Lazy, Ignorant and Entitled: the real reasons Britain voted for Brexit?

There are a whole host of reasons why Brexit happened. Some commentators focus on the role of David Cameron in allowing the situation to arise in the way it did, and for his handling of the issue as a personal act of political indulgence. Others focus on the economic factors that led to large sections of the "disenfranchised" working class voting Leave almost as a form of protest. Again, others look at the rise of UKIP and the populist tendency since the financial crisis. The second and third points are related, though, and prior to the financial crisis it was the BNP who were also tapping into this previously-ignored segment of society, before being superseded by UKIP.

In some ways, then, Brexit could be called the "triumph of the losers"; those who have "lost out" in the modern world (read; globalisation) and want things back the way they were before (when life was easier for them). It is usually termed as a wish to turn back then clock.
Populism has been on the rise since the financial crisis throughout Europe, and as we have seen with Donald Trump, in the USA. The same could also be said of Turkey, who are soon to have a referendum on turning their country into a quasi-authoritarian presidency. Populism is an ideology in its own right, although often loosely-defined. In another sense, it is also a psychology of its own. It is that "psychology", and the psychology of the Brexit-supporter, that the author wants to focus on.

Lazy?

Many of those who voted "Leave" were unskilled workers, who felt their livelihoods had become jeopardized by Eastern Europeans who have undercut them. This is the claim that many of those voters made, in any case.
It is true that there are agencies that recruit solely non-British workers from abroad, and it is true that many of the Eastern Europeans do work for a lower wage, especially in the unregulated black market. But this is far from the whole story. A recent article (there have been a number like this) spoke of how many sectors of industry recruit large numbers of Europeans simply because so few British workers apply for those jobs. It is true that many of these jobs are not well paid, but they are still legitimate salaries.
A simple - if brutally-frank - conclusion to reach is that low-skilled British workers feel that those kinds of jobs (such as in the hospitality sector, but especially seasonal farming work) are too difficult for them. With anti-social hours ("when can find the time to go out?"; "do I really have to get up a four in the morning?") and often physically demanding ("I'm not getting my hands dirty!"), these jobs compare poorly with the sedentary, generic services sector that many of them may be used to. But the point is that someone has to do these jobs; and if not enough "natives" are willing to apply for them, then employers simply have no other choice. This assessment of the reality reflects poorly on the local labour force, and  makes you wonder what the local employers think of them.

So the complaint of "foreigners taking our jobs" doesn't really ring true; those workers making this complaint simply are making an incoherent argument that - even if their argument was valid - would anyway suggest that foreign workers had greater levels of labour flexibility than them. In which case,  why don't the locals try to do better than the foreigners, rather than try to "fix" the economy into an inefficient model that's more in their favour? But as we have seen, their case falls flat in reality; either way, the locals simply look "lazy".

This might sound like a blunt assessment given that British workers are among the hardest-working employees in the EU (in hours worked per week); but this is also the case because of inefficient working practises, which are likely to get worse outside of EU regulation. So be careful what you wish for!

Many of these workers are victims of the changes that have happened to the British economy over the last thirty years, but the reality is that complaining about it will change nothing; simply, many of these people have failed to react or change to circumstances. It's true that many of them are the "losers" of modern-day globalisation. The easy answer of blaming "Europe" for everything, as was the argument from the Leave camp, explains why this was appealing to low-skilled workers: it required nothing to believe an idea that explains away their own misfortune, while doing nothing to tackle the real issues.
As said earlier, it sounds like they want to turn back the clock. This was why they voted for Brexit. But looking at things objectively, this is simply a set of workers, already shown to be "lazy" and entitled when compared to their foreign counterparts, wanting to "fix" the system yet further in the expectation that they could have control over the supply of the labour force, regardless of the the intellectual incoherence of this idea. In any case, the kind of economy they are supporting by backing Brexit is the type of low-wage economy with fewer workers' rights that would make them even worse-off than they are currently.
This is why "Brexit" was a victory for the lazy anti-intellectualism of the anti-globalisation forces: like in all Populist movements, its supporters want to be "protected" from reality, while being duped into supporting something that actually would work against their interests.

Thirty years ago the comedy series "Auf Weidersehn, Pet" highlighted a serious issue, and showed a simple way to resolve it: move to where the work is, as thousands of other Europeans do every year. Which leads on to another issue that many Brits have...

Ignorant?

We've looked at how many of the sectors in industry are reliant on European workers due to a lazy sense of entitlement from the local workforce. Some could even assign this to a "Post-Imperial" psychology of expecting others to do the "hard" work for them (such as exists in the Arab Gulf States). But there is another form of "laziness" that also afflicts many Brits: intellectual laziness.

As we have seen, many of the lower-skilled native workforce are guilty of blaming Europeans for their problems. What makes this worse is that Britain is singularly-exceptional in the EU. It has a population that consciously denies itself the full advantage of one of the EU's "four freedoms"; the freedom of labour, simply because, unlike other Europeans, British people don't bother to learn a foreign language.

While it is true that English is the lingua franca of the world, it is this willful ignorance that reflects badly on the British compared to other European nations. Britain has been in the EU for more than forty years, but most of its population have used the freedom of movement simply to indulge their holiday plans, and then casually expect to be able to speak their language in another country. Put in another way, many Brits' attitude towards Europe is to treat the EU like Post-Imperial "colonies", where they are expected, as Brits, to be treated in a superior manner.

It is this mentality that has fed a lazy thinking towards Europe and Britain's place in the EU. If "Europe" is seen by many Brits and the place "over there" only to go on holiday, buy "duty free" and make fun of foreigners' funny accents, how does this help to create a constructive attitude? Unlike other EU countries' workers, who are happy to travel to work in other parts of the EU, Brits tend to use their freedom to travel simply for leisure or for the purpose of retirement. Of the Brits who do live in different parts of the EU, the vast majority are retirees in Spain. The unwillingness to learn a foreign language is one of the major factors towards this difference.
It is true that the European continent's history of wars over the centuries - and especially the last century - that helped to engender an atmosphere of co-operation and amity. It is true that Britain's cultural history is separated from that in many ways; it could be argued that Britain's relationship with Europe is too influenced by its cultural failure to come to terms with the loss of Empire, as many seeing the EU somehow as a replacement for it. But this does not excuse intellectual laziness.

The intellectual laziness that comes from not learning a foreign language has limited how British people can fully benefit from being in the EU, creating a huge self-inflicted bias against the institution. As said earlier, other countries do not have this problem (at least, not to Britain's extent. Many criticise the French on the same grounds, but contrary to common misconception, many French people know at least some English: they simply don't like using it in their own country).

Put in these terms, many Brits attitude to being a part of the EU could seen as intellectually lazy and entitled, ignorant of what the EU stands for, and willfully-ignorant of the opportunities that being a member of the EU represents. When you are part of a multi-national, multi-lingual labour market and can't be bothered to learn a foreign language, you're simply limiting your own options, especially when the workers in the other countries are doing the exact opposite.
This is what makes British workers' criticism of Europeans who come to work in the UK especially galling; in learning a foreign language to work in the UK, the Europeans are doing something that Brits are too lazy to bother doing; yet they are criticized for bothering to make full use of the European labour market, unlike the British.

No wonder Europeans have found the British attitude so unfathomable: many Brits seem to have chosen to leave a club they never even tried to make full use of (or bothering to fully understand the rules), while criticising the others who did. It makes "Brexit" supporters sound like the kind of people who join a gym to lose weight, give up after a couple of times, then complain that it's the gym's fault that they haven't lost any weight. The cultural ignorance towards Europe that seems prevalent in many Brexit supporters is a result of intellectual laziness, and a narcissistic expectation of special treatment. But again, this is a tendency that appears throughout Populist movements.
Which brings us to the other main issue....

Entitled?

Since Britain has joined the EU, it has been one of the largest net contributors to the fund. This is a point that many Eurosceptic politicians have made over the years, and was a major factor in Margaret Thatcher getting her famous "rebate" after being in "the club" for ten years.
But the fact that the UK is the second-largest contributor (Germany being the largest) is hardly surprising, given the size of the UK economy and its population. France is a famous beneficiary of  the CAP, but as we have seen, there are other aspects of its EU membership where the UK has been holding itself back, such as treating the EU simply as one big holiday destination rather than a huge potential work-zone.
Britain's relationship with the EU since its membership has always seemed "semi-detached", and that's been part of the problem. Of course, the EU exists as an association of mutual self-interest for those involved, so all countries will fight their own corner. The "apogee" of Britain's engagement with the EU was clearly in the early years of the Blair premiership (until Brown's resistance against joining the Euro); since then, and especially under the Cameron administration, it has simply been a matter of the UK trying to get the EU to see things from their point of view i.e. that "Europe" was an unpopular cause at home. It was Cameron's liking of "feeding the crocodile" of Euroscepticism that Europeans found exasperating, damaging Britain's relations with the EU for cheap political gain, and was the (unsurprising) cause of his resignation.
While Eurosceptics found Britain's membership of the EU to be some kind of debilitating autocracy,  the reality was that Britain was able to get its way almost all of the time on the key issues that mattered: apart from Thatcher getting a rebate, Britain was able to opt out of Schengen, the Euro, and the social chapter. Britain's "semi-detached" status was therefore thanks to the EU indulging British exceptionalism as far as it could reasonably go without breaking its own rules. But, this was still not enough for the Eurosceptics that wanted to have their cake and eat it while in the EU, with that attitude persisting with Brexit. This sense of entitlement is therefore endemic.

