No. 123 - A Political Assassination and a 'Cabinet of All the Talents'?
Dear James,
It looked like the perfect political assassination. No finger prints. No blood. Not even a weapon. By refusing to accede to Boris’s demand that he sack each and every member of his personal staff, Sajid Javid took the poisoned pill and committed political suicide. Quelle surprise! What a shock! Except of course for Boris and his unelected mentor, Dominic Cummings. While Boris did the dirty work yesterday, Cummings looked on, if not from behind the one-way mirror, at least from the darkness of his spiritual cell!
In the long-run, yesterday’s cabinet reshuffle went perfectly for the new team. Boris and Cummings have consolidated their power and can therefore attempt to rule like his friend in America on a semi-authoritarian basis freed from the scourges of independent thought or, to put it another way, cabinet disloyalty. The creative tension between No.10 and No.11 has been removed and the new chancellor, Rishi Sunak, at a mere 39 years of age, will no doubt be a reliable colleague of the new team. A new centralized command and control system will soon be ready for the fight with the EU and the threatened break up of the United Kingdom. They are battening down the hatches for the storms to come. No dissent will be allowed. This will be make or break with odds on favourite being the latter.
Across the pond, Boris’s pal Donald, is showing the way. Freed now from any further powers of impeachment, Mr Trump is letting rip. On the financial side, he is increasing his spending budget to 4.6% of GDP, an all time high in a period of expansion. He claims that this is ok because borrowing rates are at an all time low. And if Donald can do it, Cummings, sorry, Boris can do it. They are determined to become our first enthusiastic Tory Keynesians since Keynes himself and they do not care who or what they destroy in the process – including the Treasury’s traditional prudence and caution in financial affairs. Boris will spend in order to convert his new followers at the ‘red wall’ into permanent Tory voters. Only rabid disruptors can do this. That’s why we’ve got Dominic aka Boris and the Americans have got Trump. Hang on tight. The ride is just beginning.
And it could be a very bumpy ride indeed. For although interest rates are low at the moment and the UK and US economies are booming, no boom in history has finished without a bust. And one way to really bust a boom is to pump more money into an economy when it is already at full employment. But let’s not be gloomster, doomster. For the moment everything is running just fine even if last autumn the IMF said that 40% of corporate debt in 8 out of 10 leading economies would become unserviceable in the event of a recession. That would mean businesses in their thousands would go bust and hundreds of thousands of workers would lose their jobs. But it’s not just corporate debt. The World Bank recently stated that emerging market economies have just recorded a record £48 trillion of borrowings. In other words, debt stalks the globe and one day may strike. This is a high stakes game for Cummings and Boris. But hey ho, they are now fully in charge of almost everything and what they are not yet in charge of, they soon will be. And, if it fails, they will be just fine. After all, politics is just a game.
So Boris’s ‘Cabinet of All the Talents’ includes Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Michael Gove, Matt Hancock, Liz Truss, Grant Shapps and Jacob Rees-Mogg. It is to this lacklustre crew that the responsibility for delivering Boris’s dreams and Cummings’s revenge descends. We’ve got a lot to look forward to.
Poor Javid. His weak point was his sense of honour and responsibility, qualities that Messrs Cumming and Johnson know very little. Another victim of yesterday’s coup was Julian Smith, the Northern Ireland Secretary who was sacked despite having recently brokered a deal to restore the power-sharing administration in Stormont, amid great praise from all those who worked with him. Too good, too independent for a Cabinet of All the Talents!
So James, best keep your head down? The knives are out and any indication of independent thought will be severely punished. So, on reflection, I guess not too much to worry about eh?
Kind regards,
BH - Your Concerned Constituent