Reply To: U-turns

[Gurnelista]

Poor old BI tries turning every which way in a bid to appear credible and the result is a word salad full of unconnected points. The one about lack of growth is familiar tho’ – Tory MPs are currently using this one in media interviews, but rather more accurately they claim that stagnation goes back to 2010 or so, in which case they have a point. Any further and they don’t, as Heathy points out above.

This problem of low growth is no surprise when we consider how those on no and low incomes have been used as a petri dish for free-market economics. The question has been ‘would free markets lead to growth and provide an escape route from austerity?’ Well, no, they’ve conspicuously failed. Those of us who inhabit reality know that untrammelled wealth and raging free markets does not mean everyone will get rich. It does not mean a few small crumbs of Thick Lizzie’s wealth will come tumbling down onto your little table, BI, as we’ve seen.

To keep thinking otherwise is to treat free market economics as a religion, a matter of belief. But, the fetishizing of markets is a dangerous thing. Reality won’t adapt to your desires, as we’ve seen with Brexit. This statement of the obvious is obvious to all except the fanatics. The ‘invisible hand’ of Adam Smith is the dead hand of zero growth in 2022.

But if there’s any cold comfort in ‘dead hands’, it’s that we are witnessing the last dying throes of this zombie government. It will probably stagger on, kicking and wretching its way from crisis to crisis for the next few months, but then it’ll be over.

These crises has been largely self-inflicted because the party has no idea what it stands for these days. We’ve seen how 2011-2015 there was a loss of direction of travel. Faced with egregious market failure, the party didn’t know what to do – turn left, turn further to the right, or steer a middle course. The loonies grabbed the wheel, lurched further right and blamed Brussels, rather than their own mistakes. And post-2015, everything was couched in terms of ‘leave or remain’, no matter how economically illiterate, unfair or bonkers.

There was also progressively poor leadership, going from bad to worse, and a loss of self-discipline in the party, from Cameron to May to Johnson… and now Truss.

Some say Truss should’ve crushed the wets in her party, Thatcher-style. But that would have exacerbated the Tory problem. Silence all diverse opinions, promote the yes-men, surround yourself with equally myopic loyalists (like Johnson did), and you’re doomed to failure (like Johnson was). It’s what Prawn did with the SUFC board. And as we’ve seen with country and club, you end up going off a cliff.

There’s a business lesson here for you Bucksiron, one F.O.C. And it ain’t pretty.