Mr Brightside: What’s Going on Part II 

 

“The power to dream, to rule 

to wrestle the world from fools” 

 
Perhaps not unusually the UK seems to be out-of- goosestep with mainland Europe. As we know, in June we returned a centrist Labour government with a near record 174-seat majority, whilst in Europe it is the far right that is prevailing. 

In recent days, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has capitulated to the far-right anti-immigration agenda of Marine Le Pen. In doing so he has dispensed with firewall that was July’s electoral pact with the left, and has turned rightwards, giving her an effective veto over PM Michel Barnier’s new government. 

By the end of the month, the Austrian Freedom party (FPÖ), founded by two former members of the SS, Anton Reinthaller and Friedrich Peter, is expected to form an anti-immigration, pro-Russian government. It will cement a new hard-right axis across Austria, Hungary and Slovakia, and more importantly, Italy, where step by step the far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is accused of taking control of the press and the judiciary. 
 

‘Perhaps not unusually the UK seems to be out-of- goosestep with mainland Europe’

 
In Germany, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (“AfD”) triumphed in regional elections in Thuringia and came second in Saxony. This is despite Germany’s domestic intelligence agency listing the AfD in three states as an “extremist” organisation, reflecting concerns about the Holocaust denial and links to far-right political violence of some of its members. 

However, Germany’s centre-right opposition leader, Friedrich Merz, has had a change of heart regarding the AfD and is refusing to enter any national or regional coalition with them, whereas last year he was supportive of coalitions with them at local government level. Despite this change of heart, Merz now wants to talk about the issue of repatriation” of existing residents. 

Also, as reported in What’s Going On I?, the German coalition government reacted to the AfD’s success by tightening control of its borders in an effort to curb irregular migration. 

In Holland, the health minister, a member of Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom party, refused requests from African countries for urgent help in the fight against mpox, even when the Dutch stockpile runs to 100,000 boxes of unused vaccines – many of which will pass their use-by date next year. 
 

‘Europe now has seven governments with hard-right parties in control or in coalition, with Austria likely to be next’

 
Europe now has seven governments with hard-right parties in control or in coalition, with Austria likely to be next. 

What interests me is, why we so apparently out-of-step? Have we, with Brexit and recent Tory governments already had our flirtation with the far-right? Or, is that still to come? 

I suspect there is a third reason; our first-past-the-post electoral system which skews the results. For example: 
 

• Whilst Labour recorded a near record majority, their overall share of the vote, 33.8%, was only 1.7 points higher than in 2019. Despite this they doubled the number of seats won. Despite this they won 63% of the seats. 

• The Conservatives took 23.7% of the overall vote but won only 121 seats.  

• Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party won 5-seats, and came second in a further 98 constituencies. In 10 of these, it was within 5,000 votes of winning, and took 14% of the overall votes cast. 

• The Lib Dems won 72 seats, taking 12.2% of the overall votes cast. 

Clearly, a system that awards two-thirds of the seats of the seats to a party attaining only one-third of the vote is skewed. 

The LibDems success was based on targeting winnable seats and concentrating their efforts to do so, whereas Reform, who achieved a higher percentage of the vote, won less than 10% of the LibDems seat total. 

If we have proportional representation the result would have looked very different. Of the 650 seats, Labour would have won 220, the Conservatives 154, Reform, 91, and the LibDems 79. 

The takeaway from this clear, we cannot be complacent. The hard-right wasn’t defeated at the ballot box it was defeated by the system. 
 

‘Of the 650 seats, Labour would have won 220, the Conservatives 154, Reform, 91, and the LibDems 79’

 
The next question is, why after so many years of progressively right-wing Tory governments are so many people voting for something worse? 

Let’s start with sleaze. This comes in all shapes and forms, and one of the most common is expenses. 

Our new PM has got off to a resounding start, declaring more free tickets and gifts than other major party leaders in recent times, with his total now topping £100,000. 

One benefactor, Lord Alli, has paid for work clothing worth £12,000, accommodation valued at more than £20,000 and glasses valued at £2,485. As a result Alli was temporarily given a pass to No 10 after the election. 

Now, this really isn’t a good look, especially with so many suffering hardships.  

I am in no position to criticise anyone who likes expensive clothing, but, I buy my own. Having seen the suits in question, they really aren’t anything special. Perhaps, the question is, will Starmer be a better PM for it? Clearly not. 

