With us living through what seems to be the rise of unreported chaos, escaping talk of nothing but politics seems all but impossible. Especially when it seems that our politicians still have the ability to stand in front of the Country and pretend that nothing is, as everyone apart from them, feels and sees.
Our usually hidden Prime Minister broke cover yesterday to announce 5 pledges that he will deliver on in ’23. Doing so provoked a range of responses including one of my own and drew some unfortunate parallels that really do show us that instead of even trying to stand on the shoulders of giants, the people leading us today, really do believe that nothing matters in terms of what they actually do. It’s all about what they say.
So, let’s have a look at these 5 Pledges (or what look more like sledges with the use of a red pen!):
1. Halve Inflation
Hilarious really. As Chancellor, Rishi Sunak printed all of the cash and wrote the cheques to fill all of the grabbing hands that have benefited from all of his profligacy.
To be fair to him, there are massive worldwide influences now at play that on their own make this pledge near impossible for any Government to control and therefore fulfil.
But he could make a really big difference right now if he were to start reigning in all of the corporate profiteering, that his unwritten promise in his responses to Covid opened the flood gates to. The moment when greedy companies and retailers concluded they could charge the public whatever they want, and the Government will just step up and fill all the gaps in.
2. Grow The Economy
You can’t grow the REAL economy from here. Not when you are taxing it in every way that you possibly can. When you are allowing and helping big business to squeeze out all of their small competition with big-business-friendly gestures and rules. When small businesses are closing down every day, because the so-called help you’ve dished out already has penalized all the wrong people. Certainly NOT when you are not prepared to deal with the real causes of all the problems that we have (MONEY, GREED, DEBT, POWER IN THE WRONG HANDS etc.).
What you can do, with power in government and with a lapdog of a willing press, is manipulate figures and statistics to make it look and sound to everyone that your plan to grow the economy has been a success.
In reality this would mean suggesting that the economy is the same thing as the amount of money that’s in circulation – and if you want to look at that more closely, go back to point 1 above!
3. Reduce Debt
The kind of debt reduction our Prime Minister is talking about here can only come about by reducing the amount of money that the Government spends, and/or raising the amount of taxes that we pay, either directly from our pay-packets, or more likely in many more hidden ways that we aren’t supposed to collectively see.
Debt is totally out of control already. Both for us as a Country and for the majority of us as individuals too.
But this was always part of what Rishi Sunak and all of the politicians who have supported Neoliberalism, Globalism and even the European Union too (which is just globalism on a continental scale) have ushered in, facilitated and made legal – even though if many of them were to be asked, they wouldn’t even understand how!
There is only one way to get rid of debt at the unworkable levels that it has now reached.
That is to take everything back to the start and begin all over again.
The Politicians we have won’t do that voluntarily. To do so would expose the part they have played in creating the mess we are now in.
But as the system they are working so hard to save – by making false promises such as these 5 Pledges tell us – The System is already on its way to collapsing anyway.
You might think things are bad now. But wait until the real fun begins.
4. Cut NHS Waiting Lists
Statistics, Statistics and damned lies is the title or saying that immediately comes to mind here (yes, again).
As painful as the delays are for the real people who are suffering them, waiting lists or rather their reduction is no reliable measure to tell us about the state of health that the nation’s health service is really in.
Simply fire hosing money at existing NHS Trusts and private healthcare providers will allow the Government to be able to declare that they have delivered on this pledge.
But it won’t solve any of the institutional or systemic problems that the NHS faces.
It won’t solve the recruitment problem.
It wont stop too much of the money that is supposed to go to frontline care and workers being redirected to back-office managers and consultants with titles that professional nurses, doctors and practitioners would never have.
The NHS needs emergency surgery of its own from top to bottom and it needs it now.
The politicians won’t do that, because of the difficult decisions and political challenges they would face. Not least of all because successive governments of all kinds have been papering over the cracks and using lies that people will now hang on to, to keep the NHS existing.
All of this, when the NHS just existing should never be a part of any responsible governments plans.
5. Stop Small Boats
So easy to say, yet so hard for any of our existing politicians to do, when we are yet again at a point where politicians from all sides will not acknowledge nor face the causes of the problems that make risking your life by crossing the freezing English Channel in dangerous boats so very attractive in the first place.
Nobody in the political establishment will talk about the incentives that drive very desperate people to do this.
No, those crossing The Channel certainly aren’t refugees – whatever the do-gooders want everyone to believe.
They are economic migrants looking for easy money and an easy route to a better life. They see the risk – and the financial gamble they knowingly take as the gate fee to getting them there!
If the Government want a quick fix to the small boat problem, the only way will be with the help of the French and the EU.
Yes, The Government could achieve this quickly. But Rishi and his circle of friends would have to sell out to Macron and his EU Bureaucrat chums to do this. Nobody should be under any illusion that to do so will come at an incredibly high (and deliberately hidden) price.
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The chances are that as we get deeper into 2023, it will quickly become clearer and clearer that in respect of most, if not all of these 5 Pledges, the Sunak Conservative Government will fail.
By tying himself and his Government to the mast in this particular way, Rishi Sunak has done little more than fire a starting pistol for a sledging race that will lead to the return of Boris, a 2023 General Election, and in all probability both.
Either way, without the way that everyone is thinking about any of this, beginning to think very differently indeed, so that we can all experience meaningful change, we are at best only going to experience more and more of the same.
In all likelihood, everything is just going to continue getting worse and worse.
Adam Tugwell 