The Economist is beginning to get the measure of today’s Conservative government. Actually all of the (linked) article is worth reading because it demonstrates how the right wing think tanks are intertwined and influential in the current UK government, but these paragraphs are particularly notable: If Mr Johnson’s classical education did not teach him the… Read more
Category:
Conservatism
Conservative reality
‘A single market without barriers—visible or invisible—giving you direct and unhindered access to the purchasing power of over 300 million of the world’s wealthiest and most prosperous people. It’s not a dream. It’s for real.’ This is a quote from Margaret Thatcher How far have we fallen – and what utter incompetence has our current… Read more
Brexit – where we are
This 10 minutes is, to me at least, so good that I really don’t need to add to it: Well worth your time if you wonder about Brexit. We really ought to be able to claim the Brexiters’ misrepresentations under misselling regulations…… Read more
Input legitimacy not output legitimacy…
There is searing stuff (below) from Meg Russell, Professor of British and Comparative Politics at University College London, and previously on the House of Lords standards committee: I couldn’t agree more: Indeed, even Murdoch’s Times is pretty sniffy (click to enlarge): With Keir Starmer recently speaking about plans for a convention on constitutional change I… Read more
Misleading a nation
In view of my previous post this old French cartoon may be especially apposite: It is striking that on this occasion the barbed wire roll should actually be being held outside the UK – but of course the effect is exactly the same. Constraining the liberty of UK citizens has been labelled as freedom. A… Read more
The problems of financialised ‘shareholder’ democracy
I’ve just taken part in an Open Democracy webinar on ‘After the Facts?’ – the truth about fake news. The title refers to the book by one of the speakers, Marcus Gilroy Ware, who lectures at the University of the West of England. The other speaker was Ece Temelkuran, who has her own considerable book… Read more
Social infrastructure is also vital to any recovery plan
This is a letter to the FT from the Progressive Economy Forum (an outfit that our esteemed benefactor, Richard Murphy, has been expelled from – simply because he doesn’t think Quantitative Easing will ever be paid back. Time has actually already told – it’s 12 years and counting that it has not…) UK chancellor Rishi… Read more
International development
After today’s percentage of GDP reduction on International Trade which was announced by Sunak, I cannot understand how, if the GDP is reducing anyway, as it clearly is, all the rhetoric is of much consequence. Still it may be a useful sop to the Tory Right Wing who may not realise this, any more than… Read more