A moment of regret and clarity

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I used to post long articles on British politics on this blog. I haven’t in awhile, and a lot of inner rage has built up in the meantime. So even though I’ll try to be as concise as possible, I have an awful lot to say. 

Prior to the UK General Election this year, after much deliberation, I gave Labour my endorsement. You can read it here http://hanrott.com/blog/the-uk-general-election-a-brief-but-definitive-guide/. But in short, I thought Labour had ran the best campaign, and had a sufficiently radical platform to address a deeply divided and troubled country.

Although the endorsement was for Labour nationally, the post was aimed at Exeter University students in particular- who constitute a large portion of my Facebook friends; I also shared the endorsement on Facebook. Here in Exeter, we have a moderate, pro-EU MP, who has been willing to take a principled stand against the leadership on various issues. So I was pleased that the endorsement was generally well received by my friends, and therefore happy when our MP won his seat with over 62% of the vote.

In the endorsement I made clear my reservations about Labour. I have never believed increasing taxes and government spending will solve the UK’s fundamental economic weaknesses, particularly in a country which already has a relatively large state. I have always had reservations about Corbyn’s viscerally anti-Western foreign policy views, as well as his unwillingness to criticise left wing authoritarian governments in places like Cuba and Venezuela. But I put those reservations aside because I believed the alternative was worse. I strongly believed the Conservative Party would win a landslide victory, and then use its dominance to leave as many of the EU’s institutions as possible, reduce the number of refugees and foreign students allowed in the country, oversee real-terms cuts to science and environmental protections, and suck up to a highly unsavoury Trump administration. Theresa May seemed to regard political opposition as illegitimate and unpatriotic, rather than a beneficial and necessary part of democracy. She was backed by the hard-right tabloids, who viewed Remainers and liberals as ‘enemies of the people’ and ‘saboteurs.’ The Conservative Party increasingly resembled UKIP in its xenophobia and intolerance of dissent. Voting Labour seemed like the only realistic alternative.

However, although I don’t regret voting for my local Labour MP, I must admit that I regret giving the national Labour Party my backing. Since their surprisingly strong showing at the election, Labour has become dominated by Corbyn and his allies. Labour MPs who were sceptical of either Corbyn’s policies, judgement or electability have been sidelined. Despite having just lost an election (albeit narrowly), the party is in a jubilant mood, with few bothering to ask why they lost. The lack of self-criticism is not only foolish in terms of future electability, it is arrogant. Corbyn and John McDonnell act as if the British people are behind them, ignoring the fact that the Conservatives won a plurality of votes in spite of an appalling campaign. The fallacious concept of a unified ‘will of the people’ is the received wisdom amongst the hard-Brexit supporting Conservatives, but has recently become an accepted dogma amongst Labour as well. Labour politicians attack May for having lost a mandate she sought, yet they too, lack a mandate.

Another mistake Labour have made in the election’s aftermath, is assuming that because their support is disproportionately young, their chances of success will be higher in the future. In reality, there’s absolutely no guarantee of this. In the Sixties, the social liberalism of the youth made many political commentators conclude that conservatives would struggle to be elected going forward. But by the Eighties, the generation that had supported the social liberation of the Sixities, then supported the conservatism of Thatcher and Reagan, largely due to a frustration with militant unions and a fear of Communism. Similarly, Democrats in America wrongly believed Clinton would win based on her support amongst the young, as did Remainers in the UK’s EU membership referendum. The fact is, Labour cannot depend on the support of the young alone, particularly as our population ages. As a young person myself, I find it extremely presumptuous when Labour members claim to speak on behalf of my generation.

In terms of policy, there is a lot to be concerned about Labour’s platform. The party hasn’t established a clear position on Brexit, with shadow ministers contradicting each other every week. On the one hand, pro-EU MPs like Exeter’s Ben Bradshaw claim Labour will seek to stay in the Single Market permanently. Since the vast majority of Labour MPs voted Remain, it’s hard to see the party choosing to leave the Single Market, which is why I thought it was safe to vote Labour as a Remainer. But Corbyn has implied the party will advocate leaving the Single Market on the basis that Single Market rules prevent a truly socialist Britain from being established. This is either false or frightening, depending on which form of socialism Corbyn wishes to pursue. If he believe Britain should be a comprehensive social democracy like the Netherlands or Sweden, then there’s nothing about the Single Market that prevents it. Many EU countries have nationalised transport and utilities, publicly funded healthcare, state-owned industries and the world’s best welfare systems. Leaving the Single Market would damage the economy by making it less attractive for EU businesses to invest in Britain, thereby depriving the welfare state of the funds it needs. However, if Corbyn wants to make Britain an altogether more radical socialist country like Cuba or China, then the prospect of leaving the Single Market becomes a nightmare scenario. Without its constraints, Corbyn could seize private assets without compensation, establish state monopolies in any industry he wishes, and restrain EU immigration on the basis that it undermines British labour- something he has alluded to.

