As ever, a fortnight is a long time in politics and for its psychological consequences. As we approach the festive season we’re having to contend with arctic temperatures, a deepening cost of living crisis and a prime minister who is surely on the ropes given the number of challenges he is facing but not resolving. The worst of these must be the strikes taking place in so many areas (border officials, postal service, NHS (nurses and ambulance staff), education and transport) that it’s no wonder General Strike is trending on Twitter. The appalling gaslighting the government is resorting to is a sure fire sign of their unease and faltering confidence in their intransigent stance: this week alone saw Nadhim Zawahi (who has form in this) suggesting that strikers are ‘playing into Putin’s hands’ by causing further inflation and Jeremy Hunt asking workers not to ‘jeopardise Britain’s recovery’ by taking industrial action. Oh and Zahawi also played the timing industrial action at Christmas card.
The intransigent government stance consists of refusing to meet the unions, fobbing this off onto ‘employers’ when it’s known the government sets the agenda, emotionally blackmailing the public by suggesting strikers are the ones causing the problem and trotting out the script about the recommendations of ‘independent’ pay review bodies when it’s known the government also sets their agendas. Another key technique is to keep citing ‘ordinary people’, ‘hardworking families’ etc when, actually, the strikers are ‘ordinary people’ and members of the public. The government’s agenda, supported by the right-wing press, is for people to take against the strikers making reasonable claims rather than the cynical politicians who could have chosen to remove non-dom status and pursue tax avoiders to boost the flagging coffers.
As topical as ever, Saturday’s Radio 4 profile is of Oliver Dowden, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, responsible for running the Cabinet Office. You couldn’t make it up that one of his tasks isn’t to help resolve the strikes but ‘to co-ordinate the government response to the current wave of strikes’. These programmes can be revealing about their subject but I thought this one was far too jolly and flattering, portraying Dowden as some kind of understated but clever strategist when the impression, I suspect, of quite a few of us is of a conventional, repressed cynic prepared to do the bidding of various prime ministers to benefit his career. One contributor suggested his latest task is a ‘poisoned chalice’ – we will see what he makes of it.
RMT boss Mick Lynch, who so far no interviewer has got the better of, has challenged Rishi Sunak to a meeting but was snubbed. It really does seem that this refusal to talk to the unions, deflecting responsibility onto ‘employers’ is the government running scared. With Lynch in particular, Sunak could well fear coming off worse and his specious arguments being exposed for all to see. The Mirror said: ‘…instead the PM upped the bitter war of words against the union as his aides accused RMT of “holding Christmas hostage with more damaging strikes.”Mr Sunak is gambling that public opinion will turn against striking rail crews, nurses, posties border guards and balloting firefighters costing a million working days this month.’ This could be a gamble too far.
And rather than deal with these problems, Sunak is now planning legislation to prevent such strikes, but this will obviously take time and won’t be available to use in the current situation. As someone tweeted: ‘The people who exploit non-dom status and offshore trusts to dodge taxes are seriously trying to tell the people who do all the work around here that industrial action is immoral’. There’s a feeling in many quarters that the Tories are breaking Britain: nothing seems to work properly and it often feels that things are falling apart.
But this is just the start of Sunak’s problems. After weeks of failing to report it, revelations about the involvement of several former health ministers and Michael Gove finally forced the BBC to focus on the scandal of Tory peer Michelle Mone, who pocketed £29m from a ‘VIP lane’ crony PPE contract during the pandemic, most of the PPE being defective, too. Mone, originally appointed by David Cameron, has now lost the whip and has taken ‘leave of absence’ from the Lords, when this will also enable her to avoid scrutiny of her affairs. The credit here (and how many more scandals remain to be uncovered??) must go to the Guardian’s David Conn, who painstakingly investigated this affair for two years. Needless to say, Sunak, on hearing the revelations, purported to be shocked. Another of his MPs, Julian Knight, has also had the whip removed, although we don’t yet know the details.
