A wolf in Sheep's clothing
I was going to write a little more specifically about a follow up to the industrial agriculture post I put up last time and I will but, I also want to focus on and tie it into our general economic tradition in this country. That of capitalism and commodification and marketisation and GDP and all things like this that oppose an organisation of society founded on broad spectrum people based development. Some of this will follow in later posts - I try not to write posts that are too long so some things will have to wait.
I’ll start with something that has been burning away in me for a while now really. The current Labour party and the inequalities they seem desperate to develop. Quite how they have the audacity to call themselves a Labour party, I do not know. The labour movement was founded on the principles of trade unionism, votes and rights for people, a centre left, socialist movement. I understand that in their early years they sought to re-nationalise some of the major industries and place back into “common ownership” the “means of production”. From this, I take, that it sought to ensure that ALL people, regardless of their social standing, had an opportunity to enter the workforce and provide a voice for everyone in society. The labour party’s own page along with a wiki entry has some information on this if you’re interested.
So, now, today, we find that they have, in their current incarnation sought to remove benefits from some of the poorest in society and are saying, in this Guardian article that red tape and regulation are a “boot on the neck of business” and they’re seeking further deregulation and more risk to enable economic growth. Their own impact assessment notes that the benefit cuts will push a further 250,000 people and 50,000 children into poverty. At a time when, according to the respected Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 14.3 million people (more than 1 in 5) and 4.3 million of them children, are living in poverty in the UK. I seem to remember that deregulation was exactly what got us to the last financial crash in 2008 and as far as I can tell, pretty much every economic melt down that has happened before or since. Because they have removed regulation and allowed betting, hedging and all other forms of gambling on and with people’s hard earned, hard saved cash. These crashes though mainly seem to penalise those who did not cause them. The wealthy benefit hugely. Anyone who has seen the film The Big Short, will know what I mean. Similarly in the case of the recent Brexit deal when the former MP Jacog Rees-Mogg made several million pounds by essentially betting against the fortunes of the UK economy as an outcome of the process, the rich benefit. Not the rest of us. The Big Short may, in part, be a work of fiction (based on fact) but so too is the guise under which the population are told that our GDP based economics, work and that the growth this will deliver, will help them to achieve more and to be more. It simply isn’t. 4.3 million starving UK children and the exponential growth in foodbanks will tell you that. Deregulation is not in our interests. The market cannot decide what’s best when people’s greed and corruption lie at its heart.
Recently the UNITE union suspended the membership of one of the Labour MP’s because labour were not “defending working people”. This all says to me that the Labour party as we knew it, is dead. The hapless Keir Starmer is leading a party that does not know what it stands for other than energising and feeding the economy. Again, the economy is not a thing to be nurtured, fed, valued. People are. This element for me highlights the tradition in the west of economics. Money. Growth. Anything, often including war, to secure more. More assets. More Cash. More growth. More minerals. More oil. Just, more. Whatever it is, we must have more of it. Capitalism I think though, has, like this incarnation of the labour party, run its course. As Sir Das Gupta states in his 2021 report on the Economics of Biodiversity “The contemporary practice of using gross domestic product (GDP) to judge economic performance is based on a faulty application of economics”. And this is from a leading economist, commissioned by the UK government. He goes on to say, in the final line of the report “The fault is not in economics; it lies in the way we have chosen to practise it”. Although a report based primarily around biodiversity and Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), this statement rings true for how governments co-ordinate and manage our economies. People and planet are forgotten in order to stoke the fires of economic growth - leaving the planet quite literally burning. Poverty is a political choice. Cutting benefits instead of reforming taxation is a political choice. Homelessness - as we saw during Covid when it was almost ended overnight - is a political choice. This government is choosing the same, faulty path. They do not seek to benefit people.
Any nation, let alone the 5th or 6th wealthiest (by the measure of GDP that is) that has one fifth of its population living in poverty, and continues with the same economic policies that brought it to that point, is negligent and frankly criminal. The current governing body are now indeed a labour party, one focused on extracting as much labour from the population as possible in the hope of achieving some economic hegemony that delivers a nirvana, an orgy of financial power and accumulation that somehow transforms mere mortals into ethereal, untouchable capital, like a digital currency based deity. This isn’t in the interests of the general public. How can it be when so many of them have so very little? This view for them is out of sight. Labour has lost all perspective of the people it is supposed to serve and has mutated into a second, perhaps more menacing branch of the conservative movement. More menacing because people believe it is going to deliver something different - a wolf in sheep's clothing.
