Sock Free Hideaway

BEATS OF LOVE 

182. You Retreat in Time and Space by Boards of Canada

THE PRECARIOUS labour market began with Thatcher, but Blair embedded it, importing US-style agency work and creating a two-tier economy: security for those already settled, instability for the folk who came after.

Blair then embraced the freedom of movement and cheap labour for business. Adopting the right to settle rather than merely the right to work, a policy choice that encouraged far greater numbers of European migrants to put down roots. Meanwhile, successive governments bombed across the Middle East then expressed surprise at the refugee flows the right was already weaponising.

Until the economic crash one might have forgiven folk their anger; after it, they voted for the very austerity that bled them dry. Austerity was a supposed temporary measure that got a minority extremely wealthy at their expense. It is little wonder that Brexit, the Covid contracts, the Russian energy windfall, and Truss's budget all followed in sequence, each one another extraction by the same minority that has become addicted to exploiting public credulity. Farage's method is simpler: amplify the grievance, then quietly hold the door open for the robbers. 

Reform will need three full terms before it can govern the way it wants. The way Trump can at the moment. It will invoke the threat of civil unrest to intimidate both the courts and the Lords into compliance. Before the courts and the Lords finally yield, enough folk will concede that they've fallen for bite-size misinformation on social media and voted, repeatedly and badly, for a generation. 

If only Labour had the sense to ban voters from social media and not children.