These are strange times. We know that things are not the same as they used to be. Our lives are being governed by a set of rules that seem to be changeable at political whim. We see the rising numbers of redundancies reaching out from our TV screens and know from conversations that many businesses are already struggling and looking ahead hopefully but suspecting that they will go bust.

Yet life continues and even seems to be returning to something like normality before the Lockdown began. The drive thrus are open. We have a choice when it comes to going out to shop or buying online. To listen to the media, it is as though Covid-19 has done all the damage to the economy that it possibly can.

Underlying all of this, economically at least, there is something very deep and very dark going on. UK GDP fell by 20.4% in April alone. High-profile business restructures like that of British Airways have pre-emptively begun and the Bank of England has today announced that it will pump £100 Billion into the Economy.

The people whose job it is to watch for the distant elephants as they cross the horizon are already extremely hard at work.

Somehow however, there is a shared feeling like this is all happening to somebody somewhere else. As if any of the pointers, red flags or warning bells that are telling us that the shit is about to really hit the fan are just another media headline that has been cooked up by story tellers for the benefit of someone else.

It feels this way simply because we are walking together through the existence of false floor economy. One that was created by the Government’s Lockdown alleviation measures such as the Job Retention Scheme and the ‘Furlough Money’ that has been fire hosed at any company or business that employs staff and has qualified itself for a Scheme.

There are potentially millions of people who are today employed within jobs that no longer exist. Employers are keeping them on the books for as long as it is not costing them their own money to do so.

As the Government money dries up or is reduced to a level where continuing to live the lie no longer makes sense, this whole situation will change.

The difference between where the economy is and where it appears to be is significant. As things stand, there continues to be a common belief that things will simply return to how they had previously pre-lockdown been. The media and political commentators who should know better have made it worse by reporting the queues outside shops as non-essential retailers reopened on Monday as being illustrative of the British Economy recovering and the Country getting back to work.

At best, what we have seen this week is the effect of little more than a bubble or overhang from the pre-Covid time that will continue to exist until the impact of the massive recession that we are now sleepwalking into has impacted a critical mass of people that will be enough to push the media to begin reporting in a very different way.

The key ignition points will be when the need for employers to contribute to the existing levels of Furlough Money comes into force at the beginning of August and then when the Schemes have ended in October, when the full six months of this artificial reality that Politicians have created come to their end.

The false floor economy will soon become a trap door for everyone. Not just the people who have already been made redundant or the incredibly significant number of business owners and company directors who have not been catered for by the Chancellors various initiatives. Policies made by a Government in fear of everything other than the consequences of what they were doing for everyone else. They never helped in the way they should, and their only real success has been to hide the arrival of what is going to be a very painful reality for all of us in plain sight.

The Government U-Turn on providing Free School Meals during the Summer is one that only a different set of politicians could have avoided.

Yes, we have seen Boris led once again by powers outside of his control. But where the Labour Party is concerned, they have also spent many years in power too, never once taking the opportunity to extend provision beyond the end of School Terms.

Political philosophy has become so malleable these days that it is difficult to identify where the left begins and where the right starts.

In fact, so transparent has the motivation of all politicians to secure and then maintain power at any cost become, we have entered a new chapter in British Politics where the leaders themselves are not leading and instead are being led.

Scientists and the Media led the Lockdown. Protests are now leading a national identity crisis. A Footballer has led the policy on Free Meals for Children to be changed.

The increasing need for Free School Meals and support for households suffering from food poverty during the Lockdown has drawn attention to the deepening impact of the Government’s farcical decision to deliberately engineer a recession. But also, to the reality beyond the current crisis that there is a huge demographic in the UK that simply cannot afford to eat.

For reasons unknown, the Conservative Party manages public policy under its control with the clear belief that unemployment and poverty are one and the same thing.

It may not be intentional. But this callous and disengaged approach to social disadvantage in the UK leads the politicians responsible to provide on our behalf for those in need with the idea that once an unemployed person can be recatagorised as having a job, the problem is no longer theirs.

A clear and dangerous disconnect exists where decision makers really have no understanding of what it is to live in poverty. They have no idea of the experience of a life where the simple basics must wait until a payment arrives or often are something that you simply cannot afford.

Indeed, it was very sad to hear the mocking of queues outside of shops like Primark and Sports Direct on Monday when ‘non-essential’ retailers reopened, as I can relate well to what it is like when shops like these are the difference between standing in rags and being properly clothed.

I grew up in a one parent family, in social housing and received Free School Meals. I left school with no qualifications at 16 and could very easily have been one of the ‘statistics’ that this debate has been all about. I went on to become a senior manager with a national charity and launch my own successful start-up when I was 30. But I became a Conservative Councillor and Licensing Chair too and saw the inner workings of what politics, politicians and political parties in this Country do.

