This is a long blog, so I’ve included some jump links for those who only want to read about the UK or the US, or just skip to the predictions!
This year was a turning point in post war history. The US has elected a criminal autocrat and given him the power to remake America as a Kleptocracy.
How did we get here?
The credit crunch demonstrated the emptiness of free market economics, which had underpinned a globalisation that had made Africans and Asians richer, middle class families more prosperous and more diverse, but which had removed the financial premium that workers without specialist skills and qualifications in rich nations had over their equivalents in poorer countries. The dilution of the economic and social premiums that white working class voters enjoyed it the most significant factor in the rise of populism in the West.
Covid has reshaped politics for lots of people and old fashioned fact or reality based policies no longer hold any value. Voters are prone to reject difficult realities for comforting fantasies; this was emerging before Covid, it was just that lockdown accelerated the spread. The more you can separate humans from each other the easier it is to get them believe crazy things.
The new authoritarian politics are filling the void of free market capitalism, but in the language of Covid. The left’s answer – a pragmatic return to managed capitalism – doesn’t excite the imagination like the rights authoritarian fables. At worse it leaves the left defending a failed status quo.
This neo-authoritarianism is a widespread attack on the rules based liberal international order.
After WW2 the democratic nations who won the war helped build international institutions to build co-operation between nations. This was to help prevent the rise of more dictatorships and create a stable world. The EU dates from the same era of co-operation and optimism. The Pax Americana replaced the Pax Britannica.
There is a concerted attempt at destroying the rules based international order and discredit all and any transnational organisations. Unsurprisingly this co-incides with the rise of a new wave of authoritarian powers; Russia, China, Iran who want international relations to be based on power not rules, and want respect for human rights to be eliminated.
I can understand why some Americans feel that the USA will thrive in this world, despite giving up global leadership. I am more bemused why Brits feel that it is in our interests. In a new world of dictatorships we will be the conquered not the conquerer.
It is too easy for authoritarians to portray people defending a rules based international order as defending a dysfunctional status quo. Dysfunction that they themselves helped create.
Lots of people feel that the status quo doesn’t work for lots of people. One of the big mistakes the Democrats made last month was in defending America against Trump they looked like they were defending the status quo.
The fight against growing authoritarianism isn’t just an American problem – all Western democracies face the same struggle.
Authoritarian regimes have identified 2 pressure points which destabilise democratic regimes – immigration, particularly asylum seekers, and inflation. The more they can create those conditions the more they can destabilise democratic regimes. Incumbent Governments around the world fell under these 2 pressures. I expect Trump to use tariffs to increase inflation in Europe even if it costs his own country dear. Even without Trump an ongoing war in Ukraine and the impact of the climate crisis will push up prioces, while an ageing population pushes up taxes.
It’s not enough to find a response to these problems. There also needs to be communication, the ability to create a narrative to explain to people why these hard choices are being made. The people leading the fight are making the same mistakes the world over. Defending a broken status quo against something worse, and sounding like wankers.
This may seem harsh, but those on the left who want to lead the fight for freedom and democracy need to find a way of communicating with ordinary people without sounding like pompous middle class snobs.
So far there is no sign that they have learned this lesson.
What they face is a powerful ecosystem of rightwing news, online content and viral disinformation that amplifies the most divisive and extreme voices, and which favours short and simple solutions over the complexities of good government and sensible policy. Easy to identify enemies wrecking the pure nation.
The people they are up against are reckless with their violence – Putin in Salisbury and Navalny in Russia. Netanyahu prolongs a violent conflict to avoid facing up to his own criminal charges.
But increasingly the don’t have to be – they can use social media and their control of legacy media organisations to smear opponents and stir up violence against them. Some call this stochastic terrorism. Whatever it’s name it is a powerful tool crushing dissent without the regime having to be too open that they are behind it
Xitter has become the most powerful tool globally for authoritarians and their supporters to smear, to harass, to threaten.
