Surrealism and dark arts: Leaving citizens behind

The British Labour Party has just won an important parliamentary election in early July more by careful targeting of seats than popular acclamation, reinforced by despair with the Tories' record, enabling the Tory-lite Liberal Democrats to pick off Tory-safe seats, while the Tory anti-immigrant, ultra-right (the newly formed Reform Party) appealed to lingering xenophobia from the Johnson-Sunak era. Full disclosure: I am a member of the British Labour Party, concerned about its pre-election trimming of principles, opting for pragmatism in order to give hope a chance. It has been a conflicted place to be in—for example, over Gaza and capping the number of children of poor families who can receive benefits.

Those of us to the left of British politics have had a torrid 14 years since Autumn 2010. The fragility of social democracy has been exposed by the variegated forces of the established ultra-right, which have tempted the British public into their conspiratorial dreams of individuated freedoms. Trump's Project 2025 in the US is similar.

The cultural prerequisites of populism en route to fascism have been evident across our walks of life. Restless egotists, having personally accumulated via underregulated banking, corrupted capitalism, rent-seeking on a grand scale through preferential state contracts and tax evasion (significantly off-shore), seek to consolidate their newfound privileges via the temporary necessity of winning popular support until they do not have to bother any more. The winning of that support entailed finding an enemy of the people, othering them and heaping upon them the causes of all ills. In Britain, these restless egotists, acting straight from the fascist playbook, have not yet fully settled upon their bête noire. For a hidden some, it is still the Jews—a disguised target of the inherent racism of the right though falsely attributed by the right to the inclusive left.

Additionally for the right, all Muslims are tagged as militant Islamicists. Asylum seekers and immigrants are cast in the same light. The definition of "extremism" was continuously widened by the Tory government and used as the basis of exclusion from policy forums and crackdowns on protesters, forgetting that the Tory party has its own share of extremists, racists, and misogynists. Another potential target was anyone who, being relaxed about others' identities, was labelled as members of the woke culture. These targets for othering continue to be "tested" in the marketplace, with the owners and controllers of populist media hard at work experimenting with what trope will work best with a poor and insecure populace.

We resembled the Weimar Republic: our polity daily fragmented into millenarian factions seeking the support of the desperately alienated with nowhere to go. The mobilisation of hatred and blame. Brexit became an amalgam of othering. A lumping together of ghosts and shadows, like Don Quixote tilting at windmills with the support of Sancho Panza, more concerned about his next meal, just like a significant proportion of the UK population. Devotees of a freedom, but only for those who ironically desire to oppress others via negative labelling and violence—culture wars. The comfortable patrician and officer classes making way for the boorish corporals, as the new line of defence for Ponzi capitalism—beer in public, champagne in private. In the Weimar Republic, people stood quietly by, hoping their time as a target of such hate would not come, but it did. And as it will again in the US if a "wounded" Trump pulls off the election in November. That discourse remains in the UK, too, as we cower and listen to the latest oral atrocities of the Reform Party—our latest incarnation of the uber-right.

The Tories persisted with dark arts until their collapse at the polls, announcing another budget last spring. Facing the prospect of defeat, in how many ways could they sabotage the future over which the Labour Party might preside? Who cares about the people? On the back of rising inequality and poverty, the votes of those frightened but clinging to exploitative work matter: so, bring in the "appearance" of tax cuts for such "working" families while taxes and mortgages have actually risen.

During the election, the Tories accused Labour of seeking to increase income tax, having themselves raised it to its highest point historically. This "tax scare" tactic was used throughout the election through the honeyed words of "hard-working families" needing more of their own money, while duped voters flounder as public services are further cut despite warnings even from the neo-liberal IMF. With Labour long signalling the removal of non-dom tax avoidance to divert 3.6 billion pounds to the NHS and school meals, the Tories then parked their tanks on Labour's lawn with their own non-dom proposal riddled with loopholes in order to fund populist tax cuts, even though the polls indicated the maintenance of public services is preferred. With such cynicism, no wonder support for the Tories came down to 24 percent of a low turnout, itself the dangerous sign of an alienated society.

