What a momentous few weeks it’s been, from the ‘election’ of Liz Truss as PM by a small minority of Conservative party members, following weeks of long drawn out contest when the government was effectively absent, the death and funeral of the Queen after a 70 year reign, to the announcement of key government policies on the economy and health. The make-up of the Truss Cabinet is depressing, transparently illustrating a move even further to the Right including the shedding of Sunak loyalists. Two of her close friends (Kwasi Kwarteng and Therese Coffey) were given key roles, as Chancellor and Health Secretary respectively, and it’s been noted that Truss’s Conservative Party is now run by the far right ERG, party donors and lobbyists. Truss is determined to ‘do things differently from the last government’ (except it’s the same government) but now it seems even more imperative to look out for their measures not being designed for the public good but instead for the benefit solely of the better off. Journalist George Monbiot believes ‘the prime minister is in hock to a group of rightwing lobbyists who are themselves indebtedto oligarchs and corporations’ – this is a frightening dependency position to place the country in.
He suggests that ‘the more loudly a politician proclaims their patriotism, the more likely they are to act on behalf of foreign money’ but places Truss in an even more extreme category than her predecessors: ‘Every recent Conservative prime minister has placed the interests of transnational capital above the interests of the nation. But, to a greater extent than any previous leader, Truss’s politics have been shaped by organisations that call themselves think tanks, but would be better described as lobbyists who refuse to reveal who funds them. Now she has brought them into the heart of government’. The media again are at fault here, too, because we often hear interviewees from these organizations on our airwaves but very rarely the political affiliations and sources of their funding, a frequent and alarming example being the far right Institute of Economic Affairs.
‘An investigation by the democracy campaign Transparify listed the IEA as “highly opaque” about its funding sources. We know from a combination of leaks and US filings that it has a history of taking money from tobacco companies and since 1967 from the oil company BP, and has also received large disbursements from foundations funded by US billionaires, some of which have been among the major sponsors of climate science denial’. It’s interesting that shortly before her selection Liz Truss received a sizeable donation from BP. This is nothing short of terrifying, not least because our feeble Constitution has no effective mechanisms to clean up our politics: ‘But now the think tanks don’t need a roundabout route. They are no longer lobbying government. They are the government. Liz Truss is their candidate. To defend the interests of global capital, she will wage war against any common endeavour to improve our lives or protect the living planet’.
We barely had time to come to terms with these changes, without the general election many thought should take place, when it became clear that the event which some have long dreaded was now imminent. The Queen’s death will surely be another John F Kennedy/Princess Diana moment, when we remember for the rest of our lives where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news long prepared for by the government and media. Even republicans will feel the effects of this massive change, adding to the political uncertainty and world politics to create a chasm. The Queen was a symbol of stability in an increasingly uncertain world and this country is now in new territory, with King Charles and Liz Truss.
What’s been striking during this time is the appalling coverage by the media, which effectively resorted to brainwashing and gaslighting us with wall to wall sycophantic coverage uttered in hushed and hallowed tones to the exclusion of other important news, constantly informing us that we were ‘a nation in mourning’ for a sovereign who devoted 70 years to duty and service, etc, and allowing no alternative views to be expressed. Social media had plenty of views on this but it seems the mainstream media would not even wish to acknowledge that the monarchy itself is a huge symbol of inequality, which the Establishment has a vested interest in perpetuating. So many of those seduced by all of this might have been enlightened by the inclusion of different voices and views: instead we endlessly heard absurd and hyperbolic views like that of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle, who described it as the biggest event we will ever see! After a 70 year reign, during which the country has seen much change, it was time for a national conversation as to whether or not people wish to continue with the monarchy, but no such opportunity was given or prepared for.
Of course, this is a major event the media needed to cover and cover well and it’s revealed the lack of capacity in many quarters to separate the individual to whom respect can accrue from the institution (monarchy). But the exclusion of other news and of anti-monarchist sentiment in favour of endless focus on the Queue, vox pops with mourners and inviting the views of anyone, it seemed, who had any interaction with the Queen (how many times did we have to hear the story of Theresa May and the cheese?) was unacceptable. Amongst many others, one angry listener tweeted: ‘Radio 4 now in its 40th straight hour of pumping out inane repetitive royal drivel while literally ignoring every other news story from around the world. Stop now. It’s deranged’.