In previous years I have included a special section in these blogs about conspiracy theories, what the clogosphere is thinking. This year there is no point in trying to separate out conspiracy theories from mainstream politics, the 2 have merged completely.
The big dividing lines in modern politics aren’t between traditional right and left, but between democracy vs autocracy, reality vs fantasy, truth vs lies and good vs bad.
The big political battles this year weren’t right or left but democracy vs authoritarianism, truth vs lies, and ultimately realty vs fantasy,
The UK
This was the year that Labour won a thumping election win with a fairly paltry vote share. Working out how popular Labour was is impossible given the level of tactical voting – all we can say is that those people voting tactically against the Tories knew that they were delivering a big Labour majority and were OK with it.
But this was also the year that British politics fractured. Labour were able to win a big majority with a low vote share because of the fracturing of British politics. Record numbers of parties now sit in Parliament, including 2 overtly authoritarian groups – the first Reform led by Farage, the 2nd a loose group of Conservative Islamists, and anti-Western democracy leftists.
The fundamental schism in British politics is the same as everywhere else in the West. Liberals who defend a world of rules, international co-operation, democracy and the rule of law, vs nationalist hard-liners who are fighting an existential war against the moral decay of “Woke” and the threat of a filthy immigrant horde.
Labour
Since 4 July Labour has swung way off to the left. Out of power Labour signalled that it’s priority was economic growth, and that it would make business friendly, pro-growth policies the immediate priority
Instead the budget was about getting public services and public finances on a sound footing, with growth friendly measures limited to areas like house building and infrastructure. They are a much more old fashioned ideological party in power, tax and spend, top down, and a massive majority means they can do what they want for the next 4 years.
Despite that I have actually been impressed by quite a lot of things Starmer has done since winning the election. Tough decisions, disciplined, competent
But he has absolutely no empathy does he?
And that is starting to become a problem. It is OK telling people we have to go through hard times to fix problems, particularly when inflation and interest rates are falling and the economy is starting to grow again
But telling people they have to dig in and take one for the team when he shows no recognition of their sacrifice, or any compassion at all is only going to last for so long. Reeves is just as bad. Cooper not much better
People will forgive a government for making tough decisions if they think they are on their side. Starmer needs to learn that lesson quickly. Maybe it is too late.
Labour failed to realise how badly damaged the state was after 14 years of contempt by ministers with no interest in public services. Peformance in many departments had fallen to CSA levels of incompetence and senior leadership roles are occupied by vapid yes men and Tory chums. Labour don’t get how many of these placemen have to be moved on. The appointment of new cabinet secretary is hopefully the start of taking out the rubbish.
Labour have become the party of the professional middle classes; Doctors, lawyers, teachers; a bit posh, a bit snobby, and a bit patronising. Starmer did well in opposition not to fall into this trap, but in Government he falls into it every time. He presides over the least privately educated cabinet in British history, but listening to them speak you wouldn’t know it. They need to start and speak to ordinary, normal popel and leave the jargon behind.
Voters are volatile. There is little point in Blair giving the current labour government advice. He was an incredibly effective PM but politics has changed utterly since his era. Voters just aren’t going to give Starmer anything like the time Blair had to turn things round.
Reform
We have a group of voters who for the last 14 years have had every daft whim indulged. Every stupid idea, every mad fantasy; austerity, hostile environment, hard Brexit, Rwanda. Bonkers ideas, costing billions. In return for which those same voters loyally supported an increasingly crackers bunch of politicians.
At the end of the 14 years the country was in a pitiful state, and the sensible majority voted in a new government to clear up the mess
Rather than accept responsibility for screwing things up the spoilt voters had a massive tantrum, voted Reform and retreated into conspiratorial fantasy, and petty grievances.
Now they are confronted by a reality based Government they can’t cope that the Prime Minister won’t give in to their every whim or fad
They didn’t riot, they left that to others, but they saw the riots as a legitimate reaction to an illegitimate government, who had failed to pander to them whims and fantasies
The riots gave them relevancy again. Incredibly the parts of the country with the shallowest gene pools were the ones most hostile to the idea of people coming to reinvigorate their meagre genetic stock.
