Thursday, March 04, 2021

Who Is Being Served?

Rishi Sunak is Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer. More than anyone else, he is responsible for the disaster that has hit Britain. Owen Jones writes:

Rishi Sunak is one of the chief architects of Britain’s economic calamity. He is an arsonist posing as a firefighter, not that you would know it from some of the media profiles, which suggested he had more than risen to the occasion. Last year, the BBC released – and, following protests, hastily deleted – a video of the chancellor as Superman; ts offering this year included talking heads complaining that he’s too “lovely” to dig any dirt on.

The charge sheet against Sunak is straightforward – or, at least in a functioning democracy, it should be. A public health crisis is, in turn, an economic crisis. The countries that have most effectively suppressed the virus have tended to be spared the worst economic consequences. That Britain simultaneously has one of the world’s worst death tolls and most severe economic hits is a case study in positive correlation, not coincidence.

Sunak is a master of the art of self-promotion. But the facts on the ground belie the hype:

In a budget supposedly designed to solve a nightmare deepened by Sunak’s own actions, the man who applauded public-sector workers and then imposed a real-terms pay cut on many of them provided no answers for the NHS and social care. If a political consensus is to emerge from the rubble of this national emergency, surely the need to bolster our health and social services is it: the failure to do so led Richard Sloggett, a former special adviser to health secretary Matt Hancock, to call out an “error”.

While Boris Johnson vowed no return to “austerity”, day-to-day spending was slashed by £4bn. While corporation tax will supposedly be raised to 25% by 2023 (whether this commitment will stick, time will tell) big businesses have been handed an untargeted £25bn tax break in the meantime. While the state puts its arm around British bosses, a cut to universal credit in six months will further strip security away from those already stricken by the crisis. While the Tories raid the rhetoric of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell’s 2019 manifesto, its substance has been hollowed out: £12bn is offered for a “green industrial revolution”, derisory compared with Labour’s £250bn commitment.

But it would be too easy for the government’s opponents to retreat into a comfort zone of deriding the same old Tories with their same old cuts. Boris Johnson and, more reluctantly, Rishi Sunak voice a willingness to spend in a way their Conservative predecessors did not. The consistent thread that runs through every Tory project, however, is mobilising the resources of the state to provide support and security for private interests. The dividing line, then, is: who should the state exist to provide for?

That is the central question of our time.

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6 comments:

Toby said...

Great Britain is an island country. Island peoples tend to like their separateness. Having fought Europeans for centuries I never understood why the Brits agreed to the Channel Tunnel. Through the bounty of the Internet I stream radio from Britain. Whether it's BBC or the various talk radio streams it frequently sounds like the Brits are still fighting Brexit, in essence fighting Europe. Will they blow up the Chunnel?

The economic mis-management of your post, Owen, is about more than just money, it's about the dying agonies of empire; it's about self destruction.

Owen Gray said...

Many governments in many places seem to be devoted to self-destruction, Toby.

Trailblazer said...

. Island peoples tend to like their separateness.

And so it is on Vancouver Island..
That you live on Vancouver Island is not enough!
The outlying Island trust such as Gabriola Island, Mudge, Saltspring, Ruxton etc set the stage for a Quebec style association with the rest of Canada

Perhaps our biggest problem is over population and over consumption?
World wide we fighting for the scraps on the table!

TB

Anonymous said...

The Brits are reaping what they sowed. Thatcher, Reagan and Mulroney ushered in the neoliberal age, which resulted in a huge transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top. The global financial elite now control more wealth as individuals than the GDP of many countries, and with that wealth comes the power to shape government policy.

The Tory austerity policies take spending away from the lower and middle classes and distribute the tax savings to the upper class. People quickly caught on and started to question the wisdom of neoliberalism. Needing a distraction, the Tories reached for the old fascist playbook and blamed Britain's woes on foreigners. In a wave of xenophobia, Brits voted to leave the EU.

Ironically, Brexit put Britain at the mercy of international financial elites, foreigners that the Tories welcome with open arms. They have no choice. For years Saudi, Russian and now Chinese billionaires have been buying up British real estate, technology and financial services at prices British elites can no longer afford. The international super-wealthy are simply applying the principles that Britain and other great powers insisted on: that capital must flow unimpeded, that history or sentiment count for nothing. Strange then that Britain is trying to block China from moving its embassy to the old Royal Mint building that was bought by Chinese investors. The symbolism of China moving its embassy to the very building that received the shipments of silver China was forced to pay at the end of the Opium Wars escaped noone.

The Tories are trying to turn Britain into a one-stop shop for international tax evasion. With plenty of British overseas territories acting as tax havens, this has always been one of the City's strengths. But since Brexit fewer shares are traded in London than in Amsterdam. The red tape at the border has caused many businesses to move across the channel and more are in the process. The old Thatcher adage that there's no such thing as society, only individual men and women, isn't working out so well. I fear the next move is from neoliberalism to outright neofascism.

Cap

Owen Gray said...

And so it is, TB, when the official policy is The War Of All Against All.

Owen Gray said...

The same process has happened in the United States, Cap. Neoliberal policies have led to national decline. And the people who championed those policies blame that decline on foreigners.