I think the BBC did do a good job with the broadcast of the funeral itself but the takeover of all their tv and most of their radio channels by this subject for 10 days was indeed disproportionate. We did not hear till two days in about key developments in Ukraine, let alone other important news. Radio 4’s The Media Show on Monday analysed the BBC’s coverage of the death and funeral and, besides the predictable commendation by the House of Lords contributor, there was marked criticism of it for excluding dissenting views, one contributor saying that ‘journalism went on holiday for the duration’. The lack of diverse views in the media was alarmingly echoed ‘on the ground’, by people being arrested even for holding up signs (hence not the policing bill verboten ‘noisy protest’) indicating anti-monarchist sentiment: a contradiction of the free speech this country has always espoused.
Veteran investigative journalist Michael Crick tweeted: ‘Absolutely right. The past days, with a few honourable exceptions, have been a shameful period for British journalism, in which scrutiny, challenge, perspective, balance and common sense have been ditched in favour of fawning banalities’. Another issue, amid so many observing that this country does pageantry well (the taxpayer, not the Royal Family, will be footing the £8m funeral bill and King Charles will pay no inheritance tax) is that there is surely something faintly ridiculous about this degree of pomp and ceremonial splendour exhibited in what is a country in marked decline. It might have suited the ethos of former imperial ages but needs seriously questioning now.
Two issues are worth reflecting on and not just assuming and accepting. One is the constant reinforcement of the message that the royals are symbols of duty or sacrifice to the nation. Amongst others Labour MP Clive Lewis went public (despite Keir Starmer’s instruction to the contrary) on his belief that this is ‘a lie’ which, by casting such behaviour as exceptional, allows elites to break rules and continue serving their own narrow interests ‘of which the monarchy is a part’. The other is the different reactions and motivations which made up what the media kept telling us was the mass outpouring of grief at loss of the Queen. Behavioural scientist Professor Steve Reicher, who specialises in crowd behaviour, analyses the key reasons, including projection of our own losses onto a public figure (very notable in the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death, the desire to witness history in the making, able to say they were there (eg in that famous Queue), those wanting to confirm a feeling of Britishness which the Queen represented to them and those wanting to endorse what they considered the Queen’s values of service and hard work.
‘They have gathered, we are told, ‘to pay their respects’. They are there ‘to thank the Queen’. Above all, they are ‘united in grief’. In this way, a picture is built up of a homogenous national community defined by its love of monarch and monarchy. But things are not that simple…… It follows that anyone who departs from this view is not of “us” and risks exclusion from the national community. This has a chilling effect. It means that certain things (such as challenging the hereditary transfer of power and wealth) cannot be said, not only through direct repression (as in the arrest of those expressing republican views) but also through self-censorship. For if we are led to believe that everyone else loves the monarchy, and demands due deference to the monarch and the monarchy, we will be more reluctant to challenge such views for fear of a backlash; and that in turn will reinforce the impression that these views are universal – what has been called a ‘spiral of silence’. That’s a very good term for it.
If it wasn’t so worrying and dangerous it would be almost amusing to hear, as we did during Friday’s Today programme, Simon Case (Cabinet Secretary) dancing on the head of a pin to justify supporting the new economic measures when these are so much at variance with what he and his colleagues had supported during the Johnson regime. It points to considerable face-saving opportunism. Many have challenged the myth of this being ‘a new government’ when it’s still claiming to have a mandate from the former one, one observer tweeting: ‘Simon Clarke is trying to reconcile ‘we’re a new government with a new PM and a new direction’ and ‘we have a strong mandate from the old government and the previous leader’ – when these are irreconcilable positions. It seems that the prime ministerial Twitter account is continuing to churn out the same kind of fantasy – no change there. Liz Truss today: ‘I have a clear plan to build a Britain where everyone everywhere can realise their potential. We will usher in a decade of dynamism by focusing relentlessly on economic growth’. Chris Bryant, Chair of the Commons Privileges Committee, tweeted: ‘It feels like pretty much anyone with a brain, a conscience and a work ethic has been purged from government either by Johnson or Truss. It’s an empty vessel of a government – loud, noisy but dangerously vacuous’.
