The Rise of the Far Right

[Tony L]

Liz Truss took on the Treasury (HQ for unelected bankers, bureaucrats and ex industrialists), and lost. Much like Heath took on the miners and lost.

I’m not convinced Truss took anyone on. I suspect she and Kwateng just acted on behalf of their owners; the US dark money influencers of Tufton St and the disaster capitalists who made such a killing crashing Sterling. There is a whole chapter of UK politics and national decline that hasn’t been properly investigated or documented yet. I’d like to see the whole lot of them facing criminal investigation for insider dealing and even sabotage.

 

[Seanm]

The funny thing about Johnson is he showed a lot of promise as a demagogue (proroguing parliament, etc) but fundamentally, he is not that type. He wanted to be 'world king' but not a tyrant. Johnson was still enough to scare Lord Hennessy, who realised that our constitution relied on a presumption of 'good chaps' being in charge (Prospect). In the final analysis, Johnson's fatal wounds came from probably two journalists, Paul Brand of ITV (Partygate) and Pippa Crerar of the Mirror (Barnard Castle and Partygate). The BBC put him out of his misery with the Chris Pincher story, but his goose was already cooked. I have a feeling you are more clued up on how the media operates in the UK than I am, but if this was the system defending itself, it took its time doing it.

As for online behaviour, I accept your point, Twitter point scoring is just one of many mechanisms helping the far-right, and is only ever a response to the real problem - the fact that the right is pushing the bounds of acceptability in the first place.

I think they didn’t so much take their time as choose it. Certainly the scandalous stuff that tanked him was known long before it was - choosing my words carefully - deployed. But the stars needed to align: Johnson had to demonstrate that he wasn’t going to allow himself to be controlled (the trolley), or step aside graciously, and the B team needed to be in safe hands. With those two conditions satisfied suddenly lots of journalists and insiders started remembering things and his goose was cooked in a matter of what, months at most.

It’s funny because the establishment is clearly in disarray but it’s still remarkably good at seeing off threats. There were three popular insurgent movements in the 2010s - Scottish nationalism, Brexit, Corbynism - and they were just dismantled (as movements: I know Brexit happened). The British establishment can’t actually *do* anything - it plainly doesn’t have any answers to the problems it’s created - but it can certainly stop anyone else from having a go. If we do ever see a successful demagogue it will be because the establishment has decided, **** it: this is all we’ve got left, short of letting in the left. 30p, Braverman and others are clearly vying for position, not to be at the head of a movement but to be anointed from above, when the time comes - that is, when Starmer’s government implodes and things look like they might boil over.

 

[paulfromcamden]

I’m not convinced Truss took anyone on.

I think you're forgetting that she was toppled by evil 'The Markets' - all those woke fixed income traders in the City ideologically opposed to tax cuts for the rich.

 

[Seanm]

I think you're forgetting that she was toppled by evil 'The Markets' - all those woke fixed income traders in the City ideologically opposed to tax cuts for the rich.

Well you could certainly argue that she was toppled by the Bank of England: when the two arms of economic governance pull in opposite directions one of them will have to give, and it's not going to be the unelected one.

 

[paulfromcamden]

Well you could certainly argue that she was toppled by the Bank of England: when the two arms of economic governance pull in opposite directions one of them will have to give, and it's not going to be the unelected one.

I'd argue that she was toppled by her own increasingly tenuous relationship with reality Sean.

But we've chatted about this before and I suspect we're not going to agree entirely. Which is fine of course.

 

[Tony L]

I think you're forgetting that she was toppled by evil 'The Markets' - all those woke fixed income traders in the City ideologically opposed to tax cuts for the rich.

That’s the spin, though my suspicion is that was the desired result. A lot of people who were connected to both Truss and Kwateng appear to have got very rich that day. As with most high-level Tories these two look to be owned, and certainly not by the electorate or national interest. Truss was likely too dumb to grasp it would cost her the PM job and that she’d go down in history as the UK’s most idiotic loser in that role, but she’s still being paid a fortune to front far-right fringe-nutter conspiracy theory etc. I bet Kwateng is off to a multi-millionaire’s lifestyle quietly shuffling money around hedge funds and tax-havens. They won. We lost.

