austerity
Rishi Sunak Says His ‘Plan is Working’ But Voters Don’t Believe Him
Three quarters of voters do not believe Rishi Sunak's claim that his "plan is working" for fixing the UK economy, findings from a damning new poll for Byline Times suggest.
The British economy entered recession at the end of last year, according to official figures published earlier this week.
The figures revealed that the UK has gone through its longest period without economic growth per capita since the 1950s.
In the wake of two massive by-election defeats on Friday morning, the Prime Minister again insisted to reporters that “our plan is working” and he can “give everyone the peace of mind that there is a better future for them and their families”.
However, a new poll conducted this week for this paper by pollsters We Think found that 73% of all those surveyed do not agree that the Prime Minister's plan is working, with even one-in-three Conservative voters disagreeing with his claim.
The poll also suggests that voters have little faith in the ability of the Prime Minister to provide the “better future” for them and their families that he promised this morning.
Asked which of the two main parties would be most likely to make them personally financially better off, just 26% of those surveyed picked the Conservatives, compared to 48% who picked Labour instead.
Both Sunak and Starmer Seen as Flip-Floppers
The findings come after a tumultuous week for the Labour Party following revelations about antisemitic comments made by its candidate in the upcoming Rochdale by-election. Keir Starmer was accused of failing to act quickly enough in the wake of the revelations, before ultimately disowning his candidate.
However, while the Conservatives have sought to use the row as further evidence that Starmer is a “flip-flopper”, our poll reveals that voters are actually marginally more likely to see the Prime Minister in these terms than the Labour leader.
Asked whether they saw Sunak as more of a flip-flopper that decisive, 64% of voters picked the former over the latter. This is actually slightly more than the 61% who said the same of the Labour leader.
Voters were more split on the subject of Starmer’s decision to abandon his £28 billion green growth plan, with 54% saying it was the right decision compared to 46% who disagreed.
Three Worst Prime Minister of Modern Times
We Think also asked for the public’s overall view of recent Prime Ministers since Margaret Thatcher and the findings suggest that voters’ are least enamoured with the most recent occupants of Downing Street.
Among all those surveyed Liz Truss came top with 34% saying she was the worst PM of all those listed, followed by Boris Johnson on 22% and Rishi Sunak on 13%. The three most recent PMs were followed by Thatcher on 10%, Tony Blair on 8%, Theresa May on 6%, Gordon Brown on 4% and David Cameron on 3%.
Asked which was the best of the listed Prime Ministers, Thatcher came top with 24%, followed by Tony Blair on 21%. However, despite being picked as the second worst prime minister, Boris Johnson was also listed as the overall third best by those surveyed, showing how polarised opinions are about the former PM.
Rishi Sunak’s ‘Austerity Bombshell’ That Westminster Won’t Talk About
Today’s news that the UK went into recession at the end of last year is even worse than the headline figures suggest.
Although the UK economy officially shrank by just 0.3% in the last quarter, that figure fails to take into account the big increase in the country’s population over that period, due to high levels of immigration.
Once you take that into account the UK’s performance is far worse. According to today’s figures, GDP per person - which shows the real impact of the economy on individuals - actually fell by 0.6% over the last three months of 2023.
It gets even worse when you look beyond the last quarter. According to today’s data, the British economy has not grown at all, per person, for almost two years. This is the longest period without per capita growth in the UK since 1955.
The longer term picture is even worse than this, with the UK’s economic growth a huge 24% lower than it would have been had we remained on the same growth trend we were on before the financial crisis.
There are good reasons for this extended period of stagnation. A decade of austerity, Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic have all contributed to what has been the biggest real-terms fall in living standards in the UK since records began.
So given this grim outlook, you might expect that the Chancellor would be talking about bold plans to finally kickstart the British economy after 14 years in Government.
This is not what’s happening. Instead the Financial Times today reports that Jeremy Hunt is considering plans to make even bigger cuts to public spending after the next general election than those he has already set out.
