The "Brexit Agenda": Immigration, the economy and the "small state"

A reminder of what Brexit really means for Britain is demonstrated in an article looking at the sharp rise in immigrant deportations.  The intent by Theresa May to create a "really hostile environment" for illegal migrants has now spilled over to mean all migrants, including those from the EU. Another article highlights how this "really hostile environment" has now seeped through to employers and landlords, with some jumping the gun on the issue (or, looking at it more charitably, creating certainty for themselves on the issue when there is none from the government). The facile response from the government to this alarming trend tells us how, deep down, many of them see this as a "win-win" situation.

While whose that voted to leave the EU may applaud this, it would also be useful to think about what it means to prospective foreign workers. Simply, they will be strongly discouraged from wanting to come.

Again, those that voted to leave the EU may applaud this too: more jobs for British workers, supposedly. So let's look at the "Brexit Agenda", and what the "Brexiteers" ultimately aim to achieve.

In my last article we looked at what is happening to British politics: in truth, the hijacking of the political agenda by a small group of extremists. We looked at "how"; now, let's look at "why".

Turning back the clock

In the previous article, I mentioned EFTA, which Britain joined in 1961, about ten years before we joined the then EEC. With the government making clear its intent to leave the EFTA as well, we can literally say that the government wishes to turn back the clock on Britain's relations with Europe; more exactly, we can say it wants Britain's trading relationship to be as it was during the days of the 1950s, when Britain had the Empire.

Since winning the referendum last year, the hard-line "Brexiteers" (perhaps better called "Brextremists") have done everything they can to take the lead on setting the agenda, not only on the terms of "Brexit" itself, but also trying to seep their ideology into other facets of political discourse. This was why what is happening could be called a kind of "soft coup" or "coup by stealth". This can be especially seen in how they have been keen to press on with their agenda in spite of the government losing its majority since the June election. In spite of being a small faction of a party without a majority in parliament, they are acting as though they have untrammeled power and a huge popular mandate.

But back to the main point. What do they want to achieve?

By turning back the clock on Britain's relations with Europe (and by implication of this new immigration regime, the world), it is about "British jobs for British workers". On the face of it, it is a harmless-sounding (even laudable) idea, until you look into the detail of what that really means.

Britain's job market is currently already running at close to "natural" levels of full employment, which, obviously, includes British workers. In other words, there is no problem with British workers finding a job. And if that is true, then it can't be true that immigrants are taking away jobs from British workers.

So this straightaway destroys the fallacy of foreign migrants taking away jobs from natives. And if this is the case, then what is the point of making it much more difficult for foreigners to live and work in Britain?

If there is no real economic case for this agenda, then it must be something else. And here we are in danger of "over-intellectualizing" a fundamentally-unintellectual agenda. Brexit was never really about economics; it couldn't be, when almost everybody who understood the economics couldn't understand the logic of leaving the EU. Brexit was about power.

One of the main reasons for leaving the EU was to "take back control". While this was said to mean returning powers from Brussels to the Westminster parliament, as mentioned in my previous article, it is clear that it is really about a government power grab. And again, this is a "power grab" by a faction of the governing party that supports UKIP's agenda. 

So while this faction is doing its best to gain quasi-autocratic control over vast areas of law previously ran by the EU, their agenda on immigration is really a red herring. Whether or not this faction really believe in their own rhetoric about immigration being the bane of the British worker's life is hard to tell. If they do believe it, then it is a sign that they are dangerously deluded; if they don't, then then are truly callous in their attitude to the fate of the British economy. The evidence points to it being a mixture of the two, with some "Brextremists" being bonkers in their "vision" for Britain, while others are simply sociopathic in their outlook. Theresa May seems to exhibit a little of both.