Bringing the party even further into disrepute is fresh-from-the-jungle Matt Hancock, who has vowed to engage with people in all sorts of new ways. That this deluded narcissist believes he matters one iota to most people is hard to credit, especially when he initially confirmed his intention to stand in the next election, only to withdraw it as it’s likely he’s been offloaded by his local constituency association. As for his book (The Pandemic Diaries), the cover of which sports a picture of Matt striking an uncharacteristically macho pose, some commentators have accused him of rewriting history. Former health secretary Stephen Dorrell has identified several key inconsistencies between text and contemporary account and warned that Hancock needs ‘to be very careful’ about repeating some of the claims under oath at the ongoing Covid Inquiry. I was struck by the book being co-written by right-wing commentator Isabel Oakeshott, as if Matt didn’t trust his own writing ability. But it seems Matt is unstoppable: he’s been pimping himself out on the speech circuit for over £2,500 a throw, clearly one of the new ways in which he plans to engage with people. ‘I look forward to exploring new ways to communicate with people of all ages and from all backgrounds’.
Sunak won’t see it like this, of course, at least in public, but the Home Secretary again recently proved herself an embarrassment. Although you could hardly make it up that the former head of the police watchdog (the Independent Office for Police Conduct), Michael Lockwood, was himself under investigation for a ‘historical allegation’, Suella Braverman, in her determination to appear powerful, wasn’t going to let him get away with resigning ‘for personal reasons’, as he’d originally framed his departure. She compelled him to either resign or be suspended, effectively boasting about taking ‘immediate action’ by forcing his resignation then outing her involvement to the media, the classic irony being that she herself should have resigned on two occasions. A classic example of projection but not one which enabled her to display any skill in that role.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-63848998
Still on the topic of MPs, and in the wake of Labour’s success in the Chester by election, it’s emerged that there are now 14 independents in Parliament. These are people who’ve lost/resigned their party whip but who aren’t (as surely they should) triggering a by election. This means their local constituencies aren’t being democratically represented as many locals would have voted for them as being committed to the manifesto of their party. Yet something else which needs addressing if/when we ever get constitutional and parliamentary reform.
We have to wonder about the timing of Jeremy Hunt’s macho new strategy to ‘grow’ the economy, via what seem very reckless banking reforms which remove some of the protections brought in after the 2008 financial crisis. It’s significant, in my view, that they been pompously badged the ‘Edinburgh Reforms’, just because his speech was made there. There seems to be a perceived need to add authority and dignity to a set of measures which will surely cause even more alarm amongst the public. ‘Jeremy Hunt is due to unveil a 30-point package of City policy changes on Friday that will involve rowing back on regulations in order to boost competition and growth. The chancellor’s announcement, referred to as the “Edinburgh reforms”, will outline how the government intends to ‘review, repeal and replace’ a host of rules that were introduced to protect savers and the taxpayer after the 2008 financial crisis, but which ministers now believe risk hindering the success of London’s banks and insurers compared with their overseas peers. The changes are Hunt’s attempt to rebrand what his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng claimed would be a post-Brexit “Big Bang 2.0” for the City’
It seems that Hunt is clutching at straws (breaking them in the process) to ‘prove’ that Brexit has been ‘a good thing’. One of the intentions is to remove ring fencing, which forced banks to separate their retail banking and investment banking operations but some have suggested this would only apply to some banks, not all. One tweeter asks a key question: ‘Is ‘opening up for foreign investment’ just another term for money laundering?’ That certainly seems possible. That cynical manipulation of language again, eg ‘getting rid of red tape’ whilst failing to mention that said ‘red tape’ consists of important measures to protect consumers and the wider economy. Critics have called this exercise ‘a regulatory race to the bottom’. Political economist Will Hutton tweeted: ‘Financial reforms to boost City of London ‘competitiveness’ exploiting Brexit ‘freedoms’ are risky, futile, unwanted and betray intellectual bankruptcy. The City used to be the financial capital of Europe. It is becoming a regional backwater. Brexit is the cause not the opportunity’.
