The Brexit debate stew bubbled over the top this weekend with the surprise resignation of UK’s eurosceptic pension minister, Iain Duncan Smith.
Smith’s resignation was carefully timed to bring the maximum amount of pain to prime minister David Cameron and chancellor George Osborne.
Smith’s Resignation Letter blasted Cameron and Osborne for forcing him to balance pension cuts on the backs of the poor, sparing the wealthy.
Resignation Excerpt
“You are aware that I believe the cuts would have been even fairer to younger families and people of working age is we had been willing to reduce some of the benefits given to better-off pensioners … The latest changes to benefits to the disabled and the context in which they have been made are a compromise too far. I am unable to watch passively whilst certain policies are enacted in order to meet fiscal self imposed restraints … It is therefore with enormous regret that I have decided to resign,” said Smith.
Political Chaos
The Financial Times reports UK Minister Duncan Smith’s Departure Sows Political Chaos.
When Iain Duncan Smith quit as Britain’s pensions minister on Friday, it was perhaps the most explosive resignation in the country’s politics for more than 25 years.
His exit, marked by his brutal criticism of the Conservative party’s leadership, not only weakened the government but cast a spotlight on what some members fear is a looming civil war within the ruling party ahead of the UK’s momentous June 23 referendum on the country’s EU membership.
Writing for the Financial Times, Bruce Anderson, a political commentator, described Mr Duncan Smith’s departure as not just a resignation but a suicide bombing.
Mr Duncan Smith’s resignation letter accused Mr Osborne, who prides himself as a political strategist adept at winning the centre ground, of indifference to the plight of the poor and putting politics before the good of the country.
On Sunday he added that the Budget, which originally contained cuts to disability benefits even as it cut capital gains tax, was “deeply unfair”.
Mr Duncan Smith’s attack may have been all the more effective because he hails from the party’s right. One Tory minister said: “Osborne is dead in the water even without the Budget.”
It may now be even more difficult for the chancellor to attempt further radical welfare cuts, leaving a £4bn hole in his budget as he attempts to balance the books by 2020 in line with his promise to provide a fiscal surplus by that date.
Broken Social Contract
This outpouring of rage is yet another example of the “Broken Social Contract””
Anger at the establishment explains the Donald Trump phenomenon, Marine LePen in France, Beppe Grillo in Italy, and Merkel’s Dramatic Setback at Hands of AfD in German Regional Elections.
Is this the year the lid blows off the simmering social pot in multiple countries simultaneously?
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
TV, junk food, drugs – the peasants are all at home, alone.
They’ll do nothing.
No revolution.
As long as they’re addicted to their screens, they’ll fall for anything, and everything.
http://www.cryptogon.com/?p=48456
There will be no revolution in the West because the people have become sheep.
No money for pensions for the poorest of the working class
Plenty of money for illegals, low skill criminal immigrants, free health care for those who never put a dime into they system, etc.
Why?
One group will vote for the most left wing “bigger government is better give me my free sh*t” party for generations
It’s just the people ranchers baiting in the new more compliant livestock.
The old ornery longhorn livestock needs to just…die.
Ain’t Dumbocracy a hoot!
Anything you tax you get less of it. In that regard I approve of punishing taxes on the poor and low taxes on success, wealth, savings, investment, and capital gains. Cameron has the right strategy to eliminate UK poverty and wealth disparity.
The beatings will continue until the morale improves?
Beatings will continue until the poor emigrate to more hospitably socialist Sweden, Germany, France, and Spain.
Jack – you know it is not that simple. If you want to level the field it means also eliminating the undue advantages of wealth, the financial and monetary supports for example that skew success. What we have now is a compensation to compensate another compensation that counter compensates another that… etc. etc.etc.The whole equation is so lost it is probably worth starting with a clean sheet.
One thing though, you beat the poor and you loose your country and business . The poor, the rich are people just the same and before all. I think the poor have the incentive and the means to create an acceptable world for themselves if they are not denied it.
Yes. As the US has demonstrated, the establishment on the left and right are equally adept at wasteful overspending to preserve their cushy lifestyles. The predictable cyclical economic downturn that comes with govt largess proceeds civil unrest, which proceeds the distractive war to keep the focus off the trouble maker – govt.
The refugee crisis; caused by the insane policies of the Nobel Peace Prize winner, the colony-dreamers in Europe, and the annointed darling of the Left; will be the convenient minority scapegoat, once again.
What we face is a socialist virus that has been deliberately infected on much of the worlds population. We have induced people to think they are entitled to be sustained regardless of their contributions and as wealth redistribution becomes more severe, we see our remaining producers under pressure, limiting their ability and willingness to produce and provide for those who will not or cannot. As we have seen, the virus eats away our our strength and induces the remaining producers to succumb to the call of entitlement that tells them they they too need not labor.
This has always been the fear and presumption of socialism’s infection, that there is no way to temper competition with mandatory and compulsory redistribution without this spiral downward ultimately occurring. Not that much different than most other moral conundrums which on the surface, in the beginning seem harmless enough until the full effects are in play and largely irreversible.
Delusion is dangerous yet always seem innocent enough at it’s start. Reality with all of its warts is our only savior as it is ultimately only our rational mind that can preserve us and that CANNOT WORK if reality is denied. If we refuse to accept reality at its inception, what chance do we have of society embracing it when reality is at its full horror?
Government solutions are impossible as government constantly seeks to distort reality if not completely obscure it. Raising taxes, lowering taxes, none of it matters as long is it is a reactionary attempt to redirect, re-distort an economy that can only be sustainable in its natural state.
What those in power will NEVER accept is the solution of freedom, of letting people live free of their saving hands. They really do believe they can change humanity, change nature. We have seen it many times through wars and revolutions killing millions in the dream of the more perfect STATE. We are living their dream now.
Incoming Russian, Chinese, and North Korean nukes, courtesy of the American elites who’ve sold us out.
Rage is no way to carry out the democratic process.
Whatever works.
Can’t wait around any more hoping for things to improve. If good manners ain’t working, then let’s try rude & crude.
Off topic, but did you notice Russell 2000 ttm pe nil per Wsj, presumably actually negative? Not encouraging.
Yes I did notice that
Been meaning to write about it
Thanks