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A litmus test for UK’s Labour Party

Free and fair elections are no longer sacred in the UK either. The Tories worked hard on voter suppression within the UK by insisting there is widespread fraud, especially among Labour-voting Muslim areas apparently, thus requiring formal ID in the polling booth, which inhibits the poor—an estimated 400,000 denied the vote. Meanwhile, they extended the franchise to three million overseas expats who seek to escape UK taxes, banking on their bizarre pro-Brexit preferences!
During Covid, the Tory leadership behaved like Italy's Christian Democrats and the mafia in the past by fast-tracking PPE contracts through personal "VIP lanes" for their mates to make millions and then contribute as donors to Tory election coffers. Before this, they attempted to bypass the parliament by illegally proroguing it in order to use a statutory instrument for the hardest version of Brexit.

Strangely, these advocates of sovereignty had no compunctions of undermining it when it suited. And when the UK Supreme Court ruled on the illegality of their manoeuvre, supporters in the tabloid press owned by Tory donors headlined the judges as "enemies of the people." Also, they sought to extract the UK from international human rights treaties (some originally drafted by the UK) in order to remove asylum seekers to Rwanda as a deterrent to UK entry, and to separate families of visa seekers and to remove citizenship from long-term residents, e.g., from the Caribbean, without appeal. Meanwhile, such asylum seekers were corralled into camps, denied an opportunity to work and, ironically, to pay taxes. When challenged, the Tories used their "elected dictatorship" to legislate that Rwanda is a safe haven with a good human rights record (so not a deterrent then?) in defiance of another Supreme Court judgment! The laws to quash protests, e.g., environment, have become draconian. This list of activity from neo-fascist playbook can be extended. How should we think about it?

Some observers have referred to 14 years of Tory policy as planned penury, shifting more of the population to insecurity and reliance on voluntarism. Some concluding facts for the day of the election (July 4): the UK government debt was highest as percent of GDP since the 1960s; eight million waiting for health treatment for 18-52 weeks; four million children in poverty households; lowest rate of aggregate economic growth since 1948 and worse per capita; business investment almost 10 percent lower than the rest of G7 countries; fall of UK goods trade below G7 since Brexit by 15 percent; UK tax revenues as share of GDP highest since World War II; real average weekly earnings in 2023 below their 2003 peak (under Labour); almost three million food bank parcels given out in a year up to March 2023 (higher now); high economic inactivity including a surge in long-term sickness now to a record high of 2.8 million; inflation up to 11 percent last year, reduced to two percent for the election and likely to rise again; mortgages on family homes up by hundreds and even thousands of pounds a month; energy prices at record highs; local government authorities filing for bankruptcy, at least seven so far, due to cuts in central funding for statutory adult and child care; local council tax to rise by 4.5 percent, funded at the household level by alleged tax cuts on income; reduction in capital gains tax (i.e., for the rich) down from 28 to 24 percent (Labour now revising this); increase in licences for North Sea oil and gas extraction (now revoked, though a disastrous "pipeline" of agreed projects remains); new gas-fired power stations approved, and Tories fighting off a protest against a new coal mine; completion of new rail infrastructure in London, while cancelling links to England's northern cities; and a drastic reduction in UK overseas aid.

Only space prevents me from continuing this litany of failure, which sustains the Tory need for othering racial and ethnic minorities and immigrants alongside its "culture" wars.

I simply ask: in what sense was the UK, under the Tories for the last 14 years, a role model for anywhere? Believe it or not, it remains a rich society, the sixth richest economy globally. But only for its top two quintiles. Under the Tories, the emperor lost its clothes—if it ever had any. Its international rhetoric of "leave no one behind" is a hollow slogan at home. And now a Tory leadership race is seeking to leave more of the UK population behind.

Dr Geof Wood is a development anthropologist and author of several books and numerous journal articles, with a regional focus on South Asia. He is also emeritus professor of international development at the University of Bath, UK.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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