Yesterday, it was the former Sir Fred Goodwin’s turn to get it in the neck.True, the unfortunate (now) Mr. Goodwin had run the Royal Bank of Scotland into the floor by sponsoring anything that moved and buying out larger banks, then scuttled off to retire on a huge pension, but he was far from alone in visiting ruination upon the banking sector. Which is why the Establishment loves a scapegoat.
In truth, it is also the rules that are to blame. The United Kingdom has far too few financial regulations, poorly implemented, and although the dubious individuals who run big City institutions celebrate this fact as a positive incentive for the world’s great financial houses to set up shop in London, it’s bad news for the rest of us.
The domination of the financial sector in the United Kingdom has meant a relative lack of diversification in sectoral and regional growth for the past generation, with the Lion’s share of governments’ attention on London and its banks. In 1979, manufacturing accounted for 30% of Britain’s Gross Domestic Product. By 2011, manufacturing had fallen to less than 13% GDP, and along with this decline went jobs and the balance of payments -the difference between exports and imports.
To illustrate the difference, the Chinese and German manufacturing sectors, for example, account for 35% and 21% of their economies respectively. Watching Prime Minister David Cameron giving a lecture on economic competence to the Germans last week was amusing. This is the same Prime Minister that is happily setting about turfing police officers and local government workers out of their jobs at the very time they are needed most, and has watched British youth unemployment rise to over a million, with nothing but a word of condemnation for recent riots and ‘Occupy’ protests. The Devil finds work for idle hands, David. Who are you to dole out advice to others when so many of your own are drawing dole?
Not that one blames the Coalition Government entirely. Britain has no opposition, as anybody watching the arrogant, ineffectual clap-trap of Ed Miliband would surely know. Listening to his piss-poor criticism of a government that has largely continued to implement the policies of his preceding Labour parliament is an exercise in masochism: trusting what he says an exercise in stupidity.
Meanwhile the Liberal “Democrats” continue to criticise both Government policy, despite – curiously – being a part of the Government, and hurling opprobrium at all other sides of the House with their usual haphazard abandon. It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. It is a failure in the political class that has allowed the world as a whole to crash into its current perilous state.
A corrupt and narrowing political elite has run away with this country’s politics: increasing numbers of Labour, Tory and Liberal politicians are from a privileged background, and no fewer than 23 of the 29 Cabinet Ministers are millionaires – several inherited from aristocratic wealth.
Capitalism has always been a brutal tool with which to feed the world, unfettered as it is by real social, environmental or political considerations. Yes, it is an efficient mechanism for allocating resources, but not the fairest, and requires strong and careful control if it is to work for the many, rather than the few who control it. Sadly, the politicians have been bought by the few, who have little to fear from either national, or international government.
Until politicians start caring more about their peoples than they do about the markets that supposedly serve them, the world will continue to be in thrall to the banks and other financial institutions that have so incompetently led us into recession. And Britain will remain in mothballs, with a downward spiral of people fearful of spending, and jobs, businesses and communities suffering as a result.
Meanwhile, scapegoats like Fred-the-Shred Goodwin will continue to be held up as an example of individual incompetence and misjudgement being responsible for our current problems rather than the deep systemic faults that run through many of our economic and political institutions.