All of which they share with the rest of us on social media. Labour’s failure to communicate is costing them, and allowing on-line rage against the left to flourish. A hatred that is immune to truth or lies. This chap was active in local Reform Facebook groups, and is not unique in his violent radicalisation. He was just daft enough to name his target:
Over the 6 months since the election the level of radicalisation has increased exponentially, and reality has been the victim. Letters were written to the King demanding Starmer be replaced by Farage because of a misreading of Magna Carta. A petition was signed demanding a new election, which the Government immediately agreed to and set a date for a new vote – Summer 2029.
They are at war with the institutions of civil society, not just the RNLI, but all charities who make any acknowledgment of diversity or who pay their senior managers who are meant to work for love not money
The latest obsession is Arla foods – a Yorkshire based dairy company that is the UK’s largest supplier of milk, butter and yoghurt. They are involved in a trial to change cow’s diets so they produce less methane, and reduce their carbon footprint. This has spawned virulent conspiracy theories involving Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. They intend to organise a boycott just as soon as they can agree how to spell it.
To illustrate how far away they are from reality a huge amount of effort was expended trying to get an anti-Starmer record to be the Christmas Number one: Freezing This Christmas by Kier Starmer and the Granny Harmers. The campaign was widely amplified by the Mail, Express, Telegraph etc. When the final chart came out it reached number 37. Rather than accept that it was a piss poor song and Christmas is the most competitive time of the year for chart positions they constructed elaborate conspiracies about the BBC, the music industry, and anyone woke. They live in a closed bubble of information, all of which reinforces their prejudices. Traditionally sensible newspapers like the Telegraph have no full embraced unreality to better connect with their dwindling audience. Historically British newspapers haven’t always told the truth, now they no longer feel that reality is important.
This isn’t just a Reform problem. As a society we are becoming increasingly infantilised. We have come to believe that we have the right to only hear viewpoints that agree with us, and we take offence if we come across a fact or idea that doesn’t immediately reinforce our prejudices. Reform forums on line are just an extreme expression of a widespread problem.
But one issue dominates all others: immigration. Particularly non-white or Muslim.
The UK economy is dependent on immigration to grow. We have a falling birth rate, and without immigrants the labour market, and the economy, will contract. We have record numbers of retired voters, and have relied upon importing working age immigrants to boost the tax take.
The UK has long faced 2 basic choices – a high tax/low immigration economy or a low tax/high immigration economy. The Conservatives for the last decade or more have demonised migrants of all kinds, while at the same time prioritising low taxes even if it meant high immigration. Their last throw of the dice before the last GE was a massive increase in immigration and unfunded tax cuts in the hope that the first would pay for the second.
Labour are serious about lowering immigration, even if it means higher taxes.
There are still people like Farage who claim that we can still have a lox tax low immigration economy if we stopped foreign aid, cut benefits, and booted asylum seekers out of hotels onto the street. The maths behind this just don’t add up – the money saved is a fraction of what would be needed for the tax cuts Farage and increasingly Badenoch are promising. If we scrapped aid to Syria for example the money we saved would fund pensions/pensioner benefits for just over 2 hours.
But increasingly Reform voters, and the broader authoritarian right look to Elon Musk more than Farage or Badenoch. Musk is becoming more and more engaged with British politics. This is the result of his own algorithinms.
Xitter algorithms prioritise far right content. Reform voters in the UK are fed a constant diet of far right misinformation which they rush to share on line. Reform Facebook groups are full of US content about “welfare” and pro-Farmer memes full of references to gophers. When Labour announced that the Conservatives had misled the public about the scale of migration in their last years in power all Reform voters heard was record migration announced by Labour, who they immediately blamed for it.
The same is happening to Musk. Xitter’s algorithms are feeding him far right misinformation from the UK, which he believes and shares just like naive reform voters in the UK.
