Beyond bonkers

It is interesting that British politics has become more unstable since the 2008 Financial Crisis (John McTernan, “Bonkers Britain”, Perspective, 11/22). Perhaps this event highlighted the deep split in both main UK parties, such that we now have four competing parties. Labour and Tory are effectively both divided between “domestic” (blue collar Labour, small businessperson Tory) and “globalist” (Internationale Labour, Europhile Tory). The instability arises because blue collar (=Red Wall) Labour and small businessperson Tory actually have much in common; they are both for “Make Britain Great Again”. Likewise, Internationale Labour and Globalist Tory both see Britain as a small but integral part of the worldwide economic system, which welcomes incoming workers and their cheaper wages etc, and wants to sell its wares across the EU and beyond. Both want open borders. The two domestic factions, by contrast, want protectionism, to keep UK wages higher (blue collar Labour) and to protect UK business from cheaper overseas competition (small businessperson Tory). The upshot is UK politics is like a square, with each of these four factions occupying their separate corners. Whoever is in power, three of four factions will feel alienated, likely causing a flip at the next election. The incomer will then similarly alienate another three of four. In such a paradigm, no lasting majority or consensus is attainable. But there is a solution. The globalist factions of both established parties must recognise that although open borders must (by pure economic logic) bring economic gains, there is a redistribution (of those gains) deficit. As a result, those who gain from open labour and open trade borders must pay the taxes that would compensate the “domestic” losers (whose prices and wages are eroded by wider competition). Only this redistribution can reconcile and unite the “domestics” with the “globalists”.

Dr Hillary J Shaw
Research Fellow – Centre for Urban Research on Austerity
Department of People, Politics and Place
De Montfort University, Leicester

There is one simple solution to the instability John McTernan states has taken hold of British Politics (“Bonkers Britain”, Perspective, 11/22). Proportional representation. Let’s have a parliament that reflects the voters, with all our differing opinions. It works in other countries, and would work here too – given a chance. For the confused, it’s called democracy.

Gary Fitzwilliam
Online

It’s just the usual conceit to say that things are especially “Bonkers” now. I have lived longer than most Perspective readers, so perhaps remember many of the economic or currency meltdowns of the past that others don’t. Let me tell you all that recent Sterling wobbles are nothing compared to the impact of Black Wednesday in 1992. And going back further, the 1976 Sterling meltdown, following the oil crisis three years earlier, puts them both in the shade. And inflation then was running at 25 per cent! Politically, we witnessed incidents like the Profumo affair, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Every time, the papers were full of doom and gloom, and end-of-the-world nonsense. Yet, here I still am. I do agree with your columnist Simon Heffer – whose writing in different organs since the 1990s I have much enjoyed – that Boris Johnson brought his office into a particular disrepute. But this was more a case of narcissism than of impending Armageddon.

Barry J, 83 years young
By email

Nothing new

Ben Wilson’s Exit, pursued by a bear (Perspective, November 2022) made me smile. Sometimes, it’s easy to get caught up in the psychodrama-de-jour. Knowing we’ve been here before makes me worry less that I’ll need to take Lucy Easthope’s sage advice on disaster planning in the next column!

Kerry Olise, Hampshire

SOS NHS

I have written to every magazine I can find. When is someone going to write about the tsunami level crisis that is facing our health system?! I read the news every day, and you’d hardly know that it’s collapsing. People are dying for fuck’s sake. Will anyone publish this?

Jean Duckworth,
By email