Johnson ally quits – or is manipulated into quitting
Sajid Javid has sensationally quit as Chancellor amid Boris Johnson’s cabinet reshuffle, days after approving the continuation of the HS2 ‘white elephant’.
Javid resigned after refusing to sack his advisory team – he expressed his anger last year when an adviser was sacked without Javid being consulted, but did not act at that time.
It seems likely that Javid was maneouvred into his resignation as part of Dominic Cummings’ push to surround Johnson with yes-men, even though Javid was hardly a challenge. Treasury Secretary Rishi Sunak has been promoted to fill the role.
In spite of Boris Johnson’s Commons majority, the sickness at the heart of his government cannot be hidden.
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Presumably he was forced to agree to HS2. In terms of economics it makes no sense at all.
Err, maybe. I never thought of Javid as the voice of reason though 🙂
If the BBC is correct – and of course this is a big IF given their appalling track record – then Javid was forced to resign. Johnson apparently required him to sack his entire advisory staff as a condition of remaining chancellor.This was calculated to humiliate him so he had no option but to resign with as much dignity as he could muster.
And of course Andrea Leadsom , Theresa Villiers Jullian Smith and Attorney General Cox been sacked today as well. It is clear the knives are out and I foresee troubles ahead for the Tory party. I would be gleeful about this but for the damage this government is causing and will continue to cause the people of this country who were conned into voting in the most obnoxious PM and hard right government since Thatcher.
Johnson went to the country promising Brexit AND a ‘brilliant’ trade deal. Just weeks later and it’s clear he doesn’t want a trade deal at all, he’ll opt for tariffs all round, in and out. The Slogan should have been ‘Let’s get a hard Brexit done’. It was indeed a con. Now Little Tinpot is on a Power grab. The Judiciary comes next, as promised. The worst thing about it is that the country will be helpless to stop Johnson joining the American- Turkish coalition to rid themselves of Assad using Jihadis and a now protected IS to do the dirty work. Three suicide bombers blew up themselves and others in Western Aleppo a few days ago after relentless shelling of residential areas and a major Turkish- Jihadi Rebel attack to try and regain control of the M5 motorway. Despite daily reports on BBC Radio 4 of children being bombed by Russians there is never time it seems to mention how the Rebels are busy fighting back including use of their favourite weapon, the suicide bomber. Once again we are at full circle, backing Turkish and American funded Jihadis to create terror in Syria. Yesterday the American Envoy in Ankara promised heavy artillery, funds and diplomatic support for Turkish ambitions to remain in Syria and annex lands they regard as Turkish. So what should we do when/if Johnson jumps in to that fray with jingoistic bluster and a pat on the head from the Big Tinpot in Washington?
Very simplistic stuff, Skwawkbox ! A much better, much more nuanced, analysis of what is currently going on around Boris Johnson and the Tory Party , and the UK’s , often deeply divided, various strands of the ruling capitalist class, is outlined in today’s Morning Star article, https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/e/johnsons-cabinet-reshuffle-and-capitalist-crisis.
In fact , Johnson, and Cummings, far from being in any disarray, are getting centralised control of The Treasury, that historic blocker of any expansionary spending by any government for centuries, getting direct control of the shambolic mess of the English NHS, and imposing discipline on the Tory Cabinet, in a way that should be a model for any future socialist government ! There can now be no doubt that under Johnson there will be a form of infrastructure building-led expansionary economic policy, which will breach Austerity spending rules on many fronts . There will also be major genuine new funding for the NHS – although privatisation will of course still remain a key objective . This will put the Johnson government on a collision course with the pro Austerity ‘balanced budget’ fanatics in both the Tory ranks, and on the Labour Right and Lib Dems. Johnson and Cummings and co, whilst being opportunist dodgy spivs all, fully intend to do enough high visibility pushing of big projects into the old, now Tory, Labour heartlands to try and get two terms of Tory government.