One commentator suggests that when we don’t think someone is very competent we can easily overlook what damage they can do. Even before her administration (I refuse to use that grandiose term ‘premiership’ in this context) took off it was revealed that her Chief of Staff, Mark Fulbrooke, had not passed vetting because he’s been interviewed by the FBI in connection with a bribery case they are pursuing. What happens if someone doesn’t pass vetting? Based on how the last few years have rolled out, absolutely nothing, another failure of our feeble Constitution. Truss has no ethics adviser and as yet we’ve not heard the outcome of the Fulbrooke situation. But what we have to worry about more is the explicit intention to shrink (eliminate, even) the State: so where would public services come from? ‘And when they say ‘state’, of course, they mean us. They plan to shrink us, our opportunities, our lives. Don’t underestimate them. You don’t have to be competent, still less logical, to make a hell of a mess’.
On assuming the role of PM, Truss, who had demurred for weeks in committing to specific plans and policies, lost no time in reiterating what she’s ‘about’, ‘growing the economy’ by (she believes) cutting corporation tax for business, cutting National Insurance, lifting the cap on bankers’ bonuses, creating low tax zones, reducing stamp duty for home buyers and very probably deleting the anti-obesity strategy. All these measures are clearly designed to benefit the better off and no plans have been put in place for those who do not pay tax. A downer she could have expected this week was being forced to admit, despite having bragged about this, that there was no trade deal in sight with the US, since President Biden had ruled out any chance of it given the continuing conflict over the Northern Ireland Protocol. Not only are these survival-of-the-fittest policies worsening the mental health of many but the government continues in its practice of avoiding scrutiny, for example the ‘fiscal event’ or mini-budget was not termed Budget because this would have necessitated analysis by the Office for Budget Responsibility.
Very worryingly and contrary to normal practice in government, Truss immediately sacked Tom Scholar, permanent secretary at the Treasury (clearly seen as a symbol of the economic orthodoxy Truss wants to challenge), leaving a big vacuum in this key policy area and many civil servants feeling uneasy. Robin (Lord) Butler, who had the same role in under Thatcher, Major and Blair, accused the PM of treating the civil service ‘improperly’, pointing out the need for such experience at a time of a new PM and new monarch. But surely this is the understatement of the week: ‘I think the politicians are beginning to forget the constitution’. They have been ‘forgetting’ it, aka deliberately disregarding it from the start of Boris Johnson’s regime. ‘Scholar’s predecessor Nick Macpherson called him ‘the best civil servant of his generation…sacking him makes no sense. His experience would have been invaluable in the coming months as government policy places massive upward pressure on the cost of funding’. It will be interesting to see how the ally Truss appoints will make out.
Kwasi Kwarteng is our rookie Chancellor yet there’s been radio silence in the media about his shocking behaviour in Westminster Abbey during the lead up to the funeral service. To my knowledge he’s not been asked to explain his bizarre and disrespectful conduct – laughing, fidgeting and gurning, clearly seen on widely circulated video clips, some of those commenting believing these were signs of drug use.
Claiming that we are now ‘in a new era’, Kwarteng outlined his ‘mini-budget’ package in the House on Friday, reversing decades of Conservative fiscal policy in order to focus on ‘growth’ rather than redistribution, including a basic tax rate of 19p, deleting the top tax rate altogether and raising the level at which stamp duty is payable on home purchases, the biggest clutch of tax cuts in 50 years. Kwarteng and colleagues seem to believe they’ve been smart but economists and the markets reacted immediately to what could be deemed reckless: on the announcement the pound lost3% of its value against the US dollar and amongst others the Institute of Fiscal Studies declared the plans unworkable.
