…June 2024

With a general election campaign in full swing, most British people have spent June dreaming of a better future, which mostly involves avoiding the news reports. 

The month started with the 80th celebration of the D-Day landings in Normandy, given fresh impetus this year by the war in Ukraine reminding everyone in Europe that freedom is precious and must be fought for. 

This message was lost on Rishi Sunak, who offended just about everyone by leaving the D-Day events early. Sunak’s campaign style has mostly been to lurch from one disaster to the next, from offending Welsh football fans to shambolic promises to introduce national service, in what often appears to be not so much an argument for government but more a desperate plea for help. He was forced to spend much of the election assuring voters that he still had the backing of his own party, even though many of his MPs have openly supported Nigel Farage’s Reform party. 

In the last few weeks the Conservative campaign has collapsed amidst a scandal in which a number of MPs and officials have been accused of betting on the date of the election. In the face of an almost certain Labour victory, the Defence Secretary Grant Shapps has suddenly started warning about the danger of allowing one party to rule Westminster with a huge majority, no doubt mindful of the damage that Boris Johnson was able to inflict on the country. At this point the Tories appear to be just playing along for the LOLs.

In truth, none of the parties have really made any effort to connect with voters or understand their day to day concerns. Instead we have had a lot of candidates making largely unsubstantiated claims about things like immigration or GDP, with little evidence that they or the majority of voters understand these issues. Perhaps that’s not surprising since British voters were warned during the Brexit referendum that leaving the EU would cause Britain’s GDP to contract by at least 4 percent, which was rubbished as ‘project fear’ though this is exactly what has happened.

I would suggest that there are a number of things that the next government should consider, which probably also apply to other democracies. The first of these is how to protect democracy and free speech? I would argue that we need to define free speech and then set out ways to protect it and the responsibilities that citizens have. Free speech should not include large botnets funded by unfriendly foreign countries to promote conspiracy theories and stoke division. Instead we should be reining in the social media companies and ensuring that they take responsibility for the content they publish. This would help to curb extremists, both left and right and return public debate to the centre ground, where most British voters are comfortable.

The second, and equally important issue, is the fair distribution of wealth. It doesn’t matter who wins the election because no party will be able to deliver on its manifesto promises since Britain simply doesn’t have the money to back these promises. Yet Britain is by no means a poor country. It’s just that most of the wealth is held by a tiny part of the population, so that most British voters do feel poor. Until this issue is dealt with, Britain will continue to be a divided country and people will continue to vote for the more extreme parties. 

Then there are all the other things that really matter, fixing the broken social care system, properly funding the NHS, sorting out the privatised utilities that have led to poor infrastructure for water and energy as well as the train network, not to mention tackling the huge inequalities in vast swathes of the country, largely due to the collapse of one industry after another. These are all long term problems that have got worse under Labour up till 2010, and then worse again under the Tories up to now. Most democracies, from the US to India, and all across Europe, have similar types of problems, and are seeing a shift to populist politicians because centrist governments failed to deliver. 

At least in India, the world’s largest democracy, there is some sign that voters are tiring of populism, with the recent election have pegged back Modi’s power somewhat. However, last month’s elections across the EU marked a decisive move to the right and revealed huge dissatisfaction with the current governments. The result is that at this month’s G7 meeting, the right wing Italian prime minister Georgia Meloni emerged as the only leader to have her electorate’s backing.

The French, no doubt jealous of the fun that everyone in Britain has been having, have called their own election. Macron is gambling that support for right-wing parties will wilt under pressure, which mirrors David Cameron’s reasons for calling the Brexit referendum – and look how well that turned out.

Meanwhile the Bank of England has warned that the sheer number of elections taking place this year, with half the world’s population in over 80 countries getting a vote, is creating economic uncertainty. The number of elections has created too many variable for central banks to predict the outcome and the likely economic policies that the winners will implement. 

In other news, the EU has surprised China by slapping tariffs on electric vehicles of up to 38 percent. This suggests that the EU has finally decided that China is as much of an economic threat as an opportunity to the EU. The Chinese government has threatened retaliation, which is less of a surprise. 

The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has finally been freed from prison after cutting a plea deal with the US government. This sets a dangerous precedent for journalists covering national security issues in future. The US government argued that Assange broke the Espionage Act and endangered lives. In reality he simply embarrassed the US, which should normally be covered under a public interest defence.

Meanwhile the Russian government is trying the American journalist Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges, that are widely believed to have been fabricated to put pressure on the US. It’s hard to see that working since the US has not demonstrated any great concern for the safety of journalists in the past.

Earlier in the month Vladimir Putin and Kim met for another date as the two men continue with their public romance. The upshot of this meeting is that even if the Ukraine war does not spread further into Europe, the world will have to deal with a much more dangerous North Korea, armed with more up to date technology and further destabilising the Asia pacific region. In other words, anyone in, say, the US, Japan or India, that thinks that the Ukraine conflict is just a European problem should think again.

Thank goodness we’ve all elected leaders that are more than capable of dealing with all these problems…