Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/25/john-oliver-britains-14-year-decline-more-about-austerity-economics-than-brexit-but-all-of-it-sucked.html
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Speaking of the conditions for civil unrest in the post-Brexit Britain Cameron enabled…
To claw back $600 million over the next two years, the council has approved a range of unprecedented budget cuts that will see streetlights dimmed and rubbish collected only once a fortnight.
The cuts will also see 25 of the city’s libraries close, money for children’s services slashed and a 100 per cent funding cut to the arts and culture sector by 2026.
The council is Labour and has its own problems, but they’re operating under constraints imposed by more than a decade of the Tories controlling the central government, imposing austerity, and determining the bulk of taxation.
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I always kinda hesitate to say anything about British politics because holy shit, politics on this side of the pond are fucking awful – but the fact that Labour is fully locked-in to Blair/Clinton-era cowardice and conciliatory cringing before the might (???) of the Tories is just horrifying.
From our perspective in the U.S. (which may be wrong – feel free to enlighten me), it looks like Labour has surrendered to the Tories on almost every issue, from austerity to LGBTQ rights to deporting refugees to Rwanda – it’s to the point where there’s doesn’t seem to be a real difference between the two parties. The Tories say one thing; Labour says they disagree but will go along with what the Tories say anyway.
They’re good and fucked now, though. To repair the UK, they’re going to have to raise taxes – or refuse to raise taxes and let everything keep falling to shit. Either way, the Tories will be back in power and worse than ever soon enough. 
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You’d think that Team Tory would be a little more nervous about restive proles.
Not because they care, or are against sending in the corpo death squads to restore ‘order’; but because hoping that G4S can remain competent longer than the undesirables can remain squalidly angry seems like lunacy.
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I am not sure I agree with your last point, but only because our constitutional set-up may fall apart before the Tories can figure out how to rebuild themselves. Especially if Labour do end up with a ridiculous majority but then suffer the same problem that the 2019 Tory government has had in the same situation - it’s all fighting immensely powerful lobby groups and the media. Then again, tbf, all modern Western democracies have this problem; it’s not just the UK (see: what’s about to happen in France, for instance.)
I can’t really comment about the points re Labour policies, since it’s an inherent problem with progressives - we tend to think that compromise is a good thing, but we keep on failing to consider that the regressives think it’s a weakness. This is how the LibDems got destroyed during the coalition years; not because they were any worse than any other political party at not keeping promises, but that they simply didn’t understand they were bringing a knife to a gun fight.
edit: also, Last Week Tonight is the best serious analysis show on television anywhere right now. I’m mildly surprised it hasn’t won a Pullitzer yet.
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Birmingham was also screwed over by Oracle. A contract for replacing its SAP system with Larry’s abomination went from £20 million to around £100 million - and it still doesn’t work.
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They are copying Ted Heath’s policies. People familiar with UK politics should already know that Heath was a pre-Thatcher Tory. Talking of old Tory PMs, Harold Macmillan’s economic policies look more like Corbyn’s than Starmer’s. That is how far Britain and Labour has fallen.
No, that seems about right. Today has seen me shouting abuse about my local Labour MP for transphobia (I have already talked about it in Today in Transphobia (Part 2)). She hit my berzerk button over conversion therapy, and I don’t see how she could earn forgiveness from me now. Maybe crawling over a mile of broken glass, then rubbing salt and lemon juice into the wounds would start to convince me she was sorry.
I hate them, but I am voting Lib Dem. I need to survive today before I can fight tomorrow, and they have promised that and have probably the best chance of beating Labour where I live.
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To say nothing of the court case the City lost about decades of unequal pay for women, resulting in a massive financial judgement against it. But Oracle and equal pay justice might have been survivable had it not been for austerity and the Tory war on non-Tory Councils up and down the land.
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s/anywhere/anywhere in the US/
I don’t know about you, but “The uploader has not made this available in [my] country”.
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Yes, you already said it was Oracle.
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Yes, alas this is true. I do not watch it here in the UK and definitely do not watch it using, ahem, other means.
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Well. Arguably, a government which paid off the debts of the entire country’s water system before selling it to private investors who then ran up a £60 billion debt to pay out dividends, could also have paid off the £1 billion equal pay debts of a major city council.
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Joined labour for Corbin not starmer, he offers nothing but more of the same, and is going to win not because he shines a beacon of hope, but because simple not being a Tory scum bag is enough to win, cos things are so bad, even Tory old people can not turn their heads and look away, as the country is shit in every direction…
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It is normally on Sky Comedy (I know – Sky)
but balance
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The LRB has had a couple of articles lately that contextualise the political choice and devastatiing consequences of austerity (AKA kicking the poor to see if coins come out). They are depressing and not too unlike much of the rest of the wealthy world. Just with added Conservative party corruption and incompetence.
The second half of that article is a catalogue of terrible harm the Conservatives inflicted on the people of Britain.
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Weird Dave is David Willets now whiling away the days in the Lords.
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To their credit, Labour have committed to scrapping the entire Rwanda plan.
A better way of looking at it is: as the Torys have gone further right over the last few years, Labour have taken over their centrist/right-of-centre position whilst purging their own left wing.
So there’s not much to choose between current Labour policies, and Tory policies from 5-10 years ago, but current Tory policies are so batshit insane even Tory voters are staying away. (eg “bring back National Service!!!11!”)
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I want to see a Labour government, but every time Starmer opens his mouth about anything I give thanks that in my constituency the anti-Tory vote is solidly for an excellent Lib-Dem candidate.
Starmer admonishing David Tennant for not being respectful enough to moon-howling bigot Kemi Badenoch was particularly sickening.
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Thank you for launching me down this rabbit hole so that now Badenoch (& Sunak before her…) are on my list
What’s worse is that - at the moment at least - Badenoch is the Equalities Minister. Not just some random Cabinet member, but someone who is specifically supposed to be not be a bigot.
Again, I don’t hold out much hope for Labour on this front (see almost any of Starmer’s comments over the past few days), but we’re in that distressing phase of saying “how could they be worse?” Which is never, ever a good place to be for anyone still clinging to a scintilla of hope.
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