According to the paper, "economists have warned that current plans for a 1 percentage point increase in public spending until 2029 are a “fiction”, as they would imply serious real-term cuts to some stretched public services.
"But people close to Hunt said Treasury officials were considering going further and reducing projected spending rises to about 0.75 percentage points a year, releasing £5bn-£6bn for Budget tax cuts."
This plan, which is predicated on the political desire to offer voters a series of pre-election tax cuts, would leave many of Britain’s already crumbling public services under the threat of complete collapse.
Now you might expect that such plans would trigger big public debate about the future of the economy and public services.
Yet despite Hunt’s slash and burn agenda already being signalled months ago in his Autumn Statement, these plans for a big new wave of austerity have so far received next to no coverage in the British press, outside of the FT, with most papers instead focusing on an endless debate about taxes and borrowing.
This focus, which has culminated in the Labour Party last week rowing back on its own plans to kickstart growth in the UK, is wildly out of step with what the economy needs and what the public actually wants. According to recent polling for Byline, voters in all parties now prioritise investment in public services over tax cuts.
Yet instead of having a big debate about actually investing in the UK’s stagnant economy, while restoring Britain’s failing public services, both major parties in Westminster remain focused on the same sterile debate about ‘balancing the books’ and ‘fiscal rules’ which helped lodge the British economy into its current slump in the first place.
The truth is that unless this changes, Britain's lost decade of stagnant growth and low productivity will only continue well into the future.
Labour trumpets endorsement by ‘leader’ who boasted of part in Truss disaster economics
40yr-Tory’s praise not the compliment Labour thinks it is…
Labour has put out a video trumpeting an endorsement by ‘former business champion and Cicero chair’ Iain Anderson for the austerity policies – disguised as the risible ‘fiscal discipline’ – of Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.
But – as with almost everything the red Tory regime tries – it’s already backfired massively, with Twitter user ‘jrc1921‘ pointing out that in 2022 Anderson boasted of his ‘almost 4 decades’ of being a Tory and his part in the ‘economic reform’ of then-soon-to-be Tory PM Liz Truss. Truss went on to have the shortest tenure ever as British prime minister – just forty-five days – and was ousted by the Tories for crashing the pound to its lowest-ever rate against the dollar, doing colossal harm to the UK economy and being the most useless and unpopular PM ever.
Starmer and co are clowns – except clowns are trying to be funny and don’t usually support genocide or help build a police state.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Labour’s ‘Intensely Relaxed’ Approach to Bankers’ Bonuses Tells Us a Lot About a Starmer Government
“Today - in the midst of their cost of living crisis - the Conservatives are scrapping the cap on bankers' bonuses", Labour’s Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves complained last October, adding that Sunak's decision to go ahead with removing the limit on pay “tells you everything you need to know about this Government".
Yet fast forward just three months and Reeves now appears to agree with the Prime Minister.
Speaking to the BBC, Reeves insisted that she has "no intention" of reinstating the cap, which she suggested would prevent her from being the “champion of a thriving financial services industry”.
In some ways Labour's latest U-turn is not terribly surprising, coming as it does in the same week that it positions itself as the "new party of business"
Yet if Sunak's decision to scrap the cap three months ago told us "everything you need to know" about his Government, what does Reeves' belated support for maintaining that decision say about a potential Labour Government?
'Morally Bankrupt'
Attempting to justify the decision on Wednesday, Labour spinners insisted to Byline Times that the Shadow Chancellor had only ever suggested that scrapping the cap should not be "a priority" for the Government.
In other words, Reeves' opposition to scrapping the cap was not one of principle, but merely of timing.
This is rather misleading. In reality Reeves had instead long portrayed the decision to scrap the cap as a basic issue of fairness.
Responding to Sunak's decision to push ahead with scrapping it, Reeves told MPs in 2022 that “at a time when he is urging wage constraints for everybody else, how can he remotely claim that that is fair?”