 

[ks.234]

I’m not convinced Truss took anyone on. I suspect she and Kwateng just acted on behalf of their owners; the US dark money influencers of Tufton St and the disaster capitalists who made such a killing crashing Sterling. There is a whole chapter of UK politics and national decline that hasn’t been properly investigated or documented yet. I’d like to see the whole lot of them facing criminal investigation for insider dealing and even sabotage.

A lot of Truss’s moans, expressed especially in the US last week, were about Truss vs ‘the establishment’, much like Trump sets himself up in opposition to The Deep State and “Washington elites”. As such they are, as you say, backed by Bannon type dark money.

While The Treasury and the economic centre are dangerously neoliberal, they are not anywhere near neoliberal enough for these guys. They won Brexit, but they won't stop there. They have succeeded in manipulating government policy to their own ends in the referendum next step is to control it more and more.

 

[paulfromcamden]

That’s the spin, though my suspicion is that was the desired result. A lot of people who were connected to both Truss and Kwateng appear to have got very rich that day.

Yes very fair point. I've obviously no way of knowing whether that was the plan all along or Tuffton St just got a sniff of her plans in advance and cashed in. Certainly there should have been the investigation Labour called for but no chance of that happening.

UK hedge funds made a fortune shorting the pound—now they may be under investigation

Wealthy U.K. investors with close ties to Liz Truss' government may have profited from their proximity to the levers of power, after they collectively shorted the pound.

fortune.com

 

[ks.234]

That’s the spin, though my suspicion is that was the desired result. A lot of people who were connected to both Truss and Kwateng appear to have got very rich that day. As with most high-level Tories these two look to be owned, and certainly not by the electorate or national interest. Truss was likely too dumb to grasp it would cost her the PM job and that she’d go down in history as the UK’s most idiotic loser in that role, but she’s still being paid a fortune to front far-right fringe-nutter conspiracy theory etc. I bet Kwateng is off to a multi-millionaire’s lifestyle quietly shuffling money around hedge funds and tax-havens. They won. We lost.

Yes. It wasn’t the Markets that brought Truss down, they simply made the fairly safe bet that tax cuts for the rich would weaken the pound and strengthen foreign investments. The Markets just did what they always do.

The Truss Debacle was an attempt to seize the economic levers by by-passing democracy. They failed. This time.

 

[laughingboy]

If we do ever see a successful demagogue it will be because the establishment has decided, **** it: this is all we’ve got left, short of letting in the left. 30p, Braverman and others are clearly vying for position, not to be at the head of a movement but to be anointed from above, when the time comes - that is, when Starmer’s government implodes and things look like they might boil over.

I don't know how likely it is, but there's a scenario where - if the Tory party suffers a catastrophic defeat this election - they, in calculated desperation, extend a hand to Farage. Farage was inviting such speculation at the PopCon conference, and Bannon was trying to get Truss to endorse the idea that Farage should join the Conservatives. If that happens, Farage will drag the party to the right. And in the likely event Starmer hasn't done anything to remake the country by 2029, or Starmer gets hit by a financial crisis, we are in real trouble.

 

[ks.234]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1762559505332625588

 

[ks.234]

I don't know how likely it is, but there's a scenario where - if the Tory party suffers a catastrophic defeat this election - they, in calculated desperation, extend a hand to Farage. Farage was inviting such speculation at the PopCon conference, and Bannon was trying to get Truss to endorse the idea that Farage should join the Conservatives. If that happens, Farage will drag the party to the right. And in the likely event Starmer hasn't done anything to remake the country by 2029, or Starmer gets hit by a financial crisis, we are in real trouble.

When the Tories lose the next election there will be a contest between One Nation conservatism and the Tufton Street Tories. The far right will win for the same reasons that they won the last contest with Truss.

 

[Hazelberry]

Liz Truss is a thoroughly objectionable hard right piece of shit, and frankly not very bright

FIFY

Luzon, the sorry leader of AO/NZs Cerberus Coalition, even regards her as a mate

 

[matt j]

I think you're forgetting that she was toppled by evil 'The Markets' - all those woke fixed income traders in the City ideologically opposed to tax cuts for the rich.

