Out with the old, in with the old

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So far, the Burnham rhetoric has been better than the Starmer rhetoric, but that isn’t exactly a high bar. The substance – to the extent that there is anything other than a superficial paint job – will emerge in the coming days and weeks. Later this year, there will be (we are told) a 10-year plan. In the light of the recent rate of turnover in leaders of the UK government, the degree of confidence that Burnham will still be around to see the plan published (it will, inevitably, be later than proposed), let alone to see it through to implementation, cannot be high.

Some of the signs are not good, already. Putting a man who resigned from government because the Treasury wouldn’t divert enough funding away from protecting people against poverty and ill-health into deterring imaginary Russian threats in charge of the Treasury doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence that the ‘change’ being demanded by Burnham will be quite the change that we need. Rhetoric about moving away from the neoliberal approach of the past few decades is utterly undermined by the statement that the arbitrary fiscal rules – only ever invented in order to entrench neoliberalism into the UK government’s economic philosophy – will be adhered to.

Scrapping the mad scheme for digital ID is a welcome step, but the mathematics behind diverting the uncommitted funding from that into a reduction in VAT on electricity costs are a little dodgy to say the least. Those paying the fuel bills – and especially those living in fuel poverty – will welcome any reduction, but when reduced to the level of ordinary household bills, the saving doesn’t look that large. £45 a year off the energy price cap equates to around 86p a week, strangely reminiscent of Gordon Brown's derisory 75p per week pension increase in 1999 - and worth rather less when inflation is accounted for.

We need more than a sharper rhetoric, a more developed sense of humour, and a bit of tinkering at the edges, but there are no signs as yet that Burnham is any more capable of envisioning a different approach than his predecessor. Being better at selling the same basic approach might buy him some time, but it will do little more than that.

Those with the vested interests aren't the ones who should be deciding the rules

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Back in April, Gianni Infantino, the head of FIFA, apparently demanded that the security arrangements for a visit to Vancouver should be at a level higher than that provided for Canadian PM Mark Carney, and at a level normally reserved for the likes of the US President or the Pope. Here in the UK, it seems that Farage has refused the security arrangements he was offered – which are equivalent to those provided for members of the Cabinet and the leader of the official opposition – as being inadequate, and said that his company would continue to provide his security instead. In the case of Infantino, it appears to have more to do with validating his own sense of self-importance than with security; perhaps there is at least an element of the same thing with Farage. Two entitled men with an exaggerated sense of their own importance, seeking special treatment. There is a valid question about what level of security is needed for people in the public eye and how should it be provided and paid for, but, even more importantly – who decides?

People who feel themselves to be under threat naturally want the best security they can get, but are probably the least appropriate people to decide what that level should be. But leaving it to the ‘experts’, which is the obvious alternative, depends on an assumption that those experts really are expert, and don’t make mistakes – an assumption which is necessarily flawed when we’re dealing with human judgement. There isn’t a simple answer (which is not to say that the government will not fall back on its usual simplistic answer to all issues – set up a review). I do wonder, though, whether Farage’s motives are as straightforward as he claims. After all, when public servants are providing security, they are subject to the normal scrutiny of public servants, and it’s more than possible that Farage wouldn’t want the security services, let alone various other authorities in the UK, to know where he was and who he was with at all times. And I really don’t believe that I’m just displaying a naturally suspicious mind by saying that.

He has attempted to turn the issue into a justification for the sort of large individual donations on which he and his company seem to depend. Without such large donations, he seems to be saying, Reform Ltd would not be able to afford the level of security which he deems necessary. It’s a complete non-sequitur – spending millions on security depends solely on the total amount of donations received, not on the amount of each one. It does, though, betray how dependent he is on a small number of enormous donations, underscoring that his company is struggling to attract the larger number of smaller donations on which other parties often depend. It is also, I suppose, possible that the widow giving her mite might just possibly be less happy than one of Farage’s fellow millionaires with her contribution being spent on security rather than electioneering. Or expelling foreigners. But here’s the thing: in the same way that people feeling threatened are not the best people to decide on what security they require, politicians dependent on the largesse of millionaires are not the best people to decide on the rules surrounding political donations.