She added that while, "he is asking working people to take the hit... if you are a banker, a non-dom or a private equity manager, do not worry: Scrooge has not cancelled your Christmas."
Other parts of the party went ever further, with Labour's leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar saying that scrapping the cap was not just “economically illiterate” but “morally bankrupt”.
Sarwar stood by his previous description today, telling reporters in Westminster that “I am not going to shift my view on that.”
"I'm not here to defend bankers' bonuses" he added.
'Intensely Relaxed'
Not everyone in the party will have been as unimpressed with the about-turn, however.
Watching on from the House of Commons gallery today, as Sunak mocked Starmer's U-turn, was the former Labour Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, who once famously suggested that their party should be "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich" (as long as they pay their taxes).
For Mandelson, who still advises the Labour leader despite questions over his own associations, Reeves's comments will likely have been received as a welcome sign of a changed party.
Asked what the U-turn said about a potential Labour government, a spokesperson for Starmer added it showed that the party was now "focused on stability and certainty” for business.
Yet the problem with the party's newly-relaxed position on filthy rich bankers, is that by always prioritising business "stability" over economic fairness, the party risks boxing itself in should it form the next government.
As both the International Monetary Fund and Institute for Fiscal Studies confirmed this week, the Conservatives' current spending plans imply big and unsustainable cuts to public spending over the coming years.
In order to avoid the collapse of basic public services that would inevitably follow, an incoming Labour Government would therefore have to either increase borrowing, raise taxes, or both. And with the general public already suffering, the pressure to balance those tax rises on those who can most afford it will be hard for the party to avoid.
Yet by largely ruling out such moves, while insisting that their priority is instead about ensuring that bankers can continue to fill their boots, Labour is risking making the position they will inherit from this Government even trickier than it currently looks.
Opponents of the bankers' bonus cap point out that it was a mostly symbolic measure. There is little evidence to suggest that the cap actually reduced the total amount of compensation received by senior bankers, nor that it significantly altered their risk-taking behaviour.
But at a time when the rest of the economy is being told to "show restraint" in demanding pay rises, the obscene levels of pay still being banked by the financial services industry, should be hard for any Government, let alone a Labour one, to justify.
Yet by putting winning the support of big business leaders ahead of issues of economic fairness, Reeves and her party are making it clear exactly whose interests they are now prioritising.
Fiscal rules: a return to the past that condemns Europe to irrelevance.
[As usual lately, this is an English AI translation of a piece written in Italian, updated to take into account yesterday’s European Parliament vote]
After three years of near-inaction, and a few months of frantic negotiations, European finance ministers have finally reached an agreement on the reform of the Stability and Growth Pact., that is now being discussed with the European Parliament. At first glance one might think, looking at the ballet of percentages, safeguard clauses, classifications, that this is a technical issue, for insiders. Nothing could be further from the truth. What was at stake, in the discussion that ended with the December last-minute agreement, was the framework within which European countries will have to operate in the coming years to face the challenges that await them. Few things are more relevant today. And that’s why it was a bad agreement. A return to the past that condemns the already battered Europe to irrelevance.
The old Pact now relegated to the attic faced widespread criticism: for its baroque complexity and reliance on numerous, at times arbitrary indicators; for its emphasis on one-size-fits-all yearly limits, fostering short-term discipline that, in effect often turned pro cyclical; for its bias against public investment. Most importantly, the old Pact was consistent with a worldview where the state’s role in the economy had to be limited among other things by imposing restrictive rules on fiscal policies.
That world no longer exists, and this explains the opening, in 2020, of the reform process of the Stability Pact. The 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the calamitous management of the euro crisis, the pandemic and finally inflation, have shown that there can be no stability and growth without stabilisation policies, without adequate levels of public goods such as health and education, without industrial policies and public investment for the ecological and digital transitions. In short, without an active role of the state in the economy.
