It’s time to talk about England and consider what has happened to the English political centre. The political creature that Leo Varadkar is negotiating with this weekend is completely different from anything in living memory.
We are dealing with an extremely unstable political entity, where the centre has been abandoned to the radicals on either side.
Not too long ago, Tony Blair won three straight elections from the deep centre. Given the fact that the DUP now holds the balance of power, it is important to remember that Blair won his elections with huge 120-plus seat majorities. Blair represented a broad wing of the Labour Party that could be described as its social democratic centre.
That Labour Party is now dead. The party is now controlled by an extreme socialist wing whose policies are a 1970s student manifesto. Going back further and at its most basic, the people who built the UK welfare state, Ernest Bevin and the like, believed in the market. Jeremy Corbyn obviously doesn’t.
On the other side of Westminster, the Tories, once the “one-nation” party of commerce, are being dragged to the weird nationalist right by a man who recently dismissed business with the colourful quip of “fuck business”. The one-nation, centre-ground party of Major, Heseltine, Clarke, Cameron and Osborne is gone. It has been replaced by the Brexiteers, enthralled by the tyranny of nostalgia.
Bruges speech
A few weeks back, I wrote about being in the audience at Margaret Thatcher’s famous Bruges speech in 1988. That speech, when seen from the radicalism of today’s Tory Party, is a centrist plea for less federalism rather than the rallying cry for Brexit.
Thatcher never once mentioned exiting anything; her position was actually to the left of where May and Hammond have positioned themselves. At the core of centrist Tory economics was commerce, wealth creation and ultimately economic growth.
Today the Brexiteers have eliminated one-nation conservatism and replaced it with the type of nativism that economic history tells us will result in less, not more prosperity.
The social democratic wing of the Labour Party has more in common with the “one nation” Toryism of the Conservative centre than it has with its own leadership. The same is true of the Tory centre; they have more in common with Labour’s social democratic wing than they have with Rees-Mogg and Johnson.
The centre ground of English politics has been obliterated and, despite the fact that elections tell us that the centre represents the aspirations of the majority of the English voting public, it is politically irrelevant.
The question is why is this happening in the UK now?
Economics is central to the explanation. Economically, the centre is being rejected because centrist politics has failed the English/British public.
For example, the recent IPPR Commission on Economic Justice shows that in 2018, average (median) earnings were still 2-3 per cent below their level in 2007-8 and are barely higher than their 2002 level. To grasp how long ago that is, think Saipan. Average (median) earnings are not forecast to recover to their 2008 level until 2025.
Weakest decade
If the forecasts up to 2020 are correct, the 2010s will be the weakest decade for average real earnings in 200 years, the era of the Napoleonic Wars. The UK is one of only five developed countries where earnings are still below their 2007 level.
Over the past 40 years, half of the UK’s population has barely shared in the growth of the economy. Between 1979 and 2012, just 10 per cent of overall income growth went to the bottom 50 per cent of the income distribution, while the bottom third gained almost nothing. Meanwhile, the richest 10 per cent took almost 40 per cent of the total.
In the mid-1970s the Bank of England calculated that the “labour share” of national income was almost 70 per cent; today it is around 55 per cent, meaning people who work for a living – as opposed to those who live off rents and dividends – have been falling back dramatically.
Almost a million people in the UK are now on “zero-hours contracts”, which provide little or no security at all. Overall, 14 million people (22 per cent of the population) live on incomes below the poverty line after housing costs; this includes four million children, or nearly one in three, and the number is rising.
There remains a six-fold difference between the incomes of the top 20 per cent of households and those of the bottom 20 per cent. This makes the UK the fifth most unequal country in Europe – that’s including some kleptocracies in eastern Europe.
Wage gap
The gender pay gap has remained stubbornly higher in the UK than the European average; median hourly pay among women is 18.4 per cent lower than for men. And we see a similar racial wage gap between white and black workers.
In London, the UK has the richest region in northern Europe, yet the stark fact is that the UK also has six of the 10 poorest regions in northern Europe, making the UK the continent’s most geographically unbalanced economy.
In contrast, the figures from Ireland on every corresponding measure show a much richer and more equal society. Ireland is currently fourth on the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) ranking, while the UK is at 14th.
