2012's Britannia Unchained championed free market fundamentalism using crass stereotypes to demonise British workers, who are "among the worst idlers in the world": "Indian children aspire to be doctors or businessmen, the British are more interested in football & pop music".
A Financial Times review said Britannia Unchained can be seen as a call to end the Conservative party’s wishy-washy Cameronism. Instead, the authors recommend an approach that is economically libertarian, Eurosceptic, & intolerant of 'the feckless & work shy'.
The book’s premise is that the UK in 2012 was a bit shit: Singapore’s maths whizz children compared to our innumerate kids; Israel’s venture capital market suggests Britain neglects its tech sector; Australia is less burdened by regulation; Brazil is more optimistic etc.
The whole book reads like it's been dictated by the antidemocratic Koch billionaire mafia who wnt an end to 'burdensome' worker, consumer & environmental protections that are a 'burden' on profitability - the 'value' worshipped above all else, including basic human decency.
It's full of incorrect assertions about Britain’s perceived ills: @UKLabour’s spending on public services was not, as they claim, “all paid for by taxes on world leading financial services”; the claim that “standards of state education have fallen” is contradicted by evidence.
For neoliberals Patel, Kwarteng, Skidmore, Truss & Raab, Britain's “malaise lies deeper than government policy can address”. They disingenuously argue Britain’s plight is sociological, not economic: “Britain has… suffered from a diminished work ethic & a culture of excuses.”
They claim 'cushy benefits' & 'celebrity worship' have left Britons idle. Although David Cameron flirted with strident moralism, his “Big Society” was ultimately an optimistic vision. In Britannia Unchained, the country is going to hell in a handcart full of Iceland frozen food.
The book marked a dangerous & harmful shift in Conservative thinking, not only from Cameron but also from the paternalism of Heath, Macmillan & Disraeli. Britannia Unchained prescribed shock therapy for the country: welfare cuts and Beecroft-style labour market deregulation.
Arguably, the book’s biggest lie is “In Britain, there has been too great a tendency to attribute results to fortune or background.” But this was & is reality: in Britain your future income & job is more strongly associated with those of your parents than in most rich countries.
One irony of Britannia Unchained is that many of the countries it lauds (eg Singapore, Brazil & Israel), have far more interventionist states than Britain’s. Another lesson ignored by the authors is that “state capitalism” works better for the many than economic libertarian.
The 2012 FT review warned that "Labour strategists believe that any Conservative move rightwards would allow Ed Miliband to occupy the centre ground. But he should be careful that the centre is not moving rightwards, too."
The review also warned that "Polls suggest young Britons are less statist & more liberal than their predecessors. They are worried about the future, cynical about established power yet keen to do good work. Whichever party can crystallise these views will reap the benefits."
Here's my account of the consequences of this pround & catastrophic shift in the @Conservatives' ideology.
The 1945 @UKLabour Party election manifesto, which led to the unexpected landslide victory for Clem Attlee, is still a cracking read, spelling out many of the progressive policies that the people of Britain once again desperately need today.
"So far as Britain's contribution is concerned, this war will have been won by its people, not by any one man or set of men, though strong and greatly valued leadership has been given to the high resolve of the people in the present struggle."
"The people made tremendous efforts to win the last war also. But when they had won it they lacked a lively interest in the social and economic problems of peace, and accepted the election promises of the leaders of the anti-Labour parties at their face value."
International nurses working for #NHS trusts & private care homes have clauses in their contracts that require them to pay up to £14,000 if they try to change job or return home early.
This, & P&O, is the stark reality of post-Brexit Cruel Britannia.
It's cruel, greedy, exploitative & unfair for employers to pass recruitment costs on to workers, when hiring internationally can save them huge sums.
It costs £10-£12,000 to recruit an overseas nurse, but employers can save £18,500 in agency nurse costs in the first year alone.
By comparison, it takes three years to train a nurse in the UK and costs about £50,000 to £70,000. The government does not pay tuition fees, but provides maintenance grants of £5,000 a year.
Unison knows of cases where nurses were “trapped by unethical contracts”.
Leaked emails suggest Tory peer Michelle Mone lobbied a health minister on behalf of a company seeking Covid contracts – five months after the point at which her lawyers said she had stopped doing anything for the firm!
In October 2020 it was revealed that PPE Medpro, a company led by Anthony Page, a business associate of Mone & her husband Doug Barrowman, had been awarded a contract for £122MILLION to supply personal protective equipment (PPE) to the #NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In October 2020, a spokeswoman for Mone stated she "has no role or involvement in PPE Medpro", adding: "Mr Barrowman is also not involved in the company PPE Medpro & is not a Director or Shareholder." It later emerged that a second contract for £80 million was awarded to Medpro.
Jeremy Hosking, who is now funding anti-‘net zero’ campaigns & has "given" millions to the @Conservatives, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party/Reform UK, & Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party, is the director of a company with $134million pounds invested in oil & gas.
A thread from 2020 about Brextremist Jeremy Hosking's funding of Laurence Fox, written in response to an irresponsible tweet from Fox which encouraged people to ignore COVID health advice during the devastating second wave, which peaked in January 2021.
The Government's proposals to tackle the tidal wave of dirty money flooding Britain, while not completely useless, will have limited impact in practice: it’s clear that the problem in the UK has largely been with enforcement, rather than the law itself.
After years of nonsensical cuts, unless extra resources are channelled into the agencies tasked with pursuing unexplained wealth, it’s unlikely much which change. Otherwise they will keep being outgunned by deep-pocketed kleptocrats capable of funding expensive litigation.
The Economic Crime Act allows the government to convey the impression that it is “doing something” about the proceeds of #kleptocracy being laundered in the UK.
But as a response to corruption, focusing so heavily on unexplained wealth orders may well prove misdirected.
How did Putin & Boris Johnson's political ally & friend Viktor Orbán seize control of the media & build an illiberal state in a decade? With foreign billionaire-funded GB News broadcasting, & Murdoch's talkTV launching soon, is the UK heading the same way? ft.com/content/a6beb5…
In May 2021, Boris Johnson met only the 2nd EU leader since Brexit: grotesque far-right racist authoritarian, Viktor Orbán, who doesn't want "our" colour mixed with others.
The Biden administration describes Hungary as 'a totalitarian regime'.
No 10 calls Orbán 'our friend'.
It seems corrupt far-right anti-democratic authoritarian liars, with strong links to deregulatory free-market think tank networks which use dark money to roll back worker, consumer, democratic & environmental protections, is what unites Britain & Hungary.