Callender

7th September, 2008

“The smell of death around this government is so overpowering it seems to have anaesthetised them all.” Polly Toynbee, Guardian, 6th September

Last November I warned against the consequences of the baiting of Gordon Brown warning that British oligarchy was intent of neutering government itself. That aspiration is now fully realized. Brown is still there despite his manifest impotence or rather because of it. The executive of the state power is there to be steamrolled and Brown has shown that he is permanent fall-guy material. How many other candidates are there for such a dubious distinction? The flickerings of rebellion fade without gathering momentum and nostalgia for El Caudillo, Blair, is back. Even Milliband’s flirtation with a war on the old enemy, Russia, hasn’t given him even a semblance of the stature of a national leader.

Perhaps that’s because Britain is hardly a nation; rather the rump of parasitic empire which has taken to feeding off its own corpse. Leading the way in this macabre business are the energy utilities, the beneficiaries of the introduction of the sacred principle of competition; competition for the lion’s share of what’s left, a battle in which no quarter is given least of all to the hapless figure of a British prime minister trying to save himself and his party from ignominy and ultimate oblivion. They continue to hike prices relentlessly reducing broad swathes of the population to poverty whilst paying out ever greater dividends. Read the rest of this entry »