The count through the night after British elections makes great TV. What could be more juicy than thrusting a microphone into the face of someone who has just made their concession speech and asking them how they feel? ITV’s election coverage roped in a lot of ex-politicians who had been there themselves to carry out this task, including two former Chancellors of the Exchequer, one Labour and one Conservative, Ed Balls and George Osborne. The two former rivals seemed very pally. As is the custom, they interviewed both the winning and the losing candidates in various constituencies just after the results were announced when emotions are at their most raw.
So, in the early hours of Friday morning, Steve Baker was standing in Stoke Mandeville Stadium where the Wycombe count took place, having just lost his seat to Labour, being quizzed by a visibly gloating Ed Balls. Baker talked about three factors that got him into politics, all of which had been presided over by the government of which Balls was a part: Extraordinary Rendition, Labour bringing forward the Lisbon Treaty to avoid having a referendum on the Constitution for Europe, and “that your government rode an enormous credit boom within which the money supply tripled, leading into the global financial crisis”.
Chuckling, Ed Balls said, “Goodness me, Mr Baker, I have to say, y’know, it’s 2024. You’ve just lost your seat in your constituency. You’ve sort of thought of three different things which all happened over seventeen years ago. Are you maybe in denial?”
Freed of the obligations of being a minister, Baker’s response did not spare either the Labour or the Conservative Chancellor:
“You know as well as I do that these big treaty changes with the European Union, and indeed the monetary system post-Bretton Woods, is fifty years old – and it’s now breaking down. And I’m afraid you and George are as bad as each other on this particular score. Neither of you have ever really understood monetary economics and I’ve wasted a lot of breath in the House of Commons trying to explain to George in particular what was going on, and the kind of injustice it was manufacturing. Well, much good did it do everybody. And now, with the nation seething with a sense of injustice, economic injustice – of course they are; they can’t afford house prices if they are young! Why? Because cheap credit was pumped into a housing market in which supply was constrained by planning laws, about which neither of you did anything. So, you know, at last, as I say, I’m free, thank God.”
Commentators as varied as the financial journalist John Stepek, the IEA’s Reem Ibrahim, and the very left wing Aaron Bastani have reposted Baker’s reply. As Stepek said, “Sorry but @SteveBakerFRSA is mostly, perhaps entirely correct in his analysis here. And the smug reaction – ridicule, not to mention the extraordinary notion that 17 years ago is ancient history with no bearing on the current situation – exemplifies why voters are fed up”.
I don’t quite understand why young people can’t have a mortgage but can pay more than a mortgage would cost in rent. I assumed that it was because, after sub prime lending caused the banking crash, much more stringent rules were brought in about who the banks could lend money to. Have I got this wrong?
Yes, Mr Baker’s parting shot was entirely on point. It’s just a shame that in-between being elected and making some good noises, he wept as he voted for The Enabling Act aka The Coronoavirus Act 2020, knowing he was voting for tyranny but doing so anyway, like President Kalinin had reportedly done as Stalin told him to sign the decree sending Kalinin’s wife to the camps.
Not my original quote:
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they attack you. Then you win.
Steve Baker couldn’t gain any traction against The Powers That Be – the Smug continue to ride the gravy train of ‘good thinking’ people. I still hope that Farage and Reform, who have been ignored, then laughed at, and recently attacked can move on to winning. Winning well enough to derail the Smug.
Of course Ed Balls and George Osborne seemed very pally. They’ve both been in the club of politicians who, on fundamental things, are in agreement. You could take 2/3 or 3/4 of MPs from Labour, LibDem and Conservatives and move them into one of the other parties and it wouldn’t cause them any anguish at all. They are all in the Uniparty.
I was a member of a political party 45 years ago and I saw a lot of decent people who were ordinary members. BUT I saw councillors, some with ambition to be leader of the council,I saw a parliamentary candidate, and several people aspiring to be candidates for,then members of, the Welsh Assembly. As a pretty useful rule of them – the higher up they were in the system the less time they had, the less respect they had, for ordinary people.
Right at the top, do you think Blair gave much thought to the people of Sedgefield, or indeed to the ordinary people of the UK? The same principle applies to Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Sunak and Starmer.
I’m not so sure about Truss. I think her misfortune was that, despite decent ideas, she lacked the personal skills of Blair, Cameron and Johnson.
And of course she was baterred when she tried to step outside the comfortable consensus of the Uniparty.
The Uniparty rules in the UK.
It rules in the USA too.
Donald Trump has been extremely famous for decades. He only became the ogre we are all so frequently warned about when he challenged the Uniparty. And that’s not accidental.
