I am of the opinion that The UK is being ruined by self-serving ideologues whose only concern is for their status and salaries. They don’t see themselves as servants of the people and our well-being couldn’t be further from their minds.
With the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, the resignation of disgraced Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the chaos of his Instagram poster girl replacement, Liz Truss, it is starting to feel like the last days of the Roman Empire or for those old enough to remember, a particularly farcical episode of ‘Up Pompeii!’. At least Frankie Howard as Lurkio and his Master, Ludicrous Sextus made us laugh.
One question I hear most often on X or Twitter as it used to be known is: What did they (as in royalty and the Conservatives) ever do for us? It’s a good question because ‘got Brexit done’ and ‘growth, growth, growth’ sounds so hollow. The same goes for ‘serving one’s country’. At least Johnson spared us the May-style crocodile tears in his resignation address from the steps of Nº 10, although he didn’t mention resignation and claimed he had been hounded out of office by ungrateful civil servants.
Well, we can’t accuse Johnson of not knowing how to throw a party, and we should at least be grateful to Her Majesty for hanging on long enough to see him out of the door. Sadly his replacement, who in her leadership campaign, promised to ‘hit the ground’ appears to have done exactly that: crashing the pound and practically bankrupting the country within weeks of taking office. I dread to think what the Truss government would have done for an encore; maybe make an elephant disappear? At least she will be remembered for having served the shortest time of any British prime minister. Although I felt a chill watching her smirk her way through a resignation speech with the same levity as a news reader with a fluffy bunny story. Perhaps her replacement can find some small territory to invade to help take voters’ minds off the crushing poverty.
The UK has changed beyond all recognition in the 20 years since leaving its hallowed shores. I now live and work in Spain having left behind a land where the ex-Home Secretary, Nutella Braverman (Cruella to her friends) takes time off to ‘dream of restarting deportations by Christmas’. It’s not exactly Martin Luther King, but then again, nothing says welcome home louder than a free flight to Kigali.
It could be argued that if there hadn’t been a monarchy, little would have changed in the lives of ordinary people. The same cannot be said for the Conservative Party and their death-cult leaders. Truss reminded me of a wet weekend in Blackpool, one in which all the pubs and chip shops have been boarded up. Then there was Johnson, who is still threatening to make a comeback. In addition to demonstrating appalling taste in home furnishings, he went on to bungle the lockdown, and the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and mired himself and co-workers in sleaze and corruption scandals. There is evidence that many millions of people could have had their lives improved, had his father worn better protection in 1963. And before I am accused of Johnson bashing, let’s not forget the ‘let the bodies pile high’ quip and the ‘f*ck business’ mantra.
Neither I nor my adopted country will miss either of them, but I think it is fair to say that Queen Elizabeth II was greatly admired, even from this distant land. She was the cornerstone of an institution that stood for the best of Britishness, steadfastly doing things properly and with dignity. She will be long remembered. But Johnson? Maybe not so much. He shambled onto the world stage like a disruptive child at a daycare centre. He was the antithesis of our late Queen, being driven out of office by his party whilst stubbornly clinging to power and touring the country for one last victory lap. Even his hero Churchill would never have done something so crass, especially after such a public spanking from his team.
Over time, I have come to regard the monarchy and the Tory Party as sharing distinct but differing attributes one could associate with a cult: The Queen, our head of state and The Church of England was given a full state funeral with the type of BBC coverage that compared favourably to a full North-Korean-style meltdown. People mawkishly queued for days (except for VIP lane celebrities) to shuffle past her coffin and pay respects to someone they never knew, but in whom they had an unshakable faith. It was a worldwide event and even here in Spain, time was set aside for sympathetic commentary, despite a chequered relationship with their royalty. For me, the outpouring of unrestrained grief, the prolonged period of mourning, and the blanket coverage were the hallmarks of true cult status, albeit a rather more benign version than that of the Conservatives.