I predicted foreign interference in the 2024 UK general election, and indeed this happened, there were unpleasant campaigns against gay and female Labour MPs amplified by foreign social media accouts, bot nets, all of which helped elect authoritarian Islamist and Reform MPs.
But they real fight came afterwards. Musk, a supporter of Trump in the US, actively took the side of the rioters against the Government. A foreign social media owner actively trying to challenge an elected PM. More blatant and shocking than anything Murdoch ever tried. Musk failed and looked daft as a result, yet more advertisers fled Xitter, and the losses mounted.
Musk will campaign relentlessly for Reform and Farage in an attempt to put an authoritarian kleptocrat government in Downing Street. Trump’s tariffs will hit the British economy, and try and create an economic crisis to bring down the Government. Farage isn’t the only candidate to lead such a Government. In fact I am not sure whether Farage will bother turning up to the House of Commons, or even leave in protest at restrictions on outside earnings. Other figures outside Parliament, including Boris Johnson might fancy themselves leading a kleptocratic government in the UK with the support of Elon and his tech bros.
Reform could form a government in 5 years, maybe not in their current form as part of some kind of realignment on the right. Hapless failure Andrea Jenkins will not be the only Tory to cross to reform,. The question is do they have room for Farage and Boris Johnson? Rees Mogg?
But it is just as likely that the rise of Reform will destroy the Tories, and help Labour and other progressive parties.
I really should write some more about Badenoch, but the Conservatives are such a shambles that it isn’t worth wasting time on her, and I don’t expect her to last long. Labour won the last election easily, not because people loved Labour, but because they loathed the Conservatives. The Conservatives are working hard to avoid facing up to this and Badenoch was chosen as leader to make sure that they continue to avoid these hard truths. Until this changes the Conservatives will be irrelevant, always outflanked on the right by the lies and fantasies of Reform. Endlessly refighting lost causes.
It’s a fight between fantasy and reality. Lets hope reality wins, but the experience of the US is that shouldn’t be taken for granted any more.
The US
CAsh from Chaos
While the left obsessed about neo-liberalism they missed the rise of neo-authoritarianism. Trump is abandoning the central element of neo-liberalism – keeping markets free from direct political influence. He will openly use his power to favour allies and enrich elites.
Trump’s next 4 years will align the US Government with the interests of billionaires, use his power to diminish equality, celebrate prejudice and bigotry and use the legal system to serve the wealthy and persecute his enemies. Trump’s mentor was Roy Cohn, who had served as legal Counsel for McCarthy’s witch hunts. Expect the same tactics but with the whole of the US state behind him.
Centrist Democrats who supported corporate interests, blocked progressive reforms, and defended a broken status quo helped bring him to power. In opposing Trump they allowed themselves to become defenders of a failed orthodoxy in the name of common sense.
There are examples of democracies becoming authoritarian regimes, but very few going in the other direction – the hatred Russia has for Ukraine is because of their successful transition to democracy.
We have seen countries which were democracies sink into neo-authoritarianism; India and Turkey for example, but most countries who take this path are poor countries, this is the first time a wealthy nation has turned it’s back on democracy. But the sad truth is that America is now a poor country, a very poor country, which has some very rich people living in it.
This doesn’t just mean the kleptoracts and billionaires, but the broad swathe of well off, diverse, well educated, liberal America who decided not to notice the widespread impoverishment of states populated by less educated people with guns and bibles, whose political and religious beliefs they held in contempt, and whose lifestyles they sniggered at.
Well they had better take notice now because these are a key part of Trumps coalition, and they will relish getting their own back on the well educated, successful liberals who looked down on them.
Trump succeeded by offering voters revenge for problems both real and imagined. Trump appeals to losers, who have been brought up to believe that they have a right of birth to be winners, that the American Dream guaranteed them success. Over the last few decades they found themselves having to compete on a more level (but not in any way completely even) playing field, and they can’t cope. Rather than blame themselves they blame those they regard is inferior; women, LGBT, immigrants.
