{"id":5705,"date":"2022-09-30T10:40:02","date_gmt":"2022-09-30T08:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=5705"},"modified":"2022-10-03T09:46:04","modified_gmt":"2022-10-03T07:46:04","slug":"liz-truss-economy-bend-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2022-09-30\/liz-truss-economy-bend-will\/","title":{"rendered":"Truss&#8217; mauling is a sharp reminder that the City can bend any politician to its will"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>The same &#8216;market discipline&#8217; currently giving Britain&#8217;s PM a bloody nose would have crushed a Corbyn programme if he&#8217;d won power<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\">There are two lessons to learn from the UK&#8217;s current economic meltdown \u2013 and commentators are obscuring both of them.<\/p>\n<p>The first, and more obvious conclusion, is that Britain has a completely dysfunctional political and media system that has allowed two mediocre, clueless careerists like Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng to reach the pinnacle of the power pyramid \u2013 and then car-crash the economy because they refused to listen to economic advisers whose sole job was to stop them sabotaging a system carefully calibrated to maintain a transatlantic Ponzi scheme designed to enrich a wealth elite while trashing the planet.<\/p>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-5709\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/2500.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"520\" height=\"312\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/2500.jpg 520w, https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/2500-300x180.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 520px) 100vw, 520px\" \/>\n<p data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\">As Noam Chomsky has observed often enough in the wider context of western democracies, the British establishment has \u2013 or at least used to have \u2013 a very efficient filtering system in place to weed out not only those ideologically unsuited to supporting the hierarchical structure of privilege it had carefully constructed but also those lacking the temperament or intellectual heft to do so.\u00a0The system was designed to block anyone from reaching a position of significant influence unless they could dependably contribute to keeping the system in good order for the elite.<\/p>\n<p>The signs are that, as late-stage capitalism runs into the cold realities of a physical world with which it is in conflict and from which it seeks to distract us \u2013 with aggressive identity politics, the \u201cIt\u2019s all about me\u201d culture, and social networking \u2013 the effectiveness of these filters is breaking down, for good and bad. That is why dangerous narcissists like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are increasingly floating to the top. It\u2019s also why authentic, moderate socialists such as Jeremy Corbyn and the rail union\u2019s Mick Lynch, as well as Bernie Sanders in the United States, have gained more of a purchase than the establishment ever intended.<\/p>\n<p>Truss\u2019 elevation to prime minister, immediately in the wake of Johnson&#8217;s festival of cronyism and corruption, demonstrates that these filters no longer function. The system is breaking down ideologically just as surely as the infrastructure of supply chains and gas pipelines is breaking down materially. We are in store for a rocky ride at the hands of serial blunderers and conmen over the coming years.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Sweet lord. The PM is literally lost for words on BBC Stoke when questioned about mortgages. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/BGCv0RfMBR\">pic.twitter.com\/BGCv0RfMBR<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Dino Sofos (@dinosofos) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/dinosofos\/status\/1575395660018368514?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 29, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Hive mind<\/h3>\n<p data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\">The second lesson is in many ways the flipside of the first.<\/p>\n<p>Truss may have triggered the economic crisis through a toxic mix of ego, incompetence and ideological fervour, but we should be extremely wary of focusing exclusively on blaming her. She didn\u2019t do the equivalent of jumping off a cliff on the assumption that she could defy gravity: the crisis was not caused because she violated some fundamental, scientific law of economics. The current crisis is manmade. She is being punished for doing things &#8220;the market\u201d \u2013 meaning people who control our money \u2013 do not like.<\/p>\n<p>Those functionaries of capitalism don\u2019t sit around plotting how they will react to a budget like Kwarteng\u2019s. They responded in unison much as a big shoal of fish suddenly and collectively take a new course. They operate as a hive mind. In this case, they were driven by shared economic assumptions, which in turn are based on a dominant economic ideology, which in turn is based on a consensual political worldview \u2013 one that largely ignores social justice or environmental realities, as the growing polarisation in wealth and the climate crisis indicate only too clearly.