When looking at who voted for Brexit, a clear generation gap can be seen. What's telling about this is that it's the generation who already have a "triple lock" pension (and a holiday home in Spain?) who are still yet unsatisfied with their lot; they are the "have their cake and eat it" generation, if you will, who want their lives protected at all costs. A cynic might add that this is the problem with democracy, when it's the older generation who do most of the voting: in a democracy, a politician must satisfy his voters. This is something that the prize Machiavellian George Osborne was all too aware of.

So David Cameron's "feeding the crocodile" may have made some short-term political sense in a way, though it adds up to horrible long-term strategy: after all, Greece got itself into a financial mess by years and years of politicians simply doing what the voters asked of them: giving them more and more money. This is the ultimate route that Populism takes, and why it always ends in tears.
Politicians have to be leaders "ahead of the curve" as well as being responsive to the electorate; this is one reason why many people in the UK bought into the "austerity" agenda, even though it was based on a false narrative of events (that Labour overspending caused the financial crisis, rather than the banks' reckless mismanagement). People believed it because they liked the idea of a politician "taking a lead" on events and telling them what appeared an "unpalatable truth". But Cameron's reasons for backing "austerity" weren't about genuine leadership; it was about opportunistic political "differentiation", making the Conservatives seem forthright compared to the seemingly-evasive Labour party.
And now that Theresa May has inherited that legacy of Brexit, she seems determined to follow the same path, indulging the worst aspects of Populism by turning her party into a re-branded "UKIP" that steals all their clothes. Meanwhile, those who stand against that, it is implied, are "anti-British" and "doing the country down". It is no wonder that the atmosphere in the country has turned uglier towards foreigners, and even countrymen who are worried about their future.

The "Brexit generation", if we can call them that, are those who are also more likely to vote Conservative i.e. the over-50's (who, of course, are more likely to be voters at all): the same people who are concerned about protecting their status, their (paid for) homes (or second homes), and are wistfully looking back to a time of their childhood when "Britannia ruled the waves".
Looking at it rationally, it's hard to know exactly why these people are so anti-European. What has modern-day Europe ever done to them personally? Why do they despise Brussels? The most common complaint, apart from "immigration" (see the points above) is about loss of sovereignty. But as alluded to before, these are the rules by how the club works: you trade in some sovereignty to get greater freedom of movement, trade and labour, not to mention greater employment rights, investment opportunities, and so on. If Brits don't want to take full advantage of that, it's Britain's problem, not Europe's. They simply don't understand the rules of the game, or can't be bothered to do so.

But this is the point: many of these people are driven by emotional prejudice and historical antipathy that pre-dates Britain joining the EU, rather than due to any rational argument. They still hate Germany because of the war, and think that all Europeans are inherently untrustworthy. They want the Britain of their childhood, with their lovely blue passports, and fewer "brown people". Policy made on such fantastical pretensions, and in favour of people who support such nonsensical thinking, is bound to result in disappointment, if not worse.

Britain is about to find out.

The IDS resignation, the EU referendum, and Cameron: a Conservative crisis of Cameron's making

A week is a long time in politics; a year a lifetime.

Last May the Tories unexpectedly won the general election. After proving all the polls wrong, it left Cameron and Osborne with a definitive mandate to continue their plan of austerity and "reform". Unencumbered by being in a coalition with the LibDems, Cameron's government were free to pursue their aims.
Cameron came to government with a clear agenda to completely restructure how government is done, and also how government is perceived by the public. It was this "agenda" that was so catagorically trashed by Iain Duncan Smith when he resigned.

The roots of the IDS resignation go deep, back to the time when he was Conservative leader, and Cameron and Osborne were advising him on his speeches. The resignation spoke of wounded pride and bitterness at the way the "power duo" were running the government as an exclusive and divisive clique.
Cameron and Osborne had been the "rising stars" of the party in the years after the 2001 election, culminating in Cameron's successful bid to become leader after the failure of the election of 2005. From this point onward, it was Cameron and Osborne, with their neatly dovetailing personalities, that dominated the party's direction. This dominance has been self-evident ever since - up to now.

The spring budget can be called the high-point of the dominance of the "power duo": self-evident from the congratulatory response from Cameron and his intimates at the end of Osborne's budget speech to the look of smug satisfaction on Osborne's face at the end of it.

It was in the hours after this that things quickly began to unravel.









The manner of the IDS resignation was certainly the most high-profile and damning incident of its kind that has been seen since the resignation of Geoffrey Howe more than twenty-five years ago. It is also the first time in more than a generation that a minister has resigned over the budget.

As IDS alluded to, this has been a long time coming, but also has been orchestrated for maximum effect. To Cameron and Osborne, it is clear that politics is something of a "game" to them; Cameron is the superficially-charming, ideology-free careerist, while Osborne is the charisma-free, deviously-smart schemer. This is how their talents have dovetailed so fortuitously for them; equally, it is this opportunistic "dovetailing" of their talents that has ultimately brought about the divine vengeance of IDS.

However sceptically you may view IDS motivations, he has said that the entered politics to make a genuine difference. And as he said in interview, he views Cameron and Osborne's agenda as little more than amoral and divisive politicking, seeking success through a policy of "divide and rule" among the electorate. The "power duo" appear to care little about the disadvantaged because they do not vote Tory; this is what makes it so easy to scapegoat them as "skivers". Equally, this is also what makes it so easy for them to ignore - and even attack - the younger generation in order to indulge the "grey vote": a cynical manipulation (at the expense of the government's actual fortunes) to curry favour with those who are more likely to vote. Last year, this strategy worked to a tee.

In fact, it worked too well. For by cynically destroying their coalition partners the LibDems, it left the Conservatives with an absolute majority - and a headache to actually put their manifesto pledges into practice. As has been alluded to, it was always clear that the Tories were expecting for (at best) a resumption of the coalition, allowing them to dump some of their more fantastical fiscal ideas for the sake of compromise. As this didn't happen, it left Osborne with a lot of "creative accounting", which finally caught up with him in this month's budget. This time, it was "Omnishambles 2: the sequel". And this time, it was personal.

The Conservative Party itself is a coalition of two main flanks, and has been since at least Thatcher's time. Roughly divided between the pro-European "moderates" and Euro-sceptic (for wont of a better word) "hardliners", IDS belonged in the latter camp. The loss of the 2005 election saw "Camborne" rise to the leadership, with their own, 21st century brand of a moderate, "One Nation" Conservativism. They saw that it was the dominance of the Euro-sceptic "head-bangers" who were destroying the Tories' chances of winning power.
With the 2010 election, the chance to form a coalition with the LibDems was therefore a opportunity too good to miss: it would allow Cameron and Osborne a legitimate reason to sideline the Tory right, by making their positioning as a "middle ground" between the centrism of the LibDems and the hard-right "head-bangers" in their own party.

This was clever positioning, but all too clever by half. This was not "conviction politics", but mere "product placement", as IDS clearly saw. At the same time, his department, and his own ideas of welfare reform (whatever your view on them), became a victim to the superficial whims of Osborne in particular. Osborne and Cameron were in favour of austerity, but only really as a trap for Labour and a tool for re-election, rather than a genuine fiscal crusade. This is why austerity in the UK - as awful as it has been for those on the receiving end - is still a drop in the ocean compared to the experience of Ireland or Greece. For those that complained about the highly-unequal application of the policy on government departments, Osborne could either blame their LibDem coalition partners or the need to be firm on austerity, depending on who he was talking to.

Then there was the issue of Europe, which is in fact the true cause of Cameron's hubris and miscalculation in particular. While Europe was not the given reason for IDS' resignation, he also knew - as an arch Euro-sceptic - that he would face the chop in a post-referendum re-shuffle. So he had nothing to lose by resigning now, and it would almost certainly benefit the fortunes of his allies in the Euro-sceptic camp.
The fact that the UK is to have a referendum at all is simply due to the whim - and opportunism - of David Cameron. This in itself tells us everything about the Prime Minister's personality.

In truth, the referendum was talked about at a moment of Cameron's weakness, with the rising spectre of UKIP, from the middle of the last parliament onwards. His pledge to a referendum in the next parliament was therefore a sop to the hard-right of his party, as a tactic to neutralise the threat from UKIP. This is what European leaders find so incredible: that David Cameron would risk the UK's membership of the EU simply as a measure of controlling his party's internal divisions. It is certainly a sign of David Cameron's sense of perspective, or astonishing lack of it.

