On 14 June last year, just prior to the UK General Election, I noticed parallels between the Labour Party and its stated aims and how matters unfolded after that party won power in 1964 under Harold Wilson.
An important event was the sterling crisis of 1967. And this week, we read of how the yields on UK government bonds (gilts) have soared – which means investors are far less confident in the country’s creditworthiness. UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, now dubbed in certain quarters as “Rachel from Accounts” due to her questionable background details, is in China at the moment (interesting destination), and there is talk of how the UK might need to be bailed out by the IMF as it was in 1976. Even if this does not come to pass, the descent of this government has taken place with tremendous speed. We could be headed for a sterling and government debt crunch; there is widespread and justified anger about its handling of criticisms about the “grooming gangs” saga; the questionable decision to hand over the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius looks worse by the day; the government is going after private schools and educational rigor more generally; one in five working-aged adults are economically inactive….and on it goes.
We are not out of the first half of January yet. “Hard pounding, Hardy”, as Nelson said at the Battle of Trafalgar.
https://youtube.com/shorts/RkV6hlL-ang?si=Ydy-g3mdsGAjuChH
Dominic Frisby sums up Rachel from accounts (or more accurately Rachel from complaints).
Ah, cap in hand to the gnomes of Zurich. Takes you back, doesn’t it?
I would speculate that Starmer (and by connection the Labour government) is playing politics by the playbook of the old elite. Unfortunately the Western World is changing and that playbook no longer works. Starmer has no easy route to the new elite playbook even if he could conceive of doing so – unlike Tony Blair (spit) who was more politically mobile.
This is much worse than 1960s/1970s.
Back then we still had plenty of heavy industry, more domestic energy, better education system, better culture, didn’t have mass immigration on the scale of current times, no grooming gangs, lower crime, and although in decay the country was not quite yet a vassal of either Brussels or Washington just yet etc etc.
Back then we still had plenty of heavy industry, more domestic energy, better education system, better culture, didn’t have mass immigration on the scale of current times, no grooming gangs, lower crime, and although in decay the country was not quite yet a vassal of either Brussels or Washington just yet etc etc.
That is true in certain respects. However, the “plenty of heavy industry” was in the process of being crushed by decades of out-of-control unions, bad investment decisions and crushing taxes that encouraged enterprising peoples to leave. As for crime and other things, I can remember things such as football hooliganism; the IRA was at its murderous worst; there was the horrible “Yorkshire ripper” murder spree; much of our public infrastructure was in a mess, and the comprehensive education system and end of grammar schools was already well under way, with all its consequences. True, we did not have the “woke” stuff, and the crowding impact of mass immigration and poor assimilation was not as severe as it is now. Back then, people worried about a new Ice Age…..
Unlike the 60s and 70s, however, we now do know how to get out of this situation, having seen the changes under Mrs Thatcher and which continued more or less under Major and even to an extent, under Blair, although the rot started back then.
One big change is that our media is generally less deferential; social media and other comms channels have meant discontent has new avenues for expression. Capital is more mobile and it is easier in some ways to get out of the way of this lunacy, if you are willing to get up and move.
Isn’t this just part of the warp and weft of the Universe? Pi is 3.14159 (and on, and on, and on), the speed of light is about 186,000 miles per second, and Labour governments wreck the economy.
And we are teetering on the brink of blackouts. Companies are having significant costs loaded onto them via taxation.
And we are teetering on the brink of blackouts. Companies are having significant costs loaded onto them via taxation.
But we are signalling our virtue to the world. Which apparently is very important, or whatever.
Johnathan Pearce is correct – and his critics are also correct.
There is no contradiction there – it is just that we are further down the road to ruin.
Someone like Harold Wilson was a Big Government Collectivist and, by the standards of the time, also a Social Radical.
Wilson and co were pro mass immigration – they just had not had the decades of it that Sir Keir Starmer has had, and they also hated Freedom of Speech (hence the 1965 Act and so on) – but they were taking the first steps to ending Freedom of Speech, now decades of such policies (including many Acts of Parliament – but the “education and training” have been even more lethal) have had time to change society.
And since the “reforms” of Prime Minister Blair even the judges are now leftist activists – something that Harold Wilson could only dream of. And if anyone thinks that judges are not now leftist activists – you have a nasty shock coming, if you are ever in the dock for your “right wing” beliefs.
My Marxist half brother (Tony Marks) was busy advising official bodies many years ago – and he was not alone, there were very many “experts” like him. But these things, the corruption of an entire society – a nation, takes time. It happens slowly at first – then all at once.
It is a bit like the lily pad thought experiment.
A lily pad is growing in a lake – the lake being British society and the lily pad being “Woke” (to use the modern word) policy.
If the lily pad doubles in size every day and it takes 60 years to cover half the lake, how much more time will it take for the lily pad to choke the whole lake, to cover all of it?
The correct answer is – one more day.
Industry?
People forget just how far ahead Britain was.
Up to 1890 (when Britain was overtaken by the United States) British industry was larger than any industry had been in the history of the world.
Even in the 1930s (so smeared in the history books – my grandfather, who had been an ordinary lorry driver, was the first person to tell me the truth about Britain in the 1930s, I later found out that he was correct and the establishment history quite wrong) Britain was miles ahead of most countries – almost twice the output per man of Germany (that is something they did not teach you in school – or university).
Indeed British industry may well have been, relative to the size of the population, the best in the world as late as 1938.
It takes time to destroy all that – all those strong family owned manufacturing companies, something like JCB did not use to be exception (as as they are today in modern Britain) – they used to be the norm.
Again it takes time to destroy all that – there is a lot of ruin in a great nation, but (sadly – tragically) they have had the time.
The United Kingdom is not even in the top ten of manufacturing powers any more – and it is about to fall a lot further.
“But Paul The City – Financial Services”.
Sometimes when I discuss that I seem to upset people – so I will just say, please do not trust the future of your children to an economy based on banking and other such, and leave it at that.
And those that were in power looked upon the ruin of the land and saw that it was good. And a great nation was destroyed, its culture quashed, its industry reduced to rubble and its people cowed. And so England was no more and those in power rejoiced, saying “There is no more England, the English are vanquished and its people dispossessed of their heritage. This is a great victory for us.” And so the once great nation was plunged into strife: immigrant against immigrant and all against the English. And so it came to pass that the land was laid waste and the people of England destroyed.
“And England is utterly destroyed and ruined”, smiled the elites, “and never more will rise; why, NOBODY could EVER put Humpty back together agai… err, what’s that?” “Oh Sirs, just another immigrant, nothing to worry y’selves abaht; some guy named ‘J. Milei’, sez ‘ee’s from Buenos Aires, wherever ‘at is…”
” – AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!” wailed the Elites.