Being against one thing doesn't mean you support one particular alternative

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One of the features of parliamentary process is that votes on legislation, budgets etc eventually come down to a straight ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Prior debate, both in committee and on the floor of the chamber, offers opportunity for parliamentarians to seek to amend and improve the proposition under consideration, but at the end of the process, nuance, subtlety, and the fact that there may be varied reasons why members choose to support or oppose the proposition are all erased in a simple binary vote.

Whether Labour made the ‘right’ call in this week’s Senedd vote on the supplementary budget is a matter of opinion, and depends on first asking the question ‘right for who?’; what suits the party’s needs may or may not suit the needs of the people. Maybe they were trying to put down a marker about not being taken for granted; perhaps they’re just struggling with the move from government to opposition. Whatever their logic, I’m amongst those who think that they called it wrong on this occasion. Whether the government should have made more effort to get them onboard is another moot point – just as former governing parties need time to adjust to being in opposition, so too former opposition parties seemingly need time to adjust to being in government.

The biggest disappointment for me, however, came not in the vote, but in the aftermath. Voting against the government is not the same thing as voting for the other opposition parties, and Plaid’s repeated criticism of Labour for voting ‘with Reform Ltd’ grates with me. It’s a tactic which has been used by Labour, in particular, against Plaid for decades, especially in Westminster, but it’s a kindergarten approach, and it’s disappointing, to say the least, to see the party which has been subjected to such an approach for so long trying to use the same approach against its former tormentors, rather than demonstrating that the grown-ups are now in charge. There are going to be a lot of votes in the Senedd during the current term, and the combinations of parties voting either for or against a proposition will also vary. Voting the same way as Party B doesn’t mean that the rationale for voting that way is shared, and the suggestion that it does is a dishonest way of avoiding the substance. Resorting to the ‘yah boo’ tactics of Westminster is not a good look.

Joining the Establishment is easy - it's staying out which is difficult

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One of Trump’s imaginary foes is what he refers to as ‘the deep state’, a vast conspiracy which he alone is capable of vanquishing. That there are shadowy forces at work in US politics pushing particular viewpoints is not a particularly remarkable claim, but the idea that it is a coherent and sinister organisation is much harder to substantiate. The biggest proof that it is not is probably Trump himself: he’s both still alive and still in office, neither of which would be likely to be true if the deep state was really all it is claimed to be. Unless, of course, rather than being its nemesis, he is actually its willing tool.

In the UK, we more usually refer to the ‘Establishment’, another shadowy creature, and Farage has chosen to paint himself as its enemy. Its membership is hard to define, but it certainly includes top civil servants, the military top brass, media proprietors, the old-boy network of certain private schools, and the aristocracy. There’s no formal membership, and no-one ever describes themselves as being part of it. It’s neither organised nor coherent, nor does it have a leadership. Traditionally, much of the interaction between its members would have taken place in the so-called ‘gentlemen’s clubs’ of London, in the way portrayed in the Yes, Minister series. Farage himself is a member of at least one such club and regularly uses others for meetings and events. Indeed, by almost any definition one would choose, he is an archetypical member of the Establishment – and the more he denies it, the more typical of its members he becomes.

There is one thing that the Establishment is very good at doing, and that is capturing and absorbing new blood, perpetually renewing itself in the process. People who start out claiming to be rebels or revolutionaries almost invariably end up becoming part of that which they set out to oppose. Titles, gongs, membership of boards and panels all help, but perhaps one of the biggest factors is that life is simply so much easier if people simply go with the flow. Membership – as Farage currently, and Tony Benn in the past have demonstrated – doesn’t require adherence to any particular political viewpoint; the Establishment can happily accommodate them all. It merely requires them to abide by a whole series of undocumented conventions and traditions, most of which serve to protect and prolong the status quo – especially for those who benefit from it. Farage doesn’t (and never really has) threaten any of that. Brexit may not have been popular amongst the Establishment, but it hasn’t threatened their entrenched position, any more than joining the EEC/EU did in the first place.

The challenge for those who seriously want to challenge the way the UK works – a group which most emphatically does not include Farage – is to recognise the ways in which they are likely to get sucked in and resist. The longevity of the Establishment shows how few have ever succeeded.

Could Farage be right about the people vs the establishment?

