United Kingdom's Labour Party had just won a major parliamentary election in early July, more through the careful positioning of seats than the cheers of the people, and the Conservative Party's desperate record allowed the Conservative Light Liberal Democrats to secure Conservative seats, while the Conservative anti-immigrant, far-right (the newly formed Reform Party) called for the lingering xenophobia of the Johnson-Sunak era. Fully disclosed as a member of the United Kingdom Labour Party, worried about its pre-election cuts to principles, opting for pragmatism to give hope a chance. It is a place full of contradictions, for example, in Gaza and in limiting the number of children to whom poor families can receive benefits.
Since the autumn of 2010, these United Kingdom political leftists have had a rough 14 years. The fragility of social democracy has been laid bare by the various forces of the established far right that lure the United Kingdom public into their conspiratorial dream of individualized freedom. Trump's 2025 plan for United States is similar.
The cultural prerequisites for populism to move towards fascism are evident in all walks of life. Restless egoists, who have personally amassed wealth through poorly regulated banking, corrupt capitalism, massive rent-seeking through preferential state contracts and tax evasion (mostly offshore), seek to consolidate their newfound privileges through the temporary necessity of winning popular support until they don't have to bother anymore. Winning this support requires finding an enemy of the people, distinguishing them, and laying the root of all ills on them. In United Kingdom, these restless egoists, acting directly according to the fascist script, have not yet fully identified their hatred. For some who are hidden, they are still Jews, which is a disguised target of the right's inherent racism, even though the right wrongly attributes it to the inclusive left.
Moreover, for the right, all Muslims are labeled as radical Islamists. Asylum seekers and immigrants share the same view. The Conservative government has continued to expand the definition of "extremism" and use it as a basis for exclusion from policy forums and the repression of protesters, forgetting that the Conservative Party also has its own extremists, racists and misogynists. Another potential target is anyone who is relaxed about the identities of others, who are labeled as an awakened culture. These other-oriented targets continue to be "tested" in the marketplace, and the owners and controllers of populist media are trying to see which trope works best for poor and insecure populations.
It's like the Weimar Republic: every day the polity splits into millennial factions, seeking the support of those desperately estranged and with nowhere else to go. Incitement to hatred and accusations. United Kingdom has become a mixture of the other. Ghosts and shadows intertwined, and like Don Quixote leaning in front of a windmill with the support of Sancho · Panza, he cared more about his next meal, like a large part of the population of United Kingdom. Champions of freedom, but only for those who ironically wish to oppress others through negative labeling and violence – culture wars. The comfortable aristocracy and officer class made way for the rude corporal and became the new line of defense for Ponzi capitalism - beer in public, champagne in private. In the Weimar Republic, people stood silently on the sidelines, hoping that the time would not come when they would be the target of such hatred, but it was. If the "wounded" Trump wins the November elections, the situation will be repeated in United States. This rhetoric still persists in United Kingdom, as it cowers and listens to the latest verbal brutality of the Reform Party – the latest super-right incarnation.
The Conservatives held on to the dark arts until they collapsed at the polls, announcing another budget last spring. Faced with the prospect of defeat, how can they undermine the future that Labour might preside? Who cares about the people? Against the backdrop of rising inequality and poverty, the votes of those who are afraid but insist on exploitative work are important: therefore, to bring the "appearance" of tax cuts to these "working" families at the same time as taxes and mortgages are actually rising.
During the election, the Conservatives accused Labour of trying to raise income tax because they themselves raised it to an all-time high. This "tax scare" tactic was used throughout the election process, through the sweet words that "hardworking families" needed more of their own money, while deceived voters struggled, and public services were being cut further despite warnings from the neoliberal IMF. Labour has long signalled the removal of non-domestic tax avoidance, diverting £3.6bn to United Kingdom's NHS and school feeding, and the Conservatives then parked their tanks on Labour's lawn, their own non-indigenous proposals full of holes to fund populist tax cuts, even though polls suggest that maintaining public services is preferred. With such cynicism, it is no wonder that support for the Conservative Party has fallen to a low turnout of 24 per cent, which in itself is a dangerous sign of an alienated society.
