https://anotherangryvoice.substack.com/p/two-shades-of-more-of-the-same
The Westminster establishment class have stitched things up so thoroughly that it doesn't matter who anyone votes for, because the next government will just continue with "more of the same".
Another Angry Voice
Jun 26, 2024


The reason the looming general election seems so underwhelming is that the Westminster establishment class have already stitched the whole thing up so that there’s no possibility of substantial change, whoever becomes Prime Minister.

Keir Starmer is just as committed to maintaining the rotten status quo as Rishi Sunak, even after 14 years of economic stagnation, failing public services, soaring rates of poverty and inequality, and egregious profiteering by privatisation parasites.

Here are some of the many issues that desperately need to be dealt with, but which the Westminster establishment order have already fixed to stay the same.

Austerity

Keir Starmer’s finance minister Rachel Reeves is just as much of an austerity hawk as any Tory.

She’s not just determined to keep the ruinous Tory austerity cuts of the last 14 years in place, she’s also voluntarily tied herself up in an economic straight jacket of "fiscal rules" that mean more austerity cuts will be absolutely inevitable, as long as she maintains her myopic fixation on pedantic book-balancing, rather than driving through the necessary funding and reforms to begin mitigating the severe social and economic damage that’s been inflicted over the last 14 years.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has already pointed out that neither Labour nor the Tories sums add up.

If they continue insisting trying to balance the books in the short-term, rather than investing for the long-term, this means they’ll be forced into either making the tax rises they’re promising not to, or extending the austerity cuts that they’re promising not to, or probably both.

It’s quite something to see the nation’s foremost economic analysts accusing both major political parties of engaging in a "conspiracy of silence" over their economic plans.

Economic deception

Keir Starmer’s commitment to keeping things the same is quite remarkable given the 14 years of economic stagnation and decline we’ve already endured.

It’s not just the policy of keeping the Tory austerity cuts in place and binding Labour into a fiscal straight jacket that makes even more austerity and tax rises inevitable, it’s the way his inner circle are wilfully recycling the exact same economic baby talk as David Cameron and George Osborne used back in 2010 to justify it.

If things are ever going to improve, politicians need to stop invoking devious economic deceptions like "no money left" and "magic money trees", but perhaps more importantly media figures really need to start calling politicians out whenever the likes of Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer use economic baby talk like this to deliberately foster economic illiteracy among the public.

Privatisation profiteering

The energy market inflation crisis; rivers and coastal waters full of raw sewage; the alarming deterioration of post-privatisation Royal Mail; England’s outdated, overcrowded, and shockingly overpriced rail network …

Everywhere we look we can see the ruinous consequences of the privatisation mania that has gripped the Westminster establishment class for the last four and a half decades.

The Tories are the main architects of all of these privatisation disasters, but Keir Starmer’s bastardised incarnation of Labour has no plans to rid our core infrastructure and services of the debilitating infestation of privatisation profiteers that have been running down our infrastructure for profit for decades, and bleeding the country dry through obscene price-gouging.

In fact, Starmer’s such a dishonest liar that he’s binned all of his rhetoric about how he fundamentally disagrees with NHS privatisation because his "mum was a nurse", to put forward plans to further privatise the profitable parts of the NHS into the hands of private health interests (who have just so happened to shower him and his right-wing inner circle with political donations).

Even Starmer’s plan to "renationalise" the railways is a deceptive sham that allows the parasitical privatisation profiteers to keep siphoning wealth out of the system through ownership of the trains and the freight haulage companies.

Under-investment

One of the main reasons Britain feels like it’s crumbling into perpetual decline is the severe lack of investment in infrastructure.

Of all of the major economies, Britain has consistently been one of the lowest infrastructure investors for decades, and the consequences of this under-investment are telling.

Britain desperately needs to invest for the future by spending on the known drivers of future economic prosperity, and alongside education and public health, infrastructure is obviously really important.

Unfortunately both main parties are so obsessed with austerity book-balancing that they’re unwilling to see that investing in the infrastructure of the future will more than offset the short-term costs, as long as the investments are made wisely.

Pro-rich policies

Both main parties are going into the election promising not to increase taxes on corporations and the mega-rich.

It’s the same for both parties:

No increases in Corporation Tax; no attempts to claw back the obscene pandemic profits; no taxes on banker’s bonuses; no abolition of the National Insurance handout that gifts lower rates of NI payments to the extremely wealthy …

Rachel Reeves even flat out refuses to equalise Capital Gains Tax and Income Tax so that unearned profits are no longer subject to lower tax rates than wages earned through work!

Isn’t Labour supposed to be the party of the workers? The clue is in the name.

Economic inertia

Another major problem is the way both main political parties outright refuse to contemplate much needed changes to the overall economic system.

One of the main problems faced by ever growing numbers of people is the unaffordability of housing. Not just the younger generations that cannot get onto the housing ladder, but the ever increasing number of parents who are stuck with their kids at home into their 30s and even 40s, because there’s nowhere affordable for them to move out to.

The government could easily legislate to force banks to offer lower interest mortgages to people buying a single family home, and incentivise the banks to seek profit by funding house-building, rather by than pumping £billions in loans into the parasitical buy-to-let slumlord sector to turn houses that already exist into profit-extraction opportunities.

The problems obviously run much deeper, but the fact that neither party will even countenance simple solutions like this tells us all we need to know.

As far as these people are concerned, the system is working perfectly well for comfortably rich property-owners like themselves, so why even bother trying to reform it?

Genocide complicity

Even when it comes to the ongoing Israeli genocide against Palestinian civilians in Gaza, both main parties are singing from the same song sheet.

Whether Keir Starmer wins or Rishi Sunak pulls off some kind of implausible last minute comeback, the prospect of Russia-style sanctions on Israeli officials and those linked with their murderous regime are completely out of the question.

Neither party is even willing to suspend arms sales to Netenyahu’s genocidal regime, because they’re quite happy for British weapons to used to commit war crimes, so while prominent Russians face economic sanctions for Putin’s actions in Ukraine, prominent Israelis get to continue with absolute impunity, despite Netenyahu’s actions being vastly more barbaric than anything perpetrated by Putin or Zelenskyy in the Ukraine conflict.

Conclusion

More ruinous austerity; more fiscal myopia; more under-investment; more pro-rich policies; more privatisation profiteering; more unaffordable housing; more refusal to reform Britain’s failing economic model; and more deceptive economic fairy stories to justify this diabolical state of affairs. All with a disgusting dollop of genocide complicity on top to demonstrate the brazen hypocrisy and downright inhumanity of our leaders.

It’s a profoundly dispiriting scenario, which means any joy at seeing the well deserved departure of the Tories is bound to be tempered with the realisation that Keir Starmer and his mob are steadfast in their commitment to continuing with more of the same.