Politicians on all sides of the political divides do not possess the experience required to make the decisions that will affect the lives of people other than their own.

The political party system has turned Westminster into a quasi-monopoly that splits three (or four) ways and the majority of candidates endorsed by the Parties do not have the skills or knowledge necessary to understand and empathise with the lives of people who will continue to find themselves going short for as long as this way of doing politics in the UK remains in place.

You cannot fix a problem if you do not understand or will not accept how it was caused.

The problems that riddle society like social mobility, racism and food poverty are simple in their complexity. They require a level of 360 degree thinking and empathy from Government that this political culture collectively does not encourage in any way.

The rot is now so ingrained within the system that Politicians like Boris. Keir Starmer and the London Mayor are all being led by events. They have resigned responsibility for taking the lead without having done the right thing and stepped down.

The Conservative Government of today does not understand that the need for Free Meals for Children does not only exist when children from deprived backgrounds are in school.

Boris may have caved into this amongst other demands since his tenure in No10 began. But the policies that are needed will not be written and the changes that the whole of our society needs for the future will not be implemented until we have a very different type of politician driving it and standing at the helm.

Whilst none of the usual suspects have produced work that reflects this from the US, the chances are that when they do, it will show that there has also been a giant leap to the left in political direction since George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis Police.

Polling that has suggested that Keir Starmer is already doing as well as the early days of Blair may well be the reflection of this shift without those same questions being asked. This being the guaranteed landslide at the General Election of December 2024 that Labour supporters so desperately want is however a different question altogether.

Social Media in recent days has been an experience to behold. The cancellation of TV comedies such as the ‘Germans’ episode from Fawlty Towers, the planned removal of statues like that of World Scouting Founder Lord Baden Powell and the boarding up of Winston Churchill’s Statue in Parliament Square at the behest of London Mayor Sadiq Kahn demonstrate just how overpowering the Groupthink underpinning what began as the Black Lives Matter protests is. It also shows how overpowered the Politicians and the Police have actually been.

Yet the speed with which this whole ‘movement’ has gained momentum gives the lie to the solidity of the foundations upon which what the leaders of the protests would hope a direction of travel has been built.

When events are studied in as much detail as we might like to think those advocating anarchy have done so before trashing everything that the UK has been built upon, incidents such as the removal of PM Winston Churchill from a Google Search of British Prime Ministers might have at least demonstrated that those responsible were wise and experienced enough to know that the great man had returned for a second term.

That groupthink has become so powerful that an horrific injustice in a foreign Country where police and government operate in a very different way with openly sanctioned gun use by the police and members of the public is worrying enough.

But the herd-like actions of British people who we might otherwise consider to be very intelligent and above all human, to become violent, involved in public disorder, to damage property or even attack the police on what appears little more than the spur of the moment should tell us that we have indeed entered very dangerous times. This is how inexplicable changes to the collective consciousness of whole Countries or an entire race are created and become formed.

The Government is actively doing all it can to distance itself from the decisions that it has made, now that the impact and consequences of the Lockdown are manifesting and finding their way into the light. But the reality is that public unrest has been all but guaranteed to kick off right from the start. It was just a question of when and what it would be that would set it all off.

That Boris and the Establishment are being led by the nose is only too well demonstrated by the delay and pyrrhic nature of the statements that Government MPs all too frequently now make and by pictures like those of the Labour Leader and his Deputy Angela Raynor ‘taking the knee’ make.

A vacuum now exists in the top tiers of Government, the Public Sector and the Police that shows there is a massive void in public leadership that is begging to be filled. Not by Black Lives Matter or anything else which has so far only really made sense to an inexperienced and emotional few who are desperate for the World to make sense. But by whatever is coming and will come very soon that achieves a critical mass in opinions across society because no matter how hollow, it makes collective sense and comprehensively connects.

For those of us who want and advocate genuine freedom for every one of us to be who we are and be all that we can be without anyone else being able to impose their own ideas of what that looks like as a framework upon us first, these really are very troubling time indeed.

We don’t have leadership in Government, nor across this Parliament as things stand. And whilst this particular dynamic of MPs remains seated and the British Political System remains broken, our future may be imperilled by whoever manages to start talking the right talk, get a media platform and start reaching and engaging the masses with the most clear and compelling voice. Because sadly, as we can see from the front benches at Westminster today, it is more often than not the case that empty vessels make the most sound.

Of the words and actions most noticeable during the riots, protests and unrest that has followed the death of George Floyd in the USA, it has been the trend to use some process of transference to make just about anything relevant to the anger that protestors have by branding it as being racist too.