I wonder if there is a single person in the country, whatever their political persuasion, who wouldn’t want to give the smirking Osborne a good slap (preferably several of them).
I doubt it.
It’s the fashion these days. The odious Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart have teamed up to present a podcast, where they massage each others smugness.
Sorry, not going to listen to anyone that describes the housing crisis in terms of planning laws but doesn’t mention immigration.
@Stonyground
I don’t quite understand why young people can’t have a mortgage but can pay more than a mortgage would cost in rent
I hear this idea a lot from complaining Gen-Zers a lot. The simple answer is that it costs a lot more than the mortgage payment to own a house. I don’t quite know how it works in the UK, but here in the US your property tax bill can be as much as three or four months of mortgage, plus insurance, repairs, maintenance and so on. AFAIK, although there are a lot of variables, mortgage payments are maybe half to two thirds of the cost of owning a house. It might be different in the UK.
And for sure they tightened up the mortgage lending rules after 2008, but that isn’t saying much since you could get a mortgage with no income and no job before 2008. In 2007 my dog could have got a mortgage. Which is saying something since I don’t have a dog.
The reason most young people can’t afford a house is simple: inflation. And inflation, generally speaking, is the result of the government spending far more money than they take in. That and the dreadful banking system we have that allows banks to create money out of thin air. (Cue Paul Marks.)
And an important point is that the inflation is differential. Prices go up, wages do not. Imagine if, instead of us calling it inflation we called it “national wage cuts”. “Under Joe Biden’s Bidenomics your wages were cut about 9% per year.” It puts a whole different spin on things don’t you think.
Rent is *always* more than a mortgage, because rent is mortgage + insurance + repairs + maintainance + etc + etc + etc + etc.
Edit: As Fraser has just said.
I’m not sure how relevant it is but when I, born 1958, was growing up, most people we knew rented rather than owned their houses. My parents started out in a council semi and then moved to a tied cottage. When it was time for me and my two brothers to go our own ways, in the 1980s and 90s, almost everybody did. We were used to progress and living standards generally moving in a positive direction with just the occasional setback. That steady progress isn’t guaranteed I realise and I have never felt as pessimistic about the future as I do now.
Hopefully, Paul Marks and the rest of the unReformable Tories will be taking a time-out to think about where their nonsensical policies and piss poor performance have taken them and how to move forward.
Personally, I think the party should simply abolish itself, allowing those Tories in name only to bugger off to their rightful home in the Illiberal Undemocratic Party (or Liebore, not that there’s much difference) and those that want to save this country should join Reform.
If Reform will even have them.
Go Reform!
@John Galt
From now on, given what they have just given us, point out forcefully that all they do is split the reform vote.
Tongue is in cheek (partially at least), but how long before this will actually be the case?
They could announce that they will maintain themselves for the duration of the parliament and at its dissolution (or the announcement of the next election or at some point of their choosing) would wind the party up and free their MPS to seek whatever home they can, stand as independents, perhaps relaunch as “conservative party 2029” or whatever.
The nightmare scenario is that it might somehow revive, labour will perform as their intellect and abilities allow and will decline from their impressive peak of 33% of the vote and it will be rinse and repeat, 2019 again.
It looks though (I sincerely hope!) that they’ve had it, but that nagging doubt remains.
It was a good exit for Baker, who seems to gone from being one of the ‘hardman’ of Brexit to a PC wetdrip in recent years. There was a flourish of the old Steve early in the campaign when he rubbished Sunak’s national service ‘policy’. But within days he was moaning about Farage’s ‘racism’ and back in wetdrip mode. Sad really. If he was supposed to be one of the best Tories, what is worth saving? His blasting of Osborne and Balls was good though, if completely inconsequential.
On the scope of the bromance between Osborne and Balls (or see Stewart- Campbell as mentioned below, or in a US setting, see how the Bush family are so friendly with the Clintons and Obamas), it does highlight that many political rivalries are basically like pro-wrestling rivalries – kayfabe (fake). I wouldn’t be surprised if Rishi Sunak will in time have some cushy media racket with a failed Labour or Lib Dem politician and they’ll both agree how awful white working class people and Reform are.
There are some permanently kept out of the club though – the likes of Trump, Farage, the Le Pens, etc – these are the people who might potentially threaten the Punch and Judy show of establishment politics
It is true that in the long term in must be cheaper to own than to rent a similar place.
Reasons why people rent anyway:
They can’t accumulate the up-front costs to buy.
They aren’t sure they’ll be in the same place long enough to offset the costs associated with buying and selling.
