Cheap and Nasty Government; But Would Labour Be Any Better?

The present government constantly provides ministers and 'spokespersons' who will defend any policy and any situation. Thus, in the past 24 hours, a survey has shown that the majority of NHS nurses go home from their shift, not only physically exhausted but emotionally drained as well. They report not being able to be present when people die, completely alone. They are anxious and embarrassed that medication is not given on time; and is sometimes missed altogether due to the pressure of work. Some clown in the Health Department did not deny that the report was true, but made the irrelevant comment that there were 7,000 more doctors in the hospitals that there had been seven years ago.

Soldiers reported that the vehicles that were designed to protect them from roadside bombs and similar hazards often break down in the hot weather conditions for which they were supposedly designed, at a huge cost. The Defence Department flatly denied this report, asserting that the vehicles were effective in keeping the troops safe: maybe so, if the failure of the vehicles keeps the soldiers in their bases. Old naval hands despair at the lack of resources to keep the massively reduced fleet operational and seaworthy and fit for action. The two new aircraft carriers have no aircraft. There are plans to reduce the number of Royal Marines beneath the present level where they cannot cover all the actions to which politicians commit them. Mrs May flies off to Estonia to declare that Britain will defend all its NATO allies: with words and sharp cuts?

More than seventy Tory MPs have signed a demand to the Prime Minister to implement her election promise to impose a cap on energy bills for millions of households: it would only affect a minority of families, but would cover many of the most vulnerable. A smaller number of Tory MPs are also agitating for delay in the implementation of the government's penny-pinching scheme to accelerate the roll-out of the single state benefit. This would save money; particularly in that as people are migrated from the complex of former benefits onto the new system there is a six-week delay before they get any money from it. This the government's outward cash-flow is deferred; while individuals and households are plunged into desperate want, forced to apply to food banks and doorstep lenders.

The sheer insensitivity of all of this calls into mind the cynicism of the worst Victorian workhouse masters and the cynical Stalinist Commissar. Both of those classes of individual - like the civil service in austerity Britain - have had drummed into them that no more resources will be made available; so they simply deny truths that are on open display.

It is the record of socialist governments, whether Marxist or not, to assert their own propaganda more often and more fervently when the truth does not accord with the official line. This is happening more intensively [and more absurdly] by the day in Venezuela at the present time. Jeremy Corbyn's  enthusiasm for the Maduro regime consequently becomes more indefensible by the day: but the Labour leader evades every opportunity to admit the lack of substance in the regime's claims and assertions; or to recognise the increasing level of oppression. Those who wore 'HANDS OFF VENEZUELA' T-shirts and baseball caps in and around the Labour Party Conference earlier this week seemed to me to be anticipating their future role as deniers on the domestic scene when the Labour Government that they expect to take office soon fails actually and humanely to implement their proposed policies. While Corbyn can still claim to be a 'seventies idealist, the people who have built his machine are ruthless advocates of extreme measures to rob the rich and to coerce the rest of the population. Nasser, Ghadfi, Ken Livingstone and a score of other 'strong men' shoved aside the much gentler figures who originally fronted their coups or electoral victories. It is well authenticated that while Mrs Attlee was driving her husband to Buckingham Palace to take the King's commission to form a government, Professor Laski, Herbert Morrison and others were plotting to hold a leadership election in the Labour Party that would choose a far different candidate than the election-winner Attlee.

There is a real and proximate danger that a Labour election victory, especially if the party won by a small majority, would quickly be followed by the overt capture of the government by a radical faction who would move quickly to consolidate their power undemocratically for a long period of authoritarian rule. As the saying in revolutionary circles goes: rely on one man one vote, once! Hence, although the Labour offering in the past week has been largely composed of highly desirable policies, and the austere Tories show that they cannot mind the shop while they flounder towards a Brexit disaster, the risks in having either party in power are immense.