For this reason, the discussion among academics and policy makers (largely ignored by governments, which woke up at the last minute) centered around the necessity for a philosophical shift. The new rule, it was widely believed, had to change this and put the protection of fiscal space for public policies a the centre of the stage (ensuring, of course sustainability of public finances). A change in philosophy that was to be found in the reform proposal put forward in 2022 by the European Commission. Albeit imperfect, the proposal abandoned the one-size-fits-all annual targets in favor of medium-term plans designed by countries in agreement with the Commission, in a framework that would guarantee debt sustainability and try to achieve an (excessively) moderate protection of public investment.
That framework is still there, but it has been transformed in an empty shell. On paper, multi-annual plans and investment protection still exist. But Germany, reverting to its old obsession with austerity, has imposed a plethora of complex (and as baroque as those of the old Pact) safeguard clauses that will be triggered in the event of excessive debt or deficits (i.e., almost always for almost everyone) and which, overruling the plans agreed with the Commission, go back to imposing one-size-fits-all annual numerical constraints, sometimes even more restrictive than the old rule. Like in the widely criticized old Stability Pact, debt reduction is still the alpha and omega, and it is no coincidence that all frugal countries rejoice that the new rule will be more effective in forcing fiscal discipline than the old one.
The Italian and French governments, the only ones that could have turned the board over, settled for a bare minimum, some short-term flexibility, in order to arrive at their respective elections with some money to spend. A short-sighted and depressing strategy: the elections, and these governments, will pass, but the rule will remain and tie our hands, while China and the United States make colossal investments in the future. It’s all right, as long that those celebrating victory today do not to come and tear their clothes in a few years’ time, when Europe will have become even more irrelevant than it is today.
Labour front bench takes £650k from health privateers – more than Tories
Starmer and co rake in cash from private health donors – twenty-five percent more than the Tories
Keir Starmer and his front bench MPs have taken almost £650,000 from private health companies, according to a compilation of their declarations of MPs’ interests.
The totals accepted by MPs in Starmer’s Shadow Cabinet between 2020 and 2023 are:
- Keir Starmer £157,500
- Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting £193,225
- Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper £231,817
- Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves £14,840
- Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner £50,000
- Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy £1,640
- Total £649,022
Figures compiled by David Powell
The total accepted by Labour beats similar donations to the Tories by around twenty-five percent. Starmer and his health spokesman Streeting have vowed to extend the use of private companies for NHS services if Labour gets into government, while promising further austerity and refusing to say they will increase NHS funding to meet need, or increase wages for NHS staff, instead saying – just like Tories – that the NHS must ‘reform’ to be ‘sustainable’.
Both are also fully committed to the ‘Integrated Care’ programme of health rationing and incentivised cuts through withholding care – a direct import from disastrous US healthcare – that is wrecking the NHS even more thoroughly that previous Tory ‘reforms’.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
When Disasters Come Home: Making and Manipulating Emergencies In The West – review
In When Disasters Come Home: Making and Manipulating Emergencies In The West, David Keen considers how powers in the Global North exploit, or even manufacture, disasters in the Global South for political or economic gain. Though taking issue with Keen’s engagement with psychoanalysis, Daniele-Hadi Irandoost finds the book an insightful exploration of the global power dynamics involved in disasters and their far-reaching repercussions.
When Disasters Come Home: Making and Manipulating Emergencies In The West. David Keen. Polity. 2023.
Find this book: 
In When Disasters Come Home: Making and Manipulating Emergencies In The West anthropological writer David Keen attempts to show how disasters are exploited for political and economic gain. A disaster, as defined by Keen, is “a serious problem occurring over a short or long period of time that causes widespread human, material, economic or environmental loss”. Keen’s analysis deals with two types of disaster in the Global North. The so-called “sudden” or “dramatic” disasters are caused by stark terrorism (eg, the 9/11 attacks), natural causes (Hurricane Katrina), financial and economic recessions (crash of 2007–8), migration crises (Calais), Covid-19, and the war in Ukraine.
