Fortsätt till huvudinnehåll

Labour set for a come-back?

With a new leader elected, some people are suggesting that Labour could make a come-back sooner rather than later, as the government's policies start to unravel.

At the moment, Labour has no credibility but to judge from the way the £ is tumbling, outside the UK there is a lack of confidence in Britain, regardless of who is in charge. The exchange rate went up after the election, reflecting expectations that have not and probably cannot be fulfilled.

We are all in this together is true in the sense that the boat is going down. People will start to notice as prices in the shops start to soar.

Fisherman's Friends will not save the country
Anyone who thinks it is helping imports is deluding themselves. The only British products in the shops in this part of the world are a few sweeties - Fisherman's Friends are curiously popular but they are not going to save the country.

From a bigger perspective on could say that it is the result of the country's moral failure over many decades. Extreme selfishness prevails and is noticeable in the behaviour of people in public places, politicians get elected for saying what the public wants to hear, the politicians themselves are cowardly and vain, the get-rich-quick culture has dominated, there is a widespread belief that moving money around is the way to create wealth, nobody really cares about people forced to sleep in shop doorways, unborn children are literally disposable.

It is not a pretty sight and it is the road to ruin. If Labour reflected on this, reconstructed itself, and took a leadership role, the party might just get itself back when the present lot find themselves presiding over the ruination that Britain seems to be heading for.

Socialism has shown itself in practice to have no effective solution to economic problems that are of very long standing. Socialist and Keynesian economics both rest on shaky foundations.

This is unfortunate because the present coalition have no interest in anything other than (a) survival in power and (b) maintaining ancient and entrenched privileges.

Whatever happens it is not going to get any better until the party that claims not to represent privilege engages with the underlying problem that afflicts the UK. The question that then arises is whether the privileged ones, and those that wrongly imagine themselves to be privileged, have sufficient vision and patriotism to see beyond their immediate self interest and accept the need for change.

Kommentarer

Populära inlägg i den här bloggen

Importing people to sustain demand

I got involved in a discussion with a Youtuber called “Philosophy all along”. This was in connection with criticism of Trump’s policy of deporting illegal migrants, which he argued would be bad for the economy as it would reduce demand. This implies that there is a need to import people to sustain demand. There is no obvious reason why a population should not be able to consume everything that the same population produces. If it can not, then something else is going on. It is a basic principle that wages are the least that workers will accept to do a job. Wages are a share of the value added by workers through their wages. The remainder is distributed as economic rent, after government has taken its cut in taxes. Monopoly profit is a temporary surplus that after a delay gets absorbed into economic rent. Land values in Silicon Valley are an example of this; it's like a gold rush. The miners get little out of it. Rent and tax syphon purchasing power away from those who produce the g...

The Zombie Train that refuses to die

The Guardian has published a couple more articles against HS2, one by specialist rail commentator Christian Wolmar, and another today by journalist Simon Jenkins. The main arguments in favour will doubtless be wheeled out by the commentators: the need for capacity and the disruption caused by upgrading existing routes. HST itself will severely disrupt services to Euston during the construction period. Capacity can be increased at a fraction of the cost by a variety of measures, provided that it is accepted that the additional traffic will run at existing speeds. It is not generally known that the Midland main line is, or was, four track all the way from London to Trent Junction, between Nottingham and Derby. This is because the additional tracks are separate, having been added for coal trains which trundled down to Brent sidings, on the edge of London, from a collection point at Toton in Nottinghamshire, where the Midland Railway build a huge marshalling yard. Beyond Derby, the main l...

How much more will the British tolerate?

The British are phlegmatic, tolerant and slow to rouse. Thus there was no great reaction after the terrorist attack in July 2005. The murder of Lee Rigby created a sense of outrage, but nothing more, since it appeared to be an isolated incident. Two serious incidents within a fortnight are another matter. Since the first major terrorist incident in 2001, authority has tried to persuade the public that Islam is a religion of peace, that these were isolated events, or the actions of deranged "lone wolves", having nothing to do with Islam, or to reassure that the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack were infinitesimally small. These assurances are are beginning to wear thin. They no longer convince. If government does not act effectively, people will take the law into their own hands. What, however, would effective action look like? What sort of effective action would not amount to rough justice for a lot of innocent people? Given the difficulties of keeping large n...