A few more years of this and we'll be a failed state.
If we continue with the gross corruption and incompetence
of Johnson's government we're going to end up flipping
from being a largely prosperous and stable nation,
into a nation in total economic, political and social chaos.
We're complacent about this because we imagine it can't happen to us
you know it's been so many years we've had a vast flow of money
pouring through the United Kingdom,
often seized effectively from the rest of the world,
and we think well this is the way it's always going to be.
But it doesn't necessarily stay that way
if you have gross misrule for long enough
then that misrule will turn your nation into a failed state.
Societies are destroyed by oligarchs that's why civilisations collapse.
Because you have a group of people whose interests
are completely at variance with the rest of the population.
But the rest of the population has got almost no say
in the direction that society takes.
And so those few people the oligarchs they drive that society into catastrophe.
That's just what we're seeing today with Rupert Murdoch,
with the other press owners with the hedge funds
with the property developers the people who've got a complete grip
on this government because they created the government.
They are the worst possible people to have in charge
at a time of national crisis.
One of the most extraordinary phenomena of our time is that in the midst
of the chaos of the government's mishandling of the pandemic
which has meant that at times we've had the highest death rates on earth.
We see the Tory parties polling holding firm 40% or so.
How could this possibly be?
We've been let down, betrayed, worse than any government has done in this country
arguably since the First World War.
And yet still people are inclined to vote for the people who have been killing them.
Why is this happening it's happening solely because of the relentless propaganda,
in the billionaire press constantly reframing what's happening.
Painting Boris Johnson as our saviour as this man who's come on clouds of glory
to lift us out of the slow of despond.
And yet what he's done is to combine the disaster of the Coronavirus,
with the disaster of Brexit and dump us in this nightmare
from which well it's going to take years to emerge.
And yet somehow people want to vote for him well that's because of the way
their perceptions have been fundamentally distorted by the press.
Without the relentless propaganda Johnson wouldn't last five minutes in politics.
He would never have become Mayor of London,
he would never have become Foreign Secretary,
he would never above all have become Prime Minister.
This guy is an inveterate liar everyone knows he's an inveterate liar,
he's a charlatan, he's a fraud.
In a system not dominated by dirty money not dominated by the media barons,
how could he possibly have survived and prospered,
it's only through them that he can govern.
He doesn't govern in his own right,
he's effectively Rupert Murdoch's viceroy.
And of course it's completely unsurprising that there's payback here.
Rupert Murdoch supports Boris Johnson's bid for power and in return
he gets the media deregulated so he can set up his own broadcasting outfit.
You look at these companies who have got coronavirus contracts
not even delivering the products or the services,
which they're being paid to deliver.
And some of them as Tory donors might have given
a few tens of thousand to the government they are reaping
hundreds of millions of pounds in untended contracts from that same government.
But above those immediate results you get something much deeper than that,
you get an entire political environment that favours your interests.
That favours dirty money over clean money,
that favours money over people,
that favours plutocracy over democracy.
And what this does is to create the most dangerous thing in politics;
which is impunity.
It doesn't matter what the government does they get away with it.
Doesn't matter how many people die it doesn't matter because you sustain
the support of Rupert Murdoch and Lord Rothermere and the Barclay brother,
and so you can get away with anything.
And that is the most dangerous situation you can have politically,
because it means that there are no breaks
there's no restraint on what a government might do
and that's how you end up with an elective dictatorship.
So you might have thought this is a perfect opportunity for Labour
to move in and say look this bunch of charlatans and liars
are only going to lead us into further disaster
here we are with a new narrative.
But instead we see Labour effectively buttoning its lip.
And Labour are saying well you know we've got to keep our powder dry
the election is three or four years off...
No sorry we're in the midst of a national crisis,
a huge national disaster bigger than any we've had for a very long time.
You've got to stand up and say here is the alternative vision,
here is how we can rebuild this nation into something completely different.
And we have a government which just wants to get back to
how things were before normal they call it.
How is it normal to have an economy in which a few billionaires
reap most of the gains of economic growth,
while people at the bottom become poorer and poorer.
How is it normal to be destroying our life support systems
in the name of economic growth.
we need a completely different economy and we have a golden opportunity
to create that economy now but Labour is not standing up and articulating it.
And by the time the election comes around well who knows,
the opportunity might not be there at all.
And it frustrates me to see Keir Starmer just dithering,
almost as badly as Boris Johnson dithers.
The only opportunities we ever get for sweeping political change
are in the wake of a major crisis.
After the Second World War for example there was a massive crisis
and we ended up with massive political change arising from that.
Because Clement Attlee was able to step forward and say
we need to rebuild this nation on new lines and he did that very effectively.
Then we had another massive crisis in 2008 with the financial crisis.
there was a golden opportunity there for Labour to say look
a terrible thing has happened to stop this from happening again
we need to rebuild this nation on different lines but it failed to do that
it just tried to get things back to the way they were before,
the disastrous way that they were before.
And now it's happening again here we are in the midst of an enormous crisis
greater than any since the Second World War and far from standing up
and articulating that alternative Labour is effectively nodding along
with the outrageous system that we have normalised suggesting a few tweaks
but not suggesting systemic change which is what we currently need.
Now the government with the help of the billionaire press
is very good at just brushing things under the carpet.
But can you really brush 100,000 deaths under the carpet?
Can you really brush under the carpet all the people with long Covid?
All the people whose livelihoods have been completely destroyed
by the government's failure to get a grip on the pandemic early on.
Not if the people come forward and say enough is enough
we're not putting up with this any longer we've had enough
of being treated like the dirt under your shoe.
This is a time for us to come together and demand that alternative,
demand a system which allows us to have a much greater say in politics day to day.
And that's got to start with proportional representation,
and with getting the money out of politics.
We've just got to stop politics being polluted by big money,
which turns democracy into plutocracy.
And we have got to come together and fill that vacuum which Labour
has completely failed to fill politics abhors a vacuum
there are massive opportunities for people to put forward
an exciting thrilling vision of how our nation should be.
And this is our moment.
This is the time when we can press for systemic change.
But these moments don't come up very often
and horrible and disastrous as this has all been
we have to turn this crisis into an opportunity for change.
Gross misrule is the other pandemic that we face
all the elements are there potentially for state failure
so we need a vaccine for this other pandemic.
What is that vaccine?
Us.
Double Down News is an antidote to the lies of the billionaire press.
An antidote to the failures of the broadcast media
an antidote to the attempts by Rupert Murdoch and others
to grab ever more of the media for themselves
and to make us see the world as they want us to see it.
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