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Farage presumably thought that resigning and fighting a by-election in which he expected to vanquish all his foes was a wizard wheeze. But then the other parties decided not to play, leaving him to fight a campaign against Count Binface and potentially a few other fringe candidates. There’s something rather pleasing about the man who refuses to play by the rules laid down by others now complaining that the others aren’t playing by the rules he has attempted to set for them.

The pundits all seem to be expecting that he will win an easy electoral victory, albeit one that will prove nothing, and probably leave him facing the same jeopardy. I wonder, though. In the first place, turnout is likely to be low – without other parties campaigning at all, who will be working to get the vote out – and for what? Secondly, in a country where ‘the people’ chose to name a boat Boaty McBoatface rather than honouring official national treasure David Attenborough, is it really too much of a stretch to imagine a victory for Count Binny McBinface, especially if the latter opted for such a scotification of his name? Farage claimed that it would be a fight between ‘the people’ and ‘the establishment’, and maybe he’s right. It’s just that he doesn’t understand that in a fight between these two titans, he – a multimillionaire public school-educated city trader – is the establishment candidate, and McBinface the anti-establishment insurgent. Farage also said that it’s an opportunity for people to stick two fingers up to the establishment – is there anything more likely to have that effect than sending a bin-clad warrior to Westminster? If I lived in Clacton, I’d certainly be tempted – and on a low turnout…

For those of us who see Farage as a danger to community cohesion, bringing his political career to an end would surely be a cause for celebration. And could there be a better – or more humiliating – way of achieving that than seeing him turfed out by a man wearing a refuse bin on his head? Maybe the pundits will be right, but we can surely dream in the meantime.

What's so special about 2029? or 2030?

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There seems to be a quiet difference of opinion amongst those who want us all to prepare for war with Russia: will the apparently inevitable Russian attack come in 2029 or in 2030? Either way, the dates postulated by defence ‘experts’ are largely arbitrary, carefully selected to be close enough to provoke action, but far enough in the future for that action to be meaningful. The ‘action’ required, of course, is to divert resources from those things which benefit the population as a whole, such as education, health, and transport, into the development and acquisition of armaments. Two years from now, the difference of opinion over the assumed date of attack will be between 2031 and 2032. It doesn’t matter how much is spent, or what weaponry is ‘required’, the need to add to it, or replace it with even newer versions, will always be there in the minds of the warmongers, to say nothing of the arms manufacturers.

Why, precisely, Russia would want to attack isn’t debated as widely as it should be; after all, if the threat was genuine, we’d know why they might want to attack, wouldn’t we? I simply don’t buy the idea that world domination by force is the motivating factor. But there is just a big hole where that question should be, and a vague assumption that Russia simply wants to expand the territory which it controls. From what Putin has said, we know that he has some strange beliefs, based on his curious understanding of history. In his view, Ukraine is not a nation, and its people are just Russians with an odd dialect. He also seems to believe that countries previously ruled from Moscow are destined by fate to be so, and should be brought back into the fold. Whether those beliefs are the driver of his military ambitions, or just a story told to justify them is another question. Telling stories as justification isn’t a trait unique to Putin.

In reality, it is surely much more likely that he genuinely believed the other story that he has told, which is that NATO and ‘the West’ in general intended to surround and dismember Russia, and he was therefore acting pre-emptively in launching the invasion. The biggest reason for striking first is always likely to be a fear that the other side would otherwise do so, coupled with the belief that striking first confers advantage. All of that, combined with a misunderstanding of the extent to which Ukrainians, particularly in the east, wanted to be Russians, and an underestimation of the likely resistance might have made it all a huge miscalculation. But one doesn’t have to be a Putin supporter or apologist to wonder whether, from the perspective of the Kremlin, the threat might have looked very real. It’s a perspective which continued active preparation for war in three or four years’ time is more likely to reinforce than dispel.

The military build-up is always presented to us as ‘deterrent’; the idea is that being seen to have a greater capability to destroy and kill will ensure that the attack never comes. It could, though, simply provoke it. Whether carrying a big stick to ward off invaders actually works is impossible to know. The fact that the putative invaders don’t invade whilst we’re waving the stick doesn’t prove that it worked – they might never have wanted to invade in the first place. But finding bigger sticks every year might eventually convince those believed to be would-be invaders that they had better act before the stick is used against them anyway. Logically, what looks like a deterrent to one can always look like a threat to the other. Discussion and mutually-agreed de-escalation are always going to be the safer route. They also mean that resources can be used more beneficially - 'defence' is about more than territory, there are other aspects to building a secure future for the population.

