You will likely be reading this before the outcome of the UK ruling Conservative Party leadership election on Monday, although the outcome is pretty much assured, with the current Foreign Minister Liz Truss the solid favourite to take over as Prime Minister.
She will take on the seemingly unenviable job of sorting out the dire mess that Britain has become after years of government mis-managment, mainly by the right-wing Conservative party, with a laundry list of damaging policy mis-steps and failures, lies, gaslighting and contempt for the public. All of which prompted the sacking of Prime Minister Boris Johnson who loses his job after this weekend.
Britain is currently suffering from an acute cost-of-living crisis with inflation running at just over 10 percent in August, the highest in 40 years and also the highest among The Group of Seven (G7) nations.
A good chunk of this is due to energy prices which have shot up across Europe driven by a spike in demand as countries lifted Covid pandemic lockdowns, compounded by the war in Ukraine as Russian oil and gas exports have been cut back.
But Britain has some unique factors which are making things worse, namely labour shortages as foreign workers left the UK when it pulled out of the European Union (Brexit) and additional taxes on households.
Britain’s debt now stands at just over 100 percent of Gross Domestic Product compared with around 70 percent in 2010 when the current Conservative administration regained power. With a chunk of that due to the now infamous failed Track and Trace system put in place during the pandemic.
The government blew a colossal 37 billion pounds on the system over two years, which a scathing report by a Westminster spending watchdog described as swallowing up “unimaginable” amounts of taxpayers’ money with no evidence of any measurable difference on the progress of the pandemic.
Despite this eye-watering spending, track and trace failed in its task of preventing the second and third lockdowns, found a cross-party House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. Committee chair Meg Hillier demanded better control of costs, accusing the government of treating taxpayers “like an ATM machine”.
There are an ongoing series of strikes across Britain by railway, postal, rubbish collectors and even barristers all striking for better pay. As if all this is all not enough, raw-sewage is being pumped in the rivers and surrounding seas due to underinvestment in the now privatised water companies sold off by the Conservative Party government in the late 1980s. There are now fifty beaches in the UK where swimming is banned…Which explains my headline.
Why am I telling you all this? The reason is that even fully developed nations can find themselves in an awful mess if an electorate allows itself to be duped by unscrupulous politicians or allows itself to be lied to, blinded by false promises or gives itself up to unthinking political dogma, the so-called ‘red meat’ that politicians throw at the public to gain votes.
This is exactly what has happened in my home country and serves as a warning to other free democracies that career politicians whose main motivation is to gain power and influence, all the trappings of power and influence, a place in the history books, a generous government pension and an easy lucrative job for life hiring themselves out as consultants or speech makers.
There are dozens of examples of this pattern. In this style of life equation, consideration of the living conditions and quality of life of the electorate at large comes a very poor second. The UK is living proof of this with the exit of Boris Johnson who is already churning out opinion pieces for the right-wing press in the UK and lining his own pockets.
Johnson was ultimately undone not by policy disagreements but by his own character failings. When he was elected 32 percent of people thought he would be a good Prime Minister and 32 percent a bad one, 36 percent were undecided. In the latest YouGov Poll 25 percent thought he had done well, 68 percent thought he had done badly, with just seven percent undecided.
This is in just over the three years he was in power and two years away from a full term in government. Britain has a five year government term compared with Taiwan’s four years.
There were myriad reasons I decided to leave the country of my birth 25 years ago and unfortunately my gut feeling about how things were going then, have turned out to be not only frighteningly accurate, but far worse than I imagined. Politicians with no moral compass were common then, now they seem to have reached plague proportions.
The unedifying cat-fight between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss for the top UK job exemplifies this, with both hurling promises around which are unaffordable, would damage and already weak economy or are just downright stupid. All they want is the top job and the consequences can go hang.
Pledges to slash taxes by Conservative leadership candidates are unrealistic unless they are matched by spending cuts. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said large, permanent tax cuts could add to pressures on the public purse as the economic outlook deteriorates.
Both Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have promised tax cuts but say their plans are affordable. They are both wrong, lying, or both. It is abundantly clear that all they want is the top job and are both paying lip service to reality in their quest for it.
I don’t want to sound too cynical, but it’s hard not to be if you take the UK as an example of a democracy gone astray. What worries me is that my adopted country Taiwan has more than its fair share of loose-lipped, over promising, unrealistic and just plain stupid politicians.
Let’s take the Taipei Mayor who in 2014 said he was going to make Taipei surpass Singapore in eight years. Two years later he said it was impossible for Taipei to be like Singapore and that it should be more like the Netherlands. This week the Deputy Taipei Mayor said she would make Zhongxiao East Road like the Champs-Élysées in Paris.
Let’s just let that nonsense sink in for a few seconds….
Would anyone in their right mind take any of these statements seriously? Or believe them to be possible? Or believe it was necessary to achieve such a state of affairs? It is just politicians throwing ridiculous statements and promises around hoping the electorate will be fooled into voting for them. These are not serious people striving to improve living standards for ordinary people with realistic strategies over the longer term.
Someone running for Taoyuan has said he will make the government pay for the downpayment for young people to purchase a flat. There are so many holes in such a ridiculous promise I hardly know where to start, plus the government would just tell him to get lost.
It’s just empty words in a cynical attempt to garner votes and empty vessels make the most noise. Vote for such people and you will end up with the kind of mess that ordinary Britons now find themselves in.
Please don’t fall for the kind of nonsense the British people did and don’t think that just because Taiwan is a fully developed and relatively rich country that it could not all go to hell-in-a-handcart if the wrong people gain power.
One of America’s Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson, statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect and philosopher who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809 once famously said “The government you elect is the government you deserve.”
Britain, stupidly, gave Boris Johnson’s and the Conservate Party an overwhelming victory in 2019 at the height of Brexit fever….and are now deeply unhappy with the result, the country is being damaged and people are suffering.
Britain’s recent experience is a stark reminder to beware believing the power hungry, the over-promisers, the popularist and the unrealistic. Choose wisely when you vote, your country’s future is in your hands and is depending on you to do the right thing.
Tinkerty Tonk...
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