That the political classes are suffering with serious amnesia over the part they have played in creating this economic collapse would be hilarious if it were not so serious.
That they believe the problems they created can be erased by fire hosing public cash in every direction says as much about their inability to think as it does their reliance on their advisors’ ability to read.
With a diversity of thought that appears to go no further than Cummings reading a book by Keynes, Boris has used the parapet provided by this week’s Mail on Sunday to proclaim that he will pump ‘Billions to get Britain Booming’ and spend, spend, spend on infrastructure projects as if he’s spending his summer out in the sunshine making hay.
The real impact of what the Johnson Government has done may still take several months to hit enough of us and reach the critical mass where the media will openly turn on the architects of what will surely become a dreadful malaise.
They have crippled this Country, our businesses, and our economy with a disproportionate response to a problem that they still don’t understand. But the Government still wants to sidestep the biggest opportunity in living memory to unravel many of the injustices that people in this Country experience day-to-day. Yet again they are falling back on the political view that money is the only tool that can provide a fix.
It is easy to see why they think this way. Former Conservative PM John Major stepped in to say that the UK must borrow to pay for a ‘crusade’ to improve living standards for the poor. You really would have thought that 23 years out of Office would have been enough to understand that washing everything with public money doesn’t make it gleam.
Money can only ever play a part in solving the problems that the UK is facing. It will never be the solution in itself.
Together we are living through an age where we have capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich. Continuing to use money as the cure for ills will only serve to extend this problem further. It lines the pockets of those who are already rich and lowers the value yet further of the incomes of the middle classes and the poor.
Politicians have got used to treating their responsibilities like being treasurers of some nice country club set in Westminster where all they need do is listen to requests for cash from club captains and the staff, then sign the cheques and watch the upgrades to the course roll out – never having to lift a finger at any point in between.
The big clue to where their responsibilities lie is in the name. Politicians are supposedly there to champion and develop policy. Not just solve every problem based on what they decide ‘we’ can afford, or what they can borrow to make their re-election secure.
Market freedom without regulation of ethical standards and morality, coupled with the impact of transactions that have real-life impacts taking place at distance in the cloud have made the life experience of normal people completely meaningless to those who control the processes and have a grip on the financial levers of life.
Attempts by any politician to address the ills of society without taking on the task of making big business, the banks and the financial sector responsible for all they do will do nothing to help anyone other than those whose interests who are best served without reform.
For politicians to believe that the problems people have are all about the amount of money is an ideological trap. Acting on them only serves the purposes of economists and money men.
The way to help everyone in the UK is for responsible politicians to take back control of the basic cost of living and regulate the way that prices of all things essential to basic life are set.
The aim MUST be the cost of essential food, transport, accommodation, and anything that always contributes to an individual being able to live self-sustainably without help from Government or charity being controlled and maintained.
Once we can all live in safety, without fear and free of debt as an absolute minimum, the UK will have crossed the threshold of all the societal problems that we have and be on the pathway to the ills we share being solved.
Adam Tugwell 