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THE SILLY SEASON
Reviewed by ANDRE BEAUMONT
Late August in Britain used to be the time when all the politicians were away on holiday and the press produced silly stories to fill the news void and everyone could safely take no notice.
Censorship is so bad in Britain now (and let us not forget Google which is not British) that no one could take notice even if they wanted to. Britain used to be the place you came to if you wanted to right a wrong of international perception and have your say because the British press and media were so varied that the truth would out if the issue were of sufficient import.
Now within a year of Labour taking office the media primacy of Britain has been totally evaporated and the media industry, except for its coverage of sport, largely on the way to the knackers.
It (Labour) was probably just doing what the civil service told it to do anyway, being largely devoid of ideas of its own except for developing a taste for ideological kibble rather than the real food of reality.
Sport may go the same way once there is government regulation of football. The civil service wants a finger in every pie of business even if it cannot kick a ball. At least the PM is a football enthusiast. The civil service will probably ruin the restaurant business if it sticks its finger into that pie. There is no inward investment in almost anything is there when the civil service is involved in everything? So the Bank of England had to warn the Treasury off from meddling in its domain. It takes a civil servant to recognise another.
There is so little intellectual content in the narratives willingly purveyed on order by the remains of the legacy media that no one is listening to it except for arguments about kibble (or lists of which is best in the supermarkets) so the politicians cannot get a message accepted, even about where there they will be taking their holidays.
The amusing thing is the bemusement on British officials' faces when international figures criticise the censorship. They do not realise that they have got anything wrong or done anything wrong because the advice they have received has been so devoid of a cutting edge - because it has been censored in favour of a pre-chosen narrative.
The government does not know that the King in parliament is sovereign not the executive and that Magna Carta limits the King's powers - but foreigners know the latter otherwise they would not believe in Britain's democracy.
You really need lengthy debates in parliament to tease out flaws in putative legislation not surreptitiously slip things through very quickly with weasel phrasing to fit a pre-designed narrative.
The fourth estate used to perform the Magna Carta part but no more.
I tend to regard Margaret Thatcher as a monetarist Conservative (in contrast, say, to Edward Heath who was a European Conservative or Harold Macmillan who was an imperial Conservative) but that neoliberalism was introduced by Bill Clinton and adopted in quick order by Tony Blair. No subsequent government has had the courage to break away from neoliberalism.
The difference is that proper Conservatism favoured individuals and companies equally (no government at all since 1979 has favoured the collective) but neoliberalism blatantly favours the corporate over the individual - as we now realise (or always did) to enslave the latter.
In fact, Margaret Thatcher favoured the individual marginally more - corporation tax stayed over 40% and the bulk of the shares sold off in privatisations went to ordinary punters with the underwriting institutions getting the scraps. It was also the case that donors to her party gave because they believed in what she was doing not because they were trying to buy policy.
Tony Blair's government had such an ideological hatred of the proprietorial class that it decimated small business and family business but, following the Clinton philosophy, showered the corporations with benefits. Do not touch the powerful was a guiding principle.
Consonant with that the civil service was inculcated with the attitude that to survive being swept away in cutbacks it must be servile to business and allow regulatory capture. Then it would be useful. As privatisation proceeded apace the civil service realised it could retain control of those businesses in many ways through setting parameters whilst reducing government accountability.
In exchange corporations sought regulation that reduced competition and pushed for mergers that would produce oligarchy or even monopoly. Though monopoly is sometimes powerful enough to not need to pay anyone anything (it might not even like doing so) oligarchy invites paying people off. Neoliberal trade deals proved useful for that.
The relative decline of Britain has something to do with the political culture. It is one of the few countries that insisted on characterising inequality as a class matter rather than facing the reality that corporate power and financialisation are the post-millennium drivers of inequality. It is a form of escapism.
Jeff Bezos was not born upper class but he can legitimately now be regarded as part of the global upper class. No longer running Amazon, his interest in space travel, yachts and owning an important newspaper is no great hazard to anyone but the corporation he established as a monopoly has diminished much of the retail industry in many countries and employed many workers on near-robotic tasks beyond human nature and could be regarded as a driver of inequality.
The British left, and those who benefit from neoliberalism, have wilfully turned a blind eye to the fact that corporations have been the root of most of the world's economic ills since the millennium - and not really so before.
They are not (one-eyed) Nelson, though.
They are not even Napoleon who sold Louisiana and had no eye on the industrial revolution going on in Britain, or even on what Nelson's exploits would deliver in terms of imperial command of the seas, whilst pursuing continental domination.
Are we exercised about it? Maybe not.
Neoliberalism will come to an end. AI has a strong likelihood of forcing it. We have said it before, AI will reduce the number of profitable corporations by over 50%.
Meanwhile we will have a long silly season of AI producing things to fool us.