Former PM Sunak also had bespoke suits, unfortunately they made him look like Charlie Chaplin! He, however, could bought his own. 
 

‘I am in no position to criticise anyone who likes expensive clothing, but, I buy my own’

 
Then there is Mrs Starmer who, it is reported, was given £5,000 by Lord Alli to buy some dresses. Again, if you want them, buy them! 

Perhaps the key reason for this highlighting Starmer’s mistaken priorities, is the latest official figures showing 123,000 households containing an estimated 302,000 children were subject to the benefit cap, trapping them in poor housing and extreme poverty. Within this, single parents, female survivors of domestic abuse and children are disproportionately affected. 

The figure marks a 61% increase in the number of capped households in the three months to May; a dramatic rise attributed to the previous government’s decision not to uprate the benefit cap in line with inflation.  

Research published earlier this year found benefit-capped families were living on as little as £4 for each person a day after rent, often living in overcrowded, rat-infested and damp homes that they had little chance of escaping. 

The benefit cap is often wrongly confused with the two-child limit, which removes universal credit support for a family’s third or any subsequent children born after April 2017, and which has also been at the centre of political controversy. The cost of abolishing it has been put at £300-500m. 
 

‘benefit-capped families were living on as little as £4 for each person a day after rent, often living in overcrowded, rat-infested and damp homes’

 
A government spokesperson said: “This is another example of the dire inheritance this government faces – too many people are trapped on benefits. We are taking bold action to support people into work through reforming jobcentres and giving local areas the power they need to tackle economic inactivity, which will boost their finances and reduce the likelihood of being impacted by the cap.” Yawn! 

Then there is immigration…this week the PM was in Rome to learn how to deal with it the Italian way! 

The Italian way, introduced by PM Meloni’s has cut the number of people arriving in dinghies across the Mediterranean by almost two-thirds in the past year, from 118,000 to 44,500. This is primarily as a result of a deal with Albania which means that irregular migrants who entered Italy would be processed in Albania, with those granted asylum returning. 

At the press conference Sig Meloni told us, “We must not shy away from brave other options”. Interestingly she didn’t define brave, or whether the option we simply unpleasant or potentially illegal.  

Readers may remember my comments on the previous PM’s, Rishi Sunak, meeting with Meloni in “Tis the Season of Goodwill to All”, provided they are white and straight!”, and it seems that his replacement was equally smitten. 

Imagine it, PM Starmer walks in resplendent in his freebie suit…… “Ciao Georgia, come stai?” 

“Ciao Kier”…and then the aside to her aide, “mi piace di più il colore di questo, ma il suo abito completo! Non ha mai sentito parlare di Armani?” 

Jokes aside, immigration is fast becoming public enemy #1 in Europe, blamed for everything from lack of jobs and housing, overstretched public services, to crime. In fact the answer is immigration, what’s the question. 

Whilst racism has always been present, the watershed for the current generation of racists might be “Breaking point”, the slogan on a poster that Nigel Farage deployed in 2016 during the Brexit referendum campaign, portraying bearded and dark-skinned migrants appearing to march in droves towards us. The exact same photograph was later replicated in Hungary, with the caption changed from “Breaking point” to “Stop”. 

Similar slogans include “Stop the invasion” (“Stop invasione”), used by Matteo Salvini’s Italian League party; and “Close the borders” (“Grenzen dicht”), adopted by German far-right groups the AfD and Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West). 

A few years ago, Trump’s now imprisoned former adviser Steve Bannon attempted to form a global coalition of anti-globalists, herding together a number of Europe’s right-wing leaders, from Nigel Farage to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. He was involved in setting up an “Academy for the Judeo-Christian West” in Italy. And Trump’s “America first” Republican party is now one of many to adopt the “my country first” slogan. 
 

‘immigration is fast becoming public enemy #1 in Europe, blamed for everything from lack of jobs and housing, overstretched public services, to crime’

 
Variation on this slogan can also be found in Switzerland (Swiss People’s Party), Spain (Vox), and outside of Europe in Turkey (“Turkey First”), Japan (“Japan first”),and in India where “India first” has been adopted by prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party. 

In all, about 50 countries have already gone to the polls in 2024. Francis Fukuyama, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy and the author of the End of History and the Last Man thesis, has concluded that, “Fears that this year would reflect the global triumph of illiberal populism have so far been proved wrong. Democratic backsliding can and has been resisted in many countries.” 