By contrast, Truss and Johnson proved themselves useful idiots of the far right. They represented the unflinching face of a considerably more dangerous cult, one driven by neoliberalism: tax cuts for the rich, and payouts from the public purse to energy companies already awash with profits. Funding to mitigate the worst effects of the energy crisis could have been raised by a windfall tax, as in the EU. It could have then been distributed in the form of grants for better insulation and energy-saving measures. Contrast that with the insanity of that mini-budget: financed through unprecedented government borrowing with the money then lost forever to corporate profits. It was this blank cheque and an unfunded tax giveaway that spooked markets and saw the UK’s credit rating downgraded to ‘negative’. According to the Financial Times, the run on long-term government bonds left pension funds within hours of collapse. The rush of cash calls to cover liabilities forced fund managers to sell long-term gilts depressing the price further and risking a ‘death spiral’. The Bank of England stepped in with a gilts buy-back plan costing up to 64 billion. A huge hike in the cost of borrowing followed. Mortgage interest rates shot through the roof and many mortgage products were withdrawn from the market. It was Rishi Sunak who coined the phrase ‘fairytale economics’ but I believe a more appropriate name is ‘Trussonomics’. At this point, I should acknowledge that Jeremy Hunt has since replaced Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor of the Exchequer and in a massive U-turn, reversed most of the mini-budget. However, irreparable damage has been done to business confidence. Whilst this reversal may be welcome, it shoots down any notion that the Conservatives can be trusted with the economy. Just how bad do things have to get before ministers responsible step up to own their decisions? An example of this was Liz Truss’ refusal to come to parliament to answer an urgent question about her handling of the economy. It was down to the waspish Leader of the House, Penny Mordaunt to face the music. MPs looked on in admiration as a belligerent Mordaunt batted away the questions with non-answers and insults to the opposition benches. Oh, if only we had chosen her, strong, abrasive and blessed with the fighting spirit of Thatcherism, if only she could recall who or what it was that we should be fighting; the perfect qualities for a Tory superstar.
Instead, we have governance via hedge funds as illustrated by the behaviour of Kwasi Kwarteng, who met with his city-trader buddies at a privately hosted champagne reception on the day of the mini-budget (all perfectly normal, nothing to see here). I don’t know if there was karaoke or if a naked lady jumped out of a cake, but certain individuals apparently made millions short-selling the pound afterwards. According to the Guardian, there are allegations that Kwarteng gave those present advanced information about planned cuts to the public sector. Perish the thought: insider trading, who me? – with my reputation? – in charge of, well, a big chest of public money? Fraudulent actions by government ministers? Certainly not! That kind of thing hardly ever happens.
However, the bigger question we should all be asking is: In a few years’ time, will any of this matter?
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I believe that it is wholesale greed that has enabled our politicians to trap us aboard a titanic ship of quasi-fascism. We are sailing full steam ahead towards a massive ‘iceberg’ of extinction, and I am not referring to the lettuce variety. There aren’t enough lifeboats, and the captain is refusing to change course. Louis Armstrong famously sang, ‘We Have All The Time In The World’ but does our world have any time left for us?
It was Frankie Boyle who said, ‘Young people shouldn’t worry too much about the future, because there isn’t going to be one.’ Why worry about the cost-of-living crisis, working longer and harder for less, or the parlous state of our health service, education, and industry, if the planet becomes uninhabitable?
Canadian Prepper, YouTube’s doomsday soothsayer has been shouting this for years, but lately, I have started to believe him. He recommends going down to your local supermarket and taking a good look at all the shelves piled high with food. If you live in certain parts of the UK, I appreciate that this may be a challenge. He suggests that we take a long look because a time is coming when those shelves are going to be empty. In a rapidly warming climate, the arrival of a sustained 40ºc will see agricultural output considerably diminished. At 50ºc nothing will grow. And at the risk of being another harbinger of doom, there are also Putin’s threats of nuclear armageddon.
Why is this happening? Surely, if it is as bad as I claim, governments around the world would be doing something. My answer is that some are, but in the case of the UK, the opposite appears to be true. We are being governed by half-truths and lies; the biggest lie of all being trickle-down Trussonomics.