And what of our Labour Party ? If even half of the reports of circa 100,000 people joining since the Election are accurate , and most of these must be Right Wingers , given that most Left wingers (or Left Liberasl), were already on board, the outright victory of the boring neoliberal, trilateral Commission stooge, Starmer must be quite likely. Who are the 100,000 extra members ? Most likely Remainer Tories, Remainer Lib Dems, and the return of old Blairites, all determined to turn the Labour Party back into the solidly pro EU, ‘fiscally prudent’, pro NATO, pro capitalism, Tory-lite Party it was under Blair and Brown.
In other words Labour will become very similar to Macron’s En Marche Party in France , ie, ‘socially liberal ‘ (it costs little to be socially liberal) but economically highly conservative. It is of course a political model that has secured widespread street fighting and strikes across France for two years now, and will never regain our old Labour Heartlands from a Johnson Tory Party which is prepared to break the budget spending rules to at least give the solid impression of ‘doing things’ for the left behind regions and their citizens .
And that highlights the tragedy of what today passes for the Labour ‘Left’ , almost totally privileged middle class, and blind to the radicalism and opportunism and determination of the Johnson Tory regime, and its potential ability to solidify its 2019 electoral gains in our old heartlands. And too obsessed with the trivia of vacuous identity politics, and too contemptuous of our lost heartland working class voters, to get to grips with either the imminent morphing of Labour under our now triumphant Right , from a decidedly Left-oriented Party under Jeremy – back to being the ‘reserve party of UK capitalism’ again under Starmer . And that will be a fiscally conservative , deeply reactionary on foreign policy, Labour Party offering nothing for socialists to build on whatsoever.
How do massive AI job losses fit into your theory jpenney?
Your analysis ignores them, which is exactly what the 1% want.
They’re still pushing the old ex-truth that new technology means more jobs for us all after the initial losses of the ‘old’ jobs.
They’re lying about “exciting and fulfilling new jobs” to keep us hypnotised until it’s too late to stop tech replacing us all.
When the electorate finally understand that they’ll be pissed.
Voters’ present infatuation with BloJob is contingent on brexit delivering, so it won’t last. Voters are as fickle in their infatuations as twelve-year-olds.
The first time the Eton fuckwit makes a quip about cancer drugs being unobtainable he’ll be finished – and jokes are all he’s got.
Sadly things will have to get worse before people understand that:
1. The motive of capitalists is profit from production of goods.
2. The motive of socialists is equal distribution of goods.
3. In an AI future with production needing neither workers nor capitalists there is no reason or justification for the unequal distribution of goods.
The word “profit” could eventually fall into disuse unless we’re stupid enough to allow the 1% to dictate our futures.
You seem to be arguing a case that is entirely unrelated to, and irrelevant to the points I am making in my post, David McNiven. Strange ! This obsession of some middle class Left Liberals with the supposed ‘end of work’ due to AI is a complete fantasy. Far from the UK not having enough jobs, we live in a UK economy where there has been a net population increase of circa 300,000 plus each year for 20 years to feed the UK’s insatiable appetite for extra labour resources. That too many of these jobs are in low paid, low skilled, sectors is due to the policy decisions of both New Labour and Tory governments to turn the UK into a financialised and service sector economy, with an ever shrinking manufacturing sector – with its skilled well-paid jobs. Not a route the Germans, for instance have gone down. The UK’s profound economic problem for 30 years and more is its low productivity – due to underinvestment in advanced technology. We need MORE high tech industry, using computerisation to the max, not be afraid of it. There is no such thing as full ‘artificial intelligence’, and probably never will be – there is just ever more sophisticated automation – one of the bedrocks of the entire postwar unprecedentedly long capitalist boom ( a capitalist ‘Long Wave Cycle’ now out of steam and foundering due to that old problem identified by Marx, the Falling Rate of Profit) .