They can’t afford a place at all without a roommate.
It’s not possible ti buy a place similar to what they are renting (they are renting an apartment, and they’d have to buy the whole building).
There are people who just don’t think things through. I’ve pointed out to people that it must be cheaper in the long term to rent than to buy, and they’ve insisted “duh duh no it isn’t”.
Of course Ed Balls and George Osborne seemed very pally. They’ve both been in the club of politicians who, on fundamental things, are in agreement. You could take 2/3 or 3/4 of MPs from Labour, LibDem and Conservatives and move them into one of the other parties and it wouldn’t cause them any anguish at all. They are all in the Uniparty.
I went to a funeral a few months ago for someone I used to know, the journalist and PR figure Sumeet Desai (very nice guy, by the way). Both Osborne and Balls were there, in the church of St Bride’s, off Fleet Street. They are good friends. Give or take, these men share the same broad set of assumptions about how things should be.
Baker’s scorn for these men, and others like them, is thoroughly deserved. I know Mr Baker a bit. He’s been one of the few redeeming figures in the modern Conservative Party. I hope he goes on to good things in future, and continues to drive intelligent ideas.
Farage denounced Sunak over D-Day for being out of touch. I don’t think he was being racist in a dog-whistle sort of way; after all, Farage gets on with a few non-white Tories. For once, I think the charges against N Farage were unfair.
One factor in a rational decision between renting and buying is risk.
If you buy, you take risks that you can neglect if you rent, such as a major collapse in the value of your home — and i mean the real value, not just the market value: you can ignore the market value if you intend to live there until you die (your heirs will take the loss); but what if your neighborhood is devastated by BLM? What if your local economy is devastated by “progressive” policies?
If you buy to rent, then the market value is also a risk, which translates into higher rents for your tenants.
OTOH if you rent, you run the risk of being evicted. Moving is one of the stressful events that puts people at most risk of a heart attack. I am personally immunized, by having moved so many times (also across the Atlantic, back & forth); so i’d rather run the risk of being evicted.
” including two former Chancellors of the Exchequer, one Labour and one Conservative, Ed Balls ”
Shadow, only shadow. Thankfully
This is what Baker was accusing Farage of racism/bigotry blah blah of….
What Farage said was pretty mild and common sense. Baker comes across as having his head in the sand and/or trying to appease the members of dar al-islam in his backyard (didn’t work anyway!).
I don’t think it is at all “racist” to point out that Rishi Sunak’s family background is not British. He was born here, he is British to that extent. His parents were not. His wife was not. She is still an Indian citizen. She does not intend to stay in Britain to have her estate subject to inheritance tax. She met Rishi in California, and they both held green cards.
So really, what did D-Day mean to Rishi? Something he had to appear at, and say a few words. Nothing that merited canceling an interview with ITV.
When I think of WWII, I think of family members. It is real to me. I don’t think it is to Rishi. I think that is what Farage meant.
I have zero problem with Mr Sunak’s wife not being, at least yet, a British citizen. She didn’t break any laws. What’s the issue here?
If they green card holders, they’ll have to file tax returns to the IRS. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.
It’s also worth pointing out that many of Indian descent fought on the U.K. side during WW1 and 2.
I have my problems with Mr Sunak, but the “he’s not really one of us” is not a complaint I make against him. His D-Day faux pas was a sign of a man out of touch, that’s all.
Steve Baker tried to explain it to the two men – and neither understood that the endless creation of money-from-nothing is leading to economic and social (cultural) disaster.
“Pearls before swine” – pearls of wisdom before two swine of the political establishment.
Steve Baker also shows the problem of our political structure – he understood the problems, he had a passionate desire to help, he got elected and…. and NOTHING, he found he could do nothing in our political system.
It was not lack of knowledge, it was not “corruption” (he was not bribed), it was not lack of desire to do what it is right – he just had very little power, as a Member of Parliament or a Minister.
The elected do not have much power (the elected have some power – but not much) in our political system – it has been a gradual process of power bit-by-bit moving to officials and experts (or “experts”) over a very long period of time.
That is the brutal truth behind all the talk about democracy – and not just in the United Kingdom.
So we in the Western world watch our societies heading towards disaster – knowing we can do nothing to stop it happening.
Future historians will condemn us (especially politicians who know what is happening – politicians like Steve Baker – and ME) “why did they not prevent the disaster?” the historians will say.
We are not preventing the disaster because we are not allowed to prevent it – even when we are “in office” we are not in power.
Indeed “in office, but not in power” has become a commonplace term.
