Donald Trump continues to cause mayhem with what media sources euphemistically call his ‘quixotic’ policies and tariffs and the two major conflicts (actually invasions) rage on despite yet more air miles and hot air being expended in often fruitless efforts to end them. At least the India/Pakistan conflict has abated for now but of course it won’t be the end of this long running sore between these two nuclear powers. What a disturbed and disturbing world we’re living in. It’s long been the case (in the UK it accelerated under the corrupt Boris Johnson regime, of course) but I fail to understand why there’s been no discussion of the failure of the global rules based order, especially in relation to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. On Wednesday Tom Fletcher, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, called upon the ‘international community to act’ but what clout does any authority have now? Israel takes zero notice of the UN or any other organization: commentators have rightly said only the US can put a stop to this horrifying situation but still Trump does nothing. No surprise due to the heft of the Zionist lobby but how can it be that no organisation has any sway now?
Many Israelis are unhappy with Netanyahu’s regime but it’s thought that criminal proceedings against him that would follow if he was no longer PM (and support from an ultra right wing Cabinet) are a major factor in his determination to continue. The excuse that every air raid and territory clearance are to eliminate Hamas and rescue hostages is wearing increasingly thin, especially when IDF attacks have killed quite a few of them, and it’s clear that the takeover of the entire Gaza Strip was his intention all along. Yet the media collude with this to a large extent via their choice of interviewees and cynical use of language. Said an X user: ‘Such a limp response from our media. Why aren’t they reporting genocide as damning and unacceptable’. Another said: ‘There’s no perpetual war in Gaza — only perpetual dispossession, oppression and erasure. Calling Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza a “war” normalises the actions of a genocidal, apartheid, settler-colonial state hell-bent on ethnic cleansing and dispossession’. Even the name of this latest onslaught, Operation Gideon’s Chariots, is performatively aggressive.
As for Trump, it seems he’s taking less and less care to disguise his transactional approach to complex political situations (walking away when things go beyond simple) and naked corruption. His acceptance from Qatar of a luxury jet of course will come with strings which it’s quite likely he’s not yet spotted – it could prove a bit of a Trojan horse. We also learn that much of this jetting around isn’t really for political purposes but primarily to cement business opportunities for the Trump Organisation, the major actors being Eric Trump and Donald Jr. ‘Trump’s inclination to accept a freebie plane from a foreign state has even given pause to some of his Maga faithful. There are suggestions that his endless promises to drain the swamp are in fact not delivered on by instead flying over the swamp in a lavishly appointed $400m sleazemobile…. For many, it’s becoming hard not to think that Trump is being played by his gifters. Imagine if you had petrostate money, and all you needed to spend to have the president of the United States fly around openly advertising his own corruption was $400m. It’s insanely cheap at the price’. Apparently 66% of Americans polled by the New York Times think Trump’s second so far is ‘chaotic’. I’m surprised the number isn’t higher.
Back in the UK it’s been good to see the conclusion of trade deals with India and the US, though they’re not perfect, of course. The India one has been flagged up as a major achievement because India agreed to cut tariffs on 92% of British goods sent there, import duties on whisky and gin cut from 150% to 75%, from 33% to zero on lamb and over 100% to 10% on cars as part of a quota system. Another major benefit is access to India’s huge government procurement market, but unfortunately legal services were omitted and the Tories have predictably twisted the facts on national insurance, saying they had refused to cooperate with this proposal when in office. However, the excusing of National Insurance payments only applies to those being sent here by specific employers and only for three years, not across the board. And this arrangement has long been in force with other countries so it’s not the ‘two tier’ system the Tories accuse the government of. We won’t see this in the right wing press but the deal is said to be the best any country has ever achieved with India, forecast to add £4.8bn a year to the UK economy by 2040.
Needless to say, these deals had impotent Tories spitting venom from the sidelines, not to mention moving towards more constructive relations with the EU. (This tack elicited yet another example of Kemi Badenoch making an absolute fool of herself, saying they will ‘not let this government betray Brexit’ etc. Such performative nonsense when no one has ever been able to indicate a genuine ‘Brexit freedom’ or ‘Brexit benefit’). But the government’s new proposals to curb immigration are being seen in some quarters as a worrying kneejerk reaction to Reform’s success in the local elections. This may well be an unfair accusation, though, as apparently these proposals have been worked on for some years.