In this sense, the LibDems in coalition acted as a political buffer or shock absorber to "Camborne" for the internal divisions of the Conservative Party, especially over Europe. Winning the election last year was, in some ways, a disaster for the "power duo", for it left them completely exposed to the right of the party. And by opening up the issue of Europe in as raw a manner as the referendum has, it guaranteed that Tory divisions would come boiling to the surface sooner or later.
Again, Cameron and Osborne's high-handed and autocratic manner of dealing with the referendum has added further evidence of their dismissive and disdainful attitude towards "outsiders". The budget and its immediate fallout were simply a manifestation of all these animosities that have been brooding amongst that wing of the party since the Conservatives gained power in 2010. IDS simply articulated in words the source of those animosities in his resignation. The uproar now among the local party over the planned enforced conversion of all schools to academies (which wasn't even in the party's manifesto last year) is simply another example of how remote from the party the "power duo" have now become.

After the fallout from the budget fiasco and the IDS resignation, many in the party are looking at the time after the referendum, without Osborne and Cameron running the government - and the party - like their own private fiefdom. It's not difficult to imagine this scenario; in fact, it appears more and more likely that Cameron and Osborne will be forced out soon afterwards because they no longer represent the party itself, but simply see the party as a vehicle for their own cack-handed schemes.
In this sense, the referendum may well prove to be Cameron hoisting himself by his own petard. That Cameron did not see this as a real possibility - or was reckless enough to think it worth the risk - is deeply telling.
In trying to out-do Thatcher on Europe, Cameron may well end up out-doing the failure that was John Major. It would be fitting if Cameron were indeed brought down by Europe, for it would symbolise everything about the man: the ego; the superficiality; the hubris.

And then, the UK might have Boris Johnson to look forward to as his successor: replacing one superficial careerist for another...

Narcissism and politics/ the narcissist as politician

It is commonly-understood that a significant proportion of politicians are narcissists (at least partially). Elsewhere, the author has looked into the darker side of politics, where it could be argued that politics and psychopathy meet. But there are plenty of cases in history and the present day to support this widely-accepted phenomenon.

We need look no further than the UK for evidence.
The modern-day Conservative Party is led by David Cameron and George Osborne.  These are the "power duo" of the UK, in some ways the "successors" to the domination that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had over British politics for fifteen years.
Like with Blair and Brown, Cameron and Osborne seem to have some kind of informal agreement about power-sharing: Cameron is the "front man", whereas Osborne is the "back-seat driver" or the "power behind the throne". In some ways, they could be called "amplified" or "alternate" versions of their respective predecessors.
Like Blair, Cameron possesses the charisma and statesmanlike gravitas necessary to appear as a convincing world leader; however, at the same time, Cameron appears less as the "heir to Blair" as the "Blair's bastard" - possessing many of the negative attributes that Blair was accused of having (but more amplified), and only a superficial smattering of the positives. Gordon Brown was accused by some of being dour and power-hungry; Osborne wields powers with supreme efficiency but absent of natural charm, and his ambition is nakedly plain to see. Everything he does is seen through the lens of amplifying power.

Whereas Osborne is an individual with apparent empathy issues, Cameron's personality displays an almost childish aspect to it at times. While the mask is in place, Cameron beams with bubbly charm; but when provoked by something, Cameron temper runs amok, turning into adolescent petulance. Cameron's personality has been analysed before, through the prism of his superficiality pointing to a  darker side. However, a second look at the evidence suggests that Cameron's narcissistic traits far outweigh anything else (what psychologists call the "anti-social" traits). He has no real values because he believes in nothing. He wanted to be Prime Minister simply because he thought he would be good at it - a definition of narcissism if ever there was one. His ideas are taken up suddenly, but because he lacks the will to see things through, will quickly lose interest and do something else. The "Green deal" is a great example of this: a policy announced with great fanfare, only to be quietly dropped when Cameron wanted to suddenly get rid of the "green crap". A large number of firms tied to the industry, and thousands of jobs, were cut loose as a result. In the same way, Cameron's ideas of ten years ago, such as "hug a hoodie" and sticking to Labour's spending plans, were instantly dropped when the socio-economic climate soured. It could similarly be argued that his government's key policy of "austerity" is nothing more than a moment of opportunism seen in 2008, which (fortunately for them) has worked out well for Cameron and Osborne since. Seen in this way, "austerity" is simply a tool to make Cameron and his government famous (or infamous) to posterity. All these examples point to the superficial nature of Cameron's personality: he will do or say anything to gain support. And all this goes without even mentioning the countless lies spoken from his mouth: there are too many to mention.

The God-figure

Adulation is obviously a key aspect of narcissists as politicians. The narcissist as politician sees himself as a "saviour", to his party and the country. But first of all, to his party and his army of followers. As we see with the example of David Cameron, he became the leader of his party in 2005, on the back of a third successive electoral defeat for the Conservatives. It was clear that when Cameron called himself the "heir to Blair" he was also aping Blair's ability to take a party that was on the ropes, channel their desperation and allow him to be their instrument. All that was necessary was loyalty and belief in his "vision". In this way, it can also be argued that "the party" in this psychological state sees its "visionary" leader as a manifestation of their own idealised self, discarded of its self-doubt and insecurities.
In this psychological state of affairs, it's easy to see how a narcissistic politician as party leader is able to channel that same energy to the nation at large. Thus when the narcissist politician does indeed attain the ultimate prize, he feels that his inflated sense of self-worth was in fact an accurate portrayal of his talents. The irony here is that this misguided psychology also results in him attracting others to his close circle who also wish to gain their own piece of the power; sycophants who will agree with and follow his ideas, or suggest only ideas that they think he will agree with. In short, this results in the leader promoting people who are incompetent but loyal over those who actually have better ideas. Cameron's governing circle is a case in point.

"Us and Them"

Thus in a court of yes-men, the narcissist politician sees anyone who criticises him as being an "enemy"; for this reason, we can see how narcissists suffer from irrational paranoia. It is in this state that we arrive at the point where the narcissistic leader sees himself as a victim, leading to a reliance on the tribal loyalty of his followers. In this way, there is a need for the narcissistic leader to create an "us and them" mentality. If an obvious enemy does not exist, one is created.
In the case of David Cameron, the creation of "austerity" as the government's effective religion is the way to assess how "loyal" segments of society are to the cause. Those who are against "austerity" are "deficit deniers", and not living in the real world. Society is divided into "strivers versus skivers", in George Osborne's infamous wording. This is the essence of the politics of "divide and rule" that narcissistic politicians always fall back on in the end. The sad truth is that it usually works.

At the end of the day, a narcissistic politician relies on the politics of low populism and base emotion to hold on to power. Cameron is no exception to this rule. Look at the themes that have occupied Conservative rule and their party conferences. While the attempt is made to make their theme hopeful, the "Nasty Party" once decried by Theresa May is back in full swing, even in her own terms. If not victimising young people or the unemployed, Cameron's Conservatives are blaming immigrants for social problems. Opponents are called "unpatriotic" or worse. It is in these national atmosphere that generates more violent dissent, as the cycle of division and hatred between opposing sides is fuelled by the rage of the narcissistic leader. This downward spiral of polarisation and ever harsher rhetoric has only one result in the end. The eventual end for the narcissistic politician is often a violent or dramatic removal from power.

That time has not arrived yet for David Cameron - and may not, as he has already indicated his "exit strategy". For others though, such as Turkey's President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it is a different story: a man who seems intent to wielding ever greater degrees of power, come what may.

Conservative and Labour manifestos launched: role reversal and fantasy politics in the 2015 election

Yesterday Labour launched their manifesto for the election, followed by the Conservatives today.

Before going on to some of the specifics, first of all it's worthwhile looking at the "first impressions" given by both parties' manifestos.

Both parties went for a "corporate" look using their party colours, with the Tories having a long angle shot of some of the cabinet "big names" (read: future leadership contenders) sat at a table. That said, it was also instructive about who wasn't in this particular photo  - the likes of Iain Duncan Smith and Eric Pickles, for example, or Grant "Michael Green" Shapps. The idea portrayed here is, one assumes, that of a solid, reliable team of ministers who work well together. The irony is that Cameron's speech talked about how "the people" were against some of his ministers' reforms, but they went ahead anyway; the reality is that it was Cameron who was against some of the reforms, but his ministers ignored him. IDS, for example, refused to resign when asked, and Cameron didn't want to fire him over the Universal Credit fiasco. So even the photo on the manifesto front page indirectly reflects some of the "behind the scenes" goings-on between the personalities in the party.

Staying with the Tories, their manifesto's "summary" page declares "we have a plan for every stage of your life" which was instantly mocked by some (see entry for 11.16) as sounding terrifyingly like something out of Nineteen Eighty-Four. So are the Tories now re-branding themselves as Stalinists, taking their tips from the Chinese Communist Party? Conservative government for life, from cradle to the grave! Clearly, some people in party headquarters doesn't get out much if they think that "summary" looks reassuring...

