“Don’t waste your words I don’t need anything from you”
Before we get into this article proper, we start with an editorial comment.
Over the life of this column, albeit with differing names, there have been a succession of predictions from me, the majority of which have proven correct, and a number of which have given me no pleasure.
This week’s revelations about Nigel Farage, prove me right on two-points.
Firstly, the hard-right have been using Israel, antisemitism and Gaza for their own agenda. Their politicians and media have used the narrative that anyone supporting Gaza or being anti-Israel is, de facto, antisemitic. When you consider the accusations against Farage is wouldn’t be a stretch to consider him antisemitic, even though he supports Israel. We might also add Islamophobic, too
Secondly, the story has been largely ignored by the right-wing media, who, had it been a labor MP, would have been foaming at the mouth like rabid dogs. They have an anti-government agenda and just want to see a hard-right government.
I did manage to find mention of it in “The Spectator”, who dismissed it saying: “as a schoolboy at Dulwich College, Farage said some naughty words……I suspect that Farage’s boisterous attention-seeking and sense of the outrageous was difficult to handle for some of the more sensitive boys, even though little real malice was involved.”
Remarkably, the writer has encapsulated everything I see wrong in hard-right politicians; strutting, arrogant bullies, full of bigotry and racism disguised with the cloak of patriotism.
It has been a gone 10-days for Farage, there have been a number of Reform casualties for racism, and helping Russia.
‘strutting, arrogant bullies, full of bigotry and racism disguised with the cloak of patriotism’
It appears that there is an unhealthy degree of admiration from Reform for Putin’s Russia, as investigations revealed that a cryptocurrency backed by one of Farage’s biggest donors has been used to help Russia fight its war against Ukraine.
The National Crime Agency has spent four years trying to crack a multibillion-dollar scheme that exchanges cash from drug and gun sales in the UK for crypto, digital tokens that are designed to hide their users’ identities.
The scheme has enabled “sanctions evasions and the highest levels of organized crime, including providing money-laundering services to the Russian state”, the agency says.
Of the $24m (£18.3m) in crypto that the NCA and its counterparts abroad have so far been able to seize, the “vast majority” was issued by Tether.
Tethers is a private company with its HQ in El Salvador, Tether declared profits of $13bn for 2024,. Tether’s shares are reportedly owned by a small group, among them Christopher Harborne, one of the UK’s biggest political donors. Harborne took a 12% stake around 2016, court papers say, although it is unclear what share of Tether’s profits he has received.
Concerns are also circulating about some of Farage’s appearances on US TV shows and podcasts earlier in his political career, where he discussed supposed plots by bankers to create a global government, citing Goldman Sachs, the Bilderberg group and the financier George Soros as threats to democracy.
These included six guest slots on the web TV show of the disgraced far-right US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Jones was successfully sued by bereaved parents after claiming the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre was faked.
During one interview with Jones in 2018, Farage argued that “globalists” were trying to engineer a war with Russia “as an argument for us all to surrender our national sovereignty and give it up to a higher global level.”
Now, we move on to the beleaguered government, and the labor party in general. Mess, directionless, rudderless, out-of-ideas, confused, all spring to mind
‘Mess, directionless, rudderless, out-of-ideas, confused, all spring to mind’
labor does not want to cut spending, but at the same time does not want to raise taxes either. The home secretary’s asylum will test even the most loyal of their MPs. No is no longer labor, it more resembles an alliance of positions, interests and instincts. This is largely due to a leader that doesn’t lead, doesn’t have any ideology, direction, or plan for how to govern. As a result, labor now resembles several small parties in one.
Poor leadership aside, there has always been some internal tension between its working-class base and its white-collar and more ideologically driven supporters. More crucially, as a result of deindustrialisation, the old core labor vote of the 20th century has simply disappeared. Moreover, that old Britain is no more, and those voters appear lost to labor.