The choice of a non-white female democrat candidate only brought to the fore the huge fault lines in the US over race, and in particular gender. The stream of celebrities endorsing Harris gave the same queasy feeling I got from watching a pre-recorded message of support from Mick Hucknall of Simply Red at the Labour 1992 Sheffield rally.
America has deep rooted misogyny. The hatred towards Taylor Swift, a confident successful outspoken woman illustrates how much hatred towards women is a part of American culture.
Trump’s appearance on Joe Rogan illustrated how important the “manosphere” is, on-line networks of men, often young, struggling to get on, often struggling to connect with opposite sex. Previously autocrats have used social media to connect with older, socially conservative voters who grew up before the internet and are easily manipulated by emotive on line content. Younger voters, who grew up with the internet, are markedly less gullible. But Trump was able to tap into a group of younger men, who were just as willing to believe all kinds of daft stuff because it connected with their resentful worldview. There are a lot of lonely young men out there.
There is a growing 4D movement in the US, of women withdrawing from relationships with men, or at least with men who support Trump. Looking at this research it won’t have a big impact:
Basically there are a lot of conservative young men who aren’t getting any, and that isn’t going to change soon. Donald Trump’s beta cuck army, young men, unlucky in love, resentful, and identifying with the crass misogyny of the orange faced fattie.
This spread even among black and latino male voters who historically voted democrat, but who saw in Trump their own mix of insecurity and machismo.
Trump is a pretty pathetic alpha male. Obese, sweaty, orange faced and with both continence and erectile dysfunction problems. But that doesn’t matter any more than it matters that wrestling isn’t a real sport.
The most immediate place this will be felt will be reproductive rights. With the Republicans holding a trifecta a complete nation wide ban on abortion is coming, along with the redefinition of multiple forms of birth control such as morning after pill IUDs as aboritifactants. HRT and IVF will also be at threat
In states with abortion bans access to routine Obs and Gynae has collapsed as draconian laws make it impossible for Doctors to practice without huge risk. This has led to a huge variance in Neo-natal mortality, still births, deaths in childbirth. The gap in outcomes between California and Louisiana is as big as the gap between Germany and Albania.
With the appointment of Robert Kennedy JR to lead US healthcare it is worth remembering that the US is on the only rich country not to have eradicated leprosy or the Black Death. I have been predicting a public health crisis in America for years now, and mostly these warnings have come true, not as a single shocking crisis, but as a continual rise in morbid ill health, and matching fall in life expectancy.
There will be pressure for a partisan replacement for ObamaCare. This threatens not just the health insurance of lots of Americans, but the viability of their healthcare. Rural hospitals have been closing for the last decade and if their customer base loses their health insurance then their already precarious income dries up. America worries rightly about how it will pay for it’s healthcare. It doesn’t worry enough about the potential for a supply side crisis, when it’s secondary care infrastructure stops being financially viable in swathes of the US.
But is the economy where Trump plans the most dramatic changes.
Trusting Trump with your money was always a bad strategy. For a supposedly successful businessman he has lost an awful lot of people an awful lot of money and is a convicted fraudster.
Covid obscured how bad his record was on the economy last time he was in power, and Biden didn’t get the credit for fixing his mess. Tariffs, and removing millions from the labour market will hurt the US economy mightily. Ordinarily that would be enough to guarantee the loss of the next election but I don’t think Trump and his chums will let that happen
Trump does not follow the normal rules of honesty, intergrity, he will use Government to enrich himself and his cronies, and will use the mechanisms of the state to punish those who tried to hold him to account.
There are 2 main aspects to Trumps economic policy beyond lining his own pocket; Tariffs and mass deportations.
Tariffs mean higher prices. Companies switched production to countries like Mexico because it was cheaper. Even if Trump can use tariffs to force them to bring production back they are still moving to a more expensive jurisdiction, which means higher prices.
Hard to see how there will be workers to re-shore if Trump deports millions of them.
