Wednesday 23 November 2016

Trump's latest farrago is a Farage.

Ha ha ha. Trump has begun the trail of international embarrassments with hinting about appointments Theresa May should make. Distance between his mouth/tweet fingers, and brain does not exist. If it weren't potentially so serious, it would be hilarious. One wonders what headlines we will be waking up to during the next four years. Although I can almost imagine May doing something ridiculous like that, like appointing Boris as Foreign Secretary....uh oh. Oh well, why not have someone equally farageous doing the UK Ambassador to the States' job too then? Maybe some of Trump's team could get jobs in May's cabinet, and hers could sit among Trump's people

But honestly, can you even remember the last time you felt apprehensive about switching on the news? It's going to be part of our daily adrenalin rush for years to come now. It's years since I've felt so apprehensive about what the next headline will be. Trump is so good with timing too. He'll upstage the Wimbledon final - just wait. Queen's speech on Christmas Day? - no wait, we're going over to a special announcement from the White House, where we have just heard that President Trump has declared himself Emperor of the Western hemisphere.

There was quite a good article in the Guardian on Saturday, complaining that the yobbish right no longer play by any rules of common decency, and because the more left and centrist parties do, they are being massacred. Lies and superficial solutions impossible to carry out are winning the day. This may be true, but if the others refuse to play by the new rules (no rules), I believe this will be a very short term love affair with the Trumpsters of the world. There may even be a backlash to the polar opposite kind of politics, which would be Jeremy Corbyn's kind. If the unelectable right can win, so I believe can the unelectable left. Once the swinging starts, it takes a while to settle.


Thursday 10 November 2016

Times I hate being right

So, my last blog was kind of prophetic. I anticipated/feared that America might go exactly the same way as our Brexit vote, and it did. All the pundits are explaining the American vote in precisely the same way as the British vote. That is, it's not about the election issues per se, but about the fact that many people feel they are not heard, not cared about, and their situation, their feeling of impoverishment, their anxieties about jobs, have been chronically ignored by the political elites of all colours. Trump was a different kind of politician and voice. Big, brutal, ugly, non establishment, sound bite solutions to the problems many people felt to be most pressing, an "I hear you" kind of message expressed inarticulately, incoherently as far as the intelligentsia were concerned, but to those who felt left behind it was powerfully articulate and wonderfully direct. America has just heard the voice of the many shout "Up yours", in the same way as happened in the U.K.

So will the clever people wake up? Will there be a greater social concern expressed by them and greater effort made when they are in government to do something which spreads wealth more effectively, makes health care more accessible more quickly, looks after us better in terms of jobs and retirement, makes education more meaningful and more effective for the many and not just the few. In this country, the Labour Party sound as if they would be prepared to give it their best shot. Watch this space! But such policies need money. There are a couple of ways of doing this. Borrow loads or increase taxes. Borrowing is more popular obviously, because there is less short term pain. But paying your way is better.

The electorate are being offered clearer more damaging ways to flex their muscles. The 2 recent votes have more than proved that when the disenfranchised get a real chance through the democratic system to express their opinion, they will.

Let's hope that the disappointment they will feel as their lot does not significantly improve under Trump or Brexit, will not channel into yet greater storms.