Photo composition with the Big Ben Tower in the center and the London Bridge in the background, with a red pointing down arrow as a reference to UK's poor economic performance. Photo: Al Mayadeen – English.
By Fra Hughes – Nov 12, 2022
From New Labour under Blair to building Britain better under the Tories, it is now obvious we no longer live in a democracy but in a duopoly.
The state of the United Kingdom is in a complete mess.
From the trappings of the Empire, through two world wars and one cold war, Britain has emerged not ruling the waves but ruing the day the sun finally set on the British Empire.
The dis-United Kingdom appears to be on the brink of dissolution… through the process of regional devolution the wheels appear to be coming off the tracks, the bus has no driver and the boat has no rudder.
A succession of failed policies and failed politicians has driven Britain into an economic wilderness, to the abyss of unemployment, with innumerable homelessness and needless unnecessary deaths… Let us pause, reflect and digest how this came to pass.
Today’s current economic woes started long before some of these compromised political leaders were even born.
The trickle-down politics of Thatcher and Reagan and the economic terrorists of the Chicago school of economics have placed the free market and the unfettered free flow of capital as the holy grail of economic policy.
The wholesale privatization of nationalized industries, such as coal, gas, electricity, water, trains, health, post office, and telecommunications has taken the wealth of the nation from the people and given it to bankers, investors, shareholders, and indeed external actors from other sovereign nations who bought into the railways and electricity infrastructure in the UK and used the profits made there to subsidize their own nationalized companies and cap charges for their own customer base.
Taxpayers in the United Kingdom are subsidizing public transport in France.
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It’s shambolic, it’s immoral, and it proves that the political classes running the country do so to increase the profits of unregulated financial interests and big businesses and corporations.
While the government pursues poor people for benefit fraud, it ignores the billions of pounds not paid by big businesses in tax avoidance, which could alleviate the national debt overnight.
The failed neoliberal economic model of austerity and privatization has led us to where we are today.
From New Labour under Blair to building Britain better under the Tories, it is now obvious we no longer live in a democracy but in a duopoly.
The left and right spectrum in British politics has coalesced into a neo-liberal collage of centrist and right-wing politics to include war hawks, lobbyists, big pharma, and big business.
This combined manifestation of class interests has led Britain to become a haven for the wealthy and a prison for the poor.
While the UK government pours billions of pounds to promote a continued conflict in the Donbass and Crimea, in a proxy war with Russia via Ukraine, while it continues to arm Saudi Arabia in its proxy war with Iran via Yemen and further destabilizes Syria, the people of Britain are facing a cold harsh winter of strikes, discontent, increased poverty, and a continued shrinkage of the economy, while the government tells us we are all in this together.
Rishi Sunak and his wife are reputed to be worth over £730 million. That’s £730 million of their own wealth at their disposal. Sunak is reported to be the richest prime minister Britain has ever had.
Why is he even in politics if not to protect his own wealth and the wealth of his family friends and class?
What has he in common with a young married couple with one child and a baby on the way, living on minimum wage and working two jobs to pay the ever-increasing food inflation bills, the spiraling cost of energy, fuel, mortgage rates, and housing rents?
In fact, he has nothing in common with the people whom his policies are directly and indirectly affecting the most.
Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, and now Sunak.
If we look at Johnson, he was partying in Down street with staff members, while families were only allowed 10 people at the funerals of their loved ones during the COVID pandemic.
Truss showed emphatically how the Conservative party is only interested in protecting and increasing wealth for the already super-rich with her budget to borrow money on the international banking circuit to indebt future generations of British taxpayers while simultaneously giving tax concessions to the rich.
She is out and Sunak is in.
He may very well unify the Conservative parliamentary party, but as a man of color, he may face a racist backlash at the polls come in 2024.
It’s brilliant that the UK has elected both a female and now a non-white prime minister, but all these people to date have been from the same party, protecting the same class, which perpetuates poverty, discrimination, and inequality, in life opportunities and in society.
Britain which self-declares itself as a modern democracy is nothing of the sort.
It is a duopoly of two parties protecting one class: the rich.
Britain has never elected a Roman Catholic to the office of Prime Minister.
We have had women and ethnic minorities but not a Catholic.
Britain has a discriminatory history of anti-Irish, anti-Catholic racism that continues to this day.
That’s how democratic the British establishment is.
A government of billionaires, millionaires, lords, and ladies with a corrupt Monarchy overseeing the continuation of the feudal system into the 23rd century.
Fra Hughes
Fra Hughes is an Irish political activist, commentator, and author. His most recent books are My Walk with Palestine: an Activist's Tale and Voices from Donbass.
