This morning I listened to John Humphries interview the Shadow Education Secretary, Ed Balls, on BBC Radio 4′s Today program. Yes, I know, I should move on from ranting about the inadequacies of New Labour and start ranting about the Tories and Lib Dems but hang on.
Following the publication of Mandelson’s diaries and a book by Andrew Rawnsley both documenting the infighting within the New Labour cabinet between Blair and Brown, Humprys was trying to pin down Balls on his association with the infighting through his association with Brown. Mandy had called the infighting an insurgency and Humphries said that Andrew Rawnsley’s book claims Mr. Brown was vacillating before a planned “coup” in 2006 and Ed Balls told Mr Brown: “It’s too late. It’s all in place. It’s going to happen.”. Adn article in The Evening Standard claimed Balls also said: “Blair is never going to go. He has to be pushed. You mustn’t be weak. You’ve been weak for too long.”
So Mr. Balls waffled and said the book was full of inaccuracies but, tellingly, did not deny the specific incident.
Humphries drew attention to Labour’s part in the financial crisis and a McKinsey document stating the UK’s horrendous debt. Mr. Balls waffled, saying “interests rates were low” and “inflation was low” and went on to say that the crisis was global, implying that nobody is to blame at all.
This tosh is like a second rate rehash of Gordon Brown’s interview technique and shows that Balls, like Brown, does not understand the linkage between cheap money (low interest rates), the asset price bubble and the financial crisis. I am reading the diaries of Tony Benn – “More Time For Politics” at the moment and he wrote something which goes to the heart of New Labour spin. He said: “….I no longer feel that I am required to believe what I am told by (new Labour) ministers”.
It occurred to me that the feud between Brown and Blair may have contributed, in a very substantial way, to the prevalence of manipulators, bullshitters and bullies surrounding the New Labour government. Both Blair and Brown would have needed hatchet men and this need would have driven out any wise, thoughtful or competent advise. Leading on from this one can speculate on the whole nature of the New Labour years without the likes of Campbell, Mandelson and Balls. If wiser heads had prevailed might Blair have remained relatively sane and not led the UK into Iraq? Might Brown have had more time for the economy and avoided the worst of the financial crisis? We shall never know.
Several people have commented to me that the Tories would have screwed things up just as bad as Labour. Maybe. But of course they didn’t did they. It was Labour and you have to punish governments who screw up by chucking them out otherwise you are just rewarding incompetence.
No doubt the Tory/LibDem coalition will draw my attention in time, though right now I just find the absence of Mandy bullshit a refreshing change and with the remnants of New Labour still voluminously TALKING BOLLOCKS it is easy to get distracted.
The Labour party wont move on until it faces up to its mistakes and rejects the unsavoury characters from the New Labour years. If it doesn’t then, once the Tories have fallen out of favour, we will be faced with another Labour government wastin ti’s time on spin rather than achieving objectives. In the words of Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition the Labour party need to “Confess the heinous sin of heresy”and “reject the works of the ungodly”. ie admit that they screwed up and chuck out the likes of Balls.
I am getting really irritated by Labour in opposition. Their outrageous self riotous indignation is disgusting. From Roy Hattersley arrogant assumption that the Lib Dems should ally with Labour to Harriet Harman winging that Lib Dem voters did not vote for the current policies.
Hey Harriet! I am a Liberal Democrat voter, don’t tell me what I think!
This week Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East became almost hysterical in the House of Commons and shouted that the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, was a “miserable pipsqueak”. This abuse from a member of a party which led the UK into war under the leadership of such miserable frauds as Mandelson, Campbell and Blair!
Labour backbenchers have still not faced up to fact that their acquiescence to being led by charlatans and incompetence for the past 13 years has cost them power and cost the country dear. Labour should wake up and smell the coffee. They knowingly allowed a bunch of frauds to lead them in order to win the election. This is an open secret. Even Tony Benn has admitted it publicly. They sacrificed their principles for power, they screwed the economy, they lost the election.
When Mr. Watson uses the term pipsqueak, I suggest that he is projecting. Today he swaggers around insulting people like a drunken bouncer but why did he not have enough courage to speak out when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were shafting Labour and the country? Could it be that Mr. Watson is a miserable pipsqueak?
