Interviewed in The Spectator, the man who has been banging on about 'Broken Britain' for years - Iain Duncan Smith - was asked by Fraser Nelson ...

... if the riots will change Cameron’s leadership, in the same way that the 11 September attacks transformed Tony Blair’s.

"Well, I think he sees it like that. It’s been a reminder to him. He’s now determined this is what he wants to do.  [IDS replies]

" ... I always argued that the last Conservative government freed up the markets, but what was missing was the next bit. Getting society in Britain ready to meet that change ... "

... the globalisation of the British labour market is something he regards as fundamental.

"So much is now produced by people from outside the UK. This is a very expensive option for us because we pay for welfare, absorb crime and health costs, then pay money for people from overseas ... "

The problem has grown so ingrained, he says, because so many ministers ... saw reform as optional.

"If anything tells you that it’s not optional now, look at the 2.5 million jobs created under Labour out of which at least 60 per cent went to foreign nationals."

Since Cameron took power, I say, the ratio has been even higher ...

"It’s getting worse because we face the problem of having to reform a group that’s progressively less able to do the work.

"Last week was a wake-up call for us. But we should thank our lucky stars that we had one."

Spectator  17 Aug 2011

Riots show Britain in last-chance saloon

Unsuprisingly - since there 'no other game in town' - IDS does not question the root cause of the problem: capitalism in its early 21st century - fiat currency - incarnation, and the growing inequality of the corporate state.

Concurrently, the ONS reports that the youth unemployment rate reached 20.2 per cent in the spring of 2011 ...

Crisis deepens for UK's young

The youth unemployment situation will be compounded by the number of teenagers who will not get into university this year.

The number applying has reached an all-time high of 669,956 as candidates try to beat the rise in fees of up to £9,000 a year, coming in September 2012.

Today's A-level results will likely see about 250,000 people chasing just over 40,000 places in clearing, meaning a record 210,000 will miss out.

Many of them will face a dilemma over whether to hunt for scarce jobs, volunteer as unpaid interns, take gap years or seek university places overseas ...

The increase in youth unemployment is especially worrying because of the strong evidence that if young people can't establish themselves in the world of work early in their careers they will find it much more difficult later on ...

Ind  18 Aug 2011

Also concurrent, and on time to underline the depth of the 'Wither Britain?' problem, Unilever's CEO - Paul Polman - is reported as claiming that ...

"Europe and the US will be, for the next 10 years, low-growth territories, I'm afraid.

"So, soon we will have 75pc of our turnover in emerging markets – by the end of decade.

"[These are the countries] where 2bn more people will be born in the next 40 years, and obviously where most of the world growth is going to be," he said.

The Anglo-Dutch business ... currently secures around 27pc of its revenues from Western Europe.

However, Mr Polman yesterday identified Turkey and the BRIC countries – Brazil, India and China – as its fastest growing markets.

"We are by any standards the emerging market company. We are growing by 10pc or more now consistently in the emerging markets, and that's a very healthy growth.

"We can continue to grow at a 4pc-6pc range overall," Mr Polman told Reuters ...

Tel  18 Aug 2011

Broken Britain

With the coming of the credit crunch Britain's debt-based consumerism reached the end of the road.

With shrinking employment opportunities, a poor skills base, and the rise of the BRICS countries, Britain faces a triply whammy: it's need to lower consumerist expectations; its need to heal a fractured society; and its need to get a betrayed generation into useful work.

From somwhere it also needs to find the will, the leadership, and the cash necessary to undertake these three tasks.

Each would be difficult; all three uniquely so.

Not only do the 'good times' continue for the very people who caused the crash, but the evidence is that Paul Polman is right: the markets will be increasingly dominated by the BRICS countries, and the UK is an outsider.

The illusion of great power status, nursed lovingly by politicians from Eden, through Blair, and finally to Cameron, has not yet died, though it is to be hoped that Libya is the last hurrah. (As Suez should have been!)

For a goverment of Einsteins and Mother Teresas the job would be difficult enough, but for politicians who treated Ruper Murdoch - that essence of what methodological individualism is about - as a role model, the task is not simply beyond them, it is not even understood.

To IDS goes a tincture of credit for at least showing an awareness that that Britain is 'broken' - something New Labour rejected, btw - but as to why that is beyond him.

His problem was illustrated in a speech he made to the to The Heritage Foundation, Washington:

When the next period of conservative government ends I want the British people to remember us for other things too. For helping parents to stay together and to spend more time with their children. For a nation where every one has a second chance. For building schools that reinforce the values of the home. For respecting and nurturing the skill of craftsmen. For protecting woodland and other habitats of rich natural beauty. For helping a new generation to understand their country’s history. That’s the conservatism that will help make my country strong and contented again. The conservatism of Wilberforce, Shaftesbury and Lincoln.

Feudalism v Methodological Individualism

It's no longer politically correct to sing the original third verse of Mrs C.F. Alexander's appalling ditty on feudalism, as you will learn if you Google "All things bright and beautiful":

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

It's possible that IDS is an archeological remnant on the old "God bless the squire and his relations, and keep up all within out proper stations" school of conservatism which was the bedrock of the Shaftesbury wing of the party before Margaret Thatcher came along with her Austrian School economics.

It's certain she would have had little time for the romantic sentimentality in the peroration of IDS's speech, such as the reference to the 'skill of the craftsman', with its overtones of William Morris!

It's almost as though IDS is trying to create the impression that he has read that most anti of all arguments against the mechanistic modelling of human beings for the economic ends of the global élite: John Ruskin's essay 'Unto this last' is as relevant today as it was in 1860 ...

What is really desired, under the name of riches, is essentially, power over men; in its simplest sense, the power of obtaining for our own advantage the labour of servant, tradesman, and artist; in wider sense, authority of directing large masses of the nation to various ends (good, trivial or hurtful, according to the mind of the rich person).

And this power of wealth of course is greater or less in direct proportion to the poverty of the men over whom it is exercised, and in inverse proportion to the number of persons who are as rich as ourselves, and who are ready to give the same price for an article of which the supply is limited.

If the musician is poor, he will sing for small pay, as long as there is only one person who can pay him; but if there be two or three, he will sing for the one who offers him most.

And thus the power of the riches of the patron (always imperfect and doubtful, as we shall see presently, even when most authoritative) depends first on the poverty of the artist, and then on the limitation of the number of equally wealthy persons, who also want seats at the concert.

So that, as above stated, the art of becoming "rich," in the common sense, is not absolutely nor finally the art of accumulating much money for ourselves, but also of contriving that our neighbours shall have less.

In accurate terms, it is "the art of establishing the maximum inequality in our own favour."

John Ruskin

In other words, 'methodological individualism' is a pseudo-intellectual way of dressing up greed - and its essential corollary, inequality - to make it appear respectable, and essential: a state of affairs for which there is no alternative.

'Broken Britain' is the result of inequality - along with the absence of full employment - and in affecting to address the problems created, IDS - wittingly or unwittingly - is playing the 'third face of power' game, now an essential strategy for neoliberal governments.

Broken Britain will remain broken.

At the far end of inequality are the marginalised: those groups of unfortunates who are simply a drain on the exchequer.

They are - in Hitler's words - "life unworthy of life".

As yet the neoliberal social Darwinists have not adopted his means of, er, 'solving' the, er, 'problem'.

The third meltdown goes on, driven solely by greed, and a 'fuck you buddy' attitude to other people.