From London
Either a government’s 100-day honeymoon is an urban media myth, or British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is the exception to the rule. Not even the devilish seven weeks of her predecessor, Liz “the short” Truss, managed to get the Indian billionaire to benefit from that effect of hope that a change of government usually brings. After 13 years of the samethe British are immune to a magic pass as simple as face swapping to change their expectations.
The wave of strikes due to the economic-social crisis that began in June are a clear example of this phenomenon. The strikes were only suspended as a sign of respect for the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September, a few weeks before the inauguration of the Indian-born billionaire. With Sunak at 10 Downing Street since the end of October they have increased week by week until the general strike by public services last Wednesday. On Friday there was another railway strike: this Monday the nursing service (about 750,000 workers) and the ambulance service will stop.
There are 14 strikes scheduled for February. That is half of this month will experience a strike from some union those considered essential during the pandemic. There is seven more strikes in sight in March. The wonderful days of sweetness and tolerance of the honeymoon have not even existed. Like an ill-arranged wedding, the government-society marriage began to fall apart.
The Billionaire’s Deafness
Sunak vowed to listen to society, correct the horrors of his predecessor and return the UK to the path of prosperity. With thirteen years of conservative promises on their backs, society responded with skepticism or protest, with apathetic discontent or strikes and demonstrations.
Confronted with the public services strike, Sunak chose to buckle down in the typical conservative-Thatcherist discourse, alleging that there were no funds to cover the increases that were requested and blaming the opposition for the strikes. In an interview for his 100th day in government, Sunak said his main concern was inflation. “I would like to give a massive increase to nurses and male nurses. It would be the easiest. But it’s about making decisions. And right now the priority is inflation,” Sunak said.
Annual inflation quintupled in one year: today it is in double digits. Public salaries have been practically frozen since the conservatives came to power in 2010. Sunak has not budged from his position despite the strikes: he cannot grant more than 4% compared to the 10-19% requested by the unions.
The result is these staggered stoppages of public transport, education, public administration, municipal services and, most alarming of all, the National Health Service (NHS). According to the National Statistics Office, in the last six months there were more than 35,000 additional deaths than the average level of the last five years.
The emergency service takes up to 12 hours to see patients, the ambulances cannot cope due to lack of personnel. There are 10 per cent of unfilled vacancies in the NHS. The waiting list for operations and emergency appointments exceeds seven million patients. So far this year, 88,000 medical appointments have been cancelled: a percentage corresponds statistically to cancer cases whose early detection is essential for treatment.
In the midst of this situation, Sunak seems to suffer from chronic deafness. At no time has the word “crisis” passed through his lips, nor has it occurred to him to summon COBRA, the Civil Contingencies Committee that meets in cases of national emergency.
It is not surprising that Labor leads the Conservatives by 24 points in the polls and that Keir Starmer, Labor leader, without doing much on his part, leads Sunak in all measures.
There’s no money?
The Tax Justice Network, among other organizations, has remarked in recent weeks that the money to pay for salary increases is there: it is what businessmen or billionaires take to tax havens, or what they get from the very generous tax breaks they obtain.
An arbitral authority in these public debates, Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, pointed out to the morning The Guardian that the wage increase in the public sector “is not inflationary”.
Johnson agrees with Sunak on one thing: It’s about political choices. He illustrates it with one example among many others. If the government were to remove the subsidy on petrol, there would be an extra £6bn in state coffers which would “sufficiently give the NHS and education a pay rise in line with inflation” .
More cases of a dysfunctional tax system. The energy company Shell revealed this Friday one of the biggest profits in British corporate history: more than 40 billion dollars thanks to the rise in energy prices. Unions demand an extraordinary tax in accordance with these benefits that do not come from an increase in productivity but from a special situation in international markets. The European Union has raised $520 million from Shell as a “solidarity contribution”: the UK just $134 million. “These profits and these tax rates are obscene and an insult to the workers,” said Paul Nowak, general secretary of the TUC, the labor union.
The economy
Sunak received a chaotic economy from Liz Truss and managed to stabilize it. The United Kingdom did not fall off the cliff, but today it is in recession. Things are not going to improve this year, according to estimates by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF predicts that all developed economies will grow, including Russia: the only one that will show negative growth in 2023 is the United Kingdom.
The ultra-orthodox approach of the government and banking authorities is digging a deeper hole in this crisis. On Thursday the Bank of England (Central Bank) announced an increase for the tenth consecutive time in interest rates: from 3.5% to 4%.
The measure will have a special impact on the business sector and those who have a real estate mortgage: more than two million people. The projection is that close to 100,000 people will incur arrears in mortgage payments. In the air is the ghost of the late 1980s and early 1990s when an increase in interest rates ended with tens of thousands of foreclosures: people who had to leave their homes because they could not pay the interest and because the cost of the property was less than what they owed to the bank.
the other 100 days
The idea of the vital first 100 days of government comes from the crisis of the 1930s and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s decision to pass 77 bills and investment in that initial period to revive the economy.
None of that has happened with Sunak who chairs a party that has an extraordinary parliamentary majority, but is fragmented, dominated by tribalism and complacency, and without any alternative ideas to the Thatcherist neoliberal mantra.
In the second 100 days of government, now without a honeymoon that did not exist, a litmus test is coming: the municipal elections in May. If the catastrophic defeat predicted by the polls is confirmed, Sunak will enter the quicksand that swallowed his predecessors: Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Things are so bad that some are predicting that in that case the Conservative Party could seek a return of Boris Johnson.