In this way, it becomes clear that "taking back control" was really about the "Brextremists" taking autocratic control of Britain. They were horrified of the idea that the EU could dictate law to the UK, regardless of the fact that those laws were designed to improve many aspects of life in the UK, as the UK was part of the EU. While the EU, as in any huge bureaucracy, has its problems, the benefits for most people clearly out-weigh the drawbacks. The problem for the "Brextremists" was about feeling powerless. As with any Populist movement, Brexit was driven on the idea of the "losers" of the current status quo rising up against a distant, uncaring elite. However, we have seen how this lie can be used by the real, home-grown elite that supports a return to to earlier age when they ruled the country in a much more autocratic fashion. The "Brextremists" of today are simply using time-honored strategies to turn the clock back to a time they look back on with wistful nostalgia: the Britain of the British Empire, before its disintegration, when the establishment ruled with an invisible hand.
Put in this context, the idea of turning Britain into a place hostile to immigrants may then serve a double purpose. First of all, it gives the "losers" who voted for Brexit a real sense of there being an identifiable change to the make-up of the country; of the country becoming more visibly "British". In this way, it makes them feel as though their vote truly "made a difference", and thus cements their connection (i.e. loyalty) to their "Brexiteer" rulers. This manipulative use of "culture war" then gives greater leeway for them to take their agenda to its conclusion (see below). 

If the economy thrives or fails as a result of this strategy is not a real concern for this "Brexit elite". In any case, they wouldn't be the ones that suffered. As we have already seen, some that voted for Brexit believe that an economic downturn is a price worth paying if they "take back control" (regardless of how horribly deluded they are in this). This mentality of "groupthink" makes it even easier for the "Brextremists" to charge ahead with their autocratic agenda.
Those that do suffer from any self-inflicted economic mess will be given the sinister, outside forces of "Europe" to blame. Like with the dog-whistle use of immigration, the scapegoating of "foreign powers" that don't want to see Britain succeed would be the next part of the plan. As with the earlier example of employers nowadays that are "jumping the gun" on immigration, this is a "win-win" situation for those in charge. This is simply another version of the strategy of "divide and rule". 

"A bonfire of red tape"

The other main reason given for leaving the EU was due to the stranglehold that European "red tape" was apparently having on business. Regardless of the fact that few people who supported Brexit could actually point to any particular regulations they found so onerous, the "red tape" was there to improve the conditions of life in Britain, as a member of the EU. Of course, some of the regulations led to absurdities, but the vast majority left people's lives better, such as through safer products they used or safer living and working conditions. 

The "Brextremists" resented these regulations as they reduced the amount of power they had. Using accusations of the "nanny state" is as old as the hills, and this loss of power to the EU ties in with the theme of "taking back control" that we looked at earlier. Again, the motivation of the "Brexit Agenda" is to have fewer controls on business, giving them greater powers to exploit their workers and reduce costs (such as by relaxing safety standards). In this way, "Brexit Britain" will more closely resemble the working conditions found in developing countries, with things like" Zero Hour Contracts" becoming ever more commonplace, and more and more companies compelling their workforce into being an army of the self-employed. Likewise, this "race to the bottom" would result in fewer protections for workers, leading to more and more unstable social conditions. 

This is the vision of the "small state", as the "Brextremists" see it: a kind of Libertarian dystopia. Apart from the "reforms" they would like to see to working conditions, there is the vision they have of the welfare system (and have already partially implemented thanks to Iain Duncan Smith). This is making "welfare" seem more like a punishment than a human right, where the individual is devalued and dehumanized at every opportunity, and a callous system that finds any small reason to withdraw its support, leaving them to fend for themselves. As the government only has respect for money and success, it follows that this philosophy makes the poor and the vulnerable feel like social failures. This is a system of "Social Darwinism" that punishes those on the lowest rungs of society, regardless of the reason. The government isn't there to help the weak, but to make them suffer for their weakness. The same strategy has already been applied to other areas of policy, such as immigration and the settling of the government's own subjects.

Is the ultimate aim here the destruction of social fabric of civilised society? Like with their vision for the economy post-Brexit, it is either bonkers or callously-brutal. It is like they literally do not care, and are so off-the-wall they cannot see how mad their ideas really are. Taken to its logical conclusion, such policies would result in chronic deprivation among the working class, like hasn't been seen since before the Great Depression. And with deprivation and gross inequality comes social breakdown and crime, providing the "Brexiteer" elite with yet another set of scapegoats to use.
But as we have already seen, their "Brexit Agenda" seems to be the restoration of the socio-economic order of Britain prior to 1945, regardless of its effect on society. It about the destruction of the "post-war settlement" for good; a "Counter-Reformation" of the establishment against the welfare state, masquerading as a social revolution.

Brexit is simply the way they seek to achieve it.

The UK's Spouse Visa Regulations: the Conservatives at their worst

The government's rules on granting visas to non-EU spouses of British citizens seem to sum up pretty well all the negative aspects of the Conservative government.