Labour then claimed it could fund a substantial expansion of government entirely by raising taxes on the top 5% of the population. This always seemed unlikely, yet the part has yet to apologise for its mistake. The truth was that the party proposed taking advantage of low interest rates to dramatically increase borrowing, in order to fund nationalisations and infrastructure investments. To an extent, this makes sense, particularly as many of these investments may pay for themselves in the long term. But it cannot be assumed that every instance of government borrowing and investment will pay for itself. The obvious example is HS2, a high speed rail line which is enormously costly, yet hasn’t attracted any private sector investment due to a low rate of return. In any case, Labour failed to explain why a higher deficit was desirable considering that Britain’s deficit is already high by OECD standards. As for taxes, countries which have a government of the size Labour was proposing have much higher taxes on the poor and middle class, not just the rich. Denmark and Sweden have higher sales taxes and alcohol taxes. The Netherlands has higher income taxes. France has considerably higher payroll taxes, as does Germany in the form of compulsory social insurance schemes.

In my endorsement, I said that Britain should vote for radical change, as if radical change was inherently good. I then said that Britain should give Corbyn’s unadulterated form of socialism a try, simply because the Conservatives had failed to provide a compelling alternative. I must now admit that I said those things out of fear and desperation. I was never fully on board with Labour’s policies, and I am certainly not now. Corbyn’s anti-Western outlook and soft Euroscepticism leave much to be desired. But I was petrified of an increasingly authoritarian Conservative Party winning a landslide majority, so I did everything in my power to prevent that. In the future, it’s highly unlikely I’ll give Labour as a whole my backing, even if many of its MPs are fantastic.

In my next post I’ll address the Liberal Democrats- why I didn’t support them, and what I think of them now.

 

 

Puerto Rico

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In Puerto Rico three and a half million Americans are suffering without food, water, medicine, shelter, or electricity. Many people are dying. This is the worst humanitarian crisis in America since Hurricane Katrina. There is food and water apparently being delivered to the capital, San Juan, sitting in containers, but inadequate manpower and transport to get it to the people who need it.

The US can send thousands of troops to Afghanistan at the drop of a hat. It can organise a whole army to defeat Saddam Hussein, and can provision scores of military bases all over the world like clockwork. But it seems it cannot get troops and all-terrain vehicles to Puerto Rico to help distribute water, food and medical supplies. I wonder why this is? Could it have anything to do with the fact that Puerto Rican don’t have mainline American votes? Why is the President more interested in the reaction of football players to the National Anthem than he is in the the plight of Puerto Ricans? Difficult to say. What is true is that when Houston was struck by a fierce hurricane Trump and his friends couldn’t do enough for the inhabitants. Puerto Ricans, however, are left to fend for themselves, while Trump plays golf and bullies the mayor of San Juan, who is doing her job trying to get help for her people. The logistics are a shambles – the hospital ship, for instance, will take five days to get to the island – it left only today. There are hundreds of helicopters sitting on the ground, but none of the pilots have been told to fly to Puerto Rico. Trump himself has only just agreed to go to San Juan next Tuesday (for a photo op.). The incompetance is staggering. This will likely be Trump’ version of Bush’s New Orleans fiasco. Shameful.

The Age of Loneliness, by George Monbiot

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When Thomas Hobbes claimed that in the state of nature, before authority arose to keep us in check, we were engaged in a war “of every man against every man”, he could not have been more wrong. We have always been social creatures who depend on each other. The hominins of east Africa could not have survived one night alone. We are shaped, to a greater extent than almost any other species, by contact with others. No longer.

Loneliness has become an epidemic among young adults, and is just as great an affliction of older people. A study by Independent Age shows that severe loneliness in England blights the lives of 700,000 men and 1.1m women over 50, and is rising with astonishing speed. Social isolation is as potent a cause of early death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day; loneliness, research suggests, is twice as deadly as obesity. Dementia, high blood pressure, alcoholism and accidents – all these, like depression, paranoia, anxiety and suicide, become more prevalent when connections are cut. We cannot cope alone.

Competition and individualism are the religions of our time, justified by a mythology of lone rangers, sole traders, self-starters, self-made men and women, going it alone. For the most social of creatures, who cannot prosper without love, there is no such thing as society, only heroic individualism. What counts is to win. The rest is collateral damage.

More than a fifth of all British children say they “just want to be rich”: wealth and fame are the sole ambitions of 40% of those surveyed. Britain is the loneliness capital of Europe. We are less likely than other Europeans to have close friends or to know our neighbours. Why? Because we are urged to fight like stray dogs over a dustbin. We talk about “losers” and have dropped the word “people” in favour of “individuals”.

Television reinforces the income-happiness paradox: as national incomes rise, happiness does not rise with them. The researchers found that those who watch a lot of TV derive less satisfaction from a given level of income than those who watch only a little.

So what’s the point? What do we gain from this war of all against all? Competition drives growth, but growth no longer makes us wealthier. Recent figures show that, while the income of company directors has risen by more than a fifth, wages for the workforce as a whole have fallen in real terms over the past year. The bosses get 120 times more than the average full-time worker. (In 2000, it was 47 times). And even if competition did make us richer, it would make us no happier, as the satisfaction derived from a rise in income would be undermined by the aspirational impacts of competition.