Your fantasising about the ‘end of jobs for humans’, is just that, a fantasy , with no basis in historical reality – any more than the introduction of early agricultural and weaving mechanisation during the industrial revolution meant ‘the end of jobs ‘ – just the end of some manual jobs, and the creation of new ones. In a sophisticated industrial society the production done by automation ( including advanced computerisation – or ‘AI’ if you insist) should release human labour to do all those endless caring/ people assisting jobs that a civilised society should carry out, and greater leisure time. But such a society needs to be democratically PLANNED, and not run for a small capitalist class – ie, only a planned socialist society ensures the periodic sectoral displacement of human labour by capital equipment does not disadvantage the humans displaced by greater efficiency.
But all that is all entirely irrelevant to the core subject matter of my actual previous post, which claims that under Starmer’s dead-hand Blairite Tory-lite New Labour style regime the Labour party will have no answers for our old heartland voters and will shrink down to a small , Lib Dem-style, fiscally conservative, middle class party of the South and big cities.
And by the way, the ‘motive of capitalists’ is NOT, profit ‘from the production of goods’ at all ! Capitalists only seek profit , nothing else, just money profit – and if they can avoid the tiresome interim stage of actually producing anything , they will do. Trading merchants for instance produce no new goods themselves, but just buy cheap, and sell dear. And a huge amount of ‘profit’ in our UK economy ie, surplus value , is derived for UK capitalists from the entirely non value producing parasitic chicanery of the ‘fictitious profit’ based financial sector ( a ‘fictitious profit’ essentially ‘systemically stolen’, via the processes of the money/goods/services exchange process, from the global pot of real surplus value production) . Still. let’s not quibble about your thin grasp of capitalist economics or socialism come to that – since you want to believe that ,
(a). genuine artificial intelligence exists, and
(b). that , despite the twenty year evidence of the year on year ever-increasing new human labour drawn into our UK economy, ‘human jobs are going to disappear because of AI’ !
“No basis in historical reality” is where your reply is most flawed – the history of industrial development vs. employment is indisputable but advances in autonomous vehicles, Amazon warehousing etc. really ought to give pause to anyone relying on history to predict the future.
Some people point to the imminent end of Moore’s ‘law’ as predicting an end to AI development but the hardware is already more than adequate.
There are estimates coming from industry leaders in this field of 40% job losses in all sectors within a couple of decades – in the Great Depression unemployment ‘only’ reached around 25%.
Tech-savvy 1%ers have been buying and building bug-out bunkers in places like New Zealand for a few years now in preparation for possible violent insurrection.
Industry leaders in AI/robotics have nothing to gain from pointing out the pitfalls – it’s the rest of the neoliberal world and its beancounters that are frantically saying “Nothing to see here.”
No informed socialist should be taking that line.
The trend may be noticeable by May 2024, but possibly only to those who care to look – UK unemployment figures will be obfuscated by the Tories and by brexit anyway, but global numbers less so.
Your ‘reply, is simply the baseless restatement of current panic-mongering middle class fantasy, McNiven. The entirely ‘robotised warehouse’ claim is a total fantasy. For instance, Ocado PLC’s current baseless mega share value , from selling robot shelf stacking equipment to other , gullible, warehousing and distribution firms is a total con – Ocado PLC has made only three years of profit in 20 years of trading. Amazon make their distribution superprofits via the hyper-exploitation of their warehouse and distribution workers, exploiting the low wage benefits systems across the globe where the warehouses are based, and by paying super-low taxes on their profits ! It is the superabundance of EU labour supply and lax global tax laws, that actually powers this super-exploitation, not technology.
And the entire ‘autonomous vehicle ‘ farrago is simply a giant con trick on gullible global investors desperately searching for high interest investment opportunities during this current period of ever-falling rates of profit. Most of the serious global car forms , like Toyota, are already admitting that self-driving autonomous vehicles as a mass phenomenum are in the VERY, very, very distant future – after years of research, experimentation, and billions of pounds invested in the technology. The best form of control for vehicles on the roads, for capitalism, and road safety, is the (low paid) human driver – and will be so for the foreseeable future. Only capitalist serial con artists like Elon Musk with his entirely Ponzi Scheme , Tesla corporation, (currently the most valuable car company by capital value on the planet behind Toyota, but has NEVER made a genuine annual profit, and only produces under half a million cars annually, compared to the many millions each by Volkswagen , Ford, General Motors), still pretend that ‘autonomous self-driving road vehicles’ are the wave of the future – displacing taxi drivers and lorry drivers , and private motorists.