An article in "The Guardian" returns to this sore issue, reminding us of what low depths that the Tories are capable of sinking of when dealing with their own people. The rules are so stringent, they make The UK's rules comparable with the immigration rules of some of the worst authoritarian regimes. Worse, they effectively make British people who wish to marry anyone from outside the EU (which obviously includes The USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) exiles from their own country, simply for implementing a basic human right, unless they are wealthy.

Why were these new laws introduced in the first place? The official reason is to reduce "benefit fraud" and foreigners "living off the state", as part of Cameron's impossible-to-achieve "pledge" to reduce annual immigration to the "tens of thousands" (more on Cameron's broken promises here). But the rules now applied are more stringent (and nonsensical) than those in The USA or even Australia. The general consensus is that the rules that prohibit Briton's earning less than approx. £18,000 from bringing their spouses to The UK are really designed to reduce the disproportionate number of Brits of Pakistani and Indian descent from bringing over their cousins in arranged marriages from the subcontinent. That, and to discourage the perceived problem of Brits marrying "brides-to-order" (for want of a less un-PC phrase) from places like the Far East and the former Soviet Union.

Whatever the motivation for these changes, this rule is really about appeasing the Conservatives' party base, as well as the instincts of "The Daily Mail", when it comes to immigration. The facts of the matter are irrelevant; it's the perception of "a problem" that counts.

A system designed to destroy the family

Apart from the financial limits to the rules, there are other rules, also far stricter than other comparable countries, that compound the injustice.

There is also the rule about children, so that the salary base escalates with every child in the Briton's family.

There is also the rule that means that the salary measured must be earned by the "sponsor" (the Brit), rather than the spouse; there is no flexibility if, for example, the foreign spouse earns a higher salary to offset if the Brits' salary is lower than the threshold.
Furthermore, there can be no "co-sponsor" (like in The USA and elsewhere), such as wealthier parents, that can act as a form of financial "insurance" for the couple.

The British "sponsor" must also have paid employment in The UK when the couple live there (i.e. for some time before the foreign spouse arrives).

The British "sponsor" can only get around these rules if they have savings in their account equivalent to more than double (or nearly triple) the average annual salary in The UK.

Lastly, if the "sponsor's" situation changes during the two years the couple are in The UK (such as losing a job), this would effectively condemn any chance of their spouse staying in The UK after their initial two-year "probationary period".

Then there are the many rules designed to catch out the foreign spouses, but there isn't time to go into them all here. It's enough to say that from the initial application of a spouse visa, the Briton and their non-EU spouse are assumed guilty of deception until they can prove they are an honest (and well-financed) married couple.

Such an ordeal would test the strongest of relationships; it is not surprising that some would break down under the stresses of such a system. Children are deprived of their parents for months on end under such a system. Under the guise of defending Britain against "sham marriages", they implement rules that break the one of the most fundamental human rights in the world: the right to choose who you want to live your life with, and the right to live in your own country with the person you wish.

A Kafkaesque nightmare 

These rules display the Conservatives are their most heartless as well as their most nonsensical.

Some might say "a person can't expect the state the fund your relationship choices". Well, The USA and The EU don't have a problem with that idea, within reasonable limits. As mentioned earlier, The USA see that it is reasonable to maintain the coherence of the family unit, and allow a "co-sponsor" of a married American an a foreign spouse living the The USA.
The EU's attitudes are even more humane: according to EU law (which The UK government flouts to implement these nonsensical rules) any EU citizen cannot be denied the right to live in the EU without his spouse, regardless of where they are from. This is again to preserve the sanctity of the family; even more important if they are children involved.

It's because of these EU rules that there is a way around the UK government's rules. As any Briton is also an EU citizen, they can simply move to any other EU country (such and the Republic Of Ireland) and live there with their non-EU spouse. These are the Kafkaesque lengths that the Conservatives are pushing their own people to in order to be happily married.
This is just one of a catalogue of Conservative disasters committed while in government. And while Brits who marry anyone from outside the EU are subjected to these inhumane restrictions (creating a whole subset of British "marriage exiles"), any other EU family is free to move into The UK without any legal restriction.

Such a situation invites comparisons (if perhaps over-indulgently) to political and economic refugees. Certainly, no other Western developed country has such an inhumane and cynical attitude towards foreign marriage. While those in the developing world have been banished from their own countries for their political beliefs, thousands of Brits are being forced to live outside their home country for their relationship choices.