A significant group of mainly young people rightly feel disenfranchised from a system that cares little about who they are, where they are from and what they do.

What they do not realise is that beyond Westminster and the Establishment system, we all feel this way. We just have a different way of looking at the World because we have had more time looking and thinking about it.

Groupthink has taken over to such an extent that racism, like many other isms that represent prejudice against certain groups is now being identified and attacked like it is a conscious, considered and deliberate dark political philosophy.

Yet racism and all these innate prejudices that so many of us unwittingly carry are a basic animalistic or intrinsic level reaction to difference.

Too many of us possess prejudices against others for the world to be as fair as it should be. But few are self-aware enough to understand and value the differences in the way that they feel about others and everything that appears to be outside of them.

We do not like anything that is different to the image and perceptions that we have of ourselves. As we look outwards. the easiest way to define or differentiate ourselves against others is by the colour of our skin.

But that same process works at different levels and in different ways with wealth, sexual orientation, race and nationality, level of education, social standing, demographics and even our view and approach to any gender different than ourselves.

Difference is important because it is the easiest way for us to define ourselves and our state of being against others who will then either elevate within our perceptions so that they stand above us and we look up to them – perhaps as celebrities and people we look up to, or we use as leverage to elevate and place ourselves above them and look down upon them – perhaps as if they have no value or do not qualify to have the same things or same experiences that we do in some way.

The recognition of differences between us and the process that goes with it runs like a background computer programme. No matter what anyone might say if they are challenged about the innate prejudices that they may or may not have, few will really be able to identify the real cause of what makes them prejudiced and the assumption will remain that it is either a cultural thing or they have been conditioned in some way.

Prejudice works in all directions too. A viral spread comes into play where the racism or prejudice about one will be mirrored towards everyone who looks or behaves similarly in some way.

The flow of prejudice is not one way and cannot be defined so simply as the oppressor is racist to the oppressed as the intrinsic reaction of the oppressed is to be equally racist about their oppressor(s) too. The harsh reality of what protestors are doing is that they are practicing an inverted form of racism and prejudice too which is invariably just as bad because they are accusing whole sets of people or professionals of being exactly the same, often in very sinister ways.

Confirmation bias is a big part of the problem too and steps in at every opportunity that it can. Any behaviour or action that can be interpreted negatively to reinforce that initial feeling of discomfort and doubt which was genuine, grows automatically and evolves itself at an emotional and therefore highly charged and dangerous level too.

As we look outside ourselves, it is rare that we realise or understand the way that we are constantly being conditioned by the media and by the world around us to think and behave. But it is the behaviour of the media that opens the floodgates that allow prejudices to come marching in.

The process is very nuanced and begins at a level where there is either extreme positive prejudice or on the negative scale, there is simply none.

Think in terms of how you view the actions, behaviours, misdemeanors and even crimes of the people who are most like you. Your family.

No matter what your family members do, can they really do any wrong? Would you stick up for family members and fight their corner because you know and trust that they are intrinsically good, no matter what they do?

If family are level 1, then your friends and the people you most closely align yourself are level 2 and within these groups you will overlook differences because whilst you have a good relationship, you see them as being the same as you. ‘You make allowances’ in the same or a similar way, and there is a bizarre reality that whatever you are used to in life becomes normality and it is everything else beyond that normality where your prejudices will be found.

As you look at what could be a series of many levels the differences increase too. We look for the easiest way to stereotype, identify and anchor those differences and skin colour is probably one of the easiest that we will ever identify.

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When you have watched a video like that of the ‘arrest’ of George Floyd, it is easy to understand how so many can conclude that racism is a very conscious and highly malevolent act and that anyone who can be deemed to be racist must either be punished or have their behviour changed or doctored in some way.

As Hanlon’s Razor says, we should “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”.

Whether it is the people who project or behave in ways which we consider to be racist, or it is those who look on and accuse them of being racist, it is a hard truth to accept that it is mostly stupidity or downright ignorance that makes all of us prejudiced about others in some way.

Solving the problem of prejudice should never have been easier than it could be today.

But what we collectively fail to understand is that the championing of difference and the messages that are crafted to promote the interests of any group with the aim of promoting equality makes the differences between groups even more profound.

The message being heard is that we are all different and need to be the same. But it is the people who are not in these groups that are the ones who are wrong to be different and that it is they who must now change.

If we really want to have and experience the kind of equality between all peoples, all races and all groups in each and every way that we can, we will have to be led and inspired to understand, believe and live the reality that differences between us are nothing more than perceptions and that whatever they might be, we are all, collectively equal and we are fundamentally just the same.

It is all about creating a condition of familiarity and conscious acceptance of difference that can only be facilitated if we learn from every angle that the differences between all of us are no big deal from the start.