Talking about Labour, as they were the party of opposition, they needed to give the impression of reassurance and competence. Ed Miliband now regularly wears grey ties, which makes me think that someone has told him it makes him look like a bank manager (it does!). The impression Labour and Ed Miliband want to give is one of almost "boring" competence, compared to the "danger and risk" to the lifeblood of the country that the Conservatives offer with their continued drive to austerity and the EU referendum. Many commentators spoke of how impressive Miliband came across compared to the past, and how to some it "looked like Miliband, but sounded like someone else" i.e. it was Ed Miliband, but the "adult/serious/competent/confident" version. This was the "yes, I'm ready to govern" version that Miliband wanted to show, contrasting with the version that Cameron and the media have shown in the past.

One more point worth mentioning was about how the press were handled by both parties during their launches, which displayed the different tones and attitudes of both sides. Miliband was keen to have an in-depth feedback with the press, even telling his (jeering) activists to show respect when he was being asked a hostile question. By contrast (and again, very "Chinese Communist Party"), the Tories' press session was must briefer, with Cameron "answering" fewer questions (usually by completely changing the topic), and having an aide hold the microphone for the press to prevent any follow-up from Cameron's "answer". Once Cameron gave his "answer" the mic quickly went over to someone else. The event was shamelessly stage-managed to avoid any awkward moments for the Tories' "dear leader"...

The role reversal of Labour and the Conservatives is striking in their manifestos and the pledges that they have made. With the Tories having a "wobble" last week, and Labour appearing to set the pace at out-flanking the Tories on their "competence" pledges, the pressure has been on the Tories to respond. After the clumsy, un-costed and ill-thought-out policy announcements at the end of the week (£8bn extra a year for the NHS? What planet are they on?), the Tories were looking to their manifesto to regain the initiative. It's never good for the Tories when they - as Ed Miliband said - make the Green Party look fiscally responsible.

Losing the plot?

The "eye-catching" policy of the manifesto launch was introducing the "right to buy" for housing association properties.

Here is an idea that qualifies as "zombie politics"; resurrecting an idea that was brought to life thirty years ago, and trying to re-package it decades later as the "next big thing". This policy also summaries everything that is wrong about the Conservative Party and the people who run it.

As Thatcher's original idea was politically popular, Cameron and his allies think the same trick can work again thirty years on with offering to sell-off Housing Association properties. For one, shows a condescending attitude towards people who live in these properties: it assumes that they want (and can afford) to buy these properties outright, rather than preferring the security that the long-term HA leases have, without having to pay the maintenance costs.
Second, it is clear that this a policy cynically aimed at Labour voters (as most HA properties are in lower-income areas), while at the same time aimed at getting the attention of  middle-class "floating voters" that the Tories are the "party of aspiration". But it's arrogant to assume that people in the 2010s have the same attitudes as those in the 1980s, because the social circumstances have changed. The housing crisis is at the back of everyone's minds, and evidence has shown that this policy isn't even popular with voters themselves. If you forgive the muddled metaphor, the Tories seem to think that voters are like Pavlovian dogs that whose "lights" can switched on and off at the click of a finger. They think that voters are - essentially - simple.

In this way, Cameron's Conservatives show how they are still living in the past, and think that they can win an election in 2015 on policies first thought up in 1979. It's superficial, arrogant and lazy thinking, and in a whole host of ways, is absolutely terrible economics. It's the worst of both worlds - a horrible political idea, and an economically-insane one. It also happens to be illegal, with HAs liable to challenge any Conservative attempts to enforce sell-offs in court.

This condescending attitude towards the public has been apparent from the stage-managed photo opportunities which people can see through immediately, and are heartily tired of seeing. It is odd that Britain is has of the most intelligent electorates in the world, yet the two main parties - the Tories in particular - treat the electorate as though they are idiots.

The overall impression of the Conservative manifesto was of a party in flight from reality. In government, they missed their economic targets by a mile, and made a mess of almost every major project and "reform" they handled. In many policies they announced in the manifesto, the costings couldn't be explained, and the cuts to made were only mentioned in the most abstract way. The Tories were telling us they could make massive savings with cuts (from where, they didn't say) while at the same time spending money here, there and everywhere. No-one with a brain could take this stuff seriously. Less than six months ago George Osborne was warning of the massive scale of the austerity to come after the election. Suddenly, the Tories have had massive attack of amnesia and self-delusion. Where does this madness end?

Cameron makes his party as being - wait for it - the "party of the working people". This is so laughable it's ridiculous. Why do so many of their party donors are tax-avoiders and have "non-dom" status, and why do the City invest in their party then? If anything, the Tories are the "trades union of the rich".

The only people that the Tories can be kidding is themselves.

Cameron versus Milliband: why business hates (and fears) Labour

In the last week or so, we have seen a barrage of media stories about how Labour is "anti-business" and has few supporters from big business. The example of the head of Boots - who lives abroad for tax reasons - was emblematic.

The other side of the coin is simply that business is anti-Labour. This can be starkly demonstrated by David Cameron's piece in the Telegraph, which was a wonderful example of seeing his world-view, such as it is.

Cameron's piece was a snapshot also of his personality in some ways (more on that here), and how he sees Labour as representing "chaos" compared to the order and competence of his government. When reading this article, it's difficult to see if this is plain electioneering garbage or if Cameron genuinely believes in what he says (the latter would be almost more worrying, though).

A statement of intent (or willful self-delusion)

Why is the main thrust of such garbage? Let's look at some examples.

Cameron says "Ours is a nation that is the best place to do business  ", which translates as really meaning, "ours is a nation that is the best place for foreign companies to make lots of money by having a badly-paid workforce with poor union representation and avoiding paying tax through helpfully-complex tax arrangements" In other words, under Cameron, the UK is a developed country whose economy is technically thriving, but whose economic model really resembles a third world country. The jobs which have been created are mostly low-paid, many of the paid so little they don't even qualify to pay income tax.
This is why the government's debt is still increasing in spite of the appearance of an economic recovery: the money being generated is literally going in the wrong direction - into the foreign (tax free) bank accounts of all the businesses that Cameron and the Conservatives and not into the government's coffers. The government's tax receipts are down massively for this reason, but those in government seem to think that their plan is working. Well, if their plan was to massively reduce the government's money coming in while at the same time reducing government spending, then it's worked perfectly!

Cameron also says the UK under his government is "A nation where we have the businesses paying the taxes we need, so we can cut people’s taxes "; a statement so plainly disingenuous to be laughable. As we have seen, the sadistic drive that the government has to reduce spending on benefits may have clawed back a small amount of money, but the amount the government loses each year through businesses avoiding tax dwarfs any money lost on paying "too much" on benefits by an enormous margin. But as we have seen, because the Conservatives are the "friends of business", this means turning a blind eye to blatantly deceptive and immoral practices that deny the government many billions each year. In reality, this attitude is simply financially self-defeating, as we are now seeing from the lack of money coming in in tax receipts to the treasury. This economic "blind spot" marks the Conservatives as having a plan that not only useless, but also idiotic. The people whose taxes he is cutting (or helping to avoid entirely) are the same businesses that are creating a working regime of zero-hour contracts, and insecure, poorly-paid jobs. This is the "Cameron Economy", where the real winners are the ones who don't pay tax.

How can a government properly function if it is not serious about collecting tax?

Creating a false narrative

The government's explanation for why the economic crisis happened is also - to put it politely - novel. Another way of describing the Conservatives' explanation for the financial crisis is "complete garbage".
Listen to government ministers on BBC's Question Time (Sajid Javid, the government's culture minister, for example), and they tell you that they are being responsible and paying down the debt left behind by Labour overspending. This is an interesting statement, but happens to be total nonsense.

Yes, when Labour left office there was a massive government debt, but that debt was not created by massive, irresponsible government spending.
As everyone may remember, there was an international financial crisis that was caused by massively irresponsible and amoral behavior by banks. The USA and the UK were especially-vulnerable precisely because successive Labour and Conservative governments had centred their economic model on financial markets, at the expense of the wider economy. When the banks crashed, the government bailed out the banks by taking on the trillions of debt - so that debt suddenly became the government's debt. The "austerity" that exists in the UK is the government (i.e. the taxpayer) paying-off the debt that was caused by the banks. Why on earth the taxpayer should pay for the banks' idiocy is another question, and the ultimate "con" that people have been buying for five years. But that's the first reason for the debt.
The second reason is that when the world economy collapsed, as the UK's did, unemployment shot up and consumer spending shriveled. These two things caused a large reduction in the government's tax receipts, which accounted for the government's debt going up i.e. when your spending stays the same, and your revenue goes down, you get a debt. As a result, Labour borrowed more to pay for this. In a different way, George Osborne - who is really running the show - is experiencing this truth now with the recovery that doesn't actually give any extra money to the government.