The UK government is effectively saying: "You Can Only Marry Who We Say You Can". If you don't, then prepare to suffer the consequences.

The government introduces these rules to avoid "marriages of convenience": and yet the government encourages Britons to marry only people who they consider "convenient" for themselves. When the government talks about "marriages of convenience", it simply means it objects to marriages inconvenient to its interests.

If there was one way for the government to encourage British people become more cynical in their relations towards each other, foreigners and the institution of marriage, this certainly would be one way to achieve it.

And this, from the supposed party of "family values".

Why Cameron's Conservatives are the most incompetent British government ever

I wrote last year about how Cameron's government is possibly the worst-ever British government in modern history. Since that time, that point of view has been only vindicated even further.

Last spring, around the chancellor's "omnishambles" budget, there were a series of cock-ups that made the government seem completely inept, as well as indifferent towards the detrimental effect their policies were having on the economy and British society in general.

If possible, things are now even worse.

 The government's economic policy has been a complete disaster. The UK is now on the verge of entering a unprecedented triple-dip recession. The UK is currently going through its slowest economic recovery (if it can be called that) than even before the Great Depression. Youth unemployment is at near-crippling levels, many of those including people with degrees. Levels of long-term unemployment are at similarly-worrying levels. The vast majority of the jobs that are on offer are part-time or temporary (if not both). All these signs in the job market tell us that, thanks to Osborne's incompetence, the British economy may be going through a permanent structural change in the employment market, so that large parts of the country become comparable with a deprived East European country.

The government's economic policy is centred on paying off the debt. This would be a laudable aim, if the way there are going about it were not more laughable. Thanks to their economic policy, the debt has increased continually, rather than the opposite. The Conservatives use the reasoning of comparing government finances to that of a household, which may seem easy to explain, but is also completely idiotic. You cannot compare running the government to running a household. This is what economists might call confusing micro-economic policy with macro-economic policy. This mistake is easily explained if you think about where government gets its money from: taxpayers.
The government confuses taxpayers to the same income you would get from a job to pay your household outgoings. The government also confuses paying government debt to the same principle as paying off household debt (e.g. a mortgage). The government thinks that if you pay off government debt as fast as you can, by cutting back on public spending regardless of its detriment to its taxpayers, it will be better for the economy. This is like a household cutting back on things like food and fuel in order to pay off a mortgage more quickly. Rather than getting a better deal on your mortgage (paying it off over a longer time frame), the Conservative household would rather starve now. Furthermore, using the same Conservative principle, imagine the household is unemployed. If you cut back on transport costs, for example, you make it more difficult to get a job. So the measure is self-defeating.
This is what the Conservative government have now discovered, too late for the economy. By cutting serious public investment, and cutting back on public spending, you are reducing the opportunities for taxpayers to make more money; and when you make the economic situation more difficult for your taxpayers, your tax revenue goes down. Thus increasing the debt, not reducing it. When the economy is doing badly, this is the time for government to act; when the economy is doing well, the government can back off. The Obama administration has known this all along, and explains why the US is on the way to a steady recovery. The Conservatives' therefore have shown that they are utterly incapable of understanding how the economy works.
Furthermore, George Osborne still says that the sign of the economy's decline is even further justification for his policy of reducing the debt at all costs. Going back to the mortgage analogy, this is like a household starving to death to pay off the mortgage stating that their starvation is a sign that they're doing well! I'm not sure what Osborne's mindset is these days, but he's either: completely irresponsible in knowing he's wrong but refusing to admit it, or; completely delusional, and in need of mental help. In either case, a rational or competent Prime Minister would dismiss him. But David Cameron is neither rational or competent either.

