The UK Conservative Party like to position themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility. It's difficult to see how they'll keep that reputation after the devastation of the past ten years....
The UK Conservative Party like to position themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility.
It's difficult to see how they'll keep that reputation after the devastation of the past ten years. They've tanked the economy, they've plunged many people into hardship and poverty, and they've caused the closure of very many small businesses.
They have done very well at funnelling huge amounts of money to their pals, but questions are now being asked about people like Michelle Mone. She sold huge amounts of PPE to the NHS during the early stages of the covid pandemic. But most of it was not fit for purpose, it was expensive, and it wasn't done via competitive tender (which is a fundamental feature of most UK public procurement processes, brought in to prevent precisely this kind of corruption). We ended up paying huge amounts of money for PPE that could not be used, then paying huge amounts of money to store it, and then again paying huge amounts of money to destroy it. She got made a member of the House of Lords[1], and she now has an enormous super yacht.
This paragraph stands out:
This propensity of Conservative governments to ignore the economic consensus and as a result make very costly mistakes is not unique to this period, as my recent discussion of monetarism showed. What is really alarming is the failure to learn from these mistakes, or even recognise them as mistakes. This isn’t just the natural reluctance of politicians to admit error, but goes far deeper. The Conservatives have created through the right wing press, pressure on the BBC, think tanks and rich donors an alternative reality for themselves, where disasters are seen as triumphs never to be questioned. Which is why in this election they are plugging tax cuts despite crippled public services, refusing to recognise the costs of Brexit and where even the delayed pandemic lockdowns are seen as a mistake.
[1] The UK is full of institutions that sort of make sense if people are not being arseholes, but that fail if people decide to ignore convention. The House of Lords is one example. It would be better to replace it with an elected house, and certainly we need to remove hereditary peers.
The UK Conservative Party like to position themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility.
It's difficult to see how they'll keep that reputation after the devastation of the past ten years. They've tanked the economy, they've plunged many people into hardship and poverty, and they've caused the closure of very many small businesses.
They have done very well at funnelling huge amounts of money to their pals, but questions are now being asked about people like Michelle Mone. She sold huge amounts of PPE to the NHS during the early stages of the covid pandemic. But most of it was not fit for purpose, it was expensive, and it wasn't done via competitive tender (which is a fundamental feature of most UK public procurement processes, brought in to prevent precisely this kind of corruption). We ended up paying huge amounts of money for PPE that could not be used, then paying huge amounts of money to store it, and then again paying huge amounts of money to destroy it. She got made a member of the House of Lords[1], and she now has an enormous super yacht.
This paragraph stands out:
[1] The UK is full of institutions that sort of make sense if people are not being arseholes, but that fail if people decide to ignore convention. The House of Lords is one example. It would be better to replace it with an elected house, and certainly we need to remove hereditary peers.