so despised.
Slowly but surely the independent music labels were all bought up by the major corporate companies and effectively neutered.
I recall too Murdoch producing a magazine called, wait for it, ‘Blah Blah Blah’ purporting to be a radical music monthly which, of course, removed anything radical from its coverage and replaced it with glossy images. This, and others, went some way to helping see off the more progressive elements of the music press – The New Musica Express &c.
Now, while providing luxury lifestyles to Tories like Michael Portillo, Matthew Parris and Anne McElvoy, we can thank the BBC for providing us with revisionary cultural commentary from Thatcherite Dominic Sandbrook, and programmes about “Yacht Rock” – when it can find some spare space in between its programmes about monarchy of course.
@Peter, I had the feeling between 1978 and 1981 that we were living through the last efflorescence of English popular culture. Uncle Monty said the same (more or less) in Withnail; I’m afraid that we were right.
“Slowly but surely the independent music labels were all bought up by the major corporate companies and effectively neutered.”
You’ll be shocked by what’s about to happen with Pink Floyd’s songs then:
https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/blackstone-among-bidders-pink-floyds-catalog-sources-2022-08-24/
Joel, you are barking up the wrong tree entirely. The big transfer of wealth, which began with Thatcher and Reagan, was not from the poor to the rich, as you seem to think, but from the old guard to the new financial classes.
This is all true.
And terribly depressing.
Another great post
I might be around the same age as you, saw nationalised industries with no investment (Steel, Shipbuilding, Mining, NHS, Roads, Rail, BT / Post Office), saw powerful unions in the motor industry and manufacturing with no care to the future wellbeing of their employer or their job security.
Saw the 3-day week, saw useless embattled and weak management unable or incapable of competing in the wider world, saw useless banks and the City of London too incompetent and lazy to seek out and support innovation and growth. Saw an education system that drove out excellence and ambition, and saw a devaluation of further education.
I went the other way from you, I saw that a guaranteed wage and a guaranteed job, only encourage indolence.
I wanted (in the old Liberal sense) to help those more unfortunate than me, either by health, wellbeing, lack of opportunity or even intellect, but I saw the certainty that abuse of the support was built in to the system. It is human nature to prefer the free lunch, it’s part of the survival instinct. Employ the least energy for the best result. We can’t help ourselves.
The ‘beautiful dream’ of Marxism is still-born – or do you just brow-beat everyone into compliance.
People are by nature good and kind, Marxism doesn’t believe that.
The great thing about life on earth is that everything changes -always- and we as humans have to adapt.
If we go for central control -by dullards- we get in a mess. Every time.
If we encourage lots of little bright people (why don’t you marxists trust people) to come up with lots of solutions (some of which don’t work) we make progress. If you allow them to keep fair share of the reward, everyone wins.
So you think the UK would still have a motor industry, a shipbuilding industry, a steel industry, a manufacturing industry, a space industry, a viable NHS, if we had freed up our brightest sparks to innovate and refine. You betcha we would.
Apart from Raspberry Pi, have we a single PC or mobile phone design / manufacturing company in the UK? I don’t think so.
Our brightest sparks abandoned this country -they certainly abandoned old Labour Scotland and they are abandoning New Stalinist Nicola’s Scotland.
Ah the old hard right refrain that we haven’t had sufficient neoiberalism. No doubt one of the 100 or so excited by the prospect of Liz Truss.
“People are by nature good and kind, Marxism doesn’t believe that”
I would argue the opposite. Marxists believe exactly that and there is no need for billions in reward for motivation. Your post is very contradictory. Humans are good and kind, while greedy lazy and selfish going for free lunch (cannot be all). Main capitalist doctrine is based on selfish, greedy RATIONAL humans!
Funny how the wasters are poor workers and not the hereditary rich….
“Humans are good and kind, while greedy lazy and selfish going for free lunch (cannot be all). “
Not in the same individual human being, no, but across a broad cross section of humanity, yes, some are good and kind, others are greedy, lazy or selfish. Most enjoy a free lunch, some are even RATIONAL.
Wally Jumblatt
You’ve had governments that say what you say for forty odd years so why haven’t all your dreams come true?
“I might be around the same age as you, saw nationalised industries with no investment (Steel, Shipbuilding, Mining, NHS, Roads, Rail, BT / Post Office),”
I think you need to go to Specsavers. In the 60s and 70 the UK built almost the complete motorway network, not to mention countless A road and by pass schemes, the NHS got most of its hospitals, the entire rural electricity and telephone networks were built, and the national grid, the railways were converted from steam to diesel and electric traction. Do you really think that if coal, shipbuilding steelmaking etc had been private they would somehow been able to survive the ability of other countries being able to produce these things much cheaper? In the real world, without the government subsidising them, they would all have been closed down decades earlier. There certainly wouldn’t have been any money for investment. With all the freight moving to road haulage, how long do you think the railways would have lasted, especially if they had to finance the replacement of their entire motive power fleets? In any case the GPO wasn’t nationalised, it was always part of the state, the clue’s in the name.
The poor management and over-mighty unions of which you complain were there before nationalisation and would not have magically gone away if nationalisation had never happened. The same poor management put paid to most of our smaller industries that were never nationalised. As you point out, we don’t have a “single PC or mobile phone design / manufacturing company in the UK”. This has nothing to do with nationalisation, as industries of this size were never large enough to have been nationalised in the first place. It certainly didn’t help that we handed over all our computing knowledge to the US after the war, whilst using the Official Secrets Act to prevent any of our own computing engineers making much use of theirs.
