Wednesday, June 28, 2017

London is Burning Again

THE FAULT LINES OF EUROPE RUN THROUGH LONDON, by William Holland, 6/27/17

It is becoming clear to anyone with even a modicum of political insight that London remains the epicenter when considering the mounting challenges enveloping the continent.  Every night for over a week, Islamists continue their nightly rampage through Jewish towns in London’s Stamford Hill-Golders Green section.  The government does nothing.  

May’s Premiership is dysfunctional and the neoliberal model that characterized so much of England’s economic success is no longer.  We’re in terra incognita; an edge vaunting toward collapse that aggravates polities.  By any measure, we’re in for a long hard slog.

While London burns, it remains deeply divided over how best to address its self-inflicted wounds.  British socialists throughout either chamber cannot acknowledge Thatcher’s achievements, for they never believed in market based solutions or privatization, deregulation or tax reduction.  The fatal conceit continues all the same.  Not even having London remain the center of globalization provides relief.  Who will emerge to master England’s terra incognita?  Theresa May?

By any sound recapitulation, the Keynesian demand side ideology isn’t working either. England’s welfare state is growing more militant while ever larger government led credit schemes falter to deliver growth.  One cannot look to trade unionism nor to industrial strategies for relief.  Does anyone believe that George Osborne will rise?

We should remember that in 1976 England was in IMF receivership given the ideological paralysis of its governing parties.  Thatcher’s aspirational conservatism was real as was her Soviet threat, both domestic and continental.  Certainly London can find the fortitude to press on, right?

What has come to pass for England is political misjudgment.  The impasse isn’t without precedent, however, no one wants a history lesson; but how is England to embrace what its governing majority openly repudiates. The fact is no policy short of economic revolution can save England.  Here’s why.

Tories have been ambivalent and divided over continental aims for over a generation.  The division toppled Thatcher, destroyed her successor named John Major and permanently weakened New Labor.  As of today, the breech is mended because the Euro-skeptics have won.  Tories who abandoned Cameron for the independence movement have returned, so why the mess?

The answer is discerned in viewing last weeks election as a referendum expressing public sentiment.  We’re living in a post-Cameron order now.  This is characterized as simple anger at the status quo embodied in failed neoliberalism.

The financial crisis undermined the public’s faith in governing institutions. No one can tell if we’re looking at a leveling of an old political landscape or a plausible birth of a new one.
Before anyone begins thinking in terms of a new order, remember what faces England now is the imposition of public order, the immediate reduction of economic malaise, raging Islamists and Brexit.  The outcome of how she manages will foretell British future. Get ready for a partial reprise of the ’70’s.

Originally published on William Holland’s Blog.


William Holland a geopolitical analyst & North American recruiter for Wikistrat, specializing in monitoring the nuclear posture of the Indian-Pakistani rivalry.


http://affluentinvestor.com/2017/06/fault-lines-europe-run-london/

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