<\/p>\n<p data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\">&#8220;The market\u201d believes Truss is in danger of wrecking the system that upholds their privilege \u2013 by accruing too much debt while also starving the government of income by cutting taxation too much. Because economics is not a science but a kind of elite formation psychosis, the instinctual reaction of &#8220;the market\u201d to Kwarteng\u2019s budget was to \u2026 wreck Britain\u2019s economy. The Bank of England stepped in not to change the fundamentals of the economy but to \u201creassure the market\u201d. You don\u2019t need to reassure a law of nature.<\/p>\n<h3>Economic &#8216;laws&#8217;<\/h3>\n<p data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\">Truss\u2019 recklessness and ideological fervour have got &#8220;the market\u201d jittery \u2013 and with good cause. But it would behave in an almost identical fashion against anyone who broke what it considers as the \u201claws\u201d \u2013 termed \u201csound money\u201d this week by Truss\u2019 supposed political rival, Sir Keir Starmer \u2013 underpinning a globalised capitalist economy.<\/p>\n<p>Witness the current pile-on against Truss, with the City crushing her, forcing her to bend to its will. Can anyone doubt that had Jeremy Corbyn,\u00a0the former Labour leader,\u00a0emerged as prime minster from the 2017 election, as he came within a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/uk\/politics\/corbyn-election-results-votes-away-prime-minister-theresa-may-hung-parliament-a7782581.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">hair\u2019s breadth<\/a> of doing, he would have been treated at least as harshly as Truss is being dealt with now? His radical programme of spending and investment was a much bigger threat to &#8220;the market&#8221; than Truss&#8217;s confounded efforts to win favour with big business and voters at the same time.<\/p>\n<p data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\">Corbyn&#8217;s programme would have been greeted with hostility not because it exuded incompetence, as Truss\u2019s does, but because the City would have refused to stomach his plans to meaningfully redistribute wealth and make British society fairer. He would have been made to bend to the will of &#8220;the market&#8221; even more ferociously than Truss is being now.<\/p>\n<p>The establishment who maligned Corbyn as a traitor, and a spy, and an antisemite, did so not because these things were true but because the former Labour leader was a threat to their wealth and privilege. The devastating war they waged on his programme politically was simply a foretaste of the war they were all too ready to wage on his programme economically.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">My latest: Corbyn&#39;s election to lead the Labour party didn&#39;t overturn the rigged political system or end the corporate chokehold on power. His victory was an accident, and the system has been fighting back with all its might to correct the error ever since <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/2u0Vyo0qLU\">https:\/\/t.co\/2u0Vyo0qLU<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Jonathan_K_Cook\/status\/1146342248566677504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 3, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\">Starmer, Corbyn\u2019s successor, understands this only too well. Which is a major reason why he is so timid, so feeble, why he hews so closely to the wishes of the self-proclaimed \u201cmasters of the universe\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The economic game is even more rigged than the political game. When the banks and hedge funds nearly brought their giant Ponzi scheme crashing down in 2008, they were decreed by western governments as \u201ctoo big to fail\u201d. Taxpayers bailed them out twice over: first, through years of austerity, through savage belt-tightening, to pay off the elite\u2019s debts; and then, by being required to fund the rebuilding of the casino so that the elite could fleece the public all over again.<\/p>\n<p>Truss may be a lightweight. But the mauling she is receiving right now ought to sharply remind us of the limits faced by any politician who wishes to change a system that was designed to protect itself ruthlessly from change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The same &#8216;market discipline&#8217; currently giving Britain&#8217;s PM a bloody nose would have crushed a Corbyn programme if he&#8217;d won power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5706,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,51],"class_list":{"0":"post-5705","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-capitalism","9":"tag-left-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5705"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5718,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5705\/revisions\/5718"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}