One component of those HDI rankings is real gross national income (GNI) per capita. This strips out much of the multinational influence. On this measure, Ireland’s income per head at $53,754 (€45,736) is 37 per cent higher than the UK’s at $39,116 (€33,279).
Again, based on UN calculations, the stock of immigrants as a proportion of the population is 16.9 per cent in Ireland compared to just 13.4 per cent in the UK. Yet we have no anti-immigrant movement.
The centre provides political ballast for a country and that ballast is a function of economic performance. The UK has abandoned the centre because the politics of the centre didn’t deliver. This should be a lesson to all of us.
David – you are a brave man!
It would be interesting to get comparison with the financial health numbers in https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2018/09/05/134-an-extremity-of-risk/ by Tim Morgan
It might be a good idea to wait to see how brexit pans out before making any claims about either state.
Brexit surely must have the potential to do us more damage than them. A hard border and the border counties are toast.
Yet in none of this article does it mention the real reason for the political plight of Britain, and indeed other European countries that sit higher in the UK in those tables: immigration. A YouGov poll done earlier this year across a broad base of European countries – north, south, east and west, showed what is uppermost in the mids of European peoples: immigration, terrorism and then the economy. Unemployment sits fourth. The first two are related, and we know why. Europe’s mainstream politicians either alos know why or refuse to acknowledge it, let alone tackle it. https://yougov.co.uk/news/2018/05/11/yougov-data-reveals-what-europeans-think-are-most-/ I also… Read more »
Unusually, I would have disagree strongly with David here and believe there is a complete blindspot in his logic. I agree entirely that the broad stagnation of wages, the increasingly free, free market capitalism that was espoused through the 80s and 90s has led to a more unequal society in the western democracies that are under discussion here. The prescription David suggests is a strengthening of the center and particularly a nudge to the center from the left. But this is precisely the center, that supported by a center leaning Labour, created the disease as outlined in the first place.… Read more »
Mr McWilliams writes: “Bruges speech in 1988. That speech, when seen from the radicalism of today’s Tory Party, is a centrist plea for less federalism rather than the rallying cry for Brexit. Thatcher never once mentioned exiting anything” – she never mentioned exiting the European Communities because the EC had an economic (Four Freedoms) character and the EU has a political character; secondly, the EC was ruled by law whereas the EU is ruled by Germany against the EU own laws. I expand on it in my article: https://burkeanjournal.com/analysing-german-political-interference-in-european-nations/ Thatcher was against German reunification when Germany was pro-Atlantic: if Mr… Read more »
And, btw, this is my latest article:
https://burkeanjournal.com/denials-and-misinformation-on-the-horror-of-the-gulags/
Where are Hugh Leonard and Brian O’Nolan when you need them: or Jonathan Swift. George Canning and and Gillray would have eaten this article alive and spat out the bloody pieces: in fact all of them would.
If you think that you can sell liberty and freedom for money then you will end up with neither wealth nor freedom.
What was 1922 all about? the crunch will come when the EU asks to subsume sovereignty in fiscal and political union: and Ireland will say no.
To disguise a political preference in the guise of an economic preference is a totally negative and unambitious aspiration
The difference between the US and the UK:
The President’s Own US Marine Band
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgABUZ4i9co
Hitler has only got one ball:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dPn9M7TLlI
But – But – it is all the same.
Does it really matter any more which political group are in power ?
The economic power is with transnstional corporations and financial groups, they can buy off any government and control them.
Their aim is to transfer wealth from the many workers to the few pigs at the top.
@scania
Yes it does.
You either have democracy or you do not:
And it is about this: it is about power and who shall wield it – “by the people and for the people” – or…
And if David can equate this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dPn9M7TLlI
with this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTVE8N9GC7k
Best of luck!
Gettesburg is still being fought;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC7bYDBj_eA
Lydia the tattooed Lady:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVBBxptpSY8
7
On immigration, the transnationals employ many, perhaps a third of their total employment in ROI. Also many immigrants work in the service low paid sector that many Irish people find unattractive. The agricultural sector of the economy is highly dependent on the British market. What happens if sterling goes on declining and tarrifs are introduced post Brexit?
and the moral of the story is; what little talent have these morons have compared with;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amQ63EZfUMA
when i’m good i’m very good; but when i’m bad i’m better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgdIh6rE7PQ
I agree with David, and I would like also to add this: – Brexit appears to have been a clever Russian-funded ploy to strengthen the UK establishment position against the UK population allowing for a creeping erosion of democratic liberties, compared with the rest of Europe, and at the same time weakening the UK & EU politically. It seemed to have worked! – Brexit has also weakened the UK economy which is heavily dependent upon banking and finance services reliant on the economic integration, and makes it less likely to attract foreign investment. – UK has become one of the… Read more »
What I am trying to say is that:
We have zero talent:
Zero – zilch – nux – crap all – nothing:
Just sanctimonious snot, gobshites whose only talent is to mix vanity, envy and total ignorance in almost equal quantities.
