The Real Manufacturing Crisis

 "We need to get Britain building again" is a routine cry of any British politician wishing to stoke populist sentiment in the least offensive way possible. Perhaps it's even true. Maybe we do need a bigger manufacturing sector, though our days as the world’s industrial superpower are, quite definitely, long dead.

What we remain very good at indeed, however, is manufacturing a political crisis. Because there's all the current political situation is : manufactured. Almost all of the so-called problems are of no significance whatever, and with a single potential exception, the rest are so routine that expecting their removal is hopelessly naïve. I put it to you, dear reader, that if you can't be satisfied with the current government then your standards are so ludicrously high you should give up following politics altogether. With demands like this, you'll always be wallowing in the self-loathing of extreme cynicism.

This may all seem like a very bold claim in itself. It shouldn't be. It should be bloody obvious, and sometimes I despair that the Great British Public are a feckin' gormless bunch of twats. This I will return to at the end.

First I should justify what I'm talking about. I've covered my stance on the current Labour Party, now the party of government, many times before, but particularly here and here. That last one, covering the moment of the major longed-for election, you might wonder if it was now tainted by the realisations – according to the press – that Labour are in fact no better than the rest of the political class. To which my answer is a provisional but nonetheless emphatic NO.

Consider how the current situation started : with the shocking "revelation" that Starmer had declared some donations a bit late. There it could and should have ended, but because there was nothing else on TV, the press decided to run with it and dig deeper. Now the major outlets began running stories Private Eye has covered for months already; that Starmer and some members of Labour have – allegedly – taken donations (!)*. All this was known, public knowledge for months – a sure sign of a manufactured rather than genuine "scandal". These donations have rarely been directly financial but usually in kind; use of accommodations here, concert tickets there, and yes, some fancy clothes as well, along with the hiring of staff.

* I'm presuming that the bracketed exclamation mark is the universal symbol for feigned surprise.

I do not, I should say, think it's right and proper for politicians to receive ALL this stuff, even if they declare it. But I absolutely expect them to, and look with dismayed amazement at those who are apparently surprised by it. You seriously didn't think that politicians don't get a measure of special treatment? REALLY? Come off it. Of course you did.

Those donations which I do see as improper – come on, you can buy your own clothes, and Lammy's claim that "leaders need to look their best" was laughably weak – can easily be redressed by returning them and apologizing. That's it. No further action needed. For the rest, the media have blown things way out of proportion. You can't buy the box Starmer was granted to watch the football any more than you can rent a room in Lord Ali's flat – it's not available for sale, but a private facility made available at the owner's discretion. Monetary values have to be entered in the records, but they're by no means real. Nor is there anything wrong, intrinsically, in private institutions and individuals making these facilities available on their own choice.

(Incidentally, I'd bet heavily that Boris and his cronies would have had a lot more donations like this and simply not declared them at all.)

Claims that this was somehow improper in Private Eye were never very convincing. Often the monetary value estimated was so low that it simply beggars belief that it had any chance of influencing government policy. Right, so gambling regulations are going to change because one minister once had a free coupon for the races, are they ? Yeah, right. As for Lord Ali – he's a Labour peer ! What exactly is supposed to be the problem with Labour peers giving aid to the, err, Labour Party? Are they bribing themselves, somehow? It doesn't make much sense to me at all. And claiming that Starmer just shouldn't go to the football... for goodness sake ! All this time spent denouncing that politicians are out of touch, then we finally get one who genuinely loves the nation's favourite sport... and you want him to stop ? Because he had access to a special area the public can't reach ? What in God's name is wrong with you ?

The Eye made an obviously erroneous declaration that ministers should make charitable donations in lieu of services rendered. Right, because if you stay at your friend's house and they won't accept payment, you should give it to charity instead, because... what ? And HIGNFY claimed that Labour were no better than the Tories in terms of sleazy corruption, something I think may be one of Ian Hislop's (a fine man and a national treasure to be sure*) silliest claims. Not to mention the melodramatic, exasperating hypocrisy of a media outlet trying to tell politicians that they shouldn’t accept the hospitality they themselves provide !