Your problem, McNiven, as with so many on the Left Liberal, ‘Left’, is that your factual knowledge and understanding always runs way behind your desire to simply adopt a popular idea promulgated by the mass media, and cynical ‘futurologists’, busy ‘ramping up ‘ the share prices of Ponzi scheme hyped technology !
The future ‘jobs crunch’ due to automation is a fantasy, predicted for the entire postwar era, and still total bollocks. Fact for the day, the wage-earning proletariat only overtook the subsistence peasantry as the largest socio-economic class of humans on this planet in the last 15 years. The wage-earning global working class has never been so numerous in the whole of human history – because, despite ever-greater automation, of the still immense productivity of a capitalism in its cyclical downwave of profitability, the system still has an insatiable appetite for ever-greater human labour power . Learn a lot more about how capitalism works, McNiven and you could free yourself of some of these middle class western phobic fears.
And the California tech oligarchs (and the bandit Russian non-tech-based oligarchs too) are building their hideaways in New Zealand, and on remote islands, because they can now feel the ever-growing wrath of an ever more impoverished global population – impoverished purely because of their tiny class’s endless greed and luxury goods consumption, and possession of the bulk of the global wealth of the world. Not because of ‘technology doing away with human jobs’. They are afraid, as a more far-sighted founding Google billionaire said a year or two ago, of ‘the impoverished masses finally coming for them with pitchforks’.
Using apples to prove the non-existence of oranges again jpenney but I’m bored with this discussion now.
Except to say that my views are un-influenced by pop-tech punditry. My opinions on tech are based on a couple of decades’ observation of the electronics industry from an equipment repair perspective. Discovering some of the industry’s mis-steps doesn’t imbue one with unrealistic expectations.
You mistake your opponent.
No doubt he’s only too well aware that Johnson’s promises are pie in the sky and he’s getting out now rather than take the blame in a few months time when the economy begins what now seems to be the inevitable crash with tariffs imposed on EU trade. It might take 10 years to recover.
Economically HS2 is a dog of the first order. BBC saying that BoJo the clown wanted Javid to fire all his advisors! Fingerprints of The Dom on that one. Let’s see who’s next?
Any engineering or infrastructure project promoted by Mr Toad needs to be met with cries of ‘Another Garden Bridge!’ -followed by a loud guffaw.
… but, of course, the professional liars of the Plutocrat Press will cover his back as protection against the much-deserved ridicule.
Paul spot on with piffel and his regime.Promises,promises and nothing to see.He’s going to build a bridge from N Ireland to Scotland and its has much the same stink has the garden bridge in Westminster.Now the buffoon is PM the plans increase with his ego.Hoping that the ships sprung a leak and the ships sinking.Fancy building a bridge costing billions across one of the most treacherous seas in the world thats been used has the dumping ground for military and navy unexploded weaponry.If it ever happens it will be a nice gift for a unified Ireland and Scotland…….Yes 👍 we can’t pay a decent pension or a civilised social security payment,but we can give away billions to prop up a corrupt and bankrupt statelet?…region? Country?..county?or just a gerrymandered part of Ireland .to gain votes in a sinking ship with the first mate abandoning ship. I knew the ship would hit the rocks eventually,but a matter of weeks?Has Johnson sneaked in a few of our notorious vandels from the PLP??
BloJob appears to be following Trump’tler’s “how to be a populist dictator” playbook to the letter.
Probably just a coincidence …
For once, I reckon the Beeb got it right (WatO) – it’s about total subservience to No.10 as dictated by Johnson’s master – Cummings.