Yet you’d never think so if you’d heard the fast talking Chris Philp, now Chief Secretary to the Treasury defend these policies in the media and insist on a new definition of a new government (not most people’s understanding but one ‘with a new PM and Chancellor’). Right – reminiscent of the Alice in Wonderland trope (a word means whatever I want it to mean). These plans have a 2.5% growth target but Philp kept saying he wouldn’t ‘speculate’ about this or that including when such a target might be realised. It’s not a target if those setting it refuse to state a date by which it might be realised. And his Friday tweet was pure fantasy: ‘Great to see sterling strengthening on the back of the new UK Growth’. Any credibility he may have had was rather shot during the recent Newsnight rail strikes interview, when Mick Lynch repeatedly told him ‘you’re a liar, you’re a liar’. We have to wonder how long he will last, since it’s thought a sex scandal is about to explode around him and he could be Truss’s equivalent of Johnson’s Chris Pincher.
Tory backbenchers are already voicing disquiet – it will be hard for them to sell these policies to their constituents, not to mention the aversion to Liz Truss many of them already harboured. Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget will prove ‘politically toxic and economically dubious’, one said as they lambasted the extra £72bn of borrowing needed to pay for massive tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit the better off. Whereas previous administrations have been more subtle about this agenda, this government is unashamedly pursuing such a policy in plain sight. Labour MP Chris Bryant tweeted: ‘It’s more bonkers than Boris! I wouldn’t mind the government risking its own future, but it’s household budgets, business opportunities and the future of our nation that’s at stake. I’ve never known such an irresponsible and reckless approach to public money’. The Financial Times believes this budget ‘will ‘leave the Treasury with no money’ and veteran Tory and former Chancellor Lord Clarke weighed in with his own concerns. Yet the BBC repeatedly invites on to ‘flagship’ news programmes deluded Tory donors and the like, such as Sir Rocco Forte (the hotelier) who thought the new measures were marvellous and that the ‘government has hit the ground running like no other’. What planet?
Kwarteng’s plans are getting flak from more quarters, too, for example conservation organisations who believe plans for 38 ‘investment zones’ will constitute an attack on nature because of current regulations relating to the environment will be withdrawn. The RSPB tweeted: ‘Make no mistake, we are angry. This government has today launched an attack on nature. As of today, from Cornwall to Cumbria, Norfolk to Nottingham, wildlife is facing one of the greatest threats it’s faced in decades’. Other organisations including the National Trust also expressed concern, resulting in a gung ho word salad defence from the Treasury: ‘Investment zones will enable locally elected leaders to set out bold new visions for their areas, and we want to ensure that they have every tool available to them in driving forwards local growth. The government remains committed to setting a new legally binding target to halt the decline of biodiversity in England by 2030’.
Still on environmental concerns, the issuing of umpteen licences for fracking has been condemned in numerous quarters. Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero, Ed Miliband, eviscerated the smooth-talking (but increasingly seen through) Jacob Rees-Mogg in the House of Commons, tweeting: ‘Fracking is dangerous, expensive, and unsafe. Jacob Rees-Mogg is ripping up the Conservatives’ manifesto promises and imposing a Charter for Earthquakes on the British people. Labour will fight this all the way. We need clean power for Britain – not dirty fracking’. The Guardian’s parliamentary sketch writer, John Crace, carried out his own evisceration of the ‘new’ government and its disrespectful dismissal of evidence not fitting its extreme ideology. ‘So she’s had a look at the science and decided that the science has got it wrong. What’s needed is new science. One that agrees with her. And guess what? She’s now redefined the science and we’re all systems go. The power of magical thinking’. On the Miliband and Rees-Mogg exchange: ‘Miliband treated Rees-Mogg as if he was a halfwit. Most people do these days. Long gone are the times when MPs were impressed by his faux politeness and smug self-confidence, squeezed into an oversized undertaker’s suit. Now people see him for the needy fraud that he is’.