Keen attempts to show how disasters are exploited for political and economic gain.
On the other hand, “extended” or “underlying” disasters derive from long-smouldering conditions of economic disparity (eg, globalisation and inequality), considerable changes in climate (deficiencies in the domestic infrastructure), as well as political fragmentation (erosion of democratic norms, etc).
Colonial historiography assumed that disasters were usually confined to the Global South. Incidentally, in his investigative research in the Global South, especially in Sudan, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Keen discovered that the politics of that world were disposed to deliberately make, manipulate and legitimise “famines, wars and other disasters”. This state of affairs enabled certain beneficiary actors to extract political, military and economic benefits.
In his investigative research in the Global South, especially in Sudan, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Keen discovered that the politics of that world were disposed to deliberately make, manipulate and legitimise famines, wars and other disasters
Here, Keen sounds a note of warning. Democracies provide only a fragile protection against disasters, and for six reasons (according to examples across the globe): disasters might be deemed “acceptable”, vulnerable groups do not always have the “political muscle” to guard against disasters, opportunists may seek to maximise profit through the suffering of certain groups, “elected politicians” may “distort” information about a disaster, democracies “may give false reassurance in terms of the apparent immunity to disaster” (emphasis in original), and, finally, a democracy may itself erode over time.
In theorising disasters, Keen endeavours to advance beyond the traditional distinction between the Global North and the Global South.
In theorising disasters, Keen endeavours to advance beyond the traditional distinction between the Global North and the Global South. His purpose is to show that, in the Western world, disasters have “come home to roost”, that the violence of “far away” countries (“whether in the contemporary era or as part of historical colonialism”) has found its way back into the Global North in the form of “various kinds of blowback”.
These “boomerang effects”, to use Keen’s words, “take a heavy toll on Western politics and society” when they are “incorporated into a renewed politics of intolerance” (“internal colonialism”). In particular, Keen says that, in the Global North, we find there is an increasing drive for security by “allocating additional resources for the military, building walls, and bolstering abusive governments that offer to cooperate in a ‘war on terror’ or in ‘migration control’ – … [which] tend not only to bypass the underlying problems but to exacerbate them” (emphasis in original). Additionally, Keen alleges that the expenses of “security systems” suck “the lifeblood from systems of public health and social security, which in turn feeds back into vulnerability to disaster”.
there is an increasing drive for security […which] tends not only to bypass the underlying problems but to exacerbate them
As Keen sees it, disasters either “hold the potential to awaken us to important underlying problems”, or “keep us in a state of distraction and morbid entertainment”, finding it important to consider their causes rather than their consequences.
Keen draws upon a wide selection of literature, covering authors including Naomi Klein, Mark Duffield, Giorgio Agamben, Ruben Andersson, Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze, as well as Michel Foucault, Susanne Jaspers, Arlie Russell Hochschild, Richard Hofstadter, and Nafeez Ahmed, among others. He pays particular attention to the work of Hannah Arendt. Her 1951 work, The Origins of Totalitarianism is a powerful and permanently valuable account of the way in which politics is framed “as a choice between a ‘lesser evil’ and some allegedly more disastrous alternative”.
[Arendt’s] 1951 work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, is a powerful and permanently valuable account of the way in which politics is framed ‘as a choice between a ‘lesser evil’ and some allegedly more disastrous alternative’.
Keen competently summarises her exposition of “action as propaganda,” upon which reality is prepared to conform to “delusions”. From his point of view, “action as propaganda” is represented by five distinct methods namely, “reproducing the enemy” (war on terror), “creating inhuman conditions” (police attacks in Calais), “blaming the victim” (austerity programmes in Greece), “undermining the idea of human rights” (the growing emphasis on removing citizenship in the UK), and “using success to ‘demonstrate’ righteousness” (Trump’s self-proclaimed powers of prediction).