I saw a cartoon in The Independent yesterday which implied that The Tory/Lib Dem coalition are using scare tactics to introduce spending cuts. I’ve also heard the Labour cabinet condemning all the cuts but giving no guide as to how the deficit (and the debt) which New Labour ran up should be brought under control. For those not steeped in financial jargon the debt is how much we owe and the deficit is the shortfall in our annual spending. So by running a deficit we increase the national debt. The talk by the new coalition government so far has concentrated on getting the deficit under control but bare in mind that Gordon Brown ran a deficit even during the boom years as the UK was spending more than the government gained in taxes!
Depressingly but, perhaps predictably, all we hear from everyone who has been asked to make cuts is justification for why their particular budget should not be cut. There was an education official on the radio recently “explaining” that the national debt is not like a credit card and that we can simply roll over the debt. Easy! We’re in debt, no problem, borrow more. It is this daft logic that has lead to the UK national debt of nearly 70% of GDP in 2009.
During the 18th and 19th centuries the United Kingdom became wealthy through empire and the industrial revolution and used that wealth to provide comfy lives for the British elite. Note that the majority of the British people had lives worse than many of those in India or elsewhere in the Empire mainly because of the cold British climate and the appalling working conditions during the industrial revolution. The British elite, however, did very well.
During the two world wars the European powers smashed each other to bits and America and the USSR stepped in as world leaders. The U.S. had ensured that the UK paid for aid during the war but the Marshall Plan got the UK and Western Europe back on their feat. The UK then hung on to it’s place in the world for a while. Our industry and trained workforce gave us “comparative advantage” compared to “developing countries” and so the UK and other European countries remained fairly wealthy and fairly secure. Sure Japan, Taiwan and others developed their own industry but most of the world remained pre-industrial.
Post World War 2 a Labour government came to power and, dazzled by the apparent success of Socialism in the USSR, started looking after the working class. For the first time ordinary people gained access to clean water, health care and pensions.
We developed a world view roughly as follows: The West leads the world, developing technology and operating industry, the far east copies the West and and performs some production and the “third world” supplies the raw materials but remains poor and dependent on aid.
But the UK was complacent., we became convinced that all our wealth was a natural state of affairs and that it could all be paid for by creative accounting. While we were naval gazing the Soviet Union collapsed, open markets became the vogue, China joined the World Trade Organisation and the rest of the world adopted capitalism and found that they were pretty good at it. Not only were they good at it they were unencumbered by a mature democracy or legislation to protect workers.
Global leadership, industry and power is now shifting from the democratic Western nations to nations who are either dictatorships or corrupt token democracies. As a quick preamble to my next bit of ranting I should explain, for the uninitiated, that the a common measure of a countries wealth is Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is a measure of the total value of goods and services produced by a country. Because countries vary in populations another common measure is to divide GDP by the population and derive a figure known as GDP per capita. This gives a measure of how much each person, on average, produces.
Time for some figures.
UK GDP is sixth in the world, just above Brazil at 8 and India at 11 and below China at 3.
National debt is at 68% of GDP, higher than Ghana at 67.5% or Uganda at 19.3%
The UK’s budget deficit (how much more we spend than we earn) is at 14.2% of GDP, above Sierra Leone at 12.35% and Vietnam at 9.3%
And yet
The UK’s defence budget is 2.5% of GDP, that’s more than above China at 2% and Germany at 1.3%.
The UK’s Education spending is the same as South Africa and Mexico at 5.3% of GDP. That’s above Bhutan at 5.2% but below Fiji at 5.6% and Bolivia at 6.3% and Yemen at 9.5%!
It’s also worth considering that other countries do not have debt, they have surplus! They have saved money and built up substantial wealth in Sovereign Wealth Funds. For example:
United Arab Emirates 627 $Billion
Norway 443 $Billion
China 288.8 $Billion
The UK still has some cards up it sleeve. In 2008 we were the sixth biggest manufacturer after Italy but Russia was at 7 and Brazil at 8.
In recent history the UK has relied on North Sea oil to top up our income. I cannot find any figures on what percentage of our GDP is made up from Oil and Gas but I recall reading that the tax take on Oil and Gas was the largest contributor to the British exchequer followed by Finance. I believe that was before the financial crisis.
