Braverman's Bullshit.

A couple of nights ago central London was unexpectedly subjected to violent disorder when groups of young people went rampaging about causing trouble, attempting to steal from shops, and so on. In response, the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, said that those responsible should be ‘hunted down and locked up’ (chilling shades of the hue and cry in that phrase, and eminently suited to the sensibilities of the smug denizens of the Tory heartlands.) She went on to say: ‘We cannot allow the kind of lawlessness seen in some American cities to come to the streets of the UK.’

Well, first let me say that I don’t want lawlessness coming to the streets of the UK either. But let me also point out that this is the typical knee-jerk reaction of a half-witted, bigoted, right wing politician: blame the disorder on the perpetrators 100% and don’t bother to look any further. So let’s look a little further.

Back in 1979 Mrs Thatcher began the process of turning the United Kingdom into something approaching a clone of the US. The old socialist-oriented, mixed economy was largely swept away and replaced by an aggressively capitalist, free market model. And that had a profound influence on the societal pecking order in Britain.

The old graduated, but fundamentally homogeneous, social order became more stratified. At the top it produced a tiny minority of staggeringly wealthy beneficiaries. In the middle developed a large number of aspirational hopefuls running around like scalded cats trying to keep up with received standards of wealth and material possessions. To the bottom sank another large number of people struggling to subsist, while the marketing forces continued to manipulate them into not only wanting, but feeling entitled to have, everything the middle class had. Only they can’t have those things without either stealing them or getting hopelessly in debt, for which the system punishes them mercilessly. And don’t let us forget that at its heart, big capitalism is essentially driven by competitiveness, selfishness, and greed, and therefore has to produce a few winners and a lot of losers. We all know by now - or should do - that the American Dream is, and always was, a myth.

So what effect does this have on the mindset of the ‘lower’ class, a mindset to which they have largely been conditioned from birth and therefore consider normal? It produces tension; it produces indignation; it produces anger and the need to hit out. And it’s been growing ever since the days of Margaret Thatcher, the pale blue Tony Blair, and all the other Tory overlords who have been running the country for most of the past forty or so years.

So when Suella Braverman says she doesn’t want American problems coming to the streets of Britain, let her take a look at the way in which her predecessors tagged Britain onto America’s economic coat tails. That’s if she’s capable of understanding it, of course, which frankly I doubt.