Spotting the obvious isn't always easy

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One of Andy Burnham’s acolytes told us this week that people who are migrating to London from elsewhere in the UK are causing problems in London, and that Burnham’s policy of directing investment into all parts of the UK rather than concentrating it all in London would help to discourage such migration. It’s impossible to disagree with the proposition: if lack of opportunity in one area of the UK encourages migration to the wealthiest area, then the best ‘solution’ to the perceived ‘problem’ is to invest in creating opportunities elsewhere. I think we can reasonably assume that the relevant ‘elsewhere’ includes Wales and Scotland as well as the north of England, although that isn’t always clear when London-based politicians are talking. No doubt some conspiracy theorists will see the suggestion as being an example of the way governments are trying to restrict our movement, but the basic proposition – widening the geographic range of opportunity – is surely sound.

But, hold on a moment – there’s also a glaring inconsistency in that policy. When people from poorer parts of the world see the riches of the UK (and even the poorest parts of the UK will look rich to many) and seek to migrate to benefit from those riches, Labour and Tory alike tell us that the ‘solution’ is to cut the economic aid which might help to develop opportunities in their home countries, and divert the money to providing the migrants with temporary accommodation before deporting them. It’s strange how they find that which is blindingly obvious in one context so hard to discern in another.

Cutting benefits isn't as simple as they claim

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One of the metrics underpinning the argument of those seeking to reduce the costs of welfare benefits in the UK is that the number of people living in households which receive more in payments from the government than they pay in taxes has been increasing. The figures are available in this spreadsheet. There are, of course, a number of assumptions and estimates involved in any figures of this nature – how much any given household pays in VAT, for instance, is not a figure for which robust actuals exist, and can only be projected from such data as does exist. Accepting such inevitable limitations on the accuracy of the figures, the statistics show that the percentage of people living in such households has indeed risen from 37% in 1977 to around 53.3% in 2024. The simplistic conclusion that benefits are therefore too generous and should be reduced doesn’t follow, however.

Whether we should really count the state pension as a welfare benefit at all is a controversial question. Theoretically, it is (like an occupational pension) paid for by contributions from employers and employees based on salary. It is true that those contributions are not enough to pay for the pensions, and it’s also true that they are not put in a long-term fund in the same way as occupational pensions, but those are deliberate decisions taken by government – the beneficiaries can hardly be blamed for those. In any event, what the same statistics show is that over the same period, close to half a century, the proportion of pensioner households in that category of receiving more than they pay has barely moved at all. Whilst it has varied between about 84% and 94%, the net change over the whole period has been from 92.4% in 1977 to 90.1% in 2024. The two messages from that are, firstly, that the overall increase for all households referred to above is not down to pensions, and secondly, that despite the increasing prevalence of occupational pensions, pensioner households remain highly dependant on the state pension. What it is not, is an argument for reducing pensions.

It follows that the increase in the proportion of people in households which are net recipients relates to people below pensionable age. Some of those people will be employed, others will not be. The popular belief seems to be that the problem is that more people are choosing not to work but to live, instead, on benefits paid for by others. The data doesn’t support that interpretation either. In 1977, the proportion of the population of working age in gainful employment was around 71%. Since then, it has varied as the economy has been through boom and bust cycles, but it reached a high of 76.5% in the 2010s, and for the purposes of comparison with the benefits figures being discussed here, it stood at 74.8% in 2024. In global terms, that puts the UK above the OECD average. The obvious conclusion is that the growth in the benefits bill is not a result of more people choosing not to work – the popular myth is just that, a myth. Certainly, the UK could be higher up the table, but the extent to which government action aimed primarily at cutting the bill can achieve that is doubtful.

Where does that leave us? Well, part of the issue is clearly the payment of ‘in-work benefits’: topping up inadequate wages. A subsidy, in other words, to employers who are underpaying their staff. One really good way of reducing that part of the benefits bill would be for the employers concerned to pay decent wages in the first place. A company which cannot pay its staff decent wages is a company which is not economically viable. In more general terms, reducing the benefits bill doesn’t start with cutting the budget, it starts with understanding why benefits are being paid and reducing the need for them. It’s a far more complex task, which the financial axemen seem unwilling to address. Simple cuts will reduce living standards. The extent to which there is scope simply to reduce the level of benefits being paid to individuals therefore depends, ultimately, on a judgement about the living standards which we, as a community, want to set for benefit recipients. That’s a much more difficult conversation, and one which politicians seem keen to avoid.