On a lighter note – the politician that Steve Baker most reminds me of is the 19th century Liberal John Bright, another great defender of liberty.
Both men were/are devout Christians – perhaps they will meet up in Heaven, and have a long talk.
If I might beg to quibble with Snorri. The risk in rent v buy is broadly symmetrical.
If you buy, you risk losing a pile of money if house prices fall. But you still have a place to live in.
If you rent, you are safe from losing a pile of money. But you risk losing a pile of “house” if house prices rise. ie you get a lot less house going forward, for your money. (Eviction being one example of this effect, but not the only one.)
Money is not THE measure of wealth, it’s just an asset like any other. Or rather it has its own pros and cons, compared to money. It keeps you liquid, it’s easily divisible, easy to sell. But it is very vulnerable to inflation medium term, you can’t live in it and so on.
I don’t own a house, but that is because I value all the chores of ownership – maintenance etc – very highly (negatively.) Buying would need to be a lot better financially to tempt me into all that homeowner hassle. I prefer to outsource hassle.
I have my problems with Mr Sunak, but the “he’s not really one of us” is not a complaint I make
That he is a citizen of the world, apparently with attitudes to go with it, is a huge problem for someone specifically charged with forwarding British interests.
Lee Moore:
Be my guest, by all means!
I submit that house prices falling should not be a homeowner’s main concern.
The main concern should be that the neighborhood/town/country degenerates to the point that you want to sell at a loss, rather than stay put.
A valid point, but not a major concern for people with a nomadic attitude, such as myself.
If house prices rise unsustainably, that means to me that the economy is in a precarious state, so i want to get out before TSHTF.
But it is true that i would stand to gain by selling my house, if i owned one AND if i bought it close to the bottom.
John Galt – Reform has five seats, and it cost (perhaps) 94 seats – “if Reform will have them” a group of five MPs in a party that is a limited company owned by one person, it does not have “members” in any real sense (although the internal democracy of the Conservative Party is not anything to boast about either). True some of those 94 M.P.s were no great loss (such as Dameon Green – last seen writing an article in the Guardian, his spiritual home), but some were a great loss.
But there is still the fundamental point about lack-of-power – let us say that by a magic spell Reform had a majority in the House of Commons what could it actually do? Or rather what would it be allowed to do by the Credit Money Corporate State – this rule by the government and corporate bureaucracy (including the Bank of England).
JohnK – I could not care less about the race of Mr Sunak, after all Suella Braverman, one of the best people left in the House of Commons, also has brown skin and parents that came from overseas.
What I do care about is the following…..
When Mr Sunak was asked, only a few months ago, in the House of Commons about the Covid “vaccines” Mr Sunak replied – “I can state, categorically, that the Covid vaccines are safe”.
In short, at least IF Mr Sunak has the information available to the average person (most people know the Covid “vaccines” are not very effective and are certainly NOT “safe”), Mr Sunak lied to the House of Commons – and he lied about a matter of life-and-death.
That made me doubt what I had endlessly been told (and told by some people who I respect) that Mr Sunak is a “very nice man”.
Perhaps he is indeed a “very nice man” – perhaps what he said in the House of Commons was a moment of madness, perhaps he actually believed what he was saying (in which case it would NOT be a lie) I do not know.
But it made me doubt it – as it was about life-and-death. I find it very hard to believe that Mr Sunak could really be so ill informed as to actually believe what he said.
But perhaps he did believe what he was saying to be the truth – perhaps Prime Ministers live in a “bubble” of disinformation from officials and “experts” and know far LESS about important matters than ordinary people.
That would be even more concerning than Mr Sunak lying.
Indeed Prime Ministers and Ministers living in a sea of misinformation – with officials and “experts” giving them a totally false view of the world, is the stuff of nightmares.
Still the whole discussion is artificial – as the chance for reform (small “r”) is lost.
Liz Truss is wrong in thinking that there is “Ten Years to Save the West” – it is already too late to prevent a massive crash, economic-social-cultural, indeed it is already happening.
And Suella Braverman (brave and good though the lady is) is wrong in thinking in terms of “in five years we can…”.
The United Kingdom does not have five years – not for the Conservatives, not for the Reform Party, not for anyone.
The officials and the special interests (the Credit Money Corporate State – the government and corporate bureaucracy) won – and we lost.
We have all lost – lost the country, lost the chance to save it.
“You are wrong Paul – there is still hope”.
Let us hope I am wrong – I fight on, but I fight on without hope (I have not had hope for years).
Johnathan:
I am perfectly well aware that large numbers of Indian troops served during the war. Were Rishi’s relatives amongst them?