More next time……………
I’ll start with something that has been burning away in me for a while now really. The current Labour party and the inequalities they seem desperate to develop. Quite how they have the audacity to call themselves a Labour party, I do not know. The labour movement was founded on the principles of trade unionism, votes and rights for people, a centre left, socialist movement. I understand that in their early years they sought to re-nationalise some of the major industries and place back into “common ownership” the “means of production”. From this, I take, that it sought to ensure that ALL people, regardless of their social standing, had an opportunity to enter the workforce and provide a voice for everyone in society. The labour party’s own page along with a wiki entry has some information on this if you’re interested.
So, now, today, we find that they have, in their current incarnation sought to remove benefits from some of the poorest in society and are saying, in this Guardian article that red tape and regulation are a “boot on the neck of business” and they’re seeking further deregulation and more risk to enable economic growth. Their own impact assessment notes that the benefit cuts will push a further 250,000 people and 50,000 children into poverty. At a time when, according to the respected Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 14.3 million people (more than 1 in 5) and 4.3 million of them children, are living in poverty in the UK. I seem to remember that deregulation was exactly what got us to the last financial crash in 2008 and as far as I can tell, pretty much every economic melt down that has happened before or since. Because they have removed regulation and allowed betting, hedging and all other forms of gambling on and with people’s hard earned, hard saved cash. These crashes though mainly seem to penalise those who did not cause them. The wealthy benefit hugely. Anyone who has seen the film The Big Short, will know what I mean. Similarly in the case of the recent Brexit deal when the former MP Jacog Rees-Mogg made several million pounds by essentially betting against the fortunes of the UK economy as an outcome of the process, the rich benefit. Not the rest of us. The Big Short may, in part, be a work of fiction (based on fact) but so too is the guise under which the population are told that our GDP based economics, work and that the growth this will deliver, will help them to achieve more and to be more. It simply isn’t. 4.3 million starving UK children and the exponential growth in foodbanks will tell you that. Deregulation is not in our interests. The market cannot decide what’s best when people’s greed and corruption lie at its heart.
Recently the UNITE union suspended the membership of one of the Labour MP’s because labour were not “defending working people”. This all says to me that the Labour party as we knew it, is dead. The hapless Keir Starmer is leading a party that does not know what it stands for other than energising and feeding the economy. Again, the economy is not a thing to be nurtured, fed, valued. People are. This element for me highlights the tradition in the west of economics. Money. Growth. Anything, often including war, to secure more. More assets. More Cash. More growth. More minerals. More oil. Just, more. Whatever it is, we must have more of it. Capitalism I think though, has, like this incarnation of the labour party, run its course. As Sir Das Gupta states in his 2021 report on the Economics of Biodiversity “The contemporary practice of using gross domestic product (GDP) to judge economic performance is based on a faulty application of economics”. And this is from a leading economist, commissioned by the UK government. He goes on to say, in the final line of the report “The fault is not in economics; it lies in the way we have chosen to practise it”. Although a report based primarily around biodiversity and Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), this statement rings true for how governments co-ordinate and manage our economies. People and planet are forgotten in order to stoke the fires of economic growth - leaving the planet quite literally burning. Poverty is a political choice. Cutting benefits instead of reforming taxation is a political choice. Homelessness - as we saw during Covid when it was almost ended overnight - is a political choice. This government is choosing the same, faulty path. They do not seek to benefit people.
Any nation, let alone the 5th or 6th wealthiest (by the measure of GDP that is) that has one fifth of its population living in poverty, and continues with the same economic policies that brought it to that point, is negligent and frankly criminal. The current governing body are now indeed a labour party, one focused on extracting as much labour from the population as possible in the hope of achieving some economic hegemony that delivers a nirvana, an orgy of financial power and accumulation that somehow transforms mere mortals into ethereal, untouchable capital, like a digital currency based deity. This isn’t in the interests of the general public. How can it be when so many of them have so very little? This view for them is out of sight. Labour has lost all perspective of the people it is supposed to serve and has mutated into a second, perhaps more menacing branch of the conservative movement. More menacing because people believe it is going to deliver something different - a wolf in sheep's clothing.
More next time……………
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