Brexit: Farce Slides Into Disaster

I voted for Leave, on three grounds:
1. I was sure the Remain side would win; but if a strong minority voted to Leave that would provide a check on the political class in the UK and in the EU,
2. The Cameron-Clegg-Osborne policy of austerity was ruinous, economically and in its effect on social cohesion: so a strong opposition vote might cause a rethink;
3. In a despairing sort of way, I wanted to register my opposition to a European super-state.

When the result was announced, I was far from ecstatic: I then began to wonder how a post-Cameron government, inevitably to be led by Tory Remainers, would package the obvious outcome of withdrawal from the political EU institutions while remaining in the safety of the Economic Community. When Mrs May won the leadership, my hopes of any sensible outcome were smashed by her idiotic mouthing of the phrase 'Brexit means Brexit'. It was her job to suggest what Brexit might mean, in sensible political terms, and to lead her party to persuade the country of that proposition.

Instead, she blundered into the destructive notion that the vote implied complete withdrawal from all aspects of the EU. Which was soon to be modified by the recognition that from the daily business of air travel to the essentials of nuclear controls and commerce, there had to be continuity. Meanwhile, she appointed three ministers who were Levers to make and execute policy: Johnson to talk political waffle [his forte], Davis to 'get us out' and Fox to chase the chimera of compensating trade deals with the rest of the world as we left the EU.

Johnson has continued to talk nonsense, and has progressively diminished what reputation he had for intelligence behind his 'wit'. Fox has had very little to do, except propagate his fantasies, latterly helped by an imported 'negotiator' from New Zealand who expresses extreme isolationist views [based on the very different experience of New Zealand, which was cut adrift by Britain's slide into the EEC, then the EU: and saved by the rise of China as an importer country] that have no relevance to the situation of the UK in 2021.

Davis, meanwhile, says that the British people did not vote for confusion: but that is what now faces us. I have assiduously read the largely off-beam papers prepared by hard-driven civil servants for dim, obsessed ministers, that collectively do not add up to a coherent guide to anything. Britain has no recognisable policy.

And now, the Commons has voted for the bizarre power-grab of the Bill that they passed last night; by a clear majority.

Failing governments in failed states take up the power to rule by decree; then become increasingly dogmatic in their assertions of their rectitude as freedom is circumscribed and the economy collapses. This is the situation in Venezuela: so Mr Corbyn will understand what is going on as aspires to take over in the United Kingdom.

There is a slim chance that Tory Remainers - surely, still a majority of the party's MPs - will recognise the need to revolt; otherwise, the last hope for democracy would have to be fought out in the House of Lords early next year.

My vote was insignificant in leading to this outcome: but I do share in the post facto responsibility for the irresponsibility of the government that has followed it.

A Bad Week for Democracy

For anybody who retains a belief that democracy, though a very unsatisfactory way of structuring politics, is better than any known alternative, this has been another depressing week.

Rwanda has been through the form of holding an election. The only question at issue was whether the dictator would claim a 97% or a 98% majority: beyond that, the answer was unquestionable.

Venezuela was pushed further along the path towards consolidating the dictator's power, through the charade of a Constituent Assembly.

The President of Turkey demanded the right to appear in the show trials of the people who were allegedly involved in last year's coup, as an aggrieved party. No doubt, he will have his way.

Nick Timothy, formerly head of Mrs May's kitchen cabinet, has told the Torygraph that the Conservatives' disastrous election result was due to control of the campaign being seized by the party's electoral machine, leaving the original campaign [that would have been centred on Mrs May's reforming zeal] high and dry. Be that as it may, the Tories are in a terrible mess. This situation was highlighted by the Irish Prime Minister's speech in Queen's University, Belfast, yesterday in which - quite politely - he pointed out that the government of the UK has not shown a clear hand on any major matter of policy since the electoral disaster. This drift towards departure from the European Economic Area is accelerating, even though its calamitous effect on the economy is beyond doubt.

The egomaniac rhetoric emerging from the President of the United States continues unabated, as the problems confronting his government become more clear and the impotence of the world's strongest democracy is demonstrated.