Keen’s discussion of these strategies to exert control resonates with contemporary politics in the UK. One is reminded of the retrogressive character of Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s article for the Times on 8 November 2023, in the context of the Israel-Hamas war and the Armistice Day, suggesting that pro-Palestine protesters are “hate marchers”, and that the police operate with a “double standard” in the way they handle pro-Palestinian marches. This is, of course, one example of the insidious process of “painting dissent as extremism”.
Nevertheless, Keen’s use of “magical thinking”, or “the belief that particular events are causally connected, despite the absence of any plausible link between them”, is one aspect of his argument that struggles to convince. Keen is persuaded that “magical thinking” links up with a well-developed science of psychoanalysis in accordance with Sigmund Freud’s conception of the magical and how people affected by neurosis may turn away from the world of reality. But the impression given by Keen’s economic or anthropological perspective is that he may have overlooked the complexity of psychoanalysis.
Keen is persuaded that “magical thinking” links up with a well-developed science of psychoanalysis in accordance with Sigmund Freud’s conception of the magical and how people affected by neurosis may turn away from the world of reality
Here, we come to two of the chief problems of what “magical thinking” really means. First, according to Karl S. Rosengren and Jason A. French, magical thinking is “a pejorative label for thinking that differs either from that of educated adults in technologically advanced societies or the majority of society in general”. Second, they found, “it ignores the fact that thinking that appears irrational or illogical to an educated adult may be the result of lack of knowledge or experience in a particular domain or different types of knowledge or experience”. It is necessary, therefore, to understand the writings of Freud as the product of their locus nascendi. That is to say, it is dangerous to politicise the processes of psychology, or, to be more exact, to apply them outside the formalities of therapy.
To conclude, When Disasters Come Home is a book to which all those interested in current affairs, geopolitics and development studies must come sooner or later, abounding in illuminating extrapolations on the ruling and official class’s exploitation (or even manufacture) of disasters.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.
Image Credit: Kenneth Summers on Shutterstock.
Cultural Famine: Austerity in the UK’s Heritage Sector Cuts Deep
Newsletter offer
Subscribe to our newsletter for exclusive editorial emails from the Byline Times Team.
It is, perhaps, a cautionary tale of over-consumption. In 2022, the UK was to celebrate its first ever food museum. In a nation burdened with a historical perception of infamously bad food, this was a culinary fight back. Housed in idyllic settings, including a medieval barn, watermill and bee-filled walled garden, Stowmarket’s Food Museum promised to tickle their visitor’s palates with a smorgasbord of cultural delights – from war-time food exhibitions to delving into the gastronomic history of British Empire.
Sadly, such visions have gone stale, and a bitter taste is all that is left in the mouths of its staff following news that the Food Museum is threatened with closure.
Suffolk County Council this week announced it would completely eliminate arts and culture funding from its budget by 2025. With a 100% cut to its spending on culture, Suffolk's decision threatens the survival of its vital cultural hubs, including the Long Shop Museum of industrial heritage in Leiston, Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury, and – yes – the Food Museum.
Many in the sector fear this alarm bell signals worse to come: a devastating trend for the cultural landscape of the nation facing cuts after cuts under successive Conservative governments. In an attempt to cushion the blow, Suffolk council has earmarked £528,000 of Covid recovery funds to help. But many say this is only a temporary measure, providing a stay of execution rather than a sustainable solution.
Fraser Hale, the Director of the Long Museum, says that it’s a slippery slope of funding. “The problem is that with a cut in council funds, the overall pot of money out there for all cultural support becomes even harder to access. Proving that what your museum is trying to do is a unique proposition becomes tougher,” he told Byline Times, "especially if the local council has said it won’t help. Grant makers are nervous about putting money into things that they are not certain will give a good return.”
The Food Museum staff are not the only ones facing famine. Hampshire Cultural Trust, a charity that runs more than 20 cultural venues across the county, has confirmed it may be forced to shut down four museums and one arts centre in response to local authority funding cuts. Hampshire County Council is set to reduce its grant funding by £600,000 annually until 2027, down from £2.5m. The trust also faces another £400,000 grant reduction after taking over the management of Winchester’s Great Hall.
