Within the narrative that has slowly but surely been tearing British culture apart, whilst giving just about every one of us an identity crisis as we try to fathom out the question of whether we should feel guilty for simply being the people that we really are and should be proud to be, there is a self-serving and self-propagating process at work.
Actually, it’s a rather large elephant that sits in this room, and it’s the reality that whenever we focus on any difference between anyone, we are highlighting or amplifying that difference, and creating division or further divisions between us or between members of society as we do.
We are all different to each other, whether those differences are physical or just in the way that we think. And the damage that wokeism and political correctness is doing only fails to be evident, because the success of this subversive culture is less than surface deep and championed only by sleepwalking groupthink.
When we have reached the point where money is the only thing that is important, it naturally follows that whoever controls money, the rules that govern money and the supply of money itself, will be the person or the people who are ultimately in charge of EVERYTHING – right down to what we do, think and say.
Because we revere money and wealth in the ways that we do today, the very democratic system that we believe to be in place to serve our best interests, doesn’t really exist.
Contrary to conspiracists talk and views, there is not some hidden world power that lies at the heart of everything and all public policy decision making, with someone sat in a bunker on a mountainside pulling every world leader’s strings.
Yes, a simple look at the way money rules everything, does make it seem logical that such a power exists. But the real power and influence that now lies in the hands of others who have or control money, and therefore have control over us all comes down to the way that we ALL think about money.
It is the way we think about money that surrenders our own power and control over life and everything else.
The so-called success of our politicians revolves around the use of soundbites.
It’s been a problem since the time of the Blairist New Labour Government of 1997-2010. There was an identifiable shift from politics being about the end result (when at least some of our politicians had the wherewithal to get things done themselves), to becoming all about the message itself.
So bewildered was the Conservative Party by the (New) Labour landslide victory of 1997, they decided the only way to beat them was to play them at their own game.
As power has shifted back from the Blairist years (1997-2010) of the left-wing wolf dressed in right wing clothing, to the Johnsonian Conservative Party of the right that today is even more left than the left, a new low in the meaninglessness of what our political classes do [to us] to retain their power in this Country has finally been reached.
As I write in early 2022, one such soundbite in daily use is that of ‘Levelling Up’.
Suspicions that Boris Johnson and the current crop of Parliamentary Tories are pushing the Levelling Up agenda just as one way to survive, the element of truth that makes the term feel valuable to anyone with ears to listen, is that our political classes do at least appear to know that there is a problem.
All the while, the Labour Left pursue an agenda and way of thinking that through the changes and implementation of public policy achieve nothing but levelling down.
Levelling Up or levelling down; it doesn’t matter. Unless there is balance and fairness in the form of a level playing field at the point where we all step off, there will always be too many of us who lose out, whilst the same old few will end up with a win.
Regrettably, the truth that sits beyond that knowledge, is that none of the MPs sitting on the green benches in our Parliament know or understand the breadth and depth of the problem, or how the problem actually works.
That is why they are playing around with a soundbite that suggests the problem can easily be fixed.
The Tory Right named their latest response to it Levelling Up. For decades, Labour and the Left have responded to it with public policy that adds up to levelling down.
But what is ‘it’? Do our politicians actually know what ‘it’ is? What is ‘it’ they don’t understand?
Today, we find ourselves in the early stages of a cost-of-living crisis and a fall in living standards that is the worst since records began. But these are only some of the issues we now face.
Social mobility, debt, housing, energy, inflation or stagflation, healthcare, climate change, education, wealth inequality, fake news, crime, wokeism and many other problems join the list that’s fast growing into this out-of-control crisis that is touching everything we know, too.
Change is happening around us in ways that make very little sense. Yet the messages we hear in the media and from our politicians suggest that everything is as fine as it can be. It is leading many of us to assume that we are alone with our views and feelings; thinking that we must be going mad.
The UK is the person with major health problems. It’s in a beauty salon, where every wannabe politician must be seen as top dog by everyone. But this political class are just the Saturday morning trainees, only able to sweep up and comb hair*. They smile sweetly and tell the Country that having a great look is all it takes to fix the problems experienced by all. Meanwhile, what the UK really needs is every form of medical surgery known, with the mental health care and physical rehabilitation necessary to make every part of our system work together, returning the UK to full fitness and providing fair and balanced lives for everyone in the shortest time possible.
With an establishment obsessed with sound bites and messages, rather than public policy that has real depth, Adam Tugwell unpicks the realities of Levelling Up, levelling down and decades of mismanagement and self-interest from a political class that simply isn’t up to the job.
Adam demonstrates that the broken tools of a flawed political age will always leave someone, somewhere behind, and shows that our politicians are repeatedly failing to create the social backstop that the UK needs to stop anyone being avoidably disadvantaged.
Levelling Level focusses on the inevitable process of change affecting everything around us that underway today. It discusses how we can harness the experiences that will accompany the challenges that we face to make life better by establishing a Basic Living Standard for all.
Levelling Level proposes that it is not money and financial wealth, but people and the way that our society treats its poorest and most vulnerable that underscores our real value, success and health as communities and as a Nation.
Levelling Level is a solution to the UKs problems that works for all.
*The qualified hairdressers are the government officers and civil servants, or people who like to ‘nudge’
Adam Tugwell 