Therese Coffey, Health minister and deputy prime minister, was the second to do the media rounds this last week, publicising her ‘ABCD’ proposals for the NHS (A for Ambulance, B was for Backlog, C for Care and D was for Doctors and Dentists), which of course don’t stand scrutiny. You would not think that Coffey’s was the same government which underfunded and undermined the NHS for 12 years, causing the very problems she purports to be planning to rectify. Attracting alarm and derision in clinical and political circles, her media performance was platitudinous and really needed challenging. It’s well known that hobbling the NHS and allowing privatisation by stealth have long been the agenda but as a good number of Tory voters value it they can’t announce they’re abolishing it. Instead they will force it to fail. I don’t think the proposals include addressing the key problem with doctors and GPs retiring early and going part-time, that of their pension-related tax liabilities. Years ago a civil service team could have been put to work on some solutions to this, rather than allowing the workforce to become so seriously depleted. As one commentator tweeted: ‘Did Coffey really imagine setting some more targets that wouldn’t get met was the answer? Thérèse looked miserable. Because it turned out that’s precisely what she did believe. Truly we are screwed’.
The government has been getting its privatisation agenda underway for quite some time, more and more patients (a shocking one in ten during the last year) feeling forced to seek private treatment because of long NHS waiting lists. For nearly half of these patients, going private meant having to go into debt, using up savings planned for another purpose or cutting back on general spending. Healthwatch England found these findings ‘very concerning’. ‘People on the lowest incomes are the most likely to wait the longest for NHS treatment and will have a more negative experience of waiting. In turn, this leads to a worse impact on their physical health, mental health and their ability to work and care for loved ones. Tackling the NHS backlog is a huge challenge but decision-makers must find a way to do so without exacerbating health inequalities, the extent of which has been laid bare by the pandemic’.
One of the most interesting pieces I’ve read this week has been the Times article about the numbers of people, clearly assuming that the Working From Home trend would continue, had moved from towns and cities to the country and seaside locations. Now many are suffering ‘buyer’s remorse’ and moving back again, disillusioned by what they hadn’t realised about their new location and lifestyle changes. ‘They just don’t want to tell anyone about the biggest, most expensive mistake of their lives. In 2020 Londoners bought 73,950 homes outside the capital, a four-year high, according to Hamptons; in the first six months of 2021 a further 61,830 bought homes elsewhere, the largest half-year figure since the estate agency started compiling records in 2006…. Some who fled the city now admit that they panicked and didn’t think through what relocating far away from friends, support networks and convenience would entail’. Interestingly, what the article doesn’t mention regarding coastal locations is the appalling discharge of raw sewage into the sea by water companies, a strong disincentive to the swimming and walks along the shore which many of these movers could have looked forward to previously.
It was topical and interesting this week to learn of the Museum of Homelessness, established in 2015, getting its own home in 2023. The current socio-political situation makes it likely that homelessness will increase so it’s timely for this initiative to come under the spotlight. The Museum aims to ‘make tomorrow’s history by building the national collection for homelessness; take direct practical action in support of the community; fight injustice with independent research and campaigning and to educate on homelessness by working with artists and creatives to ‘make unforgettable art, exhibitions and events’. Good luck to them in their endeavours.
Finally, it was poignant and cheering to hear that farmers from war-torn Yemen (where coffee originated, not South America as many assume) came over to London recently to attend an auction, the intention of which was to introduce coffee traders to Yemeni coffee directly rather than through a series of middle men. They wanted to reinstate the status and reputation Yemen as the original coffee producer as it has been generally overlooked by experts. ‘….a group of farmers in ceremonial dress, replete with daggers in their belts, visited a London coffee-roasting firm, bent on restoring Yemen’s status as the birthplace of good coffee. The farmers brought 28 samples for tasting and, within days, had sold their beans to buyers from Europe, Australia, the Middle East and east Asia at the inaugural National Yemen Coffee Auction…… Modern coffee cultivation is said to have begun in Yemen in about the 15th century, with trade passing through the port of Mocha. But by 2020, it ranked 61st in coffee exports, selling $21m of beans compared with Brazil’s $5bn’.
One of the buyers said: ‘We believe that supporting Yemeni coffee, one of the most unique and amazing flavours within the coffee world, will bring back Yemen to the global coffee industry and at the same time provide economic security for coffee farmers’. A win win situation. I was reminded of visiting a small exhibition at the British Museum last November, on the importance of coffee in the Islamic world, and this is when I discovered coffee had originated in Yemen, not Peru or Colombia. It’s maybe unlikely in Costa or Starbucks but let’s hope we see Yemeni coffee on the menus of some artisan coffee purveyors soon!
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 