Government Phases Out COVID Funding as Hospital Admissions Rise
The considerable upcoming reduction in spending calls into question the Government’s ‘Living with COVID’ strategy
Karam Bales and David Hencke
From Nottingham to Middlesbrough, councils are considering or implementing deep cuts to cultural budgets. Nottingham City Council, amidst bankruptcy woes, has proposed eliminating its entire cultural budget, while Middlesbrough Council is debating a withdrawal from the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum, potentially leaving the Dorman Museum as the sole custodian of the town's heritage.
The Local Government Association has highlighted the precarious position of councils caught in the "eye of an inflationary storm," with a £4 billion funding gap looming over the next two years. And such threatened closures signal the hard reality that cultural institutions are all-too-often often the first to go in budget slaughters.
The entire sector is feeling the pinch. A number of museums have already been forced to close under a range of funding cutbacks. Last October, the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture (MoDA) was forced to find new space for its collections following the decision by Middlesex University to close the institution. Around the same time, the Camden-based Jewish Museum of London shut its doors following a sharp drop of income in the pandemic and ever-decreasing visitor numbers. Similarly, the Bath Postal Museum had to close up shop after 44 years – just months after its founder, Audrey Swindells MBE, passed away. And the Florence Nightingale Museum in Southwark was forced to close during the pandemic, only just re-opening on a part-time basis.
Those that can stay open are feeling a terrible belt-tightening. In 2023, the staff of The Burrell Collection in Glasgow's Pollok Park and the Kelvingrove Museum went on strike, downing tools in protest over threats to their gallery’s curators and conservators. Glasgow Life, which runs the city's museums, has said it needed to make cuts of some £7.1m. Of painful note, the Burrell Collection won the Art Fund Museum of the Year award last year.
All of this, perhaps ironically, comes against a backdrop of nationwide increases in museum visits with some institutions even surpassing their pre-pandemic attendance figures. Just as the UK seeks to find its post-pandemic cultural feet, money for the sector has become too tight to mention.
Don't miss a story
The Museums Association (MA) has waded into the debate, calling for new public investment in museums, with director Sharon Heal saying in her recent Museum Manifesto: “Decades of funding cuts have put museums in a vulnerable position of managed decline, where reduction of services and closure are the only options.”
“We are calling for a fair and long-term funding settlement for local government to enable local authorities to support and invest in their museums,” she said. But words, in the face of years of catastrophic misspending and cuts by councils may not be enough.
One museum manager who works for a local council-funded museum, told Byline Times that “the future of the very institution hangs in the balance. These are the places that hold the history of the United Kingdom and the memories of society and community.”
“It is well known within the sector that museum workers are, without doubt, over-worked and under-paid. We often hold three or more roles within a single job title,” they said. “As we are facing a potential collapse in local authority funded museums, arts and culture across the UK, it is no doubt that this comes from years of Conservative austerity and ineptitude of government.”
As the Food Museum is threatened with the chop, the wider cultural sector and its communities and leaders are left to wonder what the future holds for the nation's heritage. And to contemplate just how far the promises of a prosperous post-Brexit Britain have fallen short.
As one museum manager told Byline Times: “We are fearful of losing our jobs but even more, we are frightened of losing the history of the nation that we have worked so incredibly hard to keep alive for future generations.”