You cannot deny that his links with Britain are tenuous. That’s Farage’s point, and I agree with him. It would be the same if he was of Brazilian descent. The D-Day commemoration was just a day in his calendar, and not a full day at that.
@JohnK,
What caste was Rishi’s ancestors from? Likely brahmin?
AFAIK, brahmins had almost never served voluntarily in any armed force – they view it as beneath them.
We bought our house in 1992, there had just been some financial tremor caused by the UK withdrawing from the ERM if I remember correctly. So the house prices were down and ours cost around £39,000. I don’t know what it is worth now or whether it has kept pace with inflation, it doesn’t really matter if we want to keep living in it. My daughter might differ on that point I suppose.
But the seeds of the 2008 crash were planted by Pres Carter in 1977 / 1980 when he incited the release of funding to force the influx of high risk housing investments the subsequently lead the the greedy banks off loading their risk far & wide.
Paul:
It’s not about Sunak’s race, it’s about his Britishness, which is a different thing. His links to Britain seem weak to me. His wife is not British, and has no loyalty towards this country. Indeed, the changes to non dom status mean she must leave or risk 40% of her fortune going in inheritance tax. I can only imagine Rishi will leave with her.
I agree with you about Rishi’s absurd and untrue comments about the so-called vaccines (which are not vaccines). That is the big lie which the establishment cannot admit, a bit like the blood scandal. It comes out in the end, but they all hope it will not be for decades. I hope they are not so lucky.
In all, Sunak was a disaster. If Britain had elected an Indian heritage PM, that would have been all well and good. Instead, we had one imposed on us by a Conservative Party coup (thank you “Lord” Graham Brady). It’s not his fault he is small and has a whiny voice, but it did suit his failure of leadership. The enduring image of his tenure of office will be of him soaked in rain at his podium in Downing Street, effectively announcing the death of the Conservative Party.
JohnK: to say that a person of immigrant descent has “weak” links to the UK isn’t racist, necessarily, but it is bigoted and presumptious. (People have said this about all kinds of immigrant groups down the years, such as Jews and Catholics, with ugly consequences that I should not have to belabour on this blog.)
One could turn it around the other way and note that people who chose to make a life in the UK, and worked their arses off to build a business, as Mr Sunak’s parents did, and send their bright lad to Winchester, etc, are showing more commitment to their adopted country than many of those who make a big deal about their ancestors having been here for centuries and who seethe in rage from some godforsaken housing estate and live on benefits. “Contempt” is not a strong enough word for what I think of that mindset.
Back on the original topic of the post: One reason why Ed Balls and George Osborne are such oafs in their remarks about Steve Baker is because they surely know that the financial crash of 2008, and all that stemmed from it (QE, asset price bubbles, inequalities associated with said bubbles, etc) cast a long, and continuing, shadow over the world in which we live. Baker deserves credit, which is too little recognised, for drawing attention to what he thinks are the proper lessons from this: to have a banking system that is based on real savings, not “printing from thin air”; a banking system where those who run banks have skin in the game and cannot hide behind limited liability; a government that operates a balance budget, keeps taxes low, etc.
If Balls and Osborne want to smirk at a politician who argues these points, then more fool them. Ed Balls has sought to reinvent himself as a pundit who went on Strictly Come Dancing; Osborne edited the crap Evening Standard, seems to be in various sinecures, etc. Much joy to them.
Johnathan:
Sunak could not wait to leave the D-Day commemoration to do a meaningless interview with ITV. That is what prompted this. What does D-Day mean to him? Plainly not much.
Yes he is British, but his roots here are thin. He plotted his way into No 10, but did not seem very British at heart. He is the first PM with a foreign wife, and she will not be staying here. So will he let her go or follow her? I do not think he will end his days in Britain. This was just a stop on his journey, an entry on his CV, or resume as they say in America.
This is just the attitude that motivates people to support Farage, Trump, Le Pen, Meloni, Orban, etc. (Not that i approve equally of all of them.)
Apparently Johnathan fails to consider that, just possibly, it is people like Sunak* who doom working-class people to live in godforsaken housing estates and live on benefits.
* and that has nothing to do with his background or the merits of his parents: other PMs, Tory and Labour, with generations of British background, have been just as guilty.
There are plenty of people who have chosen to make a life in the UK and work their arses off to make a business. Unfortunately those business all too often involve taxis, kebabs and haircuts with a high incidence of associated unlawful acts. While it is unlikely they will send their sons to Winchester it is a stone-bonk certainty they won’t be sending their daughters.