Two major targets for reduction are visas for care workers and international students but it’s worrying that such is the government’s desire to be seen to be addressing the issue that the (too heavy) reliance of universities on foreign student fees and the desperate need for care workers here have been underestimated. It seems extraordinary that the government has decided this approach when the major and vital piece of work on building a UK social care workforce has not yet been done – it should be part of the overarching Casey Commission on Social Care, but that won’t be delivering its final report until 2028. Once again it’s brought the rather unpleasantly labeled ‘economically inactive’ under the spotlight, numerous politicians (mostly but not all right of centre) saying we should be getting British people to do these jobs, raise the wages, etc.
Reform UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice was all over the airwaves last weekend on this theme, stressing the dignity of work and condemning the reliance on benefits, but he kept citing just one experience of a care home in his Skegness constituency. Another media interviewee who owned a chain of care homes was adamant that they’d tried raising wages, to no effect, acknowledging that generally these jobs aren’t attractive to Brits. ‘They just don’t want to do these jobs’. This could be for a number of reasons but I suspect reluctance tocarry out intimate care is a major factor.
People have been struck by how much Tice has been platformed by the media recently, forever on BBC’s Question Time and other shows and now (astonishingly, assuming some brain power) on the Nick Robinson Political Thinking podcast. Regarding Tice’s ubiquity, a wag tweeted: ‘Is Tice singing our national anthem at Wembley today?’
In view of the widespread concern about Reform undermining democratic norms, it’s good news that the Lib Dems have started a Reform Watch project (why haven’t the other parties already thought of it?) especially as we hear 22 of their councillors have already resigned and a new 19 year old councillor, with zero life and political experience, will be in charge of the complex area of children’s services in Leicestershire. Ed Davey said: ‘A key part of the monitoring will be to see if and how Reform-run councils try to cut services’. Many families had been “alarmed” by Farage’s comments saying too many people were being diagnosed with special needs or mental illnesses. Other areas would include culture war battles, such as Reform barring councils from flying the Ukraine flag as a show of solidarity, and trying to cut back on climate and net zero-related work’. There’s also the little matter (actually massive) that Farage has appealed to his political base by suggesting they will bring in auditors to check for council waste etc when such auditors already exist so he would effectively be duplicating this work and at what cost?
As will be fairly clear now, it’s not only our domestic and global political and economic conditions which are unstable but also our digital infrastructure, upon which we depend so heavily. The recent cyber attacks on service providers and retailers are a worrying example of this, some trying to keep the worst of the damage from the public until the truth emerges, sometimes from the hackers themselves. Some headline writing wags have had fun with the Marks one, ie ‘This is not just any cyber attack, this is an M&S attack’ etc. It’s thought that around three quarters of large businesses have been attacked in recent years and when it’s a household name like M&S or the Co-op, people sit up and take notice. The cost to the UK economy is said to be more than £21bn a year. Just think – if examples like this were rectified and added together there might be less need for austerity measures. The Sunday Times said this really brings home the vulnerability of today’s online, interconnected economy, with far reaching effects like empty shelves in shops, online ordering made impossible and recruitment frozen. Organisations need to be much more savvy and vigilant about this danger, for example keeping paper records of vital information and ensuring that staff skills and detection systems are up to date, not to mention investing appropriately in all of this. We hear a lot these days about resilience in our personal lives but it seems like most organizations need to step up their digital resilience.
Talking of amounts currently wasted which could be clawed back, HMRC has been in the news again with statistics suggesting that the wealthy are avoiding quite a bit of tax despite efforts being directed towards claiming it. The National Audit Office (NAO) said billions of pounds was going unpaid each year and the ‘tax gap’ (between the amount owed and that collected) was £1.9bn for the financial year ending in March 2023. The NAO said the ‘super-rich’ had faced far fewer penalties for non-compliance in recent years – what a surprise, coinciding with when their Tory chums were in office and protecting them. HMRC stated its ambition: ‘It’s our duty to ensure everyone pays the right tax under the law, regardless of wealth or status. The government is delivering the most ambitious ever package to close the tax gap and bring in an extra £7.5bn for public services per year by 2029-30’. Let’s hope the Public Accounts Committee or some other august body keeps monitoring this to check if anything like this amount is brought in.