This false narrative explains why the Conservatives need people to believe that the financial crisis was somehow Labour's fault, when really the government had very little to do with the problem. If anything, it was government's lack of control of the financial industry and the regime of no rules that caused the problem. This was the regime that the Conservatives have always supported - the same regime that caused the financial crisis.

This also explains why Labour are being targeted now by business. Having made lots of money by encouraging the government to create a "light-touch" tax regime and labour market - the very same thinking in the financial industry that caused the crisis - these business leaders are terrified of the thought that they might have to actually play by the rules if Labour return to government. This is the reality.

What Labour propose is nothing terrifying or chaotic as Cameron says in his article: it is simply wanting business to play by the rules and pay their taxes transparently like a responsible part of society. But that's the problem: many people in business treat society as something to be abused, be it the tax system or their workforce. The neo-liberal economic orthodoxy of the past thirty-five years has been responsible for turning the UK now into a pseudo-developing country, at least in terms of how it is run.
Because people are accepting the false narrative and false choice about there being "no alternative" to austerity, this is why business leaders and Conservative ministers are able to turn the UK economy into a race to the bottom. There are other alternatives, and it's only by blowing the false narrative can the UK economy change tack. People must not be awed by business into thinking whatever is good for them, is also good for the country. The evidence - and the government tax receipts - suggest otherwise.

George Osborne's 2014 Autumn Statement: the madman at Number 11?

There's a fair body of evidence to suggest that George Osborne is the worst chancellor in living memory: both as a chancellor, and as a human being.

There was a famous phrase that came out of the Labour government when Gordon Brown was chancellor: as his enemies in the Labour Party liked to say to those who'd listen "remember, the chancellor is mad".
Brown can be blamed for creating a unsustainable economic model that contributed to the UK being over-exposed financially when 2008 hit, but for his mistakes as a chancellor, it was clear that he also has a very large design towards social justice. He created measures such as working families tax credit, and channeled money into the NHS and other social programmes.
He may not always have been an obviously likeable person (and even less so during his time as PM), but it was evident that his heart was in the right place. Listening to his speeches, especially recently in the Scottish referendum, and there is an unmistakable humanity to his words. The tragedy is that never really showed when it needed to matter, when he was Prime Minister.

A calculator and a puppet master?

George Osborne, on the other hand, has less of the economic acumen of Brown, but makes up for it in devious, political cunning (which he doesn't seem to bother to hide). He has replaced Brown's clear sense of social justice, with a clear sense that George Osborne is only pretending to understand how ordinary people live their lives, and a sneering contempt for his enemies.

In this sense, Osborne appears as a pure, amoral political machine, with every calculation and decision based around how it can be made to benefit his agenda.

In some ways, Osborne and Cameron are the ideal political match: Cameron appears as the self-assured (if not terribly cerebral), statesman-like actor-cum-salesman who "does human" quite convincingly (more on Cameron's personality here); Osborne, on the other hand, is the real political calculator and the real "power behind the throne", who doesn't deign to stoop to Cameron's efforts of pretending to be something he isn't - Osborne is as he is, and seems very comfortable with it. It is Osborne's vision that the country is being subjected to, not Cameron's; Cameron simply understands the goal and acquiesces.

It has been said that Osborne rarely does press conferences; unlike the Prime Minister, who can't get enough of them. While it would be too flattering to compare Cameron and Osborne in the same light as Blair and Brown, it would be similarly too condescending to compare them to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The truth may lie somewhere psychologically in the middle.
Osborne's performances in parliament (as seen in the Autumn Statement) can be psychologically-painful to watch, as he appears to revel in playing the part of a pantomime villain, verbally attacking his enemies with sneering snide remarks and cutting put-downs. As a man clearly happy in his own skin, he doesn't feel the need to pretend to be nice for the sake of it. These types of behaviour alone tell us much about George Osborne's potential psychological make-up (it would be awful to be his psychiatrist...).

Austerity for the sake of austerity?

So much for George Osborne, the human being. As a chancellor, he has been an almost complete failure; in fact, making the economic situation worse in the long-run rather than better. He would be the first to blame it on inheriting "Labour's economic mess" (more on that old chestnut here), but the bare truth is that he simply doesn't understand how the macro economy works. If he did, then he would understand why the masses of low-paid, low-skill jobs that are filling the economy are the reason for the low tax revenues, which is also one reason why the deficit keeps on going up. You can cut spending as much as you like, but if taxes are declining also, the result will still be zero. In other words, you are back to square one, except that now people are on average poorer than before. It looks like the Conservatives' economic plan doesn't understand this basic truth, along with some others. Their idea of having a "low-tax, low-spend" economy looks idiotic, if not economically insane, in the contemporary economic climate. It is a recipe for self-inflicted masochism, as the countries in the Eurozone are finding out.

Osborne's plan is simply "austerity, austerity, austerity". Austerity until kingdom come! While back in 2010 "the plan" was envisaged to last for only one parliament, it will now last for two. And the majority of the cuts haven't happened yet. Now that Osborne has successfully twisted Labour into accepting much of Osborne's plan, what is there left to vote for in 2015, if you vote for the three main parties?

What is the point of austerity? It was said by former Downing Street advisor, Steve Hilton, that by the end of this parliament "everything must have changed". The question is: why? George Osborne has now cornered the three main parties into largely accepting austerity (the honourable exception being the Greens, while Ukip want even more stringent austerity than Osborne). But what is austerity for?

As the economic evidence shows, "austerity" fails at its basic aim of getting the national finances in order, and in any case, it's ludicrous to think of the national finances in the same way as, say, household finances. You cannot take micro-economic policy and apply it to macro-economics - this has been the ultimate failure of Thatcherite economics, with the deregulation of the financial market happening at the same time as allowing the manufacturing industry to collapse thirty years ago. While a strong pound is great for the financial markets, it spells disaster for exports. That's why the UK exports so little now, and has a bloated, (and with "too big to fail" banks, a effectively state-subsidised) banking sector.
The UK economy now subsides on finance on one hand and a mass of low-paid, low-skill jobs on the other. Engineering and other skilled industries are the exception to the rule. This is the economy that Osborne now champions.

After the Second World War, Britain faced years of austerity due to the bankruptcy of the empire. And in spite of all that, the Labour government still created the NHS and the modern welfare state. These days, Osborne's plan is a second dose of austerity after a world financial crisis, with the effect of degrading the welfare state and the NHS to minimal levels, and levels of state spending lower than before the welfare state was created. In other words, in a very real sense, the UK is going backwards, not forwards.

Is this Osborne's "vision" for the future?

The only conclusion to reach is that "austerity" is Osborne's policy because he ideologically believes in a smaller state: but not for the sake of improving the welfare of society (as austerity not only doesn't work as a social incentive, it also doesn't work to reduce the national deficit, as we have seen with its negative effect on tax receipts).
No, Osborne's vision, like that of Iain Duncan Smith, can only be an effect of his lack of empathy towards society at large. He fails to understand how people cannot be able to get jobs that pay well, and has little sympathy for the worse-off. Why should the rich pay for the "idle" poor? Why should the rich have to give money to people they have no affinity for?

This is the politics of real "class war" - and the rich are winning.

George Osborne's budget and the recovery: flying with your eyes closed

George Osborne's recent budget has been considered much more accomplished than his infamous "omnishambles" budget of 2012. Then again, that wasn't difficult to achieve.

There are two stand-out changes brought in: the "reforms" to the pension system, that allow someone to "buy back" their pension once they reach retirement; and the the expansion of the ISA system to allow people to save more of their money at a higher interest rate each year. Also, the "help-to-buy" scheme is being extended further. More on that point later.

On the first two points, what's clear is that from these stand-out changes, Osborne is marking out his political territory quite ruthlessly, aiming for the "strivers" on one hand, and those reaching the end of their working lives with the other. The first problem with this approach is that it looks too obviously political in its motivation (as was with the budget this time last year), and more importantly, demonstrates how Osborne's sense of priorities are all wrong.

Dealing with the wrong problem

As Andy Burnham wonderfully pointed out on BBC's "Question Time" about the budget recently, these changes make it appear that Osborne thinks that the main problem British people have is not being able to make the most of their savings. In reality, many people are simply struggling each month to manage paying the bills and not get into debt. Many others cannot manage without using their savings, and for still others, living with debt each month is now the norm. For these people, Osborne has no answer.

In other words, Osborne's budget looks like it benefits those who already have a decent sum of money stashed away, but are unable to make the best use of it financially. These stand-out measures simply help most those who are already earning well above the average national income. To remind ourselves, the average national income is around £25,000 pa. For many people on that salary, it is near-impossible to save any serious amounts of money to start thinking about making better use of ISAs or buying back their pensions. These are the daydreams of the comfortably middle-class; not the average family.