They have already elected their first four MPs.
I do not consider these people to be British whatever their passports and benefit books (or the modern day equivalent) might say and if that mindset makes me contemptible then so be it.
Far better if the Tories had won zero seats in my view. The sooner the Tory Party is destroyed the better.
From this point onwards, they’re simply splitting the Reform vote.
Snorri writes:
Apparently Johnathan fails to consider that, just possibly, it is people like Sunak* who doom working-class people to live in godforsaken housing estates and live on benefits.
Perhaps you would like to explain how people who move to a country, set up businesses and work hard are “dooming” people to living in housing estates and live on benefits? The economic pie gets bigger when enterprising people move to a country. This is just mad, lump of labour, zero-sum fallacy rubbish that I would expect from trade union militants and Guardian readers, not Samizdata commentators. Oh well, guess I was wrong.
Snorri: I was pointing out the absurdity of how the son of an immigrant is, by virtue of that fact, accused of having a weak sense of national feeling, even though his parents chose to make a happy home in the UK, worked hard, and so on.
I have seen countless examples of immigrants in countries across the world who are more British, or American or whatever than those who can trace their ancestors back hundreds of years, because immigrants know they are sometimes sneered at, and make a big effort to “fit in”, often in quite touching ways. Some of this is a desire to make a new home, and be successful at it. I simply cannot work out why this isn’t obvious, and why the presumption always is that such folk are somehow dodgy or, as one commenter here sneered, only interested in being taxi drivers or whatever. (Maybe that is because supposed more genuinely British people cannot be bothered to put in the work.)
Mr Sunak is a politician; he played the game and got into power. I don’t like how this happened, but he did what anyone else, of any background, could have done.
Since we are on the subject of how having a foreign wife is somehow suspect, I should point out that Nigel Farage was for a while married to a German woman.
Johnathan:
Mr Farage was never PM, and I doubt his wife was a nom dom worth £700 million. You don’t seem to get it. If we had voted Rishi in, then fine. But by virtue of a Conservative Party coup we got as PM the man who came second to Liz Truss. An Indian heritage man, a Hindu, a man with a green card, and a man married to an Indian non dom millionairess who will not be settling in Britain for the long term. But if you don’t have a problem with that, fine, it’s a free country. Only joking.
Johnathan: wake up. Rishi did not move to Britain (OK, he moved back from the US!) and did not set up a business.
Social cohesion and the common compact are very real things. A country that ignores these realities simply becomes a stopover, a mere hotel for whoever wishes to pass through.
There must be shared experiences, cultural touchstones. Otherwise, it is not a country anymore.
My own country of Singapore, being much smaller, faces this dilemma – we need immigrants and migrants, but too many at once and we dilute our essential core and the tenuous ties holding together an already diverse polity.
Yeah, borders are so racist. And the nerve of those British types unwilling to perform labor at the new rates that resulted from the old rates being underbid by our new neighbors.
Y’all should just replace your ingrate lower and middle classes.
One thing increasing notable about the high street in many UK cities and towns is that there are vape shops, mobile phone accessory shops, ethnic barbers all over the place, and almost all seem owned by immigrants or immigrant background. It’s hard to imagine all of these make a profit as they often look empty. After rent and rates I doubt many do more than break even, if that. Have to suspect these are fronts for money laundering and worse.
Martin,
Some light was shone by a recent court case when two foreign nationals were working as barbers using forged IDs provided by their non-indigenous employer/landlord who also benefitted from them paying rent to live above the shop, paying to hire their chairs and paying him a further percentage of their takings.
I doubt they went to the trouble and expense of coming over by inflatable boat, a simple air fare would have sufficed before quietly dropping off the radar.
I suggest this practice is a plausible explanation as to why many of these shops have few if any customers but invariably have two or three youngish men sitting inside playing with their phones (plus often a very new very expensive car parked illegally outside in the payment entirely unadorned by parking tickets. Traffic wardens aren’t stupid).
Martin:
I have about six “Turkish barbers” within a mile of my home. I heard on the grapevine that the police know all too well that they are money laundering operations, but have been told by senior management not to touch them. Don’t want to inflame “community relations” you see.
Snorri, you need to wake up. And learn to comprehend basic English. I referred to Mr Sunak’s parents.
JohnK: Farage was never PM. True. But he leads a political party and attacked a PM, and people like you make hay out of Sunak being married to a foreigner. What a knob you are.
Farage wants political power. If he and his fans think foreign spouses are a cause for criticism, he should take a look in the mirror.