All this is not to say that the United Kingdom is doomed, just that the world is changing and we can’t rely on the UK remaining wealthy by default. British policies today dictate the future of this country and if we continue to run up a debt our nation will decline. It not rocket science. There are younger and fitter countries in the world.
Just today I heard a British politician talking about maintaining British leadership. Our political elite have not yet caught up with the 21st century. Why should Brazil, Taiwan or China be interested in being lead by a mid size debtor nation on the other side of the world?
No nation or empire lasts for ever. Nations and Empires rise and fall. The British Empire has fallen and one day the UK will fall and I suggest that, if we are not careful, people will look back and see that the obvious start was the 21st century due to complacency, vested interests and the inability of a people to make tough decisions..
We are no longer one of the few great industrialised powers in a world populated by uneducated and illiterate farmers. The UK is now just one of many educated and industrialised countries. It is true that we have a more mature system of law and democracy but undemocratic and corrupt governments around the world see this as an encumbrance and not as something to emulate.
We are in massive debt, the oil money is running out. New Labour’s policies of spend and hope have failed. I support the current government’s prescription of large scale cuts but this should be supplemented by informed strategic planning.
We should also reconsider our commitment to allowing foreign entities to buy British assets and industry. Sovereign Wealth Funds referred to above often buy industry and assets from the developed world and this is acceptable if everyone plays by the same rules. However some of the largest of these funds are owned by nations who play by very few rules. Specifically we should be wary of allowing SWFs of single party dictatorships or corrupt regimes owning large stakes in the UK.
Globalisation is all very well while the foreign money is pouring in and funding industry and jobs but once these foreign owners have their feet under the table they often find that it is more efficient to centralise production and transfer the industry abroad. This would be fair enough were it possible for British companies to buy up industry in China, Germany or Japan in the same way but other countries are not as open as the UK.
Last Sunday night there was a TV program enthusing about one industry in the UK which remains cutting edge and world leading. This was British Aerospace and it’s production of Rolls Royce Trent aircraft engines in Derby.
The company was very impressive. What is less impressive are rumours that in order to gain access to the larger and more lucrative U.S. military business British Aerospace is trying to morph into a United States company. Once this is achieved how long will it be able to justify dispersing it’s business over two continents?
Since this blog started in January 2008 it has been mainly polemic. Polemic, I believe, justly targeting hypocrisy. Two commons targets have been Israel for continuing a racist policy of settlement building while branding all criticism of this policy as racist (anti-semitic) and New Labour for spending most of their energy on marketing a supposedly prudent economic policy while wasting huge amounts of money, dragging the UK into massive debt and achieving very little.
Tony Blair is now gone, Gordon Brown is out of government and, while the spectre of Peter Mandelson lingers like a fart in the House of Lords the nightmare of New Labour is finally over.
So what now? Who will I complain about now? Nothing new is happening in Palestine / Israel and I don’t see a resolution to that problem in the near future. So who can compete with the ghastly liars and frauds that comprised the upper echelons of New Labour? Who can match Blair when it comes to grinning like a crazed muppet while lying through his teeth?
It’s true that New Labour Next Generation are even as I write manoeuvring for position. The Millbands appear in public shaking hands and chirpily angling for advantage. Perhaps the Labour Party will resist being pushed into an early leadership election with just Pinky and Perky but I am not counting on it.
Probably Labour are out of power for a few years yet so the question is: Are the golden days of railing against hypocrisy and incompetence over? Will the Tory/Lib Dem coalition deliver fair and efficient government? Should I be searching for a new domain name. Talking Sense perhaps?
Supporters of Labour in the United Kingdom appear incensed that they are no longer the party of government and are condemning the Liberal Democrats for forming a coalition with the Conservatives. Words such as despicable, treachery and deceit have been used.
Labour suffered a massive drop in support and polled far fewer votes than the Conservatives. The Labour party, Gordon Brown and the rag tag bunch of nobodies that formed the last cabinet are widely disliked throughout the country yet they now behave as if they have been cheated of power.
“I fear the lady doth protest too much”! Their allegations of betrayal and despicable conduct should be directed at their own leadership. Gordon Brown’s decision to bring the twice disgraced Peter Mandelson back into government placed the Brown premiership firmly in the “spin over substance” camp of Tony Blair.