As the NHS crisis worsens, an already difficult situation exacerbated by (understandable) strikes, we hear more and more dreadful stories about how patients have been left lying on the floor for up to 10 hours, even worse if this happens to them outside. This alone is enough to affect our mental health, the idea that should we need medical help urgently, no one would come for hours, if at all. It’s not surprising that even higher ‘excess deaths’ than previously have been anticipated. A macabre thing I found myself wondering (but getting no answer on) is whether hospitals now have an entrance separate from A&E for ambulances to drop off those who have died while waiting or during transit. The intertwined problems of the NHS and social care seem so entrenched and intractable that any solution will take a considerable length of time to implement, even the government’s cynical strategy to let the NHS deteriorate to such a point that it ‘has to be’ privatised.
Meanwhile, a leaked document shows the extent of the crisis…. ‘Health officials are drawing up plans to draft in thousands of extra volunteers to help the NHS cope with ambulance delays and hospital pressures this winter’. How shaming, too, that the government had to do this: ‘In August, the NHS started a £30m four-year contract with St John Ambulance to provide “surge capacity” to 10 ambulance trusts and act as an official auxiliary service for England. Under the arrangement – the first of its kind – the charity is providing a minimum of 5,000 hours’ support a month via crews with the capacity to respond to the most urgent, life-threatening 999 calls’. However, one clinician warns against this strategy: ‘What we need is a skilled and trained workforce to try to deal with the problems we’ve got at the moment. It’s not just boots on the ground…’.
Soaring energy prices and the freezing weather have put fuel poverty even more under a spotlight and the charity National Energy Action reckons that 6.7 million household already fall into this category, with 2.4m borrowing or using credit cards to pay their bills. Both physical and mental health are harmed by this situation but whatever the household income, it seems people have feared putting their heating on and have resisted it, until now. For some weeks it’s been a regular topic of conversation: ‘Have you put your heating on yet?’The current temperatures mean those who can use their heating will but what of those who simply can’t pay? It seems terrible and primitive that in what is supposed to be a developed country people are resorting to virtually wearing quilts and dressing for the outside when they’re actually inside. Besides food banks (or, euphemistically, ‘food pantries’) it seems that ‘warm banks’/’warm spaces’, quite a few in public libraries, are also being normalised. It’s unfortunate they are needed at all but there have been some positive reports of people benefiting not only from being warm, getting a hot drink, recharging their phone, etc, but also from interacting with others. If it wasn’t so serious one tweet about this could be found amusing, a depiction of Nadhim Zahawi in his stables, the text underneath reading ‘My horses are warmer than your kids’.
Meanwhile, in a shockingly cavalier but not surprising admission, sacked Chancellor now says he and Liz Truss ‘got carried away’ on their mini budget and didn’t consider the political and economic consequences. This is just breathtaking for supposedly experienced politicians, the kind of mistake school children wouldn’t even make. How do they feel and live with themselves, knowing how much damage they’ve inflicted and stress they’ve caused people? Yes, I know, they’re far too thick-skinned to let any of this bother them, except their legacy will be dreadful and they could do with reflecting on that. ‘Kwarteng announced a raft of tax cuts without any reduction in spending in September, which led to the pound crashing against the dollar, pension funds nearly collapsing, a £65bn Bank of England bailout, soaring mortgage costs, and the cost of government borrowing increasing. He also said he would remove the cap on bankers’ bonuses’.
The cost of living crisis and transport strikes have also been costing the hospitality industry dear, some pub and restaurant bosses expressing frustration and anger about Christmas booking cancellations when interviewed in the media. ‘The trade body UK Hospitality said it expected the strikes to cost businesses about £1.5bn in lost sales and other knock-on effects, with a lack of a breakthrough deal pushing up expected cancellations to 35%-40% from 20%-30% at present’. I certainly have some sympathy with them but many can’t afford to go out at all and many more are thinking twice about it, some of us at least not being best pleased with overpriced menus and unheated or poorly heated premises in some cases.
