While Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, like a jilted boyfriend turned desperado, is announcing a new policy every day, future Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s strategy has been to be as vague and non-committal as possible about everything, and get elected on the back of the Tories being so useless. It makes sense: the less he promises now, and the less specific he is, the more scope he will have when he comes to power to do what he wants.
Such is the topsy-turvy Orwellian world in which we live. Labour’s five missions—massive cringe—read like something that should be on the Conservative Party website. Labour declares upfront, first and foremost, that its “first duty” is “to protect our country – through economic stability, secure borders, and strong defence.” I’m sure this is all part of Starmer’s strategy to win over the middle and rid himself of the ghosts of Labour incompetence. “I’ve changed the Labour Party so we are back in service of working people,” he boasts. “Together we can change Britain.”
So what exactly will this huge change that is coming to Britain entail?
One of the few things Labour has been specific about is VAT on school fees. This has generated a lot of negative press, particularly in the mainstream media, which is heavily populated by people who went to public school and send their kids there too. But with only 7% of children actually going to public school, I guess Labour has figured, in these times of envy, that this will be a vote-winner. While it purports to be an attack on the rich, in real terms it is an attack on the middle classes, many of whom will now put their kids into state schools. The extra burden of this on an already overburdened sector does not justify the limited increase in revenues that will come from VAT, never mind the practicalities of imposing this charge and the schools that will go bust as a result. But extra revenue is not what this is about. It’s exploiting the politics of envy.
Nevertheless, there is one clear thing we can infer from it: the middle class is going to get shafted. Where it tries to be independent and self-sufficient, it will find itself dragged into state dependency. That is not change, though. This is a process that has been going on for decades—since the imposition of fiat money, in fact. And that, I’m afraid, is the broad brush stroke. The details may be different, but the direction is the same. We are going to see more government, more spending, more technocracy, more bureaucracy, more quangos, more regulation, more taxation, further declines in the purchasing power of money, further erosion of individual liberty, more state solutions to things that would sort themselves out perfectly well if government stayed out of it, and so on. We will also see further steps in the direction of supranational bodies, one-world government, and all the rest of it. Change is not coming. Continuity is.
So the absolute first thing you have to do is keep as much wealth as you can outside the system. Do not hold sterling, or any other fiat money for that matter. Yes, sterling is holding up moderately well in the forex markets, which know Labour will win, but that is just comparing it with other fiat currencies. Use gold and bitcoin as your savings vehicles. They will outperform sterling quite comfortably by the time of the next government. Make a note of what £100,000 currently buys you. It will buy you a lot less in five years.
If you are interested in buying gold, check out my recent report. I have a feeling it is going to come in very handy.
Labour’s Five Missions
Get Britain Building Again
Labour promises to “strengthen public finances” and “reform planning laws, so we build more houses, giga factories (SIC), windfarms, roads, labs, and ports, developing the skills needed to do so.” It will “reduce energy bills and invest in the jobs and industries of the future via our Green Prosperity Plan and Great British Energy, a new publicly owned clean generation company.” And it will build more homes (heard that one before?).
This all means more state: more state spending, planning, regulation, subsidy, and action. You don’t need me to tell you where that leads.
Switch on Great British Energy
“A new publicly owned, clean energy company that ensures jobs are created here in Britain to cut your energy bills, create 500,000 new, skilled jobs in the industries of the future, and deliver energy security.”
What could possibly go wrong? All that green energy stuff has been an unbridled success so far without a whiff of corruption.
Get the NHS Back on Its Feet
It promises to “pay doctors and nurses overtime to work evenings and weekends to cut the backlog, cut waiting times by giving the NHS the staff and technology it needs, end the 8am scramble for GP appointments, improve cancer survival rates, and reduce deaths from heart disease and suicide, with more care in the community so patients aren’t stuck in hospital.”
Sounds great. What’s actually going to happen is that further enormous amounts capital disappearing up the backside of the dysfunctional money pit.
Take Back Our Streets
Labour will put “13,000 more neighbourhood police on our streets, halve violence against women and girls, and introduce tougher sentences for rapists and new ‘Respect Orders’.”
More spending and, no doubt, more two-tier policing.
Break Down Barriers to Opportunity
Labour will “create a modern childcare system with breakfast clubs in every primary school, recruit 6,500 new staff” and further fiddle with a system that doesn’t work. (My edit in the interests of brevity.)
More spending, more intervention, more state.
I’m reminded of the lyric of a certain Specials song.
I’m already at 900 words and I haven’t yet got to taxes and the specifics of which ones are going to go up. I’ll have to do that in a part 2 coming very soon.
Despite all the pledges about fiscal rectitude and stability, and there are lots, the next government is not going to run a balanced budget. It might start out with good intentions, but deficit spending will continue and, at the first sign of crisis, it will print. It is always the way.
The increase in state and quango, meanwhile, will lead to an increase in crony capitalism and deter genuine free-market, wealth-creating activities.
Own gold and bitcoin. Don’t own sterling is the solution.
I’ll do a part 2 about the coming tax rises very soon.
If you agree with the argument of this piece, you might like Life After the State - Why We Don’t Need Government (2013), my first book, which is now back in print - with the audiobook here: Audible UK, Audible US, Apple Books. I recommend the audiobook ;)
And if you are in the Edinburgh neck of the woods this August, look out for me at the Edinburgh Fringe. I’ll be performing one of my “lectures with funny bits”. This one is all about the history of mining. As always, I shall be delivering it at Panmure House, where Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations. It’s at 2pm most afternoons. You can get tickets here.
How To Protect Your Wealth Under A Labour Government - Part One