And we forget that the era of tariffs and quotas was also the era of capital controls. If the state is controlling the movement of goods, raw materials and labour it also needs to control the movement of capital. As an example in the early 60s when Spurs wanted to sign Jimmy Greaves from Italy they couldn’t finalise a £100,000 transfer as it was against the government’s capital controls on the movement of money out of the country. In the end the Chancellor of the Exchequer intervened to allow Jimmy to come home.
This may sound extreme but there are 2 parts to the import account; visible and invisible. Visible imports are pretty obvious; a country imports goods or raw materials, and money leaves the country in exchange. But there are also transactions when money leaves the country with nothing physical coming the other way. These are invisible imports, for example when someone invests in a foreign company, goes on holiday, or buys property abroad.
It makes no sense to heavily control the movement of visible imports but do nothing to control invisible imports, which means capital controls. This is a very different world to the one we have lived in. Of course these rules won’t apply to Trump and his rich cronies who will be able to move money around at will.
Higher prices, deportations, and an unbalanced economy with unproductive unfit Trump voters economically dependent on federal government fiscal transfers from liberal states to survive is a recipe for chaos.
When Russia switched from communism to kleptocracy there was such a period of chaos during which a small number of people seized assets and become hugely rich. A period of such chaos might be awful for lots of Americans, but would be very good news for autocrats and business men linked to Trump.
Musk’s starlink was excluded from Federal broadband roll out because of poor connectivity. This of course will change. Musk will be the regulator of the regulators. He can present his own struggling companies and punish competitors.
But if there is enough chaos all kinds of possibilities from privatisation of security services to handing over NASA to Space X. Handing out drilling licenses on federal land to chums will just be the tip of the iceberg.
Tech bros like Musk and Thiel might rationalise this as “disruptors” working their magic on sclerotic American democracy, or the kind of singularity that creates endless future possibility. But really it is just rich people using a crisis to loot public wealth.
And the appointment of Russian assets and conspiracy theorists in charge of national intelligence and the CIA doesn’t just threaten US security. The US is a key part of international intelligence sharing through 5 eyes for example. Intelligence partners will have to work on the assumption that any intelligence shared with the USA will go directly to Moscow too, if not further.
Back in Business School we studied game theory, and the first lesson was about the prisoners dilemma, in which 2 rational actors independently have to decide to co-operate or betray each other.
If you believe that the other player will betray you it is always in your interests to do the same, but faster.
Trump will flout the norms of Government, and act immorally, greedily and crassly. Which gives everyone else the incentive to do the same. That is why Biden pardoned his son. Trump not only brings down his own standards, he creates an incentive for everyone else to do the same.
Many Americans no longer care about the distinction between truth and lies, reality and fantasy, which means they no longer care about right and wrong, good and bad
The only good news is there has been little violence – so far.
It may be that Trump’s 2nd term won’t be total chaos. His ideas might work, and he might draw back from his most extreme ideas.
But I doubt it. Trump acts like he is high on Sdderall, while Musk appears to have vanished down a K-hole
And what for the Democrats?
It is clear in the US is that people really hate the left, and that hatred is fuelled by social media. Snobby, patronising and obsessed by niche causes
Often movements exist for themselves, offering financial support and career paths to promote single issues, which taken together don’t form a programme for government.
But ultimately the Democrats wanted to look cool and clever, hanging with their celebrity mates, and looking good. The Trump campaign was a freak show of the racists, rapists, clownshoes, mumbling and farting their way through the campaign, all led by the morbidly obese orange faced freak. America looked at those 2 groups and decided that they identified with the freaks and the fatties. America needs to work a lot on it’s self respect.
I honestly think it is time for the Democrats to consider Dwane “the Rock” Johnson their next nominee.
What did I get right and wrong last year?
Well this came true with a vengeance:
But I didn’t expect to be sanctioned by Facebook for hate speech:
Trump was found guilty but was still the nominee. I wanted Harris to win, but drafted a Trump victory blog because I thought it was likely
Biden didn’t stand, but left his decision too late. If the Democrats had held primaries they might have worked out that Harris wasn’t their best option.
