20 November (Part 1) - Escaping the Matrix - a search for post-fantasy politics
Ever since the banker Sunak sneaked into No. 10
after being rejected by Conservative Party members and a traitorous Hunt
decided to condemn us to increasing poverty until at least 2028 I have wondered
if I should mention what I thought about them - as if the preceding words fail to do so.
As someone whose political history began in 1959 when I was thrown out of a
Labour party hustings for heckling on behalf of the Conservative candidate I
have been solidly to the right of politics, never once deviating at a General
Election. When writing here I have tried to report things factually which very
often in Bexley equates to Tories “dishonest” and Labour “ineffective” but never once have I
been accused of straying from facts, only that I am a Labour stooge (very
occasionally) and attracting legal challenges from the extremities of the
Labour Party which continues to attract those who regard all Tories as “scum”.
I now find myself one of the many who will never vote Conservative again. Unless
a latter day Robert Catesby solves the problem that will never change. I have
had serious misgivings about the Conservatives ever since David Cameron said he was
heir to Blair but things have gone well beyond that now. If every last one of
their MPs lost his or her seat at the next election that result would be richly
deserved. Starmer and his cronies would be a disaster for Britain but so is
Sunak - so what’s the difference?
I have gone on for far longer than intended, the foregoing was meant to be a
brief introduction to something my former Councillor Dave Putson sent me. Dave
has always been a good bloke in my book but widely regarded by his colleagues as
far too left wing. One even wrote to warn me before he was first elected in 2018.
He was thrown out of the Labour Party three years later.
The document reproduced below was written by Dave’s colleague Alan Simpson who
was MP for Nottingham South until 2010. What is happening to politics when a
dyed in the wool Tory finds himself agreeing with a good deal of what a Tribune
magazine board member and former Treasurer of the Socialist Campaign Group from
a mining constituency has said? Not all of it but the exceptions are few.
Note: The original is illustrated but the graphics add
little to the narrative. The blog title is Alan Simpson’s.
Few people would ever mistake former Tory Health Minister, Matt Hancock for
Keanu Reeves. However, his involvement in the ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out
of Here’ TV series has become almost as mind-bending as ‘the Matrix’.
Having discharged care-home patients from hospital, without any
pre-screening for Covid, Hancock deserves having slurry and insects poured
over him. Those who suffered the bereavements and traumas that followed
might wish this to continue indefinitely. But there are wider issues about
Britain’s descent into dystopian politics that the Game Show should not distract from.
Britain’s care system remains massively over-stretched and under-resourced;
the NHS even more so. The decision of NHS nursing staff to go on strike is
unprecedented. It reflects the desperation of those who held lives together
throughout the Covid pandemic but who are now leaving/retiring early in
droves through sheer exhaustion and overwork.
Despite this, calls for a substantial boost to NHS pay, a national training
plan and an immediate/international recruitment programme all die in the
snake-infested jungle that passes for the British
parliament. The Chancellor’s Autumn Statement only makes matters worse.
Arbitrary austerity
Let’s be clear about two things. First, the economic debate is being boxed
in between 2 targets/objectives that are wildly speculative. Move the target
dates around, even slightly, and you may not be chasing deficits
at all. This isn’t to say Britain doesn’t have massive structural issues to
address - we do - but throwing the country into a period of arbitrary
austerity is a political choice not an existential one. Second, the only
people not responsible for Britain’s current economic crisis are its
workers. Everything that spirals into crisis comes from elsewhere.
Britain’s energy prices are set by the marginal cost of the most expensive
fuel (gas). Russia’s war in Ukraine is the main driver of the price hike and
shows no sign of ending soon. Food prices are similarly driven by
increased import costs (and the associated impact on fuel and fertiliser
prices). Neither have been pushed by UK wage demands.
Extreme weather events across the planet have massively disrupted food
production and farming. You can’t blame the workers for that either. And no
one, apart from Liz Truss and her insane advisors, can be held
accountable for the bonkers Budget that caused a run on the pound, a huge
increase in import prices and the spiral of rising interest rates.
When you’re in a hole…
Today’s combination of an economic crisis and a climate crisis calls for a
radical change of direction. It is an upheaval barely glimpsed at by the
Chancellor. Insulating Britains’s homes was as close as he got. But even
this was more of an apology than a policy. The extra £6bn of promised
energy-efficiency spending won’t kick in until 2025 (!). This is a ‘stay
warm in the afterlife’ gesture, not a serious fuel-poverty intervention.