Free and fair elections are no longer sacred in United Kingdom. The Conservative Party's aggressive voter suppression in United Kingdom, insisting widespread fraud, especially in Muslim areas where Labour votes, and therefore requiring official ID cards at polling stations has discouraged voting among the poor — with an estimated 400,000 people refusing to vote. At the same time, they are expanding the franchise to 3 million overseas expats seeking to evade United Kingdom taxes, pinning their hopes on their strange pro-United Kingdom Brexit preferences!
During the coronavirus pandemic, the Conservative leadership behaved like the Christian Democrats and Mafia of Italy in the past, fast-tracking PPE contracts through personal "VIP access" to get their partners to earn millions of dollars and then donate to the Conservative election coffers as donors. Before that, they tried to circumvent Parliament by illegally declaring a parliamentary adjournment in order to use the statutory instrument for the toughest version of Brexit.
Oddly enough, these sovereignty advocates didn't undermine its guilt at the right time. When the United Kingdom Supreme Court ruled that their tactics were unlawful, supporters of the Conservative donor-owned tabloid media called the judge an "enemy of the people". In addition, they sought to pull the United Kingdom out of international human rights treaties (some originally drafted by the United Kingdom) to return asylum seekers to Rwanda as a deterrent to United Kingdom entry, separate the families of visa seekers, and strip long-term residents of their citizenship, such as those from the Caribbean, without appeal. At the same time, these asylum seekers are locked up in refugee camps, denied the opportunity to work and, ironically, denied the opportunity to pay taxes. When challenged, the Conservatives used their "democratically elected dictatorship" to ignore another Supreme Court decision by legislating that Rwanda is a safe haven with a good human rights record (so not a deterrent?). ）！ Laws to suppress protests, such as environmental laws, have become harsh. The list of activities in the neo-fascist playbook could be expanded. What should we think?
Some observers have described the Conservative Party's 14-year policy as planned poverty, pushing more of the population into insecurity and reliance on voluntarism. Some conclusive facts from election day (July 4): United Kingdom government debt as a percentage of GDP is the highest since the 60s of the 20th century; 8 million people wait 18-52 weeks for health treatment; 4 million children from poor families; The lowest overall economic growth rate since 1948, with even lower per capita growth rates; Business investment is nearly 10% lower than in the rest of the G7; Since Brexit United Kingdom, the value of United Kingdom merchandise trade has fallen to 15% below the G7; United Kingdom's tax revenues as a percentage of GDP are the highest since World War II; Real average weekly earnings in 2023 are lower than their peak in 2003 (when Labour was in power); As of March 2023, nearly 3 million food bank packages were distributed in a year (now higher); high levels of economic inactivity, including a surge in the number of chronically ill people to an all-time high of 2.8 million; Inflation was as high as 11% last year, fell to 2% at election time, and could rise again; Home home mortgages increase by hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds per month; Energy prices are at record highs; Local government authorities have filed for bankruptcy due to cuts in central funding for statutory adult and child care, at least seven to date; Local council taxes will be raised by 4.5%, financed at the household level by so-called income tax cuts; reducing the capital gains tax (i.e. the capital gains tax on the wealthy) from 28% to 24% (Labour is now amending this rule); an increase in oil and gas extraction licenses in the North Sea (now revoked, but the catastrophic "pipeline" of the agreed project remains); New gas-fired power stations were approved, and Conservatives repelled protests against new coal mines; the completion of London's new rail infrastructure, while removing connections to cities in the north of England; United Kingdom's overseas aid has been sharply reduced.
Only space can prevent the continuation of this chain of defeats, which has allowed the Conservatives to sustain demand for other racial and ethnic minorities and immigrants while the "cultural" war.
I just want to ask: in what sense has United Kingdom under Conservative rule become a model for anywhere over the past 14 years? Believe it or not, it's still a wealthy society, the sixth richest economy in the world. But only in its first two quintiles. Under the Conservatives, the emperor lost his clothes, if any. Its international rhetoric of "leaving no one behind" is an empty slogan at home. Now, the Conservative leadership campaign is trying to leave more United Kingdom population behind.