Labour won a General Election, with slightly fewer voters than I suspected, but won a lot more seats.
I didn’t think Reform or the Greens would win seats and was wrong, I certainly didn’t predict this time last year the rise of an authoritarian Islamist party, although I did warn throughout the year that there might be anti-Labour tactical voting as well as anti-Tory.
I was right that Badenoch would emerge as one of the favourites for Tory leader, and that Sadiq Khan would win another term as mayor. He is in pole position to take over from Starmer as Labour leader, but I suspect Starmer is here for a long time.
I predicted widespread interference in the UK general election. Some of this came true, there were disinformation campaigns against labour candidates, which helped put Reform and authoritarian Islamist candidates in Parliament.
But the big campaign came afterwards, a deliberate attempt to disrupt an incoming Labour government with race riots. This ended with Elon Musk facing off against an elected Prime Minister openly trying to undermine the PMs authority and failing. He won’t stop there.
What can we expect in 2025.
A big spike in inflation and interest rates in the US, with economic chaos creating tension. The attempted round up of millions will be violent and messy. The boundaries between legitimate law enforcement and white right wing militas will become increasingly blurred, with a consequent increase in racialised violence.
Trump will do all he can to create autocratic one man rule; silencing critics in the media, using the judiciary to subdue his opponents, deployment of an armed and angry MAGA base against anyone who might stand in his way.
Truth Social and Xitter will merge, giving Trump control over a hugely powerful social media outlet. Sadly for him the only people left in Xitter are sex bots. Trump won’t notice or care, he will just be gratified that so many bosomy women like his tweets.
One of Trumps close circle will die of, or at least be seriously caught out with, drug problems
The new Superman movie will flop in a country which has just elected Lex Luthor as President.
The UK also faces higher inflation, but is better placed than the US to deal with it.
It is clear what Labour’s plan is:
- Reduce the UK’s reliance on low wage, often immigrant, workers
- Boost wages even if it means redistributing money from OAPs (who did very well under the Tories)
- Increase business investment in the UK to boost productivity, even if that means sourcing capital from authoritarian regimes abroad, and keeping regulation in the City low and wages high.
- Relax the rigid trading relationship Boris agreed with the EU in order to boost trade
They are also clearly more concerned about the risk of inflation than the risk of recession, and are prepared, Thatcher style, to risk a short term down turn in order to make fundamental changes to how the UK operates. As long as wages are increasing faster than inflation GDP growth doesn’t matter.
There are 2 problems with this:
- keeping inflation down is hard if wages are increasing faster than prices, and
- people are just a lot less patient than they were 40 years+ ago. They won’t judge the Government over 5 years; they will judge them much faster than that. The Dems delivered on the economy, delivering near 3% growth a year,, but voters didn’t get them credit for it. The Government really needs to find some pro-growth ideas somewhere to get the economy sorted quickly, or it risks losing the next election in advance.
There is also a tricky dynamic inside the huge Parliamentary Labour Party. There are only 100 jobs in Government, and most Labour MPs will never rise above the back benches. For some the chance to serve their constituents and help change the country is enough, but there are plenty of attention seeking plonkers happy to make trouble in order to get noticed. A few have already lost the whip. Expect more to join them hanging out with Corbyn on the Tory benches.
It is too soon to talk about life after Starmer, but he will be in his late 60s by the next election, and he already looks like a leader doing lots of difficult and unpopular stuff knowing he is unlikely to face another General Election. Andy Burnham and Sadiq Khan need to find a way back into the House of Commons in the next few years.
Reform will get loads of dark money from abroad. Farage might not stay in the House if the new rules outside earnings are too restrictive. Reform, the LibDems and the Greens will win loads of seats in the May Council elections. No-one in their right minds will pretend that the LibDems or the Greens will form the next Government but if Reform win enough Council seats to become the 5th of 6th largest party in local Government the media will declare that they are on course to win a GE. Dafties will believe them.
This will probably be enough to scare the Tories who will almost certainly dump Badenoch for someone more bonkers. Luckily a large percentage of the remaining Conservative MPs are mad as a balloon so they will be spoilt for choice.