Many immigrants here work in arenas such as healthcare and IT. But go ahead and sneer at people driving cabs and running dry cleaners.
Contemptible.
As an aside, Mr Sunak’s wife is giving up her non-dom status. It’s temporary. So it’s not like she’s going to avoid a lot of tax. As a Green card holder, the Sunaks are under the umbrella of the IRS, potentially. And that’s not a gentle regime,
Johnathan:
I think I dealt with you in a perfectly polite manner. But now you can fuck off.
JohnK, you said that I just “don’t seem to get it”. Like I am stupid or something.
That is rude. So I hit back.
Let’s have another look at one of your choice sentences: “An Indian heritage man, a Hindu, a man with a green card.”
Mr Sunak was born in the UK, so the fact he is the son of a foreign-born person is irrelevant. As is the Hindu aspect. Why raise it? What’s the relevance? About the only thing that I can think of being a problem is the Green card – if he uses it. But then again, Boris Johnson was born in the US, and a dual national, so I am not getting why this is being brought up in Sunak’s case.
And as I said, being a nom-dom isn’t illegal, and it is temporary, and there is in my view no suggestion of a serious conflict of interest. Unless anyone who owns property abroad is somehow suspect, which probably includes a large chunk of the British middle class with homes in Spain.
Johnathan, you need to wake up, and learn to read basic English.
I explicitly wrote that Rishi’s parents have NOTHING to do with my criticism of YOUR way of thinking. And how could it be otherwise?
Sounds about right.
Apparently GDP statistics calculations now include criminal activity, which may also factor into the indulgence of government towards these dubious businesses.
One thing BoJo, Liz Truss, and Sunak as PMs all supported increased immigration to boost GDP statistics. Given that economic growth has been very anaemic since the banking crash in 2007/8, one has to suspect if you took out the GDP growth accounted for by immigration related population increase and criminal activity, there will have been no net growth, and the country per capita is likely to be poorer than it was 15-20 years ago.
It means you don’t get it. I also said it’s a free country. I don’t care if you don’t get it.
It’s so blindingly obvious!
The other thing I find enraging. The UK imports about 40% of our foodstufs, yet, almost the only growth industry is building new-builds on prime agricultural land, thus taking productive land out of production, permanently. I’d assumed it was because the Tory party is captured by the house builders. But I doubt much will change with our new metrosexual prime minister.
Also noted; with the recent ‘victory’ of Labour, that repulsive reptile Blair has stirred from its lair.
Res ipsa loquitur.
Snorri: “Rishi did not move to Britain (OK, he moved back from the US!) and did not set up a business.”
Yes, I know that; his parents did so, and provided him a platform of a strong family. Something to applaud. Mr Sunak studied for a while in the US. (Spoiler alert: lots of young people do. And it works the other way with Fulbright and Rhodes scholarships.) His parents came to the UK, ran a business, and he went to Winchester, one of the best schools in the UK, and ended up doing very well in the City. A pretty impressive CV, in fact. He married a rich lady, who by all accounts dotes on him. Sounds like he is one of life’s positive stories (at least until he entered the Cabinet!)
He also, lest it be forgotten, voted for Brexit and was told by David Cameron that his career prospects were finished. Talk about ironic, given later events.
One of Sunak’s many mistakes, in my view, was recalling Cameron to government as Foreign Secretary. That certainly reeked of establishment chumminess. And made zero difference to the party’s standing in the country. In fact, it might have put another nail in the coffin.
The perplexing issue is that I probably agree with most of you folk here on issues of the day, but I find the fixation with Sunak’s foreign wife/Hindu background a bit, well, narrow-minded, even inconsistent, given Farage’s and Johnson’s own situations, as I have described earlier. I have my problems with Mr Sunak, but absolutely no issue with his background or circumstances, or think he fails some kind of loyalty test.
Anyway, I am done on this thread.
I repeat – Suella Braverman, one of the best people in Parliament, also has brown skin and her parents also came from overseas.
The ethnic attacks on Mr Sunak leave me cold – I do not like the man, but his ethnic origins and so on, are naught to do with that.
Full disclosure – my great grandfather was also from overseas (from the Russian Empire – hence “Marks” it is a Russian Jewish name, unlike “Marx” which is German Jewish).
The first action of my great grandfather was to throw a docker into the River Thames for pulling his beard – given the state of the river back then, this could be described as attempted murder.
So I have criminal, as well as foreign, origins.
“But the other side of your family Paul – the other side”.
They were IRISH.
Here is a post-election interview with Mr Baker by the Spectator.