Previous Labour programmes for tackling the scandal of ‘cold homes’ were all
ditched by the Tories post-2010. The number of loft insulations have
plummeted. Cavity and solid wall insulations followed suit.
Now Britain must reconstruct a sector that successive Conservative governments crudely trashed.
The insanity of this is that any policy wanting to reduce energy bills, cut
back on energy imports, lower carbon emissions and boost domestic employment would have had this as its centrepiece.
Was it really too much for the Tories to grasp?
Britain has had a decade of Conservative governments throwing more subsidies
at polluting corporations than at rescuing fuel-poor communities.
Even today, the pretence of windfall taxes on the oil and gas sector is
wrapped up in ‘tax allowances’ that promote research into new fossil fuel
production! The Treasury gets very little in extra taxes from fossil fuel sectors that have been profiteering the most.
Just ending pollution subsidies and allowances would make a huge difference.
The most idiotic of these is possibly the UK subsidies for bio-fuel
production. Land that could grow crops to feed people has, instead, been used to feed vehicles.
Some 3.5 million people in Britain could be fed from land currently used for
bio-fuel production. Shifting subsidies from fuel to food would reduce
Britain’s reliance on food imports, cut the cost of food and
make better use of the farmland we possess.
This isn’t rocket science. It just doesn’t suit the interests of the big
corporates who bankroll the Conservative Party.
And for all the Chancellor’s ‘pocket-money’ handouts aimed at covering this
winter’s energy bills, none open up the debates Britain most urgently needs.
Neither radical restructuring of the UK energy market around decentralised
renewable energy systems, nor an accelerated shift into net-zero ‘circular’
economics, even got a mention. We must wait to see if Labour grasps the moment. The signs aren’t good.
The COP-out conundrum
Back in Egypt, moves to save the planet face similar obstacles. A legion of
fossil-fuel lobbyists and oil producers block the roads to any Conference Statement committed to radical decarbonisation. Inside the conference halls, ‘Just Stop Oil’ protesters have been replaced by the ‘Just Stop Everything’ lobby.
Corporate (in)activists spray-paint their objections over clauses that even hint at carbon taxation or the
introduction of (reducing) carbon budgets. They glue their hands over paragraphs that would otherwise set
phasing-out targets or timetables. None will be fined or imprisoned. It is only the climate activists who are to be criminalised and silenced.
Britain does not (yet) ban the climate activism that might avert catastrophic climate breakdown. But it may
not be long. Criminalising public protest may be the one thing Tory free-market buccaneers may hope to
salvage from their disastrous leadership spell. No less worrying is the prospect of Labour supporting them.
The real danger is of Labour creating a delusionary world of its own. Much
as I would love to ditch this squalid Conservative government, I can’t pretend Labour currently offers a
visionary alternative. ‘I’m a Nonentity, Get Me Into There’ is not the answer to ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here’.
There isn’t a viable Green New Deal if you don’t get out of oil. You can’t create sustainable food systems if
you don’t radically reduce food miles and shift into low-carbon lifestyles and farming. ‘Growth’ delusions,
tied to obsessions with increased consumption, will kill us all unless they are replaced by a new economics of circularity.
Beyond the Matrix
All this is still possible. But it is only accessible to Parties that are
themselves open to radical, fresh thinking that embraces the unorthodox, the accountable and the inclusive.
This isn’t where the Labour Party currently finds itself. You don’t lose 200,000 members by accident. You
don’t invite fresh thinking if Members, Branches and Constituencies are suspended for even wanting to
discuss issues. And you can’t deliver a transformative parliamentary party if the Party machine blocks the
most visionary candidates from selections, just in case local party members might choose them.
We cast a scornful eye on countries that systematically hound, exclude and criminalise those calling for a
more open, inclusive and accountable democracy. We call them tyrannies. COP27 is besieged by them;
some are corporate, some national. But the reality is this: the world cannot build either a sustainable politics
or a survivable planet without escaping from a Matrix obsessed with control and yesterday’s delusions. This
applies to all Parties, on all continents; Labour included.
Where are you, Keanu, just when we need you?
Alan Simpson
Nov 2022