…May 2024

May has been dominated by elections, in India, Taiwan, South Africa and the EU. Britain started the month with local and mayoral elections, which gave everyone the chance to give the government a good kicking at the ballot box.

And at the end of the month Rishi Sunak, who is still prime minister – but not for much longer – finally decided to throw in the towel and call a general election, much to everyone’s relief. Even Sunak’s own staff hate him – how else to explain why they had him start his farewell tour in the same Belfast shipyard where the Titanic was built, the perfect setup for journalists to liken his campaign to a sinking ship.

There’s no need for any of us to waste any time with the election campaign as we already know what all the parties stand for. Labour’s pitch is to be slightly less incompetent and less evil than the Tories, at least for a few months. The 15 Liberal Democrat MP’s are the only people – out of a population of 64 million – who think they have any chance of forming a government. Plaid Cymru are Welsh and the SNP are Scottish, which for the benefit of international readers are the little bits on the edge of England, so of no interest to the vast majority of voters in Britain. And none of us want to think about the cess pit that is Northern Ireland’s political scene. 

May has also seen several long running scandals back in the news thanks to ongoing public enquiries, underlining the lack of morals at the heart of the British establishment. Sadly history suggests that a simple change of government won’t make any difference to this. Possibly the most egregious of these scandals comes courtesy of the Infected Blood enquiry looking into how the NHS used contaminated blood in the 1970s and early 1980s, resulting in some 3000 or so people, who were mainly suffering from haemophilia, to die of AIDs or hepatitis C. The final report listed a catalogue of cost cutting, poor decision-making and outright cover-ups. Sunak immediately committed to paying compensation to the victims, possibly the only decent thing the Conservatives have achieved after 14 years in power. 

Then there is the ongoing Post Office Horizon enquiry, in which innocent sub-postmasters were thrown into jail when the Post Office already knew that their alleged fraud was actually caused by bugs in its own computer system. Ironically it’s becoming increasingly obvious that a number of the Post Office staff may also find themselves subject to a criminal investigation. 

Yet another scandal is also brewing over the brutal treatment of unpaid caregivers by the Department of Work and Pensions. These people are saving the government millions of pounds by caring for their sick relatives, often enduring great hardship themselves to do so. The DWP is wilfully bankrupting thousands of these people over minor errors in paperwork relating to allowances, mostly caused by its own overly complicated rules.

Luckily, Partygate returned to give us all some light relief, with the delayed appearance of the Cabinet Secretary Simon Case before the Covid enquiry. He was able to detail the despair of the Civil Service at trying to work around the chaos of Boris Johnson. And Johnson himself was back in the news, having been turned away from a polling station for not having any valid ID – a requirement that he himself introduced in a thinly disguised effort at voter suppression.

There was some good news for the British economy, with a drop in inflation to 2.3 percent. However, this was less than expected so the Bank of England has kept base rates at 5.25 percent amid warnings that gross domestic product will only improve marginally and not enough for most people to really notice the difference. The figures also show a decline in exports. More worryingly, although inflation is falling, this is mostly driven by a drop in global prices of energy and food while domestic problems remain static.

In any case, Sunak has managed to sink any joy over a possible economic revival by calling the election months earlier than necessary. That’s a clear signal that the government expects the economy to tank in the next few months; otherwise Sunak would have waited for more good news to give him the best chance of electoral success. 

An annual survey by the National Farmer’s Union has found that confidence amongst British farmers is extremely low, with over 7000 agricultural businesses having closed down since 2019. Farmers have cited the continuing poor weather with very heavy rain plus the fallout from the Brexit arrangements, particularly the loss of the EU Basic Payment Scheme subsidy. As a result many farmers are expecting to cut their production, which is already having an impact on the shelves in supermarkets.

Across the pond, Joe Biden has done a good job in revitalising the US economy but a terrible job in communicating this to American voters. Donald Trump meanwhile has followed up on his hit appearance in a US civil suit, where he was found guilty of sexually assaulting the writer E Jean Carroll. His latest blockbuster played out at a New York State court, where he was convicted of 34 counts of electoral fraud.

Trump has claimed that the justice system is heavily biased – which it is – but massively in his favour since he appointed many of the judges and they have repaid him by delaying all of his other criminal trials till after the election. 

This won’t matter to his core evangelical Christian voters, with their strong beliefs in religion and law and order, for whom a corrupt felon who assaults women and allegedly sleeps with sex workers is the ideal candidate.

It’s a different story for America’s major brands, which will now have to decide if they want to be closely associated with a convicted felon. That is not a good look for any business and may provoke a massive backlash amongst their overseas customers. 

Meanwhile, the Russians have enjoyed considerable success in their war against Ukraine, opening up a new front near Kharkiv. This has largely been blamed on America’s delay in sending military aid, which was caused by Trump’s supporters in Congress and led to the Ukrainians running low on ammunition. This all but guarantees that the Russians will interfere in this year’s US presidential election, since a win for Donald Trump will almost certainly be followed by a considerable drop in US assistance for Ukraine and further battlefield success for Russia.

David Cameron quietly introduced a dangerous new escalation to the war in Ukraine by suggesting that the Ukrainians can use UK-supplied weapons inside Russia. Biden followed this up with permission to use US weapons in Russia.

The Chinese president Xi Jinping has toured European capitals in a bid to stop the EU from imposing trade tariffs on Chinese goods. The EU has become increasingly alarmed at the Chinese dominance of electric cars, steel, solar and wind technology, which are all heavily subsidised by the Chinese state. The French have led the calls to be more wary of China, backed by the EU commission chief Ursula von der Leyen. The war in Ukraine has also made European leaders more aware of strategic defence needs. However, Xi was warmly welcomed in Hungary, where the government continues to distance itself from the rest of the EU over China, Russia and other human rights abusers.

On his return to China, Xi hosted the Russian president Putin. For now Xi is balancing two different and competing demands. On the one hand, he is ideologically opposed to the West and its democratic principles and wants Putin to succeed in his war against Ukraine. But at the same time the Chinese economy is experiencing considerable turmoil and so Xi would prefer to do business with the West rather than risk sanctions. And of course Xi knows that the more deeply embedded Western businesses become in China, the harder it will be for the West to take any action against China.

Surely June will be better?