Until the mid-1980s when deindustrialisation hollowed out many towns , C.80% of labor’s support came from manual workers and their families, compared with 20% from middle-class workers and their families. By 1997 and the advent of New labor, their share of the working-class vote had fallen to 59%, while the middle-class share rose to 41%. In 2010, for the first time, white-collar labor voters exceeded blue-collar ones.
This isn’t going to change, the country has become significantly more middle class, better educated, more outward-looking and more liberal. These changes have passed the party by, leaving it in a form of limbo, and rooted in the postwar Attlee years, focussing on what is now old-style working-class politics, and neglecting the concerns and priorities of the emerging middle-class labor electorate.
Today, we see labor almost prostituting itself to capture working-class Reform supporters, whilst all but forgetting the middle-class progressive electorate who now form a large percentage of its voter base.
An example of this, was recently voiced by the singer Joy Crookes, who, when asked if the current situation was comparable to the 1970s when the National Front regularly held marches in immigrant areas, she said: “In my opinion it’s completely comparable. It’s terrifying … I am really, really concerned. It feels like we are entering a dark time.”
“I’m not blind to the political kind of landscape that we’re living in right now and I myself am a child of immigrants,” she said. “I travelled to central London to go shopping and ran into a bunch of St George’s flags. It doesn’t make me feel safe.”
At a recent London show, Crookes’ performed a cover of Sinéad O’Connor’s anti-racism anthem “Black Boys on Mopeds”, written after the deaths of Nicholas Bramble, who was killed while being pursued by the police on a moped they assumed he’d stolen, and Colin Roach, a black teenager who died under suspicious circumstances while inside Stoke Newington police station.
Crooks is exactly the type of voter labor should be appealing to, she gets what is happening; “I realised at that moment that this is an issue that’s happening in the west and it’s becoming more and more rife because of the big F, fascism, and the rise of the right.”
As with the Tory’s, the question now, is, what is the point of labor?
‘As with the Tory’s, the question now, is, what is the point of labor?’
They have almost willingly allowed themselves to be dragged into a race-for-the bottom on immigration. This has happened due to a combination of hard-right politicians and their supporting media controlling the narrative for their own ends. Stopping immigration is the answer to everything!
The overarching reality is that immigration per se isn’t as out-of-control than they would have us believe.
Office for National Statistics (ONS), adjusting historical data for methodological changes, show that net migration was 944,000 for the year ending March 2023 – about 40,000 higher than had previously been thought. The drop since then has also been steeper. The number for the year ending December 2024 is now thought to be 345,000 – lower than the earlier count by 86,000.
Recent analysis by UK in a Changing Europe forecasts a drop to between 70,000 and 170,000 in 2026. Unfortunately, it would seem that for radical right-wing parties, any immigration is too much. So much so, that we are backdating it, and wanting to remove people already settled here.
What they don’t want us to hear, is that there are benefit to immigration. Social care and hospitals are already struggling with a mounting recruitment crisis in the absence of migrant workers. Overseas students help keep our universities solvent.
Perhaps most importantly, migration tends to boost the proportion of working-age adults in the labor market. As that ratio changes, growth is harder to achieve and Treasury revenues shrink, with painful fiscal consequences. We already have an ageing population, and net zero migration will only exacerbate this. In “Send ‘Em Back”, I wrote about this and quoted the Spanish PM, Pedro Sánchez, who said; “Spain needs to choose between being an open and prosperous country or a closed-off, poor country. It’s as simple as that.”
The government’s immigration policy is nothing more than a desperate measure designed to try and ward off Reform. I really do wonder just how many of their MPs truly believe in the proposals?
Whilst, it is both cowardly and shortsighted, there is another very real issue; racism is making politicians increasingly detached from economic reality that tell us we don’t have enough money to pay for all that we need and want.
Alongside this reality, there is a fundamental problem; we are poorer than we should be, poorer than we were and poorer than our peers.
‘there is a fundamental problem; we are poorer than we should be, poorer than we were and poorer than our peers’
Real wages have barely risen in 17 years.