A handful of Tory back benchers will also be hit hard by any new rules on MPs earnings, which will cause a flurry of by-elections which the Conservatives will mostly lose. Another handful will defect to Reform, leaving the Tories with fewer MPs next Christmas than this. Labour face a tricky by-election in Cheshire after a drunk back bencher lamped someone in a pub car park. They will mostly likely win, but it will be a test of how well Reform will do with infinite cash to spend.
It looks as if UK politics is becoming more European with Labour (despite it’s shift to the left) as a classic European Social Democrat party, the LibDems and the remaining centrist Tories as the Christian Democrats with 2 authoritarian groupings; Green/Islamist/Corbynite at one end, Reform and the crazy wing of the Tories on the other.
Russia faces much worse economic problems with inflation and interest rates over 20%. Right at it’s great moment of triumph, electing a puppet to the White House, they look weaker than they have ever been.
The invasion of Ukraine wasn’t just an imperial pursuit to end Ukrainian independence. Putin’s ultimate goal was to re-litigate the post–Cold War order in Europe, weaken the United States, and create a new international system based on might not rights that gives Russia the status and influence Putin believes it deserves.
The Russian economy has tanked, Syria is slipping away, and with it their only warm water port whose access to the world isn’t controlled by NATO. This isn’t unusual. Russian history is an endless cycle of Imperial expansion, over-reach, collapse and self pity, each cycle creating the grievances to fuel the next. What is unusual about this cycle is how hollow it is. Russia throughout it’s history was a nation of dark thoughts and great artists, writers, composers, and conductors. Even under Stalin it produced world class art, literature and music, great film directors, elite athletes. It is hard to think back to the last great Russian composer, or author.
Trump will give Putin a victory in Ukraine, just as he gave Afghanistan to the Taliban. Putin will take this and come back for more. But there is no disguising Russia’s weakness. He is an old man, eventually his courtiers will start and wonder if it is time for someone to make their move.
Netanyahu will drag on war for as long as he can in order to avoid jail. Eventually he will run out of road, but not before a lot more deaths.
And it will be another terrible year. We passed a milestone in post war history. The end of the rules based order, respect for human rights and liberties. Those who want to keep the flame alive need to up their game signficantly
I no longer write separately about conspiracy theories. Both in the US and the UK crazy ideas have become part of the political mainstream, particularly in America. Something has changed with Trump supporters; before this was performative cosplay authoritarianism, ironic fascism, now it it the real thing.
People wonder how America normalised having an orange faced racist crook as President, but if you can normalise crowdfunders for life saving medical treatment, and accept school shootings as a fact of life you can accommodate anything. The assassination of the CEO of United Health is a symptom of this new unreality.
Normally I end blogs like this with the quote from Hannah Arendt about totalitarianism – that it attracts people for whom the distinction between truth and lies, reality and fantasy, no longer holds any meaning.
Democracy depends on a shared belief that there is a difference between truth and lies and between reality and fantasy. We may not always agree, but at least we all accept that there are such things as truth and reality. Scientific method, and open debate, are key ways how to gain consensus on what is true and real and what is not.
The problem is that there are an increasing number of people with authoritarian views who no longer believe in that distinction. All that matters is their side, their identity, owning the Libs, putting women in their place. For these people debate is performative, a way of reinforcing their identity, and proclaiming the superiority of their identity over everyone else. It’s not always ideological – often little more than a mass of prejudices and grievances jumbled up with some daft stuff they read on line.
That is why the disrupt and derail any debate. It’s all a performance. But maintaining the distinction between truth and lies, reality and fantasy is key to democracy.
So for a change I am going to close with a quote from Carl Jung:
“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong”
The forces of nonsense are winning. Reality is losing the fight against fantasy. And with no distinction between sense and nonsense, between truth and lies, there can be no right and wrong.
Anything is permitted. And nothing is real.
Sadly I concur in all that you say…!