Hoagy Carmichael puts us all to shame:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qWZg_RK2Io&index=2&list=RDgvhq3V8ZhTA
Speaking of unions, some fascinating remarks of the most insightful union-skeptic in Ireland (he regrets the union of Dublin with the west of Ireland – I’d love to live to see the debate between him and Mr McWilliams on things like abortion, EU, LGBT, Christianity, and nation-states): https://youtu.be/wImMJgHqQic?t=1340 Although I’m not sure if the west of Ireland he talks about (anti-colonial, conservative, religious, anti-Anglo-Saxon) still exists (or even ever existed!): I didn’t see much of it, and all we can rely on are either literature (which might or might not be all mythology rather than true accounts) or people over… Read more »
Hi,
Ireland’s economy is better is it? Really? Are you sure? Got any mates commuting to London from Eire for better pay and conditions? I have loads of them.
Whether you like it or you don’t David what’s driving the wedge between the botuom and the top is out of control monetarism confining inflation to house prices and the stock market and deflation to wages.
Its happening in all the countries doing the same type of currency printing. The politics is following the monetary status quo David.
God help us all.
@David McWilliams McWilliams.
A suggetion for a question for your next test paper in trinity professor;
Is the dysfunction in the world’s democracies with attendant mass migration and utterly failed globalisation policies the direct result of currency debasement?
Ans,
Absafuckingloutely!
I thing that the change in their fortune has been brought about by technology – the top benefits from it while the bottom gets screwed. When A.I. gets going the middle will be forced downwards towards the bottom and then Corbyn will come into his own.
Lenin was 100 years too early.
‘In contrast, the figures from Ireland on every corresponding measure show a much richer and more equal society.’ David McWilliams
‘Dublin’s homelessness crisis jars with narrative of Irish economic boom’
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/sep/05/dublin-homelessness-crisis-jars-with-narrative-of-irish-economic-boom
Really ? Ireland’s GDP statistic is a meaningless statistic for most ot the people working in the Irish economy. Ireland’s economy is so distortional that even GNI no longer makes any sense. It has less relevance here than it does in a standard economy, and is on the way to being more representative of tax haven, where dodgy politicians are in cahoots with some very dodgy avoiders, and moral codes are determined by even dodgier media outfits. One may as well, say that Guernsey is one of the wealthies places on the planet. Things have haved changed since David called… Read more »
By the way, if one looks at the range of idiots running Dublin City Council, one sees very clear evidence that the political centre is not stable in Ireland.
“It has been replaced by the Brexiteers, enthralled by the tyranny of nostalgia.” Derision of the electorate is similar to Clinton’s description of the Trump voters as the “deplorables” thereby insulting 50% of the population. “In London, the UK has the richest region in northern Europe, yet the stark fact is that the UK also has six of the 10 poorest regions in northern Europe, making the UK the continent’s most geographically unbalanced economy.” London is still the financial center of the world and those closest to the money benefit first. The south east of Britain is the only place… Read more »
The economic inequity spawns the violent politics of the left just as planned by the one world government elites. Mob rule will be supplanted with authoritarianism.
https://needtoknow.news/2018/09/antifa-threatens-president-trump-senator-cruz-judge-kavanaugh-not-safe-will-find/
“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” … H. G. Wells
There is a lot of commentary about the markets not working and a big fat ZERO ON THE CRIME AND CORRUPTION CALLED MARKET MANIPULATION. Bitcoin too is commandeered by the futures market on the COMEX. Bitcoin price is in lock down since the futures market was implemented. “”Bill,(lemetropolecafe.com) No follow through allowed, with another day of high volume trading to go along with this day-long coma. Silver has barely budged 3 cents all day, while gold is stuck at a buck or two under $1200. You have to marvel at how nearly a quarter million contracts can change hands in… Read more »
A battle of international ramifications.