These changes simply demonstrate Osborne's out-of-touch view of Britain, thinking that they could seriously benefit most people. In reality, they can only truly benefit (and politically influence) people who already vote Conservative, or may consider voting Conservative. This is the clinical political calculation behind these changes that Osborne has no doubt thought about: how will they go down in the marginals?

Not dealing with the real problem

Meanwhile, Osborne has further extended the "help-to-buy" scheme, another partly political ploy. The effect this has had on the property market is there for all to see: an out-of-control property bubble that is economically separating London and the South-east from the rest of the country. I wrote about this same topic in the article I wrote this time last year about Osborne's budget then. Since then, as experts have predicted, the disparity has grown further.

The statistics speak for themselves, in the link in the "Telegraph" article. Economically, Britain is two countries, which are getting further apart economically under the current housing and credit policy of the government. In some ways, the current property bubble (calling a "housing boom" just seems deluded and completely missing the point) is even worse than that which ended with the financial crisis. For a start, current London housing prices are twenty percent higher than they were in 2007, before the market crashed. This is insane. There is no economic logic to this whatsoever, other than that it is being inflated by artificial (and extremely dangerous) factors. People in London are not twenty percent richer than they were in 2007; practically no-one in Britain is. The only explanation for this is reckless speculation, rich foreigners inflating the average price, and Osborne's "help-to-buy" scheme.

Osborne's "help-to-buy" scheme is economically more dangerous than anything Labour did because it is essentially state-sponsored property inflation. This is the worst form of "help" imaginable for many people, especially in the South-east of England, where the property market is already far overpriced. It simply gives a green light for the market to "factor in" the extra cash available to buyers.

No-one in government seems to have the intellectual capacity, or political courage, to do the only thing that can make the housing market sane again: build lots more houses, and therefore bring down the price of property down .
The evidence suggests that Osborne simply doesn't want to go down the road of a state-sponsored house-building programme for three reasons: first, the effects would be long-term, and so there would be little short-term political benefit; second, it gives an open goal to Labour to call him a hypocrite; and thirdly, it would be electorally suicidal on the opinions of those who live in the "marginals".
Because property has become ingrained into British psyche as the ultimate "must-have" asset (as opposed to Germany, where no such attitude exists), people would find it hard to understand that more houses are a good thing for the country; they would only care about the effect it has on the value of their "asset". This pervasive mentality has also been the result of thirty years of right-wing neo-liberalism.

Britain as a one-trick pony

Thirty years of Conservative economic orthodoxy had their effect on Labour, because although they made some modest improvements to social affairs, from an economic point of view, they simply followed on much of what the Conservatives had done before. While its undeniable that Labour spent too much money, the Conservative implication that "they're paying down the debt that Labour left" simply misses the main point. Why did the financial crisis happen?

The Conservatives seem keen to play up the idea that the "austerity" that Britain faces is because of Labour overspending. It isn't. The "austerity" we're facing is because the financial system (in Britain as well as around the world) collapsed because the banks got into massive debts dealing with money that didn't exist. The banks ignored the first rule of economics, because they thought they were smarter than the system. They weren't, and now that the British Labour government bailed out the banks' stupidity, the taxpayer is left paying the bill in the form of "austerity".

The real mistake that Labour made in power was that, in terms of economic policy, they were too similar to the Conservatives. Labour wanted to out-do the Conservatives in kissing-up to the financial sector while in power, feeding it full of financial steroids and turning a blind eye to their conduct in order to cover over the lack of serious investment in others sectors of the economy. In this sense, Blair and Brown in power simply followed much of Conservative financial and economic policy. This is the truth that the current Conservative government cannot be seen to admit.

After thirty years of neo-liberal economic policy, Britain is now so reliant on the London-centred financial sector, those in Westminster don't know how else to run the country.

Britain now has one of the highest household credit problems in the Western world, due to a combination of high cost of living, a "credit card culture", and the ease of getting credit from banks and people like "Wonga", even after the lessons of the financial crisis. The "recovery", as people in the know are aware, is a London-centred affair, dependent on a weakness for credit, which acts as a fuel on spending. Where does all this "money" come from?

Like many people spending in the high street, George Osborne doesn't seem to fully know where the "recovery" has come from. Like many others, he is flying with his eyes closed. He should look for the wall that may be fast approaching...

Benefits Street: the "something for nothing" culture, lifestyle choices and the Conservatives' sadistic welfare policy

The Conservatives' attack on welfare focuses on communicating the impression that welfare for many is a "lifestyle choice"; moreover, they imply that much of Britain's welfare spending is spent on "benefit cheats", "skivers", and people simply too lazy to get "a real job".

The Channel Four show "Benefits Street" plays directly to this perception, in spite of the fact that in many ways, the real "Benefits Street" is in Westminster. And it would make for more shock-value entertainment, as well.
Who else but the Tories could castigate poor people for "living off the state", while some of their MPs feel perfectly entitled to have the taxpayer pay for their moats and duck ponds? Such a shameless lack of regard for misuse of public funds beggars belief, let alone their indifference at what society might think of such amoral behaviour.

And yet, this is the essence of George Osborne's political strategy: no more of the "something for nothing" culture, he says with an evil glint in his eye. His aim is to divide the working poor against the unemployed poor.

Because wages are falling behind the increasingly-high cost of living, it means that, for many, work no longer pays. The government seem to have accepted this truth, but their answer is as cynical as it is sadistic. How? Because the government's solution to the falling value to wages in real terms, is to restrict and cut the value of benefits. This is an act of schadenfreude (or psychological sadism, in English) against those on benefits. To make the working poor feel psychologically better, they punish the unemployed poor.

Crucially, the working poor are still no better-off financially by these cuts; they simply gain sadistic pleasure from knowing that the unemployed poor should be worse-off than they are.

The politics of choice

The Conservatives say that being on benefits is a "lifestyle choice". Well, it's worth remembering what the word "choice" actually means, in an economic and political sense.

In an economic sense of the word, "choice" comes from money. The more money you have, the more options it gives you. This is simple economics. So in this logical sense of the word, being rich is a "lifestyle choice", because those with lots of money choose to keep the money for themselves and spend it on their own lifestyle; they could equally choose to give the money to the needier in society (eg. as charity), or spend the money on investment (eg. to create more jobs by expanding their company).
In this way, as I said in a previous article when talking about the psychology of the rich:

"they have an "anti-social" view of society - or, in other words, refuse to act like responsible members of society. This is where the psychology of the "classic psychopath" appears: a lack of empathy and understanding for others, and the amoral pursuit of power for its own end. This explains why they would support the actions of the current Conservative government in The UK regarding "austerity": the state should be smaller because they see it as useless"

By contrast, those with little money have far fewer economic choices. The rich resent paying taxes on who they see as "benefit cheats" and "skivers". The reality is that only a tiny percentile of the benefit-eligible population are guilty of fraud; many of those on benefits are still in work, and so the benefits they receive are a testament to the failure of the jobs market to offer a salary that people can actually live on.

Again, the government does nothing to rectify this, but uses the most cynical of misdirection and scapegoating tactics by demonizing the unemployed poor, not to mention the young.

If anything, those people who are guilty of choosing to stay on benefits rather than get a job (yes, there are some!), are only guilty of making a rational economic choice. For them, if the salary offers less money after tax and NI deductions (not to mention lost housing benefit) than they can get while still unemployed, of course it would be in their economic interests not to work!
It's not their fault that they can't get a job that doesn't offer them a living wage. It is the fault of the labour market, and the government, for doing nothing to rectify the broken labour market and the increasing cost of living.

Being on benefits isn't a "lifestyle choice" for those kinds of people, but the only choice that some of the unemployed poor have: to choose to stay on unemployment benefit rather than take a job that will give them less money. For those people, it is their economic imperative, because the government refuses to make it economically worthwhile for them to work.

The "politics of choice" really boils down to how you choose to live your life, but those choices are also defined by the extent of economic choice.
The Conservatives, as they mostly represent (and consist of) the affluent, have no problem with "economic choice", so their political choices reflect this: this explains their hatred of seeing "their money" being spent on the "feckless" unemployed. But as they are rich, the fact they have more economic choice also means that they have more moral responsibility towards society, because their economic choices can have a much larger effect on society, positive or negative, depending on what they choose to do with their money.

Instead, they choose to feel that society owes them something; that they are entitled to special treatment because they are rich (regardless of where the money came from), not to mention getting far more in "benefits" than the poor, in the way of a plethora of government subsidies and financial guarantees.

This is something many of the rich hate being reminded of. It is more a case of the poor funding the government's "something for nothing" culture for the rich.

Sadism as government policy

As Ayn Rand liked to say, people are bound to operate according to their own self-interest.

Of course, if the government restricts benefits to such an extent (as some in government would like to) that the unemployed have no economic choice but to work for a pittance (and therefore get into debt), then the government will have changed the economic choices of those unemployed. But this doesn't make Britain a better place economically or socially, let alone morally.

