Shorting the Nation

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Marina Hyde's piece in yesterday's Guardian Journal highlights perfectly the underlying strategy behind this Government's and the Tory Party's Gadarene rush for the European fire exit under cover of the chaos and distraction due not only to the direct effects of the pandemic itself but also to the chaos and distraction ensuing from the Governments seesaw approach in its handling of the situation.

As she points out, we are leaving our biggest existing trading partnership in Europe and turning our backs on the largest trading nation on earth - China, a country whose just-in-time supply of goods and technology already feeds a very large portion of on-trade from this country, often into Europe. Noses, cutting and spite seem to be lexical bedfellows here; although until China gets it act together on its human rights record we are quite right to keep them at arms-length. How this pans out for the very many small internet-based businesses that use Chinese companies for that JIT supply chain is anyone's guess. That and simultaneously leaving Europes' safety net for an unknown and almost certainly negative trading relationship with Trump's America would seem to be very bad timing for the UK economy indeed. You would think, logically, that heading in this direction was pretty much a guarantee of national economic failure and you'd be right.

Except that those in control, either here or in the States, Brazil or anywhere else under the rule of an out of control libertine, have no actual concern for the wider economy, the working population or for country itself; disguising venal self-interest with tub-thumping and patriotism. Self-aggrandisement and short-term personal wealth-accrual will continue to carry the day while the spectre of Neo-Liberalism hangs over the world. The only outcomes of all this will be an increase in poverty, disparity and inequality. Add in the environmental impact of globalised trade and travel and we're heading into the abyss.

This can't continue. We don't have either the time or the natural resources to continue on this course. At least not in the way they would want us. Lockdown and the virus have made strange bedfellows with us; mostly in a negative, destructive sense. But, judging by the tone of the many conversations I'm sure we've all had and the consensus view of large sections of the media and the population at large, there is a growing general desire to alter the fundamentals of economic activity for [the general] good.

It is blazingly obvious to even the least environmentally-minded that atmospheric conditions have improved by orders of magnitude and the negative impacts on nature have similarly been greatly reduced since lockdown first started. Working practices for so many normally office-bound workers have necessarily shifted towards the home-as-office; which by some analyses has actually led to an increase in productivity while taking thousands of commuters off our transport networks, cutting air pollution and saving those involved thousands in commuting costs, not to mention saving useful time otherwise wasted just sitting in traffic, on buses or in trains.

People on the whole have readily accepted the limitations that the virus has inevitably placed on our perceived freedoms and  have got on with life despite them. While the threat and the guidelines we follow to mitigate its effects are clear, we at least have a collective direction we have perforce to follow.

Where we do see cracks forming however, is in the confusion surrounding the current easing of those restrictions, particularly in England, with the Prime Minister and his cabinet randomly and frequently switching between one or other contradictory message and matching slogan-set, simultaneously raising both anxiety-levels and an irrational desire to re-engage with a 'world' we have voluntarily lived outside of for months, to no real detriment to most. That this has required a temporary suspension of economic norms, necessarily upsetting the status quo, seems to be at the heart of the Government's anxiousness to restore economic order, as they see it.

The lonely and vulnerable,  including those whose businesses have fallen through the cracks of the support scheme,  have been disproportionately affected by this crisis and have been let down badly by their Government during its course. Unfortunately, those groups were being similarly treated before this kicked off. Survival of the fittest. A few old people won't matter. Disposable economic units.

The vast majority of us were prepared to hunker down for the long haul whilst there was some clarity of message. That message from the Government seems now to be, at least in England at any rate, that we'll be back to normal by Christmas and not to worry our heads about it, whilst getting back to work and school as if the virus is on the point of capitulation. It isn't.

It may be a cynical view, but with the hindsight of six decades, I'm prepared to air it with some confidence. Those pro-European libertarians, who were making so much on the markets whilst we were in the EU, suddenly performed a stunning volte face when the referendum went the wrong way for them; the smell of short-selling hanging all around the affair like brimstone. While shorting ailing companies for profit is a morally dubious but commonplace and legal practice that shores up many a fortune off the backs of the hapless or merely unfortunate; shorting your country's future smacks of treason.