In the face of that weakness, the boldness of the North Korean dictatorship in unabated. The regime has developed considerable capacity to disable computer systems anywhere in the world, as a second string to their strategy of global blackmail. As the first string, they will soon have nuclear-armed missiles capable of inflicting damage anywhere in China, in Japan, in Asiatic Russia and on the US West Coast. The unwillingness of China to put a stop to this [despite their country's front-line vulnerability] is incomprehensible to western democrats, but it could end up in massive ransom demands from Pyongyang. The ordinary people of North Korea have been starved and enslaved to enable to country to develop its extraordinary aggressive power: they could now be rewarded by the bounty that the American people have enjoyed being handed over at gunpoint to the North Koreans. Trump trumpets that it could not happen: I am not sure!

Sugar, Hunger Bonds and a Sour Thought

British  Sugar has undertaken a survey of the nation, which shows that two-thirds of us do not know that sugar is grown in the UK. It is also noted that during the emergence of the 'obesity pandemic' the UK's consumption of sugar has gone down by 1.5%, notwithstanding the growing population. It is far too simplistic to blame 'sugar' for the obscene sights that now infest our streets.

Goldman Sachs, the 'vampire squid' of Wall Street, has recently bought a very large tranche of Venezuelan state bonds at approximately one-third of their face value. Although the bank did not buy the bonds directly from the Venezuelan authorities, this purchase has bolstered the whole market in such bonds and thus has eased the situation of the violent and incompetent 'socialist' government. Within Venezuela there are shortages of food and medicines, and the government is increasingly dependent on the security services as it ignores election results which have produced a 'dissident' parliamentary majority. At least sixty demonstrators have been killed this year. Given the already awful reputation of the bank in humanitarian circles, the description of this asset as 'hunger bonds' has elicited a great deal of adverse comment. Whether it can have any impact on the future behaviour of the giant squid is problematical.

And now to the main point, the 'sour comments'. Theresa May rushed back to Downing Street after the London Bridge/Borough Market terror event, to appear 'prime ministerial' at the lectern on Downing Street. Over six years as Home Secretary she cheerfully administered the full measure of cuts in the police service that was required by the Osborne austerity programme. She presided over the control of spending on information gathering on and surveillance of 'radicalised' suspects. Now she recognises that some flexibility needs to be given to increase the capability of the police and security agencies; but she apparently intendeds to go ahead with damaging cuts in the armed services.

Donald Trump recognises that jihadist groups must be rooted-out of the middle east, as far as is feasible, even though that raises the prospect of retaliatory measures being brought to Europe and the US; with Europe more obviously in the firing line than the US. If Britain does not have armed forces sufficient - and sufficiently well equipped - to take part in external operations, that will not protect the UK from the 'vengeance' of jihadically-inclined people who are already living comfortably as UK citizens. Britain is firmly lodged in its 'special relationship' with the USA, and this includes taking a share of the comeback for American interventions in Islamic states.

Islamist groups described the children killed in the Manchester suicide bombing as 'crusaders'. The demonology that has been formulated among these people is deeply rooted, and platitudinous verbiage about 'British values' and 'our way of life' will have no mileage at all with the zealots. Mrs May's grand words have no weight, because she has no back-up to offer within the context of her policy horizons.

Jeremy Corbyn has a shameful record of giving aid and comfort to virtually any terrorist group that has emerged in the past thirty years. He has opposed almost all measures to contain terrorists, on the clever but indefensible pretext that such measures are 'administrative' devices which do not create a judicial process that would enable the would-be terrorist to legitimate his [or her] status. His personal standing in such matters is deeply in the mire; but he and his party have a more rational proposal now for dealing with the terrorist threat. They are proposing a significant enhancement of the resources for police and security, and they oppose the cuts to the armed services. Labour does this in the context of policies to expand the economy, and thus the country's capability to pay for the forces. The fact that much of the investment would be undertaken by the state, using borrowed funds, is no exception to the long history of policy that enabled the country to finance two world wars and the equip for the cold war.

The Conservatives stand against historical experience, while Labour is concordant with it. That is not their popular image, but it is the contemporary fact.