The attitude of the government simply makes life a race to the bottom; depressing wages by making cheaper and cheaper (even free) labour possible, while at the same time doing nothing to suppress the rising cost of living (because the government doesn't believe in intervening in the free market, unless you're rich). At the same time, the housing market has reached a completely dysfunctional level, helped by Osborne's cynical and economically-illiterate "Help To Buy" scheme. I could go on.

The Conservatives' approach to running the economy is amoral because it operates according to the psychology (and motivations) of the rich. It assumes that because the rich hate seeing their money being spent on others, those economically lower down the food chain will feel the same way. But from a psychological (and economic) point of view, they don't because their economic realities are very different. Those lower down in society sometimes have to rely on the welfare state when they fall on hard times.

Those hard times are these days permanent for some sections of society, including the "working poor".

Fascism, marketing and the "confidence trick": why Iain Duncan Smith says "I believe I am right"

I wrote last week about the link between marketing and Fascism, and how these links have been modified to adapt to an age of almost limitless technology. The language of marketing is used to encourage people to give up masses of personal information to their governments, via online companies like "Facebook", who willingly co-operate with the surveillance state.

This is an example of how Fascism operates in the 21st century: where surrendering privacy is transformed by marketing language into an "opportunity" for the individual, rather than a (very real) threat. Mussolini's Fascist state was contemporaneous with the rise of "marketing" as an institution in the West; to an extent, this was then extended after the Second World War in post-war USA, as consumerism was equated with patriotism and helping to preserve the "American way of life"; technological advances in the late '90s and early 21st century have enabled the kind of mass surveillance, with the consent of the individual, that was impossible before.

Politics has always had a difficult relationship with facts, and all politicians are guilty of manipulating the facts for their own purposes, at one time or another. However, the rise of propaganda in politics and the manipulation of language for political purposes occurred in tandem with the rise of marketing as a "science". The manipulation of facts and language for the purpose of propaganda became almost a science, with a philosophy in its own right; although began by Mussolini, Hitler's Nazi regime, under the guidance of Joseph Goebbels, were the real pioneers in manipulating language for political purposes in the modern era.

Using one example, the word "fanatical" became manipulated in meaning in the early days of the Nazi regime; from its previous (widely-understood) negative meaning, "fanatical" was transformed into a positive attribute - Hermann Goering, was described as a "fanatical" animal lover, for example. The Nazi regime talked of "fanatical" beliefs as being a positive asset, rather than a sign of ideological extremism. Al-Qaeda would surely recognise and agree with such a sentiment today, and Political Islam in general shares much of this ideological thinking. In other words, the strength of your beliefs is is manipulated into being more important that the realism of your ideas - this is in the crux of Fascist psychology.

"I believe I am right"

Bringing this up-to-date, the manipulation of language and a disregarding of "facts" is seen in Conservative politicians in the UK Coalition government.
The five most dangerous words that can come out of a politician's mouth are "I believe I am right"; words spoken recently by government minister, Iain Duncan Smith. His portfolio is "Work and Pensions", which includes government policy towards distribution of government benefits for the needy. In spite of him being told by official statistic agency, the ONS, that he is abusing statistics in an dishonest way for political purposes, and that his ideas were essentially lies, his response was "I believe I am right". In other words, faced with the facts, he was able to simply ignore the truth and state that he was no longer bound to reality, and that reality is what he said it was. Such behaviour would easily be found within the Nazi regime.
These five words are so terrifying because it means that a politician can make his own reality, unbound by rules. Hitler also believed what he was doing was "right"; Osama Bin Laden also believed what he was doing was "right". It is the signature of an authoritarian, and a Fascist who uses the language of morality to equate himself with God.

Austerity in the UK and Europe is also explained using the language of marketing and Fascism. Hitler said that if you repeat the lie long enough, people will believe it. Psychologically, the bigger the lie is, the more difficult it is to dispel, because the reality of a "big lie" becomes so horrifying for people that it is much easier not to think about it.
So there is a reason why Cameron says "There is no alternative!". If you repeat this enough times, people will believe it: it is a marketing strategy of carpet-bombing a product's slogan. Also, it gives people an easy answer to having to think of another economic strategy (such as the successful growth-led strategy of the Obama administration, or a long-term production-led strategy of Germany's government).

George Osborne does the same, as combined economic government strategist, and electoral strategist for the Conservative Party. The language he uses is even more nakedly divisive and compelling: that of "strivers versus skivers", implying (without any facts to support it, of course), that the economy's ails are a result of the government giving too much money to the "undeserving" poor. The massive bank bail-out (that effectively created the new concept of "Corporate Socialism") is not mentioned. Neither is it mentioned that by far the largest amount of public spending goes on pensions, rather than benefits on the "undeserving" poor; but the government doesn't want to declare war on the elderly - the defenceless poor are a much easier scapegoat. But scapegoating is a very well-worn Fascist strategy as well.

Confidence is the key to holding power. If a politician appears confident in his beliefs, then regardless of the facts, he has the ability to hoodwink the electorate very convincingly. George Osborne's confidence in the growth of the British economy goes against all the facts, when you compare it to other countries' experiences. But the government has been able to ignore sensible comparison.

David Cameron may be the most incompetent premier that Britain was seen for years, but the fact that he exudes self-confidence, makes people have confidence that he knows what he is doing.

This is why the opposition seem to have an incoherent strategy compared to the Conservatives; it's difficult to be coherent when you're fighting against a self-confident opponent that doesn't follow any rules.

George Osborne, The "Wonga Budget" and the dark arts; house prices and Broken Britain

George Osborne's latest strategy is to trap Labour into committing to the Conservatives' spending plans (thus  making the "opposition" march to the government's financial tune, and offer the electorate an economic fait accompli).
In the meantime, "Gideon, Master Of The Dark Arts" continues the cynical strategy of divide and rule with the electorate of "strivers versus skivers", while using a hideous manipulation of numbers to pretend that the economic crisis can be blamed on the unemployed and welfare claimants, and that the only answer is to therefore bleed the helpless and the blameless, leaving the corrupt and indolent rich to continue to profit from the suffering (as Jonathan Freedland has said in his recent "Wonga Budget" article).

The behaviour of the Chancellor is so Machiavellian you almost couldn't make it up. It seems that part of George (the dark side: Gideon, Master Of The Dark Arts), almost enjoys his notoriety and unpopularity. Watching him shamelessly goad the Labour party as being the "welfare party", while also offering them to hoist themselves by their own petard, is a sickening spectacle to be seen happening in Westminster. As controller of the Tories' election strategy, as well as master of the economy, Osborne seems to revel in it, even though he is one of the most disastrous Chancellors Britain has had.

With the Tories tanking in the polls, and Ukip hoovering up much of their lost support, Osborne's strategy might seem smart (if utterly cynical) in the short-term, but is likely to be political suicide in the longer-term. I've said before about why Ukip are doing so well in the polls (and have created a new four-party political system).
But by drawing Labour in to the Tories' spending plans, it merely creates less and less to differentiate between the "big Three", to the advantage of Ukip rather than the Tories. Ukip have benefitted from the "consensus" that has existed around the three main parties; now Osborne is trying to create a "new consensus" around the idea of austerity being inevitable, with the welfare state being squarely to blame (neither actually being true in the slightest!). So if Labour buy into this "new consensus", more Labour voters
may well defect to Ukip instead, as has already started happening.
The hideous irony here is that Farage and Ukip's economic policy (when it makes sense) is even more "austere" in its view on public spending (though it is profligate in certain areas such as defence); so Labour voters who defect to Ukip because they're disillusioned with Labour turning its back on its compassionate principles will be voting for a party that is even more heartless towards the helpless than the Tories are.

It will be Farage who has most to celebrate from the latest "strategy" of Gideon, Master Of The Dark Arts.

It's difficult to know where to begin, in order to adequately explain why Osborne has been such a disaster for Britain.

I tried to explain this earlier, but but a good starting point, seeing as the figures came out just the other day, is the shocking state of the property market. It is now obvious that talk about "average UK house prices" is a nonsense, a kind of logical insanity. There is no meaningful "average" when between 2007 and today, average house prices in London have gone up by 5%, while in the rest of the UK, they have gone down by 9%; in Northern Ireland, they have gone down by a jaw-dropping 52%.
From these kind of yawning disparities, it is illogical to draw a meaningful "average", because whatever average you get is statistically meaningless - it's like comparing the GDP of Hong Kong to rural China, and saying that the "average" person has so much. How many of the people who live in those places could be called "average", and what is the use of such figures? The only "use" of such figures for Osborne is to use "average" house prices as an absurd and ludicrous bench-march to claim that the economy is improving.