He starts off saying half his voters stayed at home, his vote collapsed, but the Labour vote went down. He blames ‘D-Day’ and betting, not the appalling record of the last 14 years.
He also says at 14:23 that the real problem with the Civil Service is Ministers, a rather astounding revelation, and he goes on to blame Ministers being given boxes of work in a paper format, which he says creates too much work for officials.
At 15.30 he says ‘If you turn up for power telling everyone they’ve been doing it wrong forever,.. there’s going to be animosity before you start.‘. To which I say: 1. So what, they are employed to do what they are told. 2. Presidente Milei.
At 23.02 he says that he’s quite glad to be ‘free of it’ (being an MP) given the caseload he has (the constituency duties of an MP). Which all begs the question as to why he stood in the first place.
Mr Ed – yes the interview with Steve Baker is very depressing.
A good (morally good) man with sound economic ideas – but with no fire in his belly.
In a way the problem is indeed ministers – ministers who lack fighting spirit.
Sadly, ex RAF man though he is, like Mr Baker himself – at least in this interview.
President Milei he is not – and without British versions of such a person, this country is finished.
Even if the United Kingdom makes it to the next election in five years time (sadly doubtful) then a sort of meek-and-mild version of Christian politics (no disrespect meant to Mr Baker’s Christian faith), a sort of caricature of meek-and-mildness, is not going to work.
Still Mr Baker does have a counter argument – he claims that kindness and gentleness can achieve things that nothing else can.
Perhaps he is correct – and, in five years time, the United Kingdom will still be about (although the British people will be in grinding poverty), and then a great wave of pro liberty reform will take place – due to kindness and gentleness.
I will not mock it – as it would be wonderful, but I hold it to be very unlikely.
“if you turn up for power….”
Oh dear – even after years as a minister the Gentleman has not grasped that being “in Office” is not necessarily being in POWER.
Ask the former Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab – who was forced to resign for “bullying” officials, it turned out that most of the things said against him were blatant lies – the only “charge” that was true was that he gave orders to officials and expected them to be obeyed.
If that is unacceptable in the United Kingdom (and it seems that it is) then democracy is already dead.
Paul:
You are right about Dominic Raab. Even today, people repeat the canard that he “threw a tomato” which is just not true. Rishi Sunak could have stood up for him, Raab had been personally loyal to him, but he let him go. I think that was a real failure of leadership from Sunak, he chose the blob over a true ally. Much good it did him. Why he thought he could be PM I do not know. As you say, he is a million miles from someone like Millei.
As for Steve Baker, I cannot account for his behaviour. He was a true Brexiteer, who then crawled on his stomach to apologise to Ireland, who had been pivotal in blocking Brexit. It made no sense to me. You either believe in national sovereignty or you don’t. The Northern Ireland framework and the Windsor agreement are both an affront to national sovereignty. I do not think any other country would have accepted them, I do not know why we are so wet. If the EU thought that Brexit required a customs border in Ireland (which already existed anyway), then so what? Let them erect it on Irish territory. On British territory we did not need to do anything. The whole border issue would have soon faded away. Instead we allowed the EU to make it our problem, not theirs. The same spineless attitude is apparent in the boats crisis. If you want to “stop the boats”, you do just that. You stop them and tow them back to where they came from. If France does not like that, it is up to them to police their own borders, we will police ours.
No doubt Sunak kowtowed to the blob who said it could not be done. Anything can be done, if you have the will to do it. But Sunak was a middle management squish who did not have any talent for leadership at all.
JohnK.
You sum thing up well here.
I have been told (endlessly) that Mr Sunak is “a very nice man who loves his children” – “loves his children” I can accept, but “very nice man” does not fit with his actions, such as the betrayal of Mr Raab, and “I can categorically state that the Covid vaccines are safe” – Mr Sunak’s infamous words in the House of Commons only a few months ago (i.e. long after it was obvious that they were not safe).
The “blog” (what Hegel would call the spirit of God acting in the world – which is what he thought the state machine, the bureaucracy, was) is very powerful – but it does not help if the Prime Minister is the sort of person that Mr Sunak is – very unlike President Millei.
Steve Baker – I have never spoken privately with him, somehow he has got it into his head, or seems to have got it into his head, that being a religious man means not-even-saying-boo-to-a-goose – I just do not agree with this theological position.
By the way – I do not agree with Hegel on theology either.
Proves my point that when Steve does something good (confront Balls-Osborne), he has to quickly follow it with something awful (Spectator interview). Manages to come across as both very full of himself while also sounding close to being a broken man. And he can’t help but countersignal against those to his right (Farage/Braverman).