* I renewed my subscription to the Eye, but more on that in a future post.

In other words : "Here, have a delicious cookie. OH MY GOD THIS MAN IS A MONSTER HE ATE THE COOKIE !"

Sure, whatever dude.

The real story here is, man who makes the rules follows the rules. Okay, some of the donations, even though properly declared, should be returned. But that should be the end of it. At most, some questions need to be asked about how influential donors might be in relation to policy, but this is hardly the bombshell the media think it is. Return goods, apologize, move on. This isn’t anything like the expense scandal or the shifty Russian connections under BoJo.

‘But’, one might object, ‘what about the poor pensioners freezing to death naked and alone while Starmer’s banging Taylor Swift?’. This, too, my friends, is complete bollocks. Fuel payments should ALWAYS have been means tested – given that many even give the money away anyway, this is a good thing to implement ! Rising pensions this year and next more than offset the loss, so no, of course there was no need for the government to do an impact assessment. That itself would have been a complete waste of time. Complainants never give any numbers on this; it’s all emotional rhetoric and nothing else. And, newsflash, politicians make a lot of money, so yes, they’re going to get to do things that most of us don’t. That's just reality.

Everything here has been properly declared and is fully transparent. That the media have just now decided to bother looking doesn’t magically make it worse. Nor do claims that just because not everyone will get exactly what they want, there will be a return to austerity, have any merit to them. Similarly, Rosie Duffield’s claim that Starmer has a problem with women seems ludicrously hollow after a 30-second glance at the Cabinet. Like Dianne Abbot's relentless obsessions with claiming special status as a permanent victim, it all looks rather childish and silly.

I despair of this country, I really do. What really set me off was an especially entitled pensioner moaning that they weren’t getting a 22% pay rise. Come on. Junior doctors are paid an absolute pittance for an incredibly demanding and important job. Don’t you want the guy in charge of your prostate to have the money they deserve ? God knows pensioners need doctors most of all.

I shall pass over the complete non-story that Sue Gray earns more than the PM; God alone knows why anyone would care. As for the wild accusations that climate protestors get harsher sentences than racist actions, that is little better than far-right propaganda. It’s amusingly stupid claim. Unless I missed something monumental, we have an independent judiciary, so this thinly-veiled accusation that Starmer personally decides on sentencing is just dumb. There are and always will be judges who make bad choices. Blaming the government for this is moronic.

I want to end on a more general point. We've been sold Tory fantasies for years that we can have our cake and eat everyone else's too, that a magical unicorn will build us 40 new hospitals and kick out all those pesky immigrants. The result is enormously unrealistic expectations of what can be accomplished. And now at last the cold wet flannel of reality is slapping us full in the face. The government, by taking serious, credible actions to remedy the last 14 years of stupidity, is the wake-up call we so desperately need. True, the one thing they haven't got right, where they've genuinely failed, is messaging, in not fighting back against newspaper nonsense. They've lost control of the narrative, and that, unavoidably, is a serious problem that they'll need to remedy.

In terms of actually running the country though, I say bravo ! We've already had substantial and much-needed pay rises for public sector workers (even if I might not agree train drivers needed this), the end of Tory anti-strike laws and anti-onshore wind power, the beginning of nationalising energy and rail, the end of the deplorable and inhuman Rwanda "policy", the creation of a national wealth fund, a commitment to green energy that, however flawed it may be, is leaps ahead of anything from the Tories, reform of renting that (among other things) stops no-fault evictions... in three months. Three months ! And people are worried because of freebies that cost them the taxpayer nothing. Good grief.

This is stupid. Fantasy politics perhaps played a role in the idea that politicians should, would, or could ever be moral saints; this is an illusion we desperately need to snap out of. The hypocrisy of pretending that Labour are in any way comparable to the last Tory governments is truly exasperating; to hear Starmer labelled as a "liar" for both telling hard truths – we're in a mess – and for properly declaring donations is a reminder of just how gullible the Great British Public can be, as well as how effective the media can be at making mountains from molehills. Enough of this. Time to awaken from our damn-fool Utopian fantasies and make politics serious again.