Let’s just list the reasons why they are out of power:
No party gained an overall majority.
All parties are free to negotiate alliances as they see fit. The Liberals Democrats are an independent party and are not obliged to side with Labour.
A Labour / Liberal Democrat coalition would not have achieved a majority and would therefore have no more right to govern than the Conservatives alone.
Ok, we’re off. Voting for the UK General Election has started and pretty soon the TV will start pumping out predictions and theories. Jonesxxx carried out his civic responsibility and visited the local community centre to make his mark.
Yesterday I saw a clip of the vile Brown entity on some chat show with his wife and they asked him what he would do if he couldn’t be PM and he prattled on about working for a charity. This put me in mind of Tony Bloody Blair. I recall that during his time in office Mr. Blair told us fervently that he was passionate about education, passionate about child care, passionate about young people, passionate about hospitals, passionate about politics and passionate about Britain. So what did Mr. Blair do as soon as he left number 10?
Well, he resigned as a Labour Member of Parliament for Sedgefield and got a job with an American bank. Funny, as I don’t recall him mentioning his passion for banking or America or leaving the people of Sedgefield once that they had served their purpose.
Of course he also got a job as a Middle East Peace Envoy but this seemed mostly to involve living in America working for large banks.
So, what will Mr. Brown do if he can’t be PM? What will he do if the Labour Party dump him as leader? Will he carry on nobly as Labour member for Dunfermline East? WIll he go and work for a charity as he suggested? Don’t count on either. My bet is that he will spend the remains of his life in a darkened room writing endless justifications of his period in government and how it could have been so different if he had been Prime Minister in 1997 before Blair screwed everything up.
Today Gordon Brown warned “Either governments co-operate internationally or the unfettered markets will fail us again”. Funny that. He was quite keen on unfettered markets a few years ago. Then again, one has to follow fashion. How awful it would be if Mr. Brown wore big kipper ties or polo neck sweaters or advocated light touch regulation or declared that he had abolished boom and bust.
Ah, abolishing Boom and Bust, that was Brown’s last idea. He failed of course but he’s already forgotten about that and is onto his next big idea: Global Regulation. Just today the Telegraph reported that: “The Prime Minister called for international co-operation on a ‘global solution’ to an economic crisis which he said was caused by the banks and not by governments. Meetings of the G8 and G20 in the coming months should agree common rules on banking liquidity, supervision and rewards.”
This goes to the core of why Gordon Brown is incompetent. This goes to the core of his neurosis. Mr. Brown is a narcissist. He believes he is one of histories “Great Men“. Remember the Freudian slip where he claimed that he had saved the world?
All economists know that the abolition of boom and bust is akin to the alchemists attempts to turn lead into gold. Any statesman should understand that getting global regulation for the banking system is also out of the question. Yes, Mr. Brown, we all know it would be a good idea for the United Nations to dictate fiscal policy to Greece. We all know that the UN should be able to ensure the liquidity requirements of China. But what if the UN wanted to dictate regulation to British banks?
The UK will not even join the Euro so we are not going to hand regulatory powers to any international body. Just last June the City Minister, Lord Myners, warned that “European proposals on banking regulation could hand greater political control of Britain’s vital financial services industry to the EU if left unchecked.” Yet Gordon Brown thinks he can reinvent The Man From Uncle. What next we have to ask? A perpetual motion machine perhaps?
Gordon Brown has a Napoleon complex but he is more Tommy Cooper than Napoleon. Endlessly claiming he can perform miracles but endlessly cocking it up. Just like that. Just like Dostoevsky’s “Idiot” you just know he will knock over the Chinese Vase.
Mr. Brown has a massively over rated view of himself. He is impractical and lacks judgement because his vainglorious naivete always makes him go for an idealistic and unattainable solution. In short, the man is a fool.
Why the BBC is worth keeping
Meanwhile the BBC, to my mind, are doing an excellent job covering the admitedly insipid election.