There have been success for centre parties, obviously there is Labours near record majority, the re-election of Ursula von der Leyen as president of the European Commission, the shift away from the far right in Poland and the setback for Modi in India. Also, in Spain, the incumbent PM, Pedro Sánchez, defeat the right in national elections last year, but he has skilfully engineered a split between Spain’s centre-right People’s party (PP) and the far-right Vox over the fate of vulnerable child migrants.  

The far-right is in the ascendency because mainstream politicians have largely failed to deal with the economic crisis that was the GFC. In many countries there is increasing inequality, jobs, and falling standards of living. 

Whilst right-wing politician don’t have the answer to any of this, they provide a scapegoat, immigrants. 

To date, our new PM has succeeded only in making 1.6m pensioners with disabilities lose their winter fuel payments because of government cuts. A move which is estimated to realise the princely sum of £1.4bn. in governmental terms this is lunch money. However, next month the chancellor will unveil a package of spending cuts and tax rises totalling £22bn. Beyond that, the commitments Labour made in opposition mean that in government it is on the hook to make annual savings of about £20bn.  
 

‘To date, our new PM has succeeded only in making 1.6m pensioners with disabilities lose their winter fuel payments because of government cuts’

 
All of this comes after 14 -ears of Tory austerity which means there is little, if nothing to cut!  

What of scrapping the two-child limit on benefits? Then there is the benefit cap, abolishing the bedroom tax or lifting the local housing allowance, which determines how much support households can get with accommodation. Then there’s the pressure on public services.  

All of this seems predicated by the hope of economic growth. Given that last weeks data showed that the UK economy is at a standstill, what hope is there? 

There is an answer; relax the fiscal rules copied from the Tories that limit how much it can borrow. After all, former Tory chancellor George Osborne broke his own rules, and Gordon Brown bent his. Then we really might see change.  

The situation in Europe is little different. Last week Mario Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank, published a report on Europe’s competitiveness and future.  He concluded that, in the absence of annual investment 3x greater than that delivered by the postwar Marshall plan, Europe would face a “slow agony” as its economies failed to keep pace with China and the United States. 

He advised ending the shortsighted, self-defeating economics of austerity that, as in the UK, has been so destructive post the GFC, and said that balancing the books at the expense of beleaguered regions and the less well-off has helped fuel the rise of anti-immigrant nationalism across the continent. The precedent of the €750bn (£634bn) Covid recovery fund offered a contrasting glimpse of the fiscal power and solidarity the EU can mobilise – given the political will.  
 
Now we know…. 
 

“… History will repeat itself 

Crisis point we’re near the hour” 

 

‘This isn’t the piece I had initially planned but it neatly fitted in as a follow-up to “What’s Going On”.

Clearly, Labour inherited a mess. Every piece of news, be it economic, NHS, social services, or poverty data is awful.

I just feel that by trying to stick to what were Tory spending cuts and plans is a mistake. It’s only going to create a greater number of people feeling “left behind” and add to the feeling that the mainstream parties no longer have the answers.

If you add to this Starmer’s liking for perks and freebies, and you can clearly see how this could be viewed as “I’m alright, Jack”.

I have looked to Europe as an example of what could happen; there we are seeing a proliferation of far-right parties gaining traction, even to the extent of forming or participating in government.

Interestingly, Mario Draghi, the former head of the ECB, also sees the need to stop austerity and start spending.

I looked back at the election data to see how the far-right might have fared under a different electoral system, and it doesn’t take too much imagination to realise that Farage / Reform could replicate the success that the far-right is enjoying elsewhere.

What shouldn’t be overlooked in all this is the media. I use Mussolini my mother , as an example. She gets all her news and opinions for the Daily Mail and GB News, it can be summed as a sea of panic, invective, and racist bile. But, she isn’t alone.

The far-right has the Mail, Express, Telegraph, and, now Paul Marshall owns it, the Spectator, and a TV channel, GB News.

The centre left has only the Mirror and the Guardian, although the far-right would argue that the BBC are against them, too.   

Perhaps, Starmer should look to Italy to solve the small boats issues. If he can do that he would certainly spike Farage’s guns.

Lyrically, we start with “People Have the Power”, by Patti Smith, and finish with a song that gave rise to this columns’ title for some months, (We Don’t Need This) “Fascist Groove Thang”, by Heaven 17.

Enjoy!

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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