Building for peace, not war

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The idea that ‘Russia’ has learnt nothing from its catastrophic losses invading Ukraine, and will shortly be poised to take on the even greater challenge of a direct attack on a part of the European Union seems to be gaining ground almost daily. The Conservative and Labour parties seem equally in thrall to the threat of the Russian menace and equally determined to divert resources from welfare to armaments to prepare to meet the threat. In the process, they and what increasingly seem to be their puppet-masters in the armed forces and the weapons industries seem to be making such a war more, rather than less, likely.

Yesterday, we had a report of a speech from the head of the UK Army, laying out his views of what is needed. Needless to say, the head of the army wants to build up the army, but it was the detail which struck me. “Only armies seize and hold ground”, according to the pre-release of his speech. It’s impossible to argue with that, but the question which needs to be answered is why, exactly, we would want to ‘seize ground’ in the first place. The questions posed by his statement were compounded by his argument that the UK needs to be able to ‘strike deep’ and ‘defend forward’, which seems to mean developing the ability to strike at the enemy’s resources deep inside their own territory before those resources can be used against us. To me, it sounds a lot like an argument that the best defence is attack – and from the Kremlin’s perspective, it will surely sound even more so. What reaction should we expect from a state which feels itself thus threatened, after having watched the UK (and other governments) portray it as an imminent threat to themselves? Do we expect them to just wait, and watch that capability being built for use against them?

For the military (and, apparently, most UK politicians), the natural instinct is to build ever stronger armed forces to deter an attack by the enemy, but surely the deeper issue is how to avoid an attack. Maybe 'deterrence' has a role in that, but the extent to which that is so in that is arguable: up until the point at which war starts, it is impossible to know whether the lack of war is down to deterrence or simply a lack of rationale for going to war. (For example, whether merging the French and German economies into a single economic jurisdiction prevented the two countries from going to war again (one of the original objectives of the EEC) or whether they would never have gone to war anyway is an academic question, to which there can never be a definitive answer.) What we do know is that one of the most likely reasons for going to war against any potential adversary is the belief that 'they' intend to attack ‘us’ and need to be stopped before they can build the capability to do so successfully. But why are so few able to understand that exactly the same consideration plays out on the ‘other’ side as well?

Where are the political leaders prepared to make the argument that if we want to build for peace we should avoid sending the message that we are building for war? Building for war has, instead, become the default position of the UK establishment. And those who build for war are likely to find themselves, sooner or later, fighting that war.

May was a near record month for UK saving

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The UK Government accepted a record level of deposits from savers during the month of May, the second highest total on record for the month of May. Savers (mostly pension and life insurance funds as well as some wealthy individuals) clearly recognised that saving with the UK government is one of the safest places for their money, because the UK government’s ability to create extra money as and when required means that they can never lose their capital. That’s one way of presenting the figures, but it’s not the way that most of the media chose to present the same information. Instead, the near-universal response (here’s one example) was to treat it as a disastrous increase in government borrowing.

The disparity serves to underline the simple and unavoidable fact that what looks like a debt to one party will always look like an asset to the other. It also underlines the way in which those who want to deliberately constrain or reduce UK government expenditure will choose to interpret the facts in the way which they believe boosts their perception – to say nothing of boosting their own financial interests. The willingness to deposit such large sums with the government suggests that the savers aren’t really against what they describe as ‘government borrowing’ at all – why would they be, when they’re the main beneficiaries? It’s more that they’re against the government spending money on services instead of cutting taxes. And – surprise, surprise – those who benefit most from interest payments on government ‘borrowing’ would also have the most to gain from tax cuts.

For the rest of us, the problem isn’t government borrowing per se, it’s the way in which paying for that borrowing ends up funnelling money into fewer and fewer hands, concentrating wealth rather than spreading it. Any meaningful attempt to decrease inequality must inevitably mean that we have to look at the way in which wealth and income are distributed within the economy. Understanding that one person’s debt is another person’s asset is one small step towards that.