They have a web page with an “Election Calculator”. This allows you to adjust the share of the popular vote that a party might gain to see how that would “translate into seats” as they say. Of cousre this will be based on assumptions and algorithms but it is quite interesting that you have to wind the LibDems up quite considerably before they start getting any seats. In one scenario I ramped the popular vote up to 37.3% for the LibDems (Con:30.6%, Lab:24.7%) yet still the LibDems did not have more seats that the Tories or Labour. I’d say the electoral system needs to be changed.
I have been in favour of proportional representation in the past but I do think it would be a mistake to break the MPs link with their constituency. At least if all else fails it is possible to go and sit in front of your MP and harangue him. So these days I think that we should move to a Single Transferrable vote for the common and have PR for the House of Lords. However, I would have long terms for the H of L to allow them some independence from the party whips. I’d have the election at the same time as the Commons but only every other election would you get to vote for the Lords.
There is a phrase being bandied about by the Labour party whenever Gordon Brown does something stupid. The phrase is “well, that’s Gordon” and we are hearing it practically every day now.
The reaction we are supposed to have is, oh well, he may be a bit clumsy and irascible but he is really very good with economics and, well, he’s like your mate who can be a bit of a prat sometimes but he has a heart of gold and you wouldn’t swap him for the world.
This is BOLLOCKS!
Mr. Brown may well be irascible and clumsy but this does not mean that he has sound judgement or that he is a good leader of th British economy. Let me restate some of Mr. Brown’s blunders.
Taxing dividend payments depressing pension funds
Selling the nations gold at the bottom of the market because he thought he had abolished boom and bust. (and announcing his intention first to drive the price lower)
Setting up a Tripartite system of financial regulation which resulted in no clear responsibility for regulation of the banks.
Deluding himself that inflation was low because cheap Chinese imports kept high street inflation low while gigantic asset price inflation took place in the stock and property markets.
Running a budget deficit even during the boom years
Dithering while Norther Rock collapsed.
There is another little myth that Mr. Brown himself propagates. This is that the financial crises is global in nature and therefore he cannot be blamed for any of it. This, also, is bollocks. The reason the crises is global is because each responsible government member around the world was, to a greater or lesser extent, imprudent and incompetent. If a group of people go into a bar and drink beer and all get drunk it is not an excuse for one of them to say: well, we were all doing it.
And the leaders of the hyper-capitalist trend which lay behind the crises were the United States and the United Kingdom. Remember Brown preaching sanctimoniously about “light touch” regulation to the other countries in the EU?
Yes the fact that Gordon Brown is an unpleasant character is beside the point.
What now?
Tags: Gordon Brown, tony blair, new labour, israel, Hypocrisy, racist, peter mandelson, marketing, Tory, Labour party, Liberal Democrats, coalition, Polemic, racist policy, settlement building, anti-semitic, prudent economic policy, wasting money, debt, nightmare of New Labour, New Labour Next Generation, Millbands, leadership election, railing against hypocrisy, incompetence, Lib Dem, efficient government, Talking Sense
Since this blog started in January 2008 it has been mainly polemic. Polemic, I believe, justly targeting hypocrisy. Two commons targets have been Israel for continuing a racist policy of settlement building while branding all criticism of this policy as racist (anti-semitic) and New Labour for spending most of their energy on marketing a supposedly prudent economic policy while wasting huge amounts of money, dragging the UK into massive debt and achieving very little.
Tony Blair is now gone, Gordon Brown is out of government and, while the spectre of Peter Mandelson lingers like a fart in the House of Lords the nightmare of New Labour is finally over.
So what now? Who will I complain about now? Nothing new is happening in Palestine / Israel and I don’t see a resolution to that problem in the near future. So who can compete with the ghastly liars and frauds that comprised the upper echelons of New Labour? Who can match Blair when it comes to grinning like a crazed muppet while lying through his teeth?
It’s true that New Labour Next Generation are even as I write manoeuvring for position. The Millbands appear in public shaking hands and chirpily angling for advantage. Perhaps the Labour Party will resist being pushed into an early leadership election with just Pinky and Perky but I am not counting on it.
Probably Labour are out of power for a few years yet so the question is: Are the golden days of railing against hypocrisy and incompetence over? Will the Tory/Lib Dem coalition deliver fair and efficient government? Should I be searching for a new domain name. Talking Sense perhaps?
Somehow I don’t think I’ll need to.