Another perpetual source of unnecessary expenditure which could be cut out or at least cut back is the outmoded institution of monarchy. While the family continues to fight and plot like ferrets in a sack, aided and abetted by the supine media, we learn from the Sunday Times Rich List thatKing Charles’s personal fortune increased to £640m in the past year, making him as wealthy as the former prime minister Rishi Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murty. ‘The 76-year-old monarch, who acceded to the throne in 2022, recorded a £30m increase in wealth and ranks joint 238th on the list of the UK’s wealthiest people and families. The estimate of the king’s wealth is based on personal assets, including the investment portfolio he inherited from his late mother and private estates at Sandringham and Balmoral, and does not include the crown estate’. And what about the Duchy of Lancaster and Duchy of Cornwall, so-called ‘private estates’, the vast income of which (based on exploitation of private tenants and public sector organisations like the NHS) goes straight to Charles and William? It doesn’t fall within the Crown Estate.
The core taxpayer-funded Sovereign Grant was £86.3 million for 2022-23. However, the total cost of the Royal Family, including items like security and other operational expenses, is estimated to be much higher, with some sources citing figures as high as £510 million annually. And this isn’t even the total as it won’t include all the marching bands and pomp of various ceremonies, often totally unnecessary, like the recent Order of the Bath, during which wags made fun of the King and Prince of Wales wearing robes made from ‘the curtains’, But it doesn’t even stop there because whenever the royals make visits there’s the additional cost to local councils of policing, security, catering and time lost from core tasks.
On the same subject of monies which could be brought in, there’s some that now might not be, or at least not for a while. Farmers and vested interests have been hugely exercised by the inheritance tax loophole being closed, with some justification in some cases but on the other side many feel that farmers are playing the victim card, those targeted mainly being those cynically investing in agricultural land as a tax dodge (certain household names come to mind). But now MPs on thecross-party Efra committee (environment, food and rural affairs) have raised concerns that the changes announced in the budget were made without adequate consultation, impact assessment or assessment of affordability, with a risk of producing ‘unintended consequences… The Committee has called on the government to hold off announcing its overhaul of agricultural property relief and business property relief until October 2026, before bringing them into effect from April 2027’. They say this would give farmers, especially the older ones more likely to be caught by these tax liabilities, more time to plan etc. It will be interesting to see how much notice the government takes of this Committee’s recommendations.
We learn this week that Royal Parks Police, which polices 5,000 acres of royal parks across London, will be disbanded by November and its 77 officers redeployed. Unlike most parks (I’m old enough to remember the ‘parkies’, employed years ago by local authorities to keep order but now long gone) you often see the Royal Police vans driving around in these huge areas like Hyde Park and Richmond Park. A few years ago some social groups and personal trainers were put out when a licencing arrangement was introduced, ie you couldn’t just be teaching someone a plank or squats or using this land in a walking group as a private business without coughing up for a licence. Now this force is being disbanded it will be interesting to see if there’s less oversight of these activities.
Finally, the editor of The Week draws attention to the prevalence of this or that ‘awareness’ Day or Week, some of which you’d never have heard of eg 2 May World Tuna Day, designated by the UN ‘to highlight the importance of responsible tuna fishing’. All too often such days/weeks like Mental Health Awareness Week are cynically used as monetization opportunities and they also imply that ‘awareness’ is enough when it’s manifestly not. We need action, not just awareness. We could get awareness fatigue – apparently May will see no fewer than 24 UN-endorsed awareness days. Theo Tait reckons that few will celebrate International Human Resources Day on 20 May. ‘In medieval Europe, when feast days reached around 60 per year, the whole system fell into disrepute. There’s a lesson there somewhere. Leave our days alone: there’s only so much awareness we can handle’.
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 