Given the self-styled genius’s (aka self-deluded idiot) record at Education, the country should be afraid. Very afraid.
The dirt blows out, the dust blows in….
This is what Sajid Javid published on his own website before the 2016 Brexit Referendum
https://www.sajidjavid.com/news/sajid-javid-only-thing-leaving-eu-guarantees-lost-decade-british-business
What’s that to do with javid being binned (To all intents and purposes) in 2020 after his about turn on brexit, once de pfeffel made javid his #2?
Or are you just finding yourself in league with the (former) views of yet another duplicitous, self-serving toerag?
Y’know? In the exact same way you say those who voted leave were in league with the other duplicitous toerag, de pfeffel?
The Toffee (597) 13/02/2020 at 3:46 pm · ·
Y’know? In the exact same way you say those who voted leave were in league with the other duplicitous toerag, de pfeffel?
Are you reffering to those who voted Conservative in the GE?
🥱
Toffee – Your inability to work that one out for yourself is telling.
Oh, look!! – rh has stolen your stock answer, steve.
Now THAT’S ‘telling’. 😀
The Toffee (597) at 4:09 pm
🤷♂️
SteveH 13/02/2020 at 4:33 pm · ·
”Are you reffering to those who voted Conservative in the GE?”
Your inability to work that one out for yourself is telling.
The Toffee (597) at 1:21 pm
No originality. No shame. No brains.
🥱
Boring.
I thought so too.
Yeah, says the whopper accusing me of not having any originality while copying my style of comeback to his alter ego..
You are the david baddiel to my frank skinner; the andrew ridgeley to my george michael. Stop it lad, you’re an embarrassment.
🥱
Late to the party as ever, just noticed “my style of comeback”
Give me your addreth, Violet Elithabeth, and I’ll thend you a ‘Barbie’ and a ‘My Little Pony’ to play with.
Methinks Uncle Festa and cheap and nasty Tory party are fucked, just the small matter of a financial crash to bury them completely
The focus on Javid is a bit of a distraction when you look at the wider picture. Notice that the Ugly Patel remains Home secretary. Then there’s Suella Braverman as Attorney General (see the Canary on that one) :
https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2020/02/13/boris-johnsons-pick-for-top-legal-adviser-takes-idiocy-to-a-whole-new-level/
If the previous bunch were bad enough, this is a steep downhill slope.
Meanwhile, Labour is being safely ignored, and bound up with the incest of the leadership election – the main focus of which seems to be saying ‘Three bags full,sir!” to one of the main strands of the Right wing campaign that permeated the election.
“Rebecca Long-Bailey has vowed to challenge the media’s “vested interests” and “ridicule” perceived smears against Labour if she succeeds Jeremy Corbyn as leader.” (The Canary)
‘As soon as this pub closes …’ … as the song went.
Bit late for that, Becky, after gifting the BoD a free pass and sidling up to one of their key shills!
RH – Was that before or after Little Becky declared herself to be a Zionist at the JLM Hustings.
To paraphrase Nye Bevan : If she (and any other) don’t know what Zionism is, they are too *stupid* to be the leader; if they do know, they are too devious and dishonest to be the leader.
RH – Keir Starmer was the only one of the 4 leadership candidates that declined to self describe himself as a Zionist.
https://labourlist.org/2020/02/how-each-leadership-candidate-fared-in-the-jewish-labour-movement-hustings/
As I’ve said many times before, it’s high time we disaffiliated all religious organisations from the party (there are only 2 of them). We are a secular party so why should Christian and Jewish groups have more influence than any other religion. I’m quite happy for people to believe in whatever ‘sky fairy’ that takes their fancy but I draw the line at religious organisations being given any political power within the party.
Talk about small mercies! But it’s a start.
RLB has really burned her boats. You have to laugh at someone who talks about ‘educating members’ (about antisemitism) when they have absolutely no grasp of the history and principles involved.
How about these chancers being given a hustings platform organised by JVL? I can see the excuses from here.