The top 1% own 48% of global wealth, but even they aren’t happy. A survey by Boston College of people with an average net worth of $78m found that they too were assailed by anxiety, dissatisfaction and loneliness. Many of them reported feeling financially insecure: to reach safe ground, they believed, they would need, on average, about 25% more money. (And if they got it? They’d doubtless need another 25%). One respondent said he wouldn’t get there until he had $1bn in the bank.

For this, we have ripped the natural world apart, degraded our conditions of life, surrendered our freedoms and prospects of contentment to a compulsive, atomising, joyless hedonism, in which, having consumed all else, we start to prey upon ourselves. For this, we have destroyed the essence of humanity: our connectedness. (This is a precised version of an old article by George Monbiot, The Guardian, 14 October 2014. It is reproduced without comment by me, for what response can there be?)

Winston Churchill on Mohammedanism

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The following passage occurs on Winston Churchill’s book, “The River War”, first edition, Vol II, pages 248-250

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.

“The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

“Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the e influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step;
and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”

I read “The River War” years ago and at the time thought this passage was way over the top and that, had he not been so well-connected, he would have been forced to rescind this passage. But now his words seem increasingly prescient, given the Saudi-financed activities of al-Queda, the growing Wahabi influence throughout the moslem world, the subversion, for instance, of Pakistani education, the swarm of radical mosques popping up all over the place, manned by Saudis, the terrorist attacks in Europe and the deliberate radicalization of moslem youth in the West. While all this is going on, the West, less than ever “sheltered in the arms of science” in the age of Trump, pussy-foots around the middle Eastern moslem governments, terrified of offending them because of oil.

If the muftis, mullahs, sheiks and preachers think the God really intends the murder of innocent women and children, in their own countries or abroad, then there is something very wrong with the religion. The same can be said of radical Hindus. One answer is Epicureanism, which is peaceful and moderate, not a religion steeped in tribal custom or a vehicle of intolerance and mass death. CanIslam reform itself and cast aside the violence? We could help by removing our military and leaving the region alone.

Patriotic Millionaires official statement on the Trump tax Plan

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“President Trump’s Trickle Down Tax Plan is somewhere between indefensible and obscene. “What kind of people see the devastation of Harvey, Irma, and Maria; watch Houston residents wading through the streets; and see Puerto Rico in total darkness and think to themselves “Wow, millionaires really need a tax cut?’”

“The Trump Tax Plan is nothing but a payoff to millionaires and multinational corporations. It is an embarrassment to history, common sense and decency that any elected official continues to perpetuate the fraud of Trickle Down Economics, particularly one who ran promising to help the middle class. Time and again the epic lie of trickle down has served as the justification to taking money that belongs to the American people and handing it over to a few thousand well-connected political donors. They pretend like its a philosophy. This is not a philosophy, this is a pay off.”

The group went on to make several specific points about some of the details of the tax framework:

“- On the elimination of the Estate tax: “We can’t wait to hear President Trump try to explain how a $4 billion tax cut for Ivanka and Tiffany helps the middle class.”

“- On the reduction of the top rate: “Lowering the top rate for America’s richest people in the face of already destabilizing inequality is irresponsible bordering on immoral.”

“- On the repatriation of profits: “So the Trump Administration has decided to reward companies for essentially stealing American taxpayers’ money by hoarding it overseas. How is that good for the middle class?”

“- On the reduction of the corporate tax rate: “Randall Stephenson, the chief executive of AT&T is wrong. The correlation between lower corporate tax rates and more jobs is not ‘very, very tight,’ it is nonexistent. From 2008-2015 the company paid an effective rate of 8%, they laid off 80,000 people, and Mr. Stephenson cashed in $124 million in stock options. Companies do not hire more people when you lower their tax rate, they overpay their already overpaid executives.”

“- On the elimination of the AMT: “The elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax will virtually guarantee that thousands of Americas wealthiest people will pay no tax at all. Who will be left holding the bill for that lost revenue? The middle class.”

“- On the territorial tax system: “President Trump’s big plan to boost the middle class starts by helping multinational corporations avoid paying any taxes at all.”

“- On reducing the number of tax brackets: “If anything, we need more tax brackets. Someone making $5 million, $10 million, $50 million a year has almost nothing in common economically with someone who makes $400,000 a year. And they should be taxed at a significantly higher rate.” ( Patriotic Millionaires, September 27, 2017.

My comment: they might represent a small minority of rich people; they might be toothless in the face of the ravening greed and lack of care for others that is on full display from the Republican Party. But I follow the statements the organisation “Patriotic Millionaires” because they demonstrate that not all rich Americans are selfish and immoral, trotting out all the well-worn lies and self-justifications we have seen for decades. They are joined by most economists truly interested in the future of the United States, honest economists who believe that trickle-down economics is a con-job and that this latest plan will increase the deficit out of sight. Epicureans believe in working together in mutual understanding and harmony. The only interpretation of this tax reduction plan for Party funders is the single word: corrupt.