While Osborne is responsible for the government's disastrous and idiotic economic policy, his long-term friend David Cameron supports him, and meanwhile is largely responsible for the government's foreign policy, in particular Europe. Now that Cameron has officially stated his party's stance towards Europe, he has displayed another example of his amateur ineptness at politics. Cameron has stated that if he wins the next general election, he will give the public a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU, based on the assumption he will get back some powers (which, he doesn't say, or know, yet).
There are a host of reasons why Cameron has shown appalling judgement (here), as well as creating a disaster in the making (here). In short, Cameron has offered a short-term solution to papering over the cracks of his party's disunity, by offering a ticking time-bomb, for both his party and, potentially, the country.
Apart from its reception in the UK, Cameron's European "strategy" of getting a better deal can only work if his threat to leave concerns the EU, and Germany in particular. But thanks to thirty years of government under-investment in the manufacturing sector (as I described here), the EU paying more for the UK's exports  is not a huge worry for them if the UK leaves. Many of them would just shrug their shoulders at the silliness of the British government, and carry on without us. The UK needs the EU more than the EU needs the UK. Cameron doesn't seem to realise this, however.
So Cameron has followed up Osborne with a potentially disastrous and idiotic European policy. For even in the best-case scenario (that he is re-elected, wins sizable EU concessions, and wins the referendum), there will still be a Eurosceptic wing to his party, as now. Cameron doesn't even want the UK to leave the EU, but he is willing to put everything at risk for a relatively small gain.
I wonder if he's ever played poker.

At the same time, Cameron has given further ground to Alex Salmond, effectively Prime Minister of a semi-autonomous Scotland. For Cameron's newly-stated European policy plays into the hands of those who want Scottish independence. The reasoning for Nationalists is this: why put at risk Scotland's position in the EU (and even if not threatened, potentially reduced, as part of a re-negotiated UK deal)? Rather than wait for Euro-sceptic England's potential withdrawal in (for example) 2017 to drag out Scotland as well (joined at the hip, as they are in the UK), much better for Scotland to engage with the EU on its own terms as a separate state, by supporting the independence referendum in 2014.
Thus by 2020, Scotland could be in the EU in its own right, and the "remainder of the UK" out. Again, Cameron shows up his complete lack of strategic thinking.

Then there is the issue of defence, another issue that Cameron has completely screwed up. He recently made a speech that the Algerian hostage crisis highlighted the need for a British defence strategy for North Africa, involving troops and additional ordinance. He suggested this at the same time as supporting his governments ongoing plan to reduce the British army to a level (eighty thousand men) that is lower than was that of the German army's punishment at the terms of the Treaty Of Versailles (who were reduced to a standing army of one hundred thousand men). In other words, it could be argued that, in earlier days, Cameron and his government's treatment of the British army would have been equated to that of a foreign conqueror on a defeated enemy. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the service chiefs have similar views now.
Not only does this attitude of obsessive parsimony to the army show incredible arrogance by the party that is traditionally supposed to best defend the interests of the armed forces. More than that, it is another example of the chronic lack of foresight and future planning. How does the government expect Britain to defend itself, let alone fulfill current and future commitments abroad?
It could be argued that such incompetence towards its defence policy is tantamount to an abrogation of its duty to defend the nation.

This "lack of foresight and planning" is an ongoing theme with Cameron's government - a polite way of saying that they haven't got a clue how to run the country. But this is, in effect, the reality.

Not only is the government completely incompetent in its key roles of the economy, defence, and European relations. It also has a completely incompetent and self-defeating immigration policy.
The UKBA has been found out to be one of the most incompetent government agencies of all. Again, government cutbacks play a part in this, as fresh scandals explain. UKBA staff are overwhelmed with the workload relative to their staffing sizes; as a consequence, airports are filled with queues more redolent of a banana republic, and tens of thousands of visa applications (including passports and supporting documents) have been lost or forgotten about. Months pass without a response for many applicants, and that is just in the UK.
Then there are the government's idiotic immigration rules themselves, that are causing universities to pull their hair out in frustration, as thousands of potential foreign students forego on the chance to get a British education because they are either unable to get a visa, or don't have the patience to wait months for one when they can much more easily go elsewhere. For these people, getting a visa to the UK seems no less difficult than getting a visa to North Korea.
Lastly, there are the government's immigration rules that are less incompetent, as inhumane. British nationals married to spouses from outside the EU or EEA (meaning those married to Americans, Australians and Kiwis as many as any other country) can only live with their spouses (and children) in the UK if they earn nearly £20,000 a year, or have a similar amount in savings (more if they have children). In other words, if you are British, not rich, and are married to someone from the wrong country, you cannot live in the UK. If the government's defence policy is something close to an abrogation of its duty to defend the country, the government's policy towards these unfortunate Britons is something close to a denial of the basic right of residence to its own people.

There are countless other examples of ministerial and governmental incompetence.
One of the most recent ones is the fiasco over the implementation of the "Green Deal", the government's supposed "flagship" environmental policy, that was meant to update the environmental standards of homes across the UK, and keep the related industries with permanent, long-term employment. However, in spite of the government's outward support for these industries, lack of basic government planning has meant there is no work at all for these industries, as very few home-owners know about the "Green Deal", let alone signed up to it. Bone-headed government thinking has therefore left key "green energy" industries out on a limb.