Whilst the GFC was a global phenomenon, we are struggling more than our counterparts to recover.
Over the past two decades, we have experienced the biggest slowdown in productivity growth in the G7.
Part of our problem is that we have too few internationally successful industries, which means that many parts of the country have too few well-paid jobs, and people have too little income coming in.
Brexit has undone one part of our economic model, which was founded on openness to trade, ideas and people. Open trade has been fundamental to our success, therefore taking us out of the EU’s single market had seen the economy contract, with exports falling by >1% p.a. Previously, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimated that our departure from the EU would shrink Britain’s long-term productivity by about 4%.
Even finance, which, prior to Brexit, was a machine that helped plug the gap left by a declining goods trade, has also been hit, losing its once disproportionately large slice of the market. London, for so long the country’s economic powerhouse, is now Britain’s worst-performing region in terms of productivity growth.
It is hard to see how we progress if we stay isolated. Even rejoining the customs union would be a step forward. We constantly hear that we have no money for the things that matter, yet being outside of the EU is estimated to be costing us up to £30bn a year.
This is one manifesto pledge labor could break as, compared to breaking their pledge on tax rates, rejoining the customs union would cause a fraction of the political damage. In addition, labor can plead “where needs must” give the disruption caused to global trade by Trump’s tariffs.
Another problem area that would be helped by becoming closer to Europe is youth unemployment. The Office for National Statistics latest quarterly estimate makes for sobering reading; the number of 16- to 24-year-olds who are so-called Neets (not in education, employment or training) now numbers 946,000.
For those that do manage to find a job, it is all too often short-term. Circa 170,000 jobs have been lost since last summer, and recent analysis suggests that nearly half of those losses hit people under 25; “last in, first out” most likely. It would be interesting to know just how many of these were due to last year’s increase to employers’ NIC.
There is also the influence of big tech on young people. Firstly, they are attracted to social media platforms that corrode the social skills necessary for a successful career. And, as AI becomes more prevalent, automating the jobs they would have once walked into.
All of this, pushes them towards more disruptive, right-wing politicians, promising the earth and delivering nothing.
labor, are almost at the point of no return. Their traditional voter base is deserting them, and their popularity is close to an all-time low. If now isn’t the time for something radical such as undoing the damage of Brexit, and taking on Reform in area where they are vulnerable, then it never will be…
“I′ve seen your Auto-suggestion psychology
Elimination policy
A military industrial Illusion of democracy”
‘The big non-news of the week is the scandals that still surround Farage and Reform.
Unfortunately, it is being largely ignored by the majority of the media, and is being swatted away as the Guardian not wanting a fascist PM. Really, does anyone?
Mussolini, My mother confirmed it was not featured in the Daily Mail or GB News, but she did catch some of it on Sky News. She is confident that Farage will never be PM. For once, I hope she’s right.
labor goes from bad to worse, with this weeks’ budget being variously described as make or break. I think it will be hard to break what is already broken, but still……
The PM is overseas again…this time trying to help Ukraine before Trump and Putin divvy it up, and make them an offer they can’t refuse.
Over in the US, the newly elected mayor of NYC has been charming Trump, or perhaps remembering to keep his enemies closer.
And, speaking of enemies, it will be interesting to see what happens to Majorie-Taylor Greene after her surprise resignation from the Senate.
MTG was a longtime supporter of the president, but seems to have broken with him over the Epstein Files. She has a considerable following amongst the MAGA voters, and could yet be a thorn in Trump’s side.
Lyrically, we play tribute to the late, great Gary “Mani” Mountfield of the Stone Roses and later Primal Scream. Whilst the songs are dedicated to Mani they target Nigel Farage. We open with the Stone Roses “I am the Resurrection”, which nasty Nige isn’t. We end with “Swastika Eyes” by Primal Scream…no prizes for guessing why.
I predict no enjoyment for Rachel this week!
Philip.’
@coldwarsteve
Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.
Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s
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