The General election July 4 2024

This General election is the most Boring ever! 

What's the point?

50 years ago, October 1974 was my very first General election.

 

And I was thinking...

How times and the parties have changed since then?  

Labour In particular has changed beyond my wildest imagination. From a warm Social Democratic Broadchurch that I remember, to what was and has become today under  Sir Keir Rodney (Plunker) Starmer, Conservative Mark 2 a party for Business.

These are bad and uncertain times in the world both at home and aboard, However, the Tories are going to be annihilated and consigned to the dustbin of history possibly (Fingers crossed) permanently?

Tory Britain is about to fall... But what follows could be far worse.

When Britain goes to the polls on 4 July, it is certain Keir Starmer’s Labour Party will surge to victory. A victory by default, the Tories after 14 long years are hated more than Labour is distrusted. 

Starmer has changed the Labour Party

Starmer has changed the Labour Party since taking over from Jeremy Corbyn, many say he has been ruthlessly purging the left, deselecting candidates from the left, Imposing candidates on constituency parties and much more.

Starmer has moved Labour towards the Liberal right of the old Conservative Party, and Labour could move further, more to the right once in office.  

Politics in general is moving to the right in Britain, In Europe, in the US.

I think new waters are flowing in all directions, a turning point in establishment politics is merging that could combine to change the politics of this country and around the world. 

The legacies of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan are still playing out before our very eyes all these years later. 

They both planted the seeds of the world’s move to the deep right politically. In Britain Thatcher, implemented sweeping reforms concerning the affairs of the economy, eventually including the privatisation of most nationalised industries, and the weakening of trade unions

Reaganomics and Thatcherism

The fact that British and US elected leaders within a year with strong anti-government, anti-Keynesian, and advocates of the private market sector and tax reductions was a remarkable coincidence.

Both President Reagan and Mrs. Thatcher had the distinction of getting their names linked to a special line of thinking. 

Both leaders attempted to shift the centre of the political spectrum sharply to the right in their policies.

Reagan set about undoing a half-century of legislation which had built up the public sector while opening up America to expansion led by the private sector. 

Mrs. Thatcher was occupied with doing the same thing in Britain. Both leaders believed that government itself was partly the cause of their mutual economic problems, including high inflation and slow economic growth. The answer they believed was less government. In contrast, all previous leaders since the 1930s had assumed that if things went wrong, the remedy would be government intervention.

Neoliberalism

The term neoliberalism has become more prevalent in recent decades A prominent factor in the rise of conservative and right-libertarian organizations, political parties, and think tanks, and predominantly advocated by them, neoliberalism is often associated with policies of economic liberalization, including privatization, deregulation, globalization, free trade, monetarism, austerity, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society.The neoliberal project is also focused on designing institutions and is political in character rather than only economic.

How does neoliberalism affect the poor?

Higher rates of poverty; less protection against poverty, unemployment, and healthcare risks; social exclusion. Austerity-driven financial policies leading to an increase in unemployment and poverty; reduced labour costs.

The origins of Neoliberalism lie in early 1920s, in the works of Austrian economist and sociologist Ludwig von Mises, as a response to the powerful organizations of German and Austrian workers (Misses, 1981 , 1983 , 2005). It represented a means of justifying the concentration of capital, the subordination of the state to the market and an anti-socialist system of social control. Mises became an economic advisor to the Austrofascist dictator Engelbert Dollfuss. He argued for corporate tax cuts, balanced budgets, wage cuts and the repression of trade unions. He believed that Mussolini’s seizure of power had “saved European civilisation. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history”. Moreover that “the capitalistic market economy is a democracy, in which every penny constitutes a vote”. Elected by means of what he called a “consumer plebiscite”, the rich depended on the “will of the people as consumers”

The Conservative Party learnt a very salutary lesson in 1972 when five shop stewards in the London docks were imprisoned for breaching a court order. This lead to massive unofficial strike action and the, normally moderate, Trades Union Congress (TUC) called a one-day general strike. The government climbed down and found a legal excuse to release the so-called “Pentonville 5”. Thereafter, the basic principle of British anti-trade union law has been to avoid direct penalties on workers, but rather to threaten the funds of trade unions that do not obey the law to the letter. This drives the trade union bureaucracy to protect its assets by making sure that their members only engage in lawful industrial action.

Neoliberal politicians make a big play of their opposition to regulations.

However, they are quietly in favour of the maximum regulation of trade unions,

particularly restricting their right to strike.

Successive governments have imposed increasingly draconian restrictions on the normal functioning of trade unions, in particular making it increasingly difficult to hold a legal strike. Currently, not only must a postal ballot be held, but ballots have to achieve at least a 50% turnout of eligible union members, with a majority voting in favour of strike action. In important public services – including in the health, education and transport sectors – an additional threshold of 40% in favour of industrial action from all eligible members must be met for the action to be legal. A Government website said: “Tougher ballot thresholds will reduce industrial action in important public services like transport, health and education by 35%, and 1.5 million working hours a year will be saved from strike action. These measures will provide a £100 million boost to UK economy over 10 years”.

A split in the Conservative Party between its pro- and anti-EU wings finally forced Thatcher out of office and, indirectly gave birth to Ukip (United Kingdom Independence Party) in 1991, a virulently right-wing, racist, anti-European party, led by Nigel Farage. Farage confirmed his neoliberal credentials when the 1997 Ukip manifesto said “Regulations destroy jobs and the Ukip is determined to reduce the regulatory burden on industry and on small businesses in particular” ( United Kingdom Independence Party, 1997 ). Since then Farage has used Ukip, and latterly the Brexit Party, to pull the Conservative Party to the neoliberal right by threatening to attract their voters.

In 2012, a group of Conservative Members of Parliament published a book entitled Britannia Unchained that argued that that the UK has a “bloated state, high taxes and excessive regulation”. It continues: “The British are among the worst idlers in the world. We work among the lowest hours, we retire early and our productivity is poor”.