It's for this reason that Osborne's greatest "achievement" (i.e. economic disaster) has been take the politics of divide and rule to the country on a financial level, and create two separate countries, divided clearly by house prices, the make-up of their economies and rates of employment.
On one hand, you have London and the Home Counties (population roughly ten million), which are as economically separate from the rest of the geographical UK that they may as well be a different country. Here, house prices continue to sky-rocket, the cost of living continues to soar, while salaries (high compared to the rest of the UK) struggle to keep up. Although unemployment is not high and there is plenty of work (both skilled and unskilled, and mostly in the private sector), people still struggle to save up money for a house, which can take more than ten years. Furthermore, there is a shortage of multiple-occupancy accommodation, making it even more difficult for families to economically survive.

It is the above part of the country that Osborne understands as meaning "The UK", and which he uses as his model to justify his economic policy. This explains his "bedroom tax" on people living in houses with empty spare rooms, for example; more on that in a moment.

Then there is the rest of the geographical UK. This is the larger part, where house prices have been on a continual downward spiral, the rate of unemployment remains stubbornly high (especially with the young), there is little incentive for private companies to invest (unlike in London), and the public sector provides a significantly larger proportion of the employment.
London-centred (and utterly ignorant) Osborne claims the large size of the public sector outside of the Home Counties is the reason why the economy there is stagnant (and all the more reason to neuter it); but history tells you it is due to a combination of factors, such as the collapse of heavy industries and mining in the post-war period, culminating in the Thatcher era.
While London's economy is diverse and service-based, the rest of the UK's is not - many regions specialised in producing certain goods upto the Second World War (Sheffield for steel, Stoke for pottery etc.). The fact that Osborne is so brainless he doesn't know simple British history (or is so heartless he doesn't care), is the most damning indictment of all. But almost all Tories have had the same view of the UK for decades, Thatcher being one of the most famous. So that lack of diversity meant that the public sector stepped in to take up the slack in the (inefficient) private sector. That is still true today for many parts of the UK outside of the Home Counties.
The "bedroom tax" was another classic example of Osborne's combination of economic brainlessness and emotional emptiness. While London has a lack of multi-occupancy housing, much of the post-industrial North has a surfeit of it. In cities and towns across much the North, single people struggle to find one bedroom flats and houses, because the houses were all built for families before the Second World War, for example. So this situation is the exact opposite to that in London. The differences in the local economy, added to the differences in the housing market, make The UK a country economically divided in two.

Having a government in London, of London and for London, is economic insanity for the rest of the country.

This is what it means to live in "Broken Britain". The UK, economically-speaking, is not fit for purpose, because, economically, it is two countries. While all large countries have disparities between the capital and the regions, in The UK, the differences, when laid about simply and clearly as above, are striking and unmistakable.

Having one economic policy for two economic realities is economically-crazy. This is what the Euro-zone is finding out, as Germany has an economic policy that works well for itself, but is creating an economic catastrophe in Southern Europe.

The Conservatives' plan is therefore to treat the rest of the UK as an out-sourced franchise of the Republic Of London.

Benefit cheats and Tax cheats : why, in the West, corruption is a luxury good

What is "corruption"?

The generally-understood idea of "corruption" is when power and influence is used in immoral and exclusive ways, commonly by-passing law and socially-acceptable norms. More specifically, when most people think of "corruption" they think of bribery and brown envelopes, Swiss bank accounts and social deprivation.

These things are what existed in the toppled regimes of the "Arab Spring", and are one of the main reasons why those Arab populations finally turned their resigned frustration into vigorous revolution. It is corruption that keeps a potentially-rich country poor.
Africa is a continent rich in resources, but the wealth of those resources is only felt by the ruling elites. The DR Congo is a prime example of this: a vast nation, which contains the world's largest supply of rare metals needed for much of modern technology (such as mobile phones). On paper, DR Congo should be one of the world's richest countries, but due to corruption and malign foreign influence, it has been a war zone for the last fifteen years; Africa's "Great War".

When the corrupt ruling elite of a country ignore the law to feather their own nests, one way they stay in power is by either destroying other powerful factions, or by indulging them. In the Third World, when corrupt regimes are not killing, imprisoning or persecuting those deemed a threat, they are offering them a piece of the action. This latter form is more commonly called "cronyism". This is how Third World dictators (for example, former military leaders) keep their hold on power.
The "piece of the action", the method that the corrupt ruling elite use, is usually a system of bribery and patronage. In Third World dictatorships, government money that is given to ministers or military leaders is the prize of the ruler, an insurance for loyalty for the minister to dispose of as they wish (e.g. in a Swiss bank account). Just as important, the role also gives the individual ministers virtual omnipotence over their supposed underlings; and as such, demand loyalty in hard cash (i.e bribes). This then trickles down through the hierarchy, as each manager at each level is required to give a bribe to his relevant superior under pain of dismissal. Thus corruption and bribery runs from even the lowliest ministry clerk (who subtly demands a bribe for the most basic service to the public).
For the real reason that bribery exists in such a state is as an instrument of psychological terror. What prestige the ruler of the corrupt elite gives, he can also take away. In corrupt Third World states, a dictator offers a ministry to a favoured individual under probation; unless the dictator has special reason to fear the individual (by keeping an enemy sweet and under close watch), the newly-appointed minister knows the best way to ensure his position is to get as much money as possible from his underlings, to be used as a periodic "gift" to the leader. Thus bribery becomes a weapon of government terror; pay your dues, or risk the wrath of your superior. And "wrath" in a country without rules is simply whatever the person in influence is capable of.

This is the primer in "corruption". The West has generally been free of large-scale corruption for the last hundred years or more, depending on how wide your definition is. But, as I said at the start, what is "corruption"?

Corruption has never really left some aspects of Western society; it simply became more refined. I wrote before about Britain's establishment here, and the link between corruption and incompetence. In the Third World, corruption is a cancer that infects every level of society, as explained above. Corruption no longer infects every level of Western society; rather, corruption is something that only the richest can afford.

In the Third World, corruption is almost egalitarian in how is spread through every level of society. In Africa, if you pay the bribe the right person, you can get what you want. In the West, corruption is a luxury good: only the richest can afford the fees.

Consider the number of scandals - be it banking practices, tax scams - that cost the UK government billions in revenue. The money lost through these corrupt practices of the elite dwarf into insignificance the petty fraud carried-out the "benefit cheats" widely-reported in the media. But it is easier for the government to target those at the low end of society for persecution. This is a practice right out of a corrupt Third World dictators' handbook. When the Conservative government feels challenged, rather than tackle the corrupt system and those individuals considered part of the British "establishment", it isolates those who it sees as an easy target - the petty fraudsters at the lowest end of the social spectrum.
Ian Duncan Smith is another example of the Conservatives' instinct for "divide and rule" tactics. For those with the least to lose and most to gain from social revolution, it is in the elite's interest to ensure they are as divided as possible: Osborne's "strivers versus skivers" is another variation on the same theme. Whether this is by design or (more likely) a combination of education and gut instinct, people like the Conservatives have a vested interest in "the system": the British "establishment" that has raised them, therefore they fear anything that threatens change.

"Divide and rule" is how corrupt elites stay in power, from Africa to the UK. Corruption kills societies because it breeds incompetence and inefficiency. When there is no rational oversight, and when everything is influenced by not what you know, but who you know or how much money can buy you influence, intelligence becomes irrelevant.
One important reason why the financial crisis happened is because those in positions of responsibility in the finance sector failed to ask questions. As long as the system generated money, they didn't ask why things worked. In the end, the system crashed because no-one knew how anything really worked. No-one has realised that the system they relied on was a fraud, literally. Everyone was defrauding everyone else, but no-one thought this was wrong - it was normal at the time.
This is exactly the same psychology that exists in corrupt Third World states. When everyone around you is corrupt, it no longer seems like corruption: it seems normal. 
Back to the financial crisis, because those in positions of responsibility all had similar educations, were from the similar backgrounds, often had known each other's families for years, they had all progressed to their positions of authority thanks to the same corrupt system. Therefore, they assumed that they knew what they were doing simply because of their backgrounds. David Cameron and George Osborne share the same deluded psychology.

Corruption therefore breeds incompetence because people do not gain power through meritocratic ability, but through influence or other means. Thus you have people who are put in positions of power far beyond their ability. And as they delude themselves into thinking they have attained power fairly, they are more likely to become vain and arrogant, haughty and over-bearing. As living proof of this, a number of Conservative ministers seem to fit into this personality set. Worse, such a corrupt system makes these incompetent people make mistakes, and they naturally react by persecuting those they feel most threatened by once their mistakes have been discovered. Thus corruption is an evil of society: it breeds on amorality, it disregards intelligent thinking and efficiency, it rewards incompetence, and punishes all those who seek to change the status quo.

In this way, a corrupt society is a morally evil one, too. The process of moral degradation as described above as much describes what happens when you put psychopaths in positions of power. This also explains why psychopaths thrive in corrupt societies, and why there are likely to be a disproportionately-high number of psychopaths in corrupt societies.

Psychopaths are products of childhood chaos, and thrive on social chaos. And corruption, by definition, creates chaos.