An unambiguously negative development

Andy Burnham warned 'basket case' Britain cannot withstand any more tax hikes as economy flounders

Andy Burnham has been warned that ‘basket case’ Britain cannot withstand any more tax hikes after a bleak two years for the economy under Labour...

Matthew Ryan, head of market strategy at Ebury, added: ‘Sterling and gilts are holding up for now, but we view this as an unambiguously negative development for UK assets.

‘Burnham sits firmly to the left of the Labour Party, and his record as mayor points to a significant step-up in public spending, a higher tax burden and greater gilt issuance. This is an experiment that the UK can ill-afford.

‘The critical near-term question is who becomes Chancellor. Any indication that a new Chancellor intends to loosen or abandon the existing fiscal rules could trigger fresh selling in UK assets.’

 

I lived upon words, and believed in phantoms.

Ivan Turgenev – Rudin (1856)

Faith, Masters and Fetters

Faith

It is life that, little by little, case by case, enables us to observe that what is most important to our heart, or to our mind, is learned not by reasoning but by other powers. And then it is the intellect itself which, taking note of their superiority, abdicates its sway to them upon reasoned grounds and consents to become their collaborator and their servant. It is faith confirmed by experiment.

Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu


Masters 

What would you have? The government has freed us from the dependence of serfdom--and many thanks to it! but the habits of slavery are too deeply ingrained in us; we cannot easily be rid of them. We want a master in everything and everywhere; as a rule this master is a living person, sometimes it is some so-called tendency which gains authority over us.... At present, for instance, we are all the bondslaves of natural science.... Why, owing to what causes, we take this bondage upon us, that is a matter difficult to see into; but such seemingly is our nature. But the great thing is, that we should have a master.

Ivan Turgenev – Smoke (1867)


Fetters

Cold, hunger, animal terror, a burden of toil, like avalanches of snow, block for them every way to spiritual activity--that is, to what distinguishes man from the brutes and what is the only thing which makes life worth living. You go to their help with hospitals and schools, but you don't free them from their fetters by that; on the contrary, you bind them in closer bonds, as, by introducing new prejudices, you increase the number of their wants, to say nothing of the fact that they've got to pay the Zemstvo for drugs and books, and so toil harder than ever.

Anton Chekhov – An Artist’s Story (1896)

Big Drivel

I lived upon words, and believed in phantoms.

Ivan Turgenev – Rudin (1856)


Online browsing can be an extremely enlightening thing to do. It may even be too enlightening, easily creating a sense of disenchantment, a sense that we are too absurd to survive. At other times it offers sane voices, new insights with a warm and welcome sense that all is well and sanity must surely prevail.

Yet online drivel is so easy to find that it is not easy to avoid. It leaves behind a sense that we must read at least some drivel to understand drivel culture, where it comes from and what sustains it. We need to do that because Big Drivel rules the world. It spews out seductive verbal formulae which are obviously formulae and obviously drivel, but easy to remember, easy to adopt and they come in various wrappers to give them mass appeal.

Most of us probably know that we are not particularly original in our ideas. The words we use, the arguments we make or the ideas we pursue are from being entirely original. It’s what politicians continually make use of – our general lack of originality. Online browsing tells us so and tells us that it works. Many people lack the originality to be sceptical. Political parties are not interested in people who are habitually sceptical anyway - how could they be?

The political classes cannot deal in ideas which appeal to sceptics, so they bypass them with simple and seductive verbal formulae. It doesn’t matter if the verbal formulae are dubious or outright drivel as long as they are simple, appear to be optional and have enough authority for mass appeal.

It also helps if political verbal formulae do not persuade sceptics, who are routinely portrayed as off-piste. Nice folk don’t wish to be off-piste for a number of reasons, all of which are exploited politically.

We already know this. We know how easy it is to adopt verbal formulae instead of pursuing the rocky paths of investigation and analysis. Verbal formulae save time, cut down mental effort, save energy and come with added virtue-signalling. Sceptics can’t match that.

We are a soft people

source

We talk of skepticism as our special characteristic; but even in our skepticism we are not like a free man fighting with a sword, but like a lackey hitting out with his fist, and very likely he is doing even that at his master's bidding. Then, we are a soft people, too; it's not difficult to keep the curb on us.

Ivan Turgenev – Smoke (1867)

Mr Happy

When a man is very happy, his brain, as is well known, is not very active.

Ivan Turgenev - The Diary of a Superfluous Man (1850)

What would you have?

What would you have? The government has freed us from the dependence of serfdom--and many thanks to it! but the habits of slavery are too deeply ingrained in us; we cannot easily be rid of them. We want a master in everything and everywhere; as a rule this master is a living person, sometimes it is some so-called tendency which gains authority over us.... At present, for instance, we are all the bondslaves of natural science.... Why, owing to what causes, we take this bondage upon us, that is a matter difficult to see into; but such seemingly is our nature. But the great thing is, that we should have a master.

Ivan Turgenev – Smoke (1867)

Turgenev made the point almost a century and a half ago but it still stands today. Many people appear to be uninterested in political independence as long as they are free to consume. It has become painfully obvious that the global drift towards total government is no accident, no quirk of political circumstance.

Neither does it feel like a planned assault on our political freedoms because we are freely giving those away. Here in the UK we are handing them over to the EU and a complex web of global agencies most voters seem barely aware of. In the US, voters seem likely to be faced with a choice between Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump for their next president. Neither seems likely to halt the slow American slide towards total government.

By 2020 UK voters may be faced with a grisly choice between Conservatives led by David Cameron and Labour led by Jeremy Corbyn. Of course it is possible that neither man will weather the events between now and then, but is any other choice likely to be more appealing?

What would you have?