You suffer, like most politicians, from the fallacy that “industry” consists solely of large businesses employing thousands, whereas industry mostly consists of small businesses employing, at the most, hundreds. Such businesses were largely unaffected by either unions or nationalisation, and they were the ones that the bright sparks would be looking to work for. The fact that so many went abroad was because these businesses, too, were not immune from bad management practices, which had more to do with our societal and educational faults than nationalisation.
Democracy in action today.
George Galloway, who demonstrated astonishing courage and honesty during the Iraq travesty, has organised an online poll on youtube around the question:
“Are you prepared to pay for the Ukraine War through increased energy prices?” Yes or no.
At time of this post, 3400 have responded, and the nays have it with a ratio of 95:5 !!
https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxLyn8eHoFqit5b_-7lyhbYP0ocBOuNC_a
Tells you more about the sort of numbskulls who are prepared to let George shout at them for an hour than anything else.
Which is why YouTube have taken it down of course
You mean we should prefer to be lied to by the BBC and The Guardian!
Well, Mr Morgaine, are you? (prepared to pay for the Ukraine War through increased energy prices, that is)
BTW, don’t forget which side in that war our money is going to, either. Clue – it’s not Ukraine.
George has been shouting again: ”In the Bleak Midwinter three quarters of the State pension will go on fuel bills by April.” These numbskull pensioners don’t realise they have nothing to worry about: Pears will come round and give them a warm hug!
If Scotland had become independent in 2014, and an incoming Scottish government had nationalised all aspects of the energy sector, then they could now have determined energy costs themselves. The costs of producing renewable energy haven’t increased, and the costs of extracting hydrocarbons haven’t increased. So the cost of those energies, if nationalised, could have been held. Prices, if nationalised would have been lower because there would be no imperative to pay dividends to shareholders. The reason prices are increasing is because of speculation in the energy markets. Any private company has a duty to sell its product at the highest price possible to maximise returns for shareholders. A government should have a duty to ensure the public are able to maintain a decent standard of living.
I wouldn’t take utilities into public ownership, I’d hand over control and ownership of a utility to the workers in that industry.
“I wouldn’t take utilities into public ownership”
No, that was the mistake made after the war, although not with the utilities. They were not taken into public ownership, they were made part of the state.
“I’d hand over control and ownership of a utility to the workers in that industry.”
The management are workers, too, or do you mean what used to be called “blue-collar workers”? In which case, why persist in such an artificial “officers and other ranks” division which achieves nothing except keeping the snobs happy?
A key question is, to whom do the economic rents of whichever asset/industry/good, and perhaps more especially essential utilities and ‘public goods’, accrue? The role of any government with an objective of equality and fairness, it may be argued, is to prevent the interception of economic rents by a particular interest group or groups. What we see in what passes for current ‘British’ society is successive governments actively enabling the interception of economic rents by particular private interest groups, which is or may well be at the root of inequality Craig refers.
In the example of major seaports, my academic colleagues on the continent used to describe the UK ‘ports policy’ as the ‘Anglo-Saxon model’, which emphasizes primarily private profit and private ownership, and also a highly irregular form of private self-regulation (i.e. private port ‘authorities’). Of course, in such instances the important matters of barriers to entry and market contestability, especially within port areas/firths etc are largely disregarded, as is the need to create new advanced seaport capacity in a timely fashion to ensure the nation’s future international trading competitiveness and security. The result is what we see, a less than competitive (UK) economy largely dependent on imports.
On the European continent and in most countries globally, governments still maintain what is termed the ‘Latin model’ for seaports and indeed for many other forms of public utilities as well. This ‘model’ ensures the continuation of public regulation and mostly (ultimate) public ownership of assets, whilst permitting private actors, in many cases but not all, to operate such assets under long-term concession agreements. It is in this way that the public sector benefits from gaining access to private sector expertise and (partial) investment in assets, whilst maintaining regulatory control (including control over competition, pricing, capacity etc) and also property rights within the public sector.
I suspect that Scotland, historically and culturally, more naturally fits the continental or ‘Latin model’, and would seek to adopt something broadly similar upon independence, whilst the ‘Anglo Saxon model’ is clearly another, rather exploitative alien culture, as it were. We might therefore extrapolate this seaport policy/economics example and rather extreme ultra neo-liberal ideology to most aspects of the UK economy.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0308883042000304890
Maybe – but ‘The Wee Liar’ would have seen to it that we joined in in sanctions on Russia, just to make sure no-one got any ideas that we were ‘really’ independent.
Neo-liberalism is just 19th Century “laissez faire” capitalism with a veneer of dodgy economics to justify it. We know how that turned out.
Great post. It’s obvious the plutocracy are not going to relent in pushing inequality to absurd extremes, even as it exposes them to the least sentient. Despite the relentless demonisation of “Corbynism” I sense that 4 year period when the public were consistently exposed to alternative thought will prove important in years ahead. It surely informs the popular heresy of supporting strikes and is going to fan the coming firestorm over living costs. The elite’s TINA propaganda will intensify but haa ever decreasing resonance. Outside the OAP contingent few people subscribe to the commonsense of the plutocracy and its political and media actors. Small children can see Britain’s crises (all crises of Neo-liberalism) are not going to be addressed either by the Tories or the Mandelson-Epstein lot. The conservative and liberal elites no longer have the Brexit distraction and I don’t think transgender nonsense, “antisemitism” psyops or Putin-Xi new Hitler narratives will be enough to divert attention from the stitch up. The long con is being exposed by insatiable greed and the criminals are now on the run. Never again will it be glad, confident morning for the Neo-liberals.