Thus in the space of less than a few years, the Conservative government has reduced the UK to same level of government competence as found in a Third World banana republic.

The title of the article is "why Cameron's Conservatives are the most incompetent British government". I have explained the "how", but not the real why.
The real reason "why" is because those at the top, from the supposed "cream" of society, have little idea about how to run government and the key institutions that run modern-day Britain. This is down to education, as explained in more detail here.

What the 2011 UK census tells us about post-Imperial Britain

The main points that stand out for me from the 2011 census are:
1) atheism is increasingly the norm,
2) London's white British population is a minority in the city,
3) the immigrant population has increased by around three million in the last ten years,
4) there are now more than half a million Polish people in the UK,
5) the tenant population has increased by more than half.

Britain is a post-Imperial power, and has been since the rapid disintegration of the Empire after the Second World War. In a nutshell, what has happened to the UK since then is the effective implosion of its Imperial society. Whereas in the 19th century, Britain spread its social values to its colonies around the world, after the end of the Empire, its former colonies have sucked back to the "homeland" like a collapsing star sucking matter back in on itself. The "homeland" of the former British Empire is now a teeming microcosm of its former Imperial population.

This was inevitable. And what I write here is neither a condemnation or otherwise: this is simple observation, free of judgement.

An Imperial power the size of the British Empire cannot discard the great majority of its Empire in the space of little more than twenty years and expect to continue unscathed. Until the 1950s, Britain was an island of generally homogeneous white people that still ruled a vast colonial population. But that "Golden Age" of Empire was destroyed by the effects of the Second World War. After the war, the bankrupt "Empire" was shown to be a financial conjuring trick, and suddenly the "homeland" needed more people to re-build the economy. So it turned to the colonial populations.

Britain, like France and Portugal, were European, post-Imperial powers looking for a way to survive when it was clear that Imperialism was no longer financially viable and practical in a Cold War world dominated by two huge continental superpowers, the USA and USSR. For the broken European powers to survive, they pooled their talents around a new Franco-German centre, based on trade. After a couple of false starts,  Britain joined the European club, thus put the final nail in the coffin of Imperialism. Britain's last formal colony, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), was relinquished shortly after Britain joined the European club, the (then) EEC.

Britain, always being largely ignorant of continental politics and society, has been considered the black sheep of Europe. Thus its critical voice was always easy for the others to ignore. The expansion of the former EEC, now EU, into Eastern Europe, has had an immediate effect on the population of the "homeland"; now more than half a million Poles live permanently in the UK - a tenfold increase on ten years previously.

Since the 1990s, Britain's increasing role has been as the "conscience of the world"; in order to replace its middling role in the Cold War, it has largely embraced the American belief in an "open door" policy to immigration. This largely accounts for the unprecedented rise in the immigrant population in the last ten years.

The effect of this on British society in general is clear from the 2011 census. London, like New York, is one half of the Anglophone twin cities of globalisation. These two cities symbolise everything that globalisation represents, and are living examples of it. Boris Johnson is another living example: born in New York, now mayor of London, and a passionate promoter of both cities, and the concept of globalisation generally.

As I've said before, "Globalisation" is the direct result of the Anglo-Saxon economic model propounded by the British Empire and the USA. It is also largely interchangeable with the core ideas of Economic Fascism, as I've also said elsewhere. The fact the "the world lives in London", or New York, doesn't change the fact that the same economic model that brings people around the world together, also makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.

The story of 2011 in Britain is now of economic stagnation in a society of unprecedented diversity. But what this really masks over is the danger of communities in general slipping apart. I don't mean in stark terms of race, religion and so on, but more in terms of more social insecurity, and more psychological distance between people, exacerbated the socio-economic plan of the current Conservative government. As fewer and fewer people can afford to buy homes, or as more and more jobs become temporary and part-time, it makes it more and more difficult to make real roots and develop a real sense of "community". This is the real danger: people no longer talking to their neighbours because they never know who they are (or when they're at home) for long enough, and people not making real workplace connections because they never see the same people from one day to the next.

