Except, it seems, when it comes to the Tories and COP26, currently meeting in Glasgow. The government are all over the place. Boris Johnson's behaviour, for instance, is proving more erratic than usual. When he should have been single-mindedly pushing the conference at last week's G20, he couldn't resist getting sidetracked by the French fishing row and contriving an awkward photo opportunity. This while he intoned about the seriousness of the climate crisis, wibbling about humanity being 5-1 down at half time and, yesterday, falsely claiming the Roman Empire was brought down by immigration. This morning we were "one minute to midnight", and by this afternoon he was asleep in the auditorium, catching 40 winks before a private jet whisked him back to London.
A shambling performance, and one unlikely to inspire confidence among green-minded voters, so-called green business, nor for the climate sceptics inhabiting the Tory party's extended universe. But his own incoherence and disdain mirrors the contradictory web the Conservatives are caught in. The so-called levelling up agenda talks a lot about green jobs and green industry, but Rishi Sunak's October budget passed nary a whisper about the issue. Indeed, cutting duty on internal flights isn't a policy that telegraphs climate change mitigation. It's starting to look like the chancellor is exhibiting a pattern of behaviour. Meanwhile, the legs of green modernisation are yet to find the trousers of delivery. The promises and the yacking are uttered as frequently as the deficit and long term economic plan once did from Tory lips, and it's difficult to see them ever coming to fruition. The Conservatives are the party of the worst polluters, after all.
Here are the filters we need to apply when considering the Tory politics of COP26. As per Covid, the first priority is not the defence of people, but their people: the interests the Tories have faithfully articulated, prioritised, and defended. But this cannot be done coherently in the context of a slow burning disaster Britain is ill-prepared for, and responding to opposing quarters of the party's present electoral coalition. For instance, as Gabriel Milland points out, far more Tory voters, even among the rock solid over 65s, believe Johnson and co need to do more on climate change, not less. The sceptics are a minority, even if they have overweening influence in the right wing press and Number 11 Downing Street. This is why we see Johnson using colourful metaphors and earnest pledges of action. Because it has worked before, being showy with one's promises, provided the press don't kick up a fuss, making a spectacle of one's pledges crowds out the eventual failure of delivering on them. The circle is squared.
Because, ultimately, the forces arraigned against meaningful action on the climate will be satisfied with the Tories' performance. Sunak's budget, Johnson's mooning around the convention, the refusal to rule out new coal in Cumbria, jetting here, there, and everywhere, this says going through the motions of "green crap" more loudly and clearly than anything else. If there is an agreement at COP, Johnson will get the plaudits and he won't have to deliver any of his promises. And if not, he can make more noise about the UK meeting its obligations while failing utterly to do so. It's a no-pain position as far as he's concerned. Johnson and his kind will be alright when the floods come and stay. The rest of us? Not so much.
When it comes to Boris Johnson's Conservatives, most of its many critics are entirely at sea when it comes to understanding what is going on. Ideology, the wrong information, the wrong opinions, we've heard them all. Most are incapable or unwilling to get to the nub of the issue: class politics. It' s what the Tories are about, whether Brexit is the focus, a global pandemic, or taking up the cudgels against climate change. The incompatible tensions within its base, the vagaries and demands of political necessity and always finding the glue that sticks together their coalition best is the root of their frequent lapses into incoherence and incompetence.
7 comments:
Interesting article from OpenDemocracy on how the hard Brexit and climate change denial wings of the Conservative Party are regrouping to oppose and delay Net Zero policies.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/the-brexit-dark-money-lobby-has-a-new-target-climate-change-action/
«the first priority is not the defence of people, but their people»
Oh please this is the classic dogoodery moralizing that comes across not just to me as so hypocritical: from the point of view of business and property rentiers Labour/the left comes across as exactly the same, the first priority of Labour/the left is the defence of their people, workers and the poor, by shafting bosses and landlords with higher wages and lower rents. The standard tory vote motivator is "the socialists will rob us to give massive handouts to the scroungers".
Of course there are some big differences between the right and the left as to “not the defence of people, but their people”:
* There are many more of "their people" of the left, workers and the poor, than "their people" of the right, bosses and landlords, so it is much more likely that one was born as one rather than the other.
* The lives of bosses and landlords are already very comfortable, so a bit of downward redistribution is a lot less bad for them than a bit of upward redistribution from workers and the poor whose situations are usually a lot less comfortable.
* Often the right define "their people" in dynastic terms, those with personal ties to specific cliques, rather than merely on being business or property rentiers, while as a rule the left consider "their people" those in a given situation, regardless of their personal ties. A poor person who becomes a property rentier will not be as much as "their people" as someone born into it, while a rich person fallen into poverty will be much more accepted as "their people" from the left.
* To a significant extent more prosperous workers and smaller numbers of poor people also benefit the level and security of income of business and property rentiers too, something that small business owners and property owner-occupiers and landlords in the "pushed behind" areas should well keep in mind too before voting Conservative because they are afraid of "the communists".