The government must be feeling some relief that at least one febrile news item doesn’t have them once again in the frame, that is the reinvigorated and polarised debate about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, which has accompanied the release of their ‘documentary’ series on Netflix. The £112m deal has involved the delivery of six episodes of Harry & Meghan, ‘an up-close-and-personal documentary of their life together’. The media has been in a frenzy about it, many lambasting what they see as attention-seeking and efforts to undermine the monarchy. Some commentators have gone over the top with their declarations that it’s all so disrespectful of the Queen’s memory, how hurt she would have been and how unpatriotic they both are. The Daily Mail accused the pair of wanting to ‘bring down the monarchy’ and describing the tell-all as an ‘assault on the Queen’s legacy’. The media have reported two lots of ‘furious’ reactions: one by Prince William, as could be expected, but the other from Netflix bosses, who believe they have detected fake footage in the series trailers which they would have expected the Sussexes to flag up prior to the streaming.
One reviewer found the first episode ‘sickening’ and at least one bit I’d concur on is where Harry, alluding to the Windsors’ first meeting with Meghan, cringe inducingly says to camera ‘Maybe they were surprised a ginger could land such a beautiful woman’. I find myself ambivalent on the Harry/Meghan debate: I think there’s little doubt that they did experience a form of racism within the royal family and wider household, some aspects of Meghan’s reception were hostile, and there’s far too much sycophantic and mindless royal worship which shouldn’t be conflated with ‘patriotism’. On the other hand it’s well-known that the Sussexes need to generate income, they complain about media intrusion when their self-promotion is dependent upon the media, some of the accounts of events don’t stack up and the Californian style obsession with ‘telling our truth’ is grating. It seems to me that a mistake she made was to perceive and assume that the Royal Family was just another cadre of celebrity, a milieu she was already familiar with and that many problematic assumptions stemmed from that. Meanwhile, there’s much more anti-monarchist sentiment than the media coverage would suggest, as we saw with coverage of the Queen’s Jubilee and her death and funeral.
Given the cost of living and housing market crises, a very interesting article (Why inheritance is the dirty secret for the middle classes- harder to talk about than sex) discusses an issue which is rarely aired – that of the haves and have-nots in terms of inheritance. Many young people benefit from family inheritance, handed down via the ‘bank of mum and dad’ but many others don’t have this opportunity. This results in massive inequality between those who can afford to buy their own property in their 20s or 30s and those who have no choice but to chase expensive rented property or live with their parents or friends. The author suggests that this is where the real social divide is, not the one often cited between boomers and millennials. One of the young people cited had her IVF treatment paid for by her parents and before that had had help buying a house her house and her student loan paid off so that she could then start saving for a pension. Such situations truly illustrate the gulf between the haves and have nots but surely also come with a disadvantage, that of such gifts perhaps being taken for granted and affording far less opportunity for the individual to stand on their own two feet and develop strength of character from having managed financial hardship.
‘Although she couldn’t be more grateful for her parents’ life-changing generosity, like many recipients of family money, she isn’t comfortable discussing it publicly…she hasn’t been upfront with colleagues about how she came to buy a house so young. It seems to me that this beneficiary gets it in one about privilege: ‘When I think of the money that’s gone into that pension, it just starts a whole cycle of privilege over again.’
A bright note to end with! The cost of gas and electricity means many have cut back on using their ovens, but still wanted to make their own Christmas cakes. A generous baker in Yorkshire has kindly invited locals to use his ovens for free, the fuel for which costs £2,000 a month. ‘We’ve got to have our ovens on anyway – I just wanted to help people out a little bit’. Truly cheering and inspiring to hear about people like him!
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 