This is the other story of Britain in 2011. That Britain, long the arch-proponent of globalisation and economic liberalisation, became a victim to it in 2008. But the culprits were not affected, nor punished. It was everyone else who was a victim to it, and the average person on the street who has continued to suffer. This is what accounts for the rise in tenants in the UK, for the first time in living memory, as people see the "homeland" of the former British Empire become a third-rate nation-state. Britain imports most of its goods, manufactures little, and has a national housing shortage; if it were not for the amoral practices of the financial sector in London artificially flattering the state of Britain's economy as a whole, the country would be on a par with failed state.

That said, it is the amoral practices of the financial sector, who have had the ear of government for thirty years, that are responsible for the economic stagnation and social dysfunction outside of the Home Counties.

 "Strength in Diversity" is a great slogan for 21st century Britain. Another way of putting it is "The Empire Coming Home". Both are technically correct, but the second is heavy with loaded xenophobia. The stark future facing Britain is not of "rivers of blood" as Enoch Powell said, but of "streets of desolation", as whole areas of the UK gradually turn into economic black holes.

Like the Soviet Union, but without the Socialism

Under the noses of its people, the Conservative government is carrying-out an ideological war on British society. In its scale, its righteous certainty, and callous lack of empathy, it ranks as one of the biggest hidden attempts at social engineering on a national scale seen in the Western world for decades.
The evidence is plain to see; you just have to look carefully at the headlines.

Since coming to power, under the charming and harmless-looking nose of David Cameron, the Prime Minister has given his ministers free rein to take their ideological battles to the departments they run, and further out to the nation.

The most notorious of these is the Education minister, Michael Gove. Just today the news leaked out of his plan to scrap GCSEs and return the secondary education system back to the O-levels/CSEs of thirty years ago. He claims that the current exams do not adequately provide the skills and standards necessary for today's situation. Well, it may well be said that the education system is not perfect; certainly it could be improved. But what he recommends is a system that formalises Social Darwinism.
For a start, it is misleading and disingenuous to compare education systems retrospectively, thirty years apart: the methods are different, and the old system was replaced because business people saw it as inadequate for  real life conditions. How would going back the previous discredited system be better? Not only that, but any return to "O" levels would mean they no longer correlate to the following A-levels - unless Gove recommends (and secretly plans on) changing the FE system as well. People who are adults now (who look the old "O" levels) say GCSEs are much easier than in their day: but logically any exam reviewed by a 40-year-old that is designed for a 16-year-old is going to be easier. It's easy to mock teenagers when you're an adult.

But those are small points compared to the main one: that this is another example (I'll mention others later) of how the Conservatives, with Gove as one of its most vociferous proponents, are content to "raise standards" by creating a system whereby those who are unlucky enough to fail these "rigorous" exams will be effectively cast out from social mobility - in other words ensuring that there will be a permanent and significant underclass, cut off from the more well-off and socially capable rest. But he hasn't though much about this.
There are already the student fees in place (some of the highest in the Western world), also meant to "raise standards", but also guaranteeing that there will continue to be an entire generation of graduates with tens of thousands of pounds in debt with little hope of getting a well-paid job, due to the swelling ranks of highly-educated unemployable young people. They will have to resort to the growing trend of unpaid "internships", unpaid "work experience", or if they're lucky, part-time work. This is the future that Mr Gove is helping to create: a generation of graduate slave labour.

Then there is the Chief Inspector of School, Michael Wilshaw, who seems to operate as Mr Gove's ideological witchfinder-general: psychologically terrorising the schools system by constantly undermining the way schools' performance is measured. For him, no longer is it acceptable to be a "satisfactory" school two years running - to him, this represents failure. He also threatened to impose on-the-spot inspections, but with that idea leaving some school heads and teachers literally living in fear every day they come to work, this idea has been quietly shelved. Teachers are supposed to be amongst our most valued people in society, but under the catch-all excuse of "raising standards", it is being used as a weapon of terror on the educational system: terrorising teachers and students alike, and leaving many of the teachers either on the edge of a nervous breakdown, quitting, and many prospective teachers discouraged to even think about it. Perhaps Mr Gove wants this to happen as well.
The Department of Education, therefore, is ran like a latter-day branch of the KGB; declaring war on education for the sake of education.