‘Growth, growth, growth’ was the slogan of the newly anointed, then cast-out Liz Truss. At the time I recall experiencing a smidgen of scepticism. We have self-imposed trade barriers with our biggest market that stop our citizens from working with and selling freely to 450 million consumers. It has become hard to see where that growth will come from. I don’t see a Pacific Trade Agreement or an Australian deal making good the shortfall in my lifetime.
Liz Truss’ leadership had been described by one of her backbenchers as the work of neoliberal jihadists. The economy became the subject of an unhinged experiment of free market economics. This was only possible with the assistance of the non-dom-owned, tax-dodging, right-wing press. The years of failed Reaganomics proved beyond doubt that unrestrained free markets and tax cuts for the most wealthy could never work. The UK doesn’t even have a reserve currency. The financial markets were quick to see the problem and exploded the test tube. So much for telling us that our current problems are the fault of illegal immigrants, Putin, COVID, lefty-activist lawyers, lazy British workers, oh and Meghan Markle. Now we learn that even the net carbon zero targets have been put to the sword with the restarting of fracking.
‘We will only frack if local people want it,’ they say.
Really? Who will be in charge of determining local opinion?
The reply: ‘Fracking companies of course! We’re not that stupid!’
A further nail in the coffin of the Conservatives’ imagined ‘green credentials’ was the licensing of over 100 new North Sea sites, which will do nothing to ease the energy crisis as the bulk of the output will be refined offshore and reimported at whatever the market rate happens to be.
Perhaps the most important strand of neoliberal thinking is to get rid of that pesky human rights bill, thus clearing the path for mass deportations and the setting up of low-tax enterprise zones. What kind of person does not want to respect human rights? I can think of a few despots from history. I am also at a loss as to who will benefit from freeports, certainly not local authorities who will lose business rates revenue. Neither will employees, who will be required to work in unregulated conditions having signed hostile contracts. The same goes for the treasury, which will miss out on vital customs revenue. The only growth will be from pirates and their nefarious activities. Will the freeport pirates make us naysayers walk the plank and import tons of contraband and grog? Will the P&O Ferries ship, Spirit of Britain, registered in Cypress and crewed by those outside of EU control be hoisting the Jolly Roger over Plymouth? That be pirating country, true enough.
It seems to me that the pomp and ceremony of Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral only served as a further distraction to the climate emergency. Sadly, no amount of royal tears can change that. The policies to counter the monsoon flooding disaster in Pakistan or Hurricane Ian which destroyed the coast of Florida don’t exist. Millions have been displaced and thousands died but atmospheric heating continues. Meanwhile, the think tanks of the neoliberal ultras have been busily marshalling their ‘useful idiots’.
“I believe that our new policy of banning solar farms from the English countryside is going to help us grow more food which is more important than becoming carbon neutral.” Of course, giving up agricultural land to build more profitable housing will be just fine. Oh, and we are going to need some roads, but no actual high-speed rail network.
“Anyone who doesn’t believe in tax breaks for the rich is a member of the anti-growth coalition.” Look over there! The Queen – she had corgis -she is just like you and I, human – even. RETWEET!!!
David Icke would disagree (about the Queen being human that is). He has built a career trying to get us to believe that she was a reptilian alien. This notion sums up the core of extremist thinking. We need to be ‘believers’ for any cult to work. I wonder if Icke is a true believer. For that matter, are you a believer, dear reader? Because facts have no place in our kingdom of cults (checks spelling). And yet, the last time we took actions based solely on belief, rather than facts, we were burning witches and torturing heretics in the Tower of London.
It was George Orwell, who in his dystopian epic, 1984 said:
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
And so with that happy thought, let us all close our eyes and breathe deeply as we join virtual hands. It’s time to get into the zone and really BELIEVE in Trussonomics. This is the only way to save the world with our policy of infinite growth and trickle-down p**s-taking. If it helps, why not download Spotify, crank the volume up to 11 and play ‘I’m A Believer’ by The Monkees… It won’t save us, but who doesn’t love The Monkees?
Better go. I’ve just got an urgent text from Canadian Prepper…
Till next time, if there is one, hasta la vista, baby!