Secular Sage

I am not a Marxist, far from it in fact. Unlike many, I am in no doubt that the Marxist project was put to the test and we got exactly what we expected.

At this point, I do not believe that Keir Starmer is a Marxist either. However, the budget he came up with alongside his Chancellor had an air of the same foolish policies. I am not sure exactly what was meant by it but what I heard, and many others along with me, was the same old gong of “tax the rich, feed the poor”.

I do not intend on addressing the wider headline here, this is a topic for another day. Let’s instead focus on how poor a job this budget actually did of sounding the gong. Most farmers, though “asset rich”, are by no means rich, nor are many of the students who will have to deal with the upheaval of being dropped into new schools during the course of their senior years, many during their GSCEs. Furthermore, the enormous pressure being put on the NHS and the outrageous levels to which the welfare budget has climbed are equally not the result of dealing with actual poverty. What is worse, is that the taxes raised from both of these policies do not amount to the cost we bear per year in support of a completely unnecessary and misguided war, which has the second order effect of damaging households and businesses through significantly higher energy bills the past few years and potentially for years to come.

Our largest and most out of control of expense budgets are welfare and health. I am a proponent of both to some degree, but they have grown out of control and were accentuated through COVID. Tim Spector cited studies which estimate that 50% of demand on NHS relates to illness directly linked to diet. That is well over 100 million pounds per year! The health budget, as a percentage of total spending, has almost doubled over the last 25 years, The deteriorating quality of our food is something that America has pledged to tackle, albeit they are further down the slippery slope than we are. Whether quality or simply quantity of foods consumed (more likely both), the public should not be responsible for peoples poor choices. The same could be said for alcohol and smoking addictions. We do not want a nanny state, but if people cannot choose to be healthy themselves then either the state has to play nanny or we have to leave people to die on the streets. Obviously the latter is untenable, for me and the public in case there was any doubt.

That welfare spending is taken advantage of is no secret. I have never lived in a property in London where some perfectly healthy individual was not “taking the piss”. Drawing only from my own experience, properties have been given to people perfectly capable of making a living, and certainly capable of making a complete nuisance of themselves in absence of making a living. Parents with kids in free schools fly abroad for lavish holidays while drawing on social income and living rent free in one of the best parts of London. The streets are plagued with people quite happy to make their problems everyone else’s without lifting a finger to own them or even to enter the process whereby social institutions can support them in ownership.

Of course there is real poverty, I have been on the receiving end of social care myself, albeit not in this country. It is unforgettable and can be life changing, but life changing is the point, always! There are also real problems related to drug addiction and alcohol abuse which have resulted in, now helpless, people on the streets. But I have seen, heard and know too much to believe for a second that this is all or even the majority of the problem.

I do not vote along party lines. I have voted for Prime Ministers across at least three parties over my tenure, including a labour PM. I was concerned about Kier Starmer as a leader and motivator, about a party that recently held a true Marxist, Jeremy Corbin, at the helm, and one that seemed to be shorter on ideas. Nevertheless, I had a glimmer of hope. Labour of all parties are most trusted with health and social spending. They could wield true and lasting change in this space. Keir Starmer has taken over a country entirely through the negligence of others. In spite of the dismal performance of the Tories over 14 years, he barely managed to scrape together 30% of the popular vote. Nevertheless, he has won, and he has done so with a legislation defining majority in parliament. Has such a grossly undeserved opportunity ever befallen a politician? He has the opportunity to solve the crises he is best placed to solve, and finds himself with the power to solve them. There have even been glimmers of intention, including a recent Bloomberg article, “Starmer Says ‘Bulging Benefits Bill’ Is ‘Blighting Our Society’. Similar statements have been made about the NHS, but I have seen no real plan for fixing these core problems.

I am not sure this government aver had the imagination to strategically stimulate growth, but they could have stuck with their promise to keep taxes unchanged, solved the budget on the expense side by addressing these core issues, and distanced themselves from this ridiculous war with Ukraine which costs us more per year than we will raise through the farmers and private schools tax combined, let alone the potential benefits from normalised energy prices.

A gift has thus far been squandered. But it is not too late. I clearly have the optimism of the AI that generated this photo from keywords “Keir Starmer UK Politician”.