The Democrats have descended to despicable, dirty, deranged, unsubstantiated sexpot stories. The ends justify the means. No morals, there are no ethics, just sewer rats.
https://spectator.org/337085-2/?utm_source=American+Spectator+Emails&utm_campaign=00b5385442-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_09_26_08_14&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_797a38d487-00b5385442-104365713
UK, Germany and France conspire with Russia and China to avoid Iranian sanctions by side stepping the SWIFT banking settlement system.
https://www.axios.com/trump-administrations-hostile-rhetoric-undercuts-its-iran-strategy-b7d0e917-9faf-4f14-aa5b-062bd3f8191c.html
‘A few weeks back, I wrote about being in the audience at Margaret Thatcher’s famous Bruges speech in 1988. That speech, when seen from the radicalism of today’s Tory Party, is a centrist plea for less federalism rather than the rallying cry for Brexit. Thatcher never once mentioned exiting anything’ The idea that Thatcher wouldn’t have campaigned for Brexit is completely ludicrous. In her private correspondence she made clear that Maastrict was a treaty too far, never mind what her reaction to the Lisbon Treaty would have been! Attempting to fudge/ignore the ‘evolution’ of the centrist EEC into the radical… Read more »
‘Today the Brexiteers have eliminated one-nation conservatism and replaced it with the type of nativism that economic history tells us will result in less, not more prosperity….The question is why is this happening in the UK now? Economics is central to the explanation.’ David McWilliams The ‘nativism’ is to be found in the ‘Germany First’ model of economic mercantilism and Germany, like China, doesn’t seem to be doing too badly with that model. Whilst the EU may need the UK, the UK certainly does NOT need the EU. The current fantasy of an ‘asymmetric Brexit’ that damages only the UK… Read more »
David gives the conventional view of British politics and it is nonsense, so much so that there is barely a sentence that is true. There is no centre ground. The centre is a very limited range of tolerated opinion that has veered alarmingly to the left in the last two decades. Hitchens says that some of what passes for received opinion now would have horrified him and his comrades in his youthful revolutionary Trotskyist/ -ite days. The gender nonsense has only been on the radar here for the past couple of years and it is alrady an article of faith!… Read more »
What a load of blah Ireland’s economy is still the same model that crashed in 2008. It’s even worse this time and local Economists like McWilliams still make out that this boom is not fuelled by debt, because they focus on on some local measure like loan to income ratios introduced by our Central Bank or some balderdash . The reason for Irelands temporary recovery is 1. Quantitative easing and central banks. Ireland benefits from this more than any country on the globe. The reflation of assets, by suppressing interest rates and flooding the world with cheap money benefits those… Read more »
There is a battle waging in the US senate of historic proportions, the outcome of which will have ramifications for civilized society in the western world. It concerns the erosion and abandonment of a key pillar of the law and the safety of all citizens. The Presumption of Innocence of charges is at stake. If lost we succumb to the totalitarian state. “Guilty as charged” will be the cry. Incarceration the norm. We are in peril. Already in Canada, the presumption of innocence is abandoned if charged under human rights legislation. People have the power of the state and defendants… Read more »
Wealth exiles have contributed to the wage decline as a percentage of profits. (70 -53) Nations and national taxes are for the poor only. Throw in “work for pittance immigrants” and you have unnegotiable incomes. The stats show Ireland ahead but stats don’t mention our dysfunctional health service. and our public sector in general. The unsackable over superannuated sixth who have become a “super class” unweathered by adversity much like communist party members in the Russian eighties. “Some are more equal than others.” There is no mighty Ireland myth. We copy the UK in almost all things from economic policy… Read more »
Does National Debt distort the GNI per capita ranking ? Despite 5 yrs of growth, Ireland is still borrowing 10bn /yr permanent debt to sustain paying the public sector 40% more than the private sector. This disparity is politically driven by some cowardly Irish economists and the host of all discussions on our resources. For every 10bn / yr permanent ND borrowed, does it not just show up as +9.5bn ÷ 5m on our GNI per capita ranking ? The .5bn going to the first year of interest repayments. Magic money. Irelands ND in 2007 was 43bn. Today its 213.4bn.… Read more »
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