Wolfgang Schäuble’s Ideas are Alive and Kicking
[As usual lately, this is an English AI translation of a piece written for the Italian Daily Domani]
Wolfgang Schäuble was a central figure in the German political landscape. A member of parliament for the centre-right Christian Democrats party from 1972 until his death on Tuesday evening at the age of 81, he was very close to Chancellor Helmut Kohl and, as a lawyer, one of the negotiators of the treaty that brought about the reunification with East Germany. But it was with Angela Merkel as Chancellor that Schäuble became known beyond national borders. For a few years Minister of the Interior, he was appointed Minister of Finance in 2009, a few weeks before the revelations about the state of Greek public finances that triggered the sovereign debt crisis. Since then, he has been one of the central figures in the calamitous management of the crisis. A staunch pro-European, he has nevertheless always been convinced, in homage to the ordoliberal doctrine, that integration could only be achieved by harnessing the European economy in a dense network of rules that would guarantee the public and private thrift necessary to make the EU competitive on world markets. Schäuble was the main standard-bearer of the “Berlin View” (or Brussels or Frankfurt, being adopted by the heads of the European Commission and the ECB of the time) which attributed the debt crisis to the fiscal profligacy and lack of reforms of the so-called “peripheral” EMU countries. A narrative about the crisis that forced “homework” (austerity and structural reforms) on the countries in crisis: we owe to Schäuble’s intransigence, backed by Angela Merkel, the Commission and the ECB (and sometimes against the IMF, which often had a more pragmatic approach), the draconian conditions imposed on Greek governments in exchange for financial assistance from the so-called Troika. In those years, he and the then president of the ECB, Jean-Claude Trichet, argued, against all empirical evidence, for expansionary austerity, the idea that fiscal restriction would supposedly free markets’ animal spirits and thus revive growth. An austerity that Schäuble imposed on countries in crisis but also followed at home. On the occasion of his departure from the Ministry of Finance in 2017, the photo of the employees forming a large zero in the courtyard in homage to the achievement of a balanced budget objective went around the world.
History has taken it upon itself to show the ineffectiveness and cost of that strategy. Not surprisingly, austerity is almost never expansionary and certainly has not been so in the eurozone. The fiscal adjustment imposed on the EMU peripheral countries triggered a crisis which for some of them had not yet been absorbed by the end of the decade. A crisis that, moreover, could have been less painful if the countries in better shape had supported the eurozone growth with expansionary policies, instead of adopting a restrictive stance themselves. The EMU is the only large advanced economy that suffered a second recession in 2012-13, after the Global Financial crisis of 2008. Not only that: since then, domestic demand has remained anaemic, and the European economy has become “Germanized”, managing to grow only thanks to exports; this contributes to the growing trade tensions, and Germany stands accused by international bodies and by the United States of exerting deflationary pressure on the world economy.
The narrative of a crisis caused by the fiscal irresponsibility of spendthrift governments quickly lost its luster and already in 2014 many of its initial supporters (e.g. Mario Draghi, who in the meantime became president of the ECB) opted for a more “symmetrical” explanation, according to which the trigger of the crisis were balance of payments imbalances of which the over-spendthrift and the over-austere countries were equally guilty. But Schäuble never backed from his belief that the only necessary medicine was the downsizing of public spending; Germany also imposed this view to its partner when reforming the European institutions (from the ESM to the fiscal compact).
With the Covid crisis and Germany’s staunch support for Next Generation EU, it seemed that the ordoliberal doctrine finally went into retirement, along with Schäuble, its proudest partisan. But recent events show us that this was wishful thinking. Schäuble would probably have approved the (non-)reform of the Stability Pact imposed by his successor Lindner, whose only guiding light is the reduction of public debt. Schäuble has left us, but the fetish of public and private thrift as a healing virtue is alive and well.
Video: SNP’s Flynn uses PMQs to rip Thatcherite Sunak and Starmer
SNP’s Westminster leader has fun at the expense of red and blue Tories
SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn caused merriment on his own back benches – and parts of the Labour ones – this week when he asked Tory PM Rishi Sunak whether he was worried that he might make history as the first Tory PM to lose an election to lose an election to a fellow Thatcherite, in reference to Keir Starmer’s nauseating praise for the late and unlamented Tory PM, Starmer’s hard-right austerity politics and his enthusiasm for starving poor children:
Flynn is funny. The lack of real political choice – pick blue Tory or red Tory – that the rest of the UK is stuck with by Establishment design is not.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.