Then there's the Health minister, who is pushing through the biggest form of privatisation in the health sector yet seen. This is on the back of continual criticisms from the sector itself, and a radical dismembering of the NHS - the government institution most cherished by the British public. It is almost as though the government is taking a perverse form of pleasure of taking to pieces that which the people most respect about government. As the Conservatives are so ideologically-obsessed with the idea that government by definition cannot do things as well as the private sector, they are determined to even destroy the one thing that government still does well (and is most respected by the public), given the alternative. By purposely undermining government as an institution, it also as though the government deliberately is courting controversy and sees unpopularity as a badge of honour. This lack of empathy and twisted logic reeks of "Bolshevik"-style ideological psychopathy, turned on its head.

There is also the issue of welfare, pensions and investment.

Welfare has seen the sledgehammer of "reform" and cuts. The disabled, families and the "working poor" are all suffering due to the government's zeal for cutting back on the state's provision to the neediest in society. One of the most disturbing developments partly due to the cuts has been that some councils have been forced to relocate some families to other (less developed) parts of the country for financial reasons: in other words, forced deportations to "the regions", or effectively economic exile.

The government has also declared an unofficial war on public servants' pensions. Its main tactic, so it appears, is through the government's intransigence to provoke the various public servants unions into going on strike in order to discredit them in the court of public opinion. So once again, we see the government playing a reckless game of brinkmanship to test the resolve of the public sector as a whole. We already saw earlier this year this same tactic back-fire spectacularly with the tanker drivers' dispute, when the government caused a national panic even though there was no declared strike. But even then, the government blamed the (non-striking) tanker drivers.

The government's resistance to promoting growth in the economy through government investment also ensures that a growing trend in employment has become entrenched: a growing and significant number of long-term unemployed (to add to the many unemployable graduates and school-leavers); and a growing and significant number of part-time jobs to replace full-time employment. It used to be true that the Soviet Union had zero unemployment: this was because many people had "non-jobs" like opening doors. The government's lack of interest in unemployment is turning the UK into a variation on the USSR's state of affairs: the UK will become a country of part-time workers.

Furthermore, there is also the Ministry of Defence, whose role in the cuts is to oversee the down-sizing of the military by twenty per cent. This is not often in the news, so some may see this as a side-issue, but for the thousands of soldiers to lose their jobs and regiments due to be disbanded, it is a shocking state of affairs: all the more so as it comes from the same Conservative Party what was meant to be the vanguard of the military's interests. Ironic, then, that the one that wields the knife is the military's bosom buddy. As it happens, I am currently reading the biography of Stalin (which partially inspired me to write this article): he who ordered the execution of many of the military leaders who had been his staunchest allies in the Bolshevik's rise to power. The similarly-ruthless psychology of the Conservative Party hierarchy is not lost on me.

Last, but far from least, is Theresa May, the Home Secretary, who is keen on cuts and "reform" to the police. Like the military, the police are supposed to be a cause close to the heart of the Conservative Party; but also like the military, those closest to the Party are those most likely to feel the knife. The police are in open revolt over the massive cuts proposed, but the Home Secretary is unyielding in her desire to see through the "reforms". By law, police cannot strike - though perhaps, like with other public sector workers, the Conservatives would secretly wish that they could, just so that they could provoke them. All the better to discredit the enemies of "reform". The Home Secretary also wished to force on the police, in the same way that the Chief Inspector of Schools is ideologically supportive of the government, a reform-friendly bureaucrat. The police wouldn't stand for this further insult, however.

One further very recent change to immigration, at the suggestion of the Home Secretary, puts the UK almost in a league of its own compared to other Western democracies. British citizens married to non-EU citizens (which includes those Brits married to Americans, Canadians, Australians, Kiwis, South Africans, as well as all other non-English speaking countries in the world) may only live in the UK with their spouses if they earn more than £18,000 - increasing to above £22,000 if they have a child, increasing with the number of children they have. The average salary in the UK is around £27,000, give or take. If you earn minimum wage, your salary is more like £12,000. The figure of £18,000 is beyond what the majority of women, and people under thirty, typically earn in the UK. Around forty per cent of the UK working population earn less than £18,000 overall.
So that puts this immigration rule into perspective: the British government has now effectively offered some of its own citizens an awful choice. For those Brits married to non-EU foreigners and not on a "high" salary, they must either live in the UK apart from their spouse, or permanently live in exile. The Soviet Union created thousands of political exiles; the government now is creating thousands of financial exiles, simply because the government doesn't approve of who they marry.
So now the Conservative government has even declared war on the "wrong" type of love.