Don't forget the mighty lettuce got the better of her as well. In 20 years when we're hunting squirrels and pigeons for dinner in the local park with home made spears, we'll be looking back through rose tinted specs at the missed opportunity of a lettuce being elected leader.

 

[tuga]

Social media has to a fairly large degree removed absolute control of the narrative from the political establishment. I’d argue this was on the whole a positive thing, but I believe very firmly in democratic accountability and I am inherently anti-authoritarian, so I would! Social media has allowed a whole new level of citizen journalism and made it impossible for states to hide their oppression and criminality. It has also opened echo chambers and paths to radicalisation, but I’d argue none of them were anything like as destructive to society as say the Murdoch press. As with all democracy it is both good and bad. On balance it is unquestionably a step forwards. Another tool that can be used to speak truth to power. It has defined our century allowing us all to witness racist violence of police, genocide in other lands etc. It removes hiding places and ultimately that has to be a good thing.

Would Leave/Brexit, the election of D. Trump, the 6th of January, etc. have happened without social media?

 

[Tony L]

Would Leave/Brexit, the election of D. Trump, the 6th of January, etc. have happened without social media?

Hard if not impossible to say. Things have gone very wrong here and in the USA since the late-70s and is possibly just the concluding decline phase of the Reagan/Thatcher era of economics and the huge social divides and oligarch classes that ideology created or empowered. My personal view is we’d be here anyway. I suspect the wheels finally fell off neoliberalism in 2008 and we’ve been running on oligarch money-laundering pretty much ever since.

I view the internet as a democratised decentralised communication medium that is in itself inert. It is neither good nor bad any more than say a hammer or screwdriver is. It is the modern equivalent of the the printing press and arguably far more of a step-change. It has brought unmeasurable amounts of free information sharing, community, knowledge, democracy/equality, a real ability to speak truth to power, and to document abuses of power. The converse is it has enabled the propagation of the bad as well as the good. As one would expect. Humans are what they are.

If what I fear is right, and what is happening now with the lurch to the far-right would have happened regardless as it is the inevitable failure of neoliberalism along with an elite that refuses to address climate collapse, I feel we have a far better chance of surviving with good communication technology and the ability to share information fast. I suspect we will need it.

 

[droodzilla]

Would Leave/Brexit, the election of D. Trump, the 6th of January, etc. have happened without social media?

Yes.

They are all facets of a legitimation crisis.

Social media is orthogonal.

 

[Yank]

Hard if not impossible to say. Things have gone very wrong here and in the USA since the late-70s and is possibly just the concluding decline phase of the Reagan/Thatcher era of economics and the huge social divides and oligarch classes that ideology created or empowered....

I like to trace that to the Powell Memo of 1971, and the formation of the Heritage Foundation in 1973.

 

[Seanm]

I'd argue that she was toppled by her own increasingly tenuous relationship with reality Sean.

But we've chatted about this before and I suspect we're not going to agree entirely. Which is fine of course.

It absolutely is not fine!

Seriously tho there's the immediate issue - Truss's nutty economic plans - and then the broader issue of the Bank of England, an unelected but by no means truly independent body, determining government economic policy, in large part. Worth keeping in mind that the BoE's policy here was also, arguably, wrong. It just wasn't wrong and crazy.

 

[Seanm]

I don't know how likely it is, but there's a scenario where - if the Tory party suffers a catastrophic defeat this election - they, in calculated desperation, extend a hand to Farage. Farage was inviting such speculation at the PopCon conference, and Bannon was trying to get Truss to endorse the idea that Farage should join the Conservatives. If that happens, Farage will drag the party to the right. And in the likely event Starmer hasn't done anything to remake the country by 2029, or Starmer gets hit by a financial crisis, we are in real trouble.

I think this is the *most* likely scenario: it's more or less nailed on. With or without Farage, I think the Conservative Party will very likely reposition itself as the heirs to UKIP after the coming massacre, ready to capitalise on anger and disgust at the failure of Starmer's government.