* It is much more likely and much more damaging for a boss or landlord to become a worker or poor than viceversa, therefore it is in the interests of bosses and landlords, at least the lower rungs, to ensure that workers and poor do well, in case they fall into the lower classes.
So the left is not "kumbaya", all-inclusive, everybody a winner, and indeed the right and the left advance politics for the advantage of "their people", but there are rather meaningful differences as to that.
«the hard Brexit and climate change denial wings of the Conservative Party are regrouping to oppose and delay Net Zero policies»
As to Net Zero, things are quite complicated, for example thatcherism has done more than anything else for the Net Zero of the UK by offshoring all those carbon-based industries (mining, carmaking, shipbuilding, steel, ...) from the "pushed behind" areas to the third world. Lots of unemployed people is absolutely wonderful for reducing the UK's carbon footprint too. Many tories dream of a return to the 50s, the 1750s, with the peasants living in sheds with a very small carbon footprint, and the return of England to a green and pleasant land, highly ecological.
As to "Net Zero" one of the great advantages of rentierism is that being wholly redistributive and entirely unproductive, a doubling of rents or house prices involves no increase in carbon footprint, no additional pollution, as consumption gets redistributed from lower to upper classes, while a doubling of sales of a business usually involves additional energy consumption and additional pollution, as production usually must increase if sales do.
Also higher rents and house prices, by pushing "losers" and "scroungers" into doubling up into ever smaller dwellings might help to considerably reduce the carbon footprint of residential heating.
In an ideal tory England in which everybody were living off BTL profits and property capital gains and nobody had to work, the carbon footprint of England would be much lower than now. :-)
«Because it has worked before, being showy with one's promises, provided the press don't kick up a fuss, making a spectacle of one's pledges crowds out the eventual failure of delivering on them.»
https://scramnews.com/boris-johnson-pretended-left-wing-university-elections/
«"In 1986, [Johnson] ran for the presidency of the [Oxford] Union. Though nothing like as rabid as the Balliol JCR, the Union was sufficiently left-wing for it to be inconceivable for a Tory to be elected as president. Boris concealed his Conservative affiliation and let it be widely understood that he was a Social Democrat. [...] Boris got himself elected as president of the Oxford Union in Trinity Term.” [...] ““I’ve just the man for you,” I said, “bright and witty and with suitable political views. He’s just finished being president of the Union, and his name is Boris Johnson”. When I summoned Boris to ask whether he was interested in the job, he burst out laughing: “Master, don’t you know I am a dyed-in-the-wool Tory?””»
Keir Starmer has learned from the best :-).
Note: I don't think that Keir Starmer is a tory, more like a rather "flexible" whig who wants to chase "soft tory" voters as he finds them more compatible with whiggism than those of social-democratic voters, because contemporary tories and whigs are different types of thatcherites, while social-democrats are non-thatcherites.
Boris Johnson is the very epitome of the Indian proverb, "white man speak with forked tongue". Although I guess by woke logic the Indians were being racist!
Bojo the clown believes in protecting the planet about as much as Sajid portrait of a serial killer Javid believes in protecting our health.
To be honest, the same could be said of Biden.
At least with Trump he admitted he was a straight out climate skeptic, other than that there is no difference between Biden and Trump on the climate issue.
The ruling classes use the green agenda to force consumption onto us and to raise taxes, thus making it easier to control us.
There was a recent survey which asked people would they accept higher taxes to 'protect the environment' and the overwhelming majority said they would. The ruling classes have found a perfect way to make us compliant to their thievery. You have to take your hat off to them but at the same time despair of the working class servile dogs.
Say "Putin" to your dog, pat them on the head and give them your treat. Good boy!
“one of the great advantages of rentierism is that being wholly redistributive and entirely unproductive, a doubling of rents or house prices involves no increase in carbon footprint”
I think you are mixing up rentierism and Feudalism. Rentierism absolutely relies on a working class working to create surplus value. In other words rentierism is very much a part of capitalism, but is not, i repeat not, a substitute for it.
Doubling of rents and house prices are capitalist categories, which makes your next comment a wee bit off the mark:
“In an ideal tory England in which everybody were living off BTL profits and property capital gains and nobody had to work “
If by ideal, you mean they dream of this then fine but if by this you mean they are actively looking to create this society then you are nuts, under capitalism this society is not possible.
The last thing the Tories want is the working population not working! By pushing up taxes etc they force us to work until we drop. The goal of the Tories is to reduce our disposable income as much as possible, and to increase our fixed costs, such as council tax by as much as possible. This way we are forced to work for them. Of course, this being a capitalist system and not a Feudal one, reducing our disposable income reduces effective demand, cue financialisation! It also makes society very sensitive to increases in fixed costs. For example, in Syria where fixed costs are relatively higher due to their place in the world market, a bloody civil war was instigated by rising food prices.
What we are witnessing, in policy terms, is not the effects of climate change but the relative decline of the West.
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