By Gwydion M. Williams
Morally bankrupt, but the wages are great!
Tories as Latter-Day Anti-Fascists
‘Money Makers’ are Chieftains and Money Takers
Snippets
Iran: Willingness to Suffer
Poland and West Ukraine: Normal Hatreds Resumed
Trump and Musk’s Anti-State Folly
Losing the Moon? Or Losing Life on Mars?
Children of Sixteen?
Lowering the Cost of Motherhood
Green and Compromising
Morally bankrupt, but the wages are great!
I’m certain that Keir Starmer did not tell Labour members that the party was morally bankrupt when he needed their votes to become leader. And that’s a moral issue, far more important than the fact that several recent Prime Ministers were not party leaders when their party last faced the electorate.
The wider problem is what many Labour MPs have become, especially after parts of the Labour left favoured graduates who sounded left-wing. Preferred them to the rooted trade unionists who had once been more commonly selected.
Corbyn in 2017 got the biggest-ever Labour vote since Tony Blair’s first victory. One has to wonder, is victory for Labour their first priority?
It is reasonable to ask whether someone with a basic annual salary above £90,000 can meaningfully represent the interests of people on ordinary incomes.
The median annual salary for full-time workers is below £38,000. MPs also receive expenses in addition to their salaries. As a result, they sit within a comparatively privileged group, with access to networks and opportunities that may lead to far greater wealth.
Don’t call it a betrayal of fine old democratic traditions. Britain’s Parliament was not originally designed as a democratic institution.
England has had parliamentary institutions since the medieval period, drawing on systems already present in Continental Europe. Looking back to the Roman Republic. Yet Rome gave most voting power to its richest citizens (https://mrgwydionmwilliams.quora.com/Rome-s-Undemocratic-Republic).
It was designed to create fellow-feeling among a diversity of people with regional power. Not to give ordinary people what they wanted, when this did not suit ‘Upper London’.
‘Upper London’ is my way of emphasising that power rests with an elite centred on London, though often with homes elsewhere. It is much more accurate than saying ‘Britain’ wanted things. Just now, Britain wants a wealth tax, and Britain wants limits placed on what Israel does in Gaza. But ‘Upper London’ has so far got its way on both issues.
England divided power between a few hundred titled aristocrats and a ‘House of Commons’. But that chamber was not common in the modern sense: even before Rotten Boroughs spread, only about one-seventh of adult men had the vote. Only in the 1880s did a majority of men living in the core of the wider British Empire get a useful vote (https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/m-articles-by-topic/40-britain/665-2/).
MPs were unpaid until 1911. They were ‘Gentlemen of Independent Means’: men who lived from ordinary people’s labour as property owners or shareholders, without any obligation to do anything to help the people they lived off.
When MPs finally received salaries, £400 a year placed them firmly among the privileged. Britain was then poorer, and this was before historic inflation; average annual earnings were £70.
Their concern for ordinary people could resemble the concern many people show for pets or favoured wild animals. Suffering should be avoided, but their needs are still balanced against those of ‘people like us’.
For most MPs, ‘people like us’ means the privileged 5%, along with deep admiration for multi-millionaires and billionaires. Real power lies less with the few thousand billionaires, who together hold only about a fifth of private wealth, than with this wider privileged class. Legal but dishonest subsidies and hostile media controlled by multi-millionaires matter, but shared economic interest matters more.
Many of our ‘democratically elected’ MPs feel more affinity with billionaires than with the 90% or 95% whose interests differ sharply from their own.
Those majorities increasingly support wealth taxes, yet elected centre-left representatives abandoned that idea during the era of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.
Obama did much to reduce existing racial inequalities, but during the 2008 economic crisis he firmly defended the interests of the 5%. Gordon Brown acted similarly during his brief period as Labour Prime Minister.
Those richer than the 90% but poorer than the 5% merely broke even, as they have since Reagan and Thatcher. That is why I have spoken of the ‘Next Nine’ and rejected the possibility of uniting the 99% against a handful of billionaires. This is a class issue, not a struggle between ‘The People’ and sinister rich figures lurking in the shadows. And people within the richest 10% may still want economic fairness.
Tories as Latter-Day Anti-Fascists
The problem is that we elect the wrong people as national representatives, after which their incomes place them within the 5%. It also gives them the prospect of far greater rewards if they reliably defend the rich.
The rise of socialism and communism frightened the 5%. Many supported fascism in the 1920s and 1930s (https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/m-articles-by-topic/44-fascism-and-world-war-2/how-the-tory-party-aided-hitlers-rise/). They became Latter-Day Anti-Fascists when Nazi Germany attacked the non-fascist West, and the Soviet Union became necessary to help save them. Our elites try to rewrite this history, but the Nazis kept two-thirds of their army on the Eastern Front until the very end (https://www.quora.com/q/mrgwydionmwilliams/Nazi-Germany-Was-Defeated-in-Russia).
Churchill was a hero of the anti-Nazi war, but when fascism was confined to middling and pro-British Italy, he went beyond most Tories as an enthusiast for Mussolini (https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/m-articles-by-topic/44-fascism-and-world-war-2/why-churchill-admired-mussolini/).
While memories of fascism’s rise and defeat remained strong, only a few eccentrics wanted a revival in another form. Many socialist ideas about state management and regulation were tolerated, even normalised. Most still exist, though treated as ‘secret vices’.
Even many left-wingers had, and have, an irrational fear of ‘corporatism’. Anti-state populism remains depressingly strong, even though no successful populist politics has worked without state power behind it. Growing acceptance of gays and lesbians is the clearest example, but there are many others. Consider the restrictions on speeding and public tobacco-smoking, both denounced only a couple of decades ago as grave infringements of personal liberty.
Benjamin Franklin famously wrote in 1789:
“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
I am surprised that this is so often treated as wisdom. Every society beyond tribalism has taxes. Tribal societies impose social obligations that may feel even more burdensome to ordinary members bound by tribal norms. But taxes within civilisations can be very uneven. Some people, usually the privileged, may be exempt from taxes. That was a major grievance behind the French Revolution.
In studying the decline of empires around the world, I have noticed that tax avoidance by the rich is often a major factor. Someone should write a book about it; I already have more useful projects than I am likely to complete in my lifetime (https://gwydionmadawc.com/ideas-you-might-borrow/2537-2/).
State power cannot prevent death indefinitely, but it can do much to lengthen or shorten lives. The USA, with its dogmatic faith in people spending ‘their own money’ within a profit-driven economy, has lower life expectancy than Britain or any other Western country. And that despite spending more than twice as much per person on health care.
Why do MPs not address this? Because most are embedded within the 5%, and the present arrangement suits them.
If I could change the system, every MP would have to live on the average wage of an ordinary worker. They would receive a lifetime guarantee of at least that amount, but could not rise above it.
That would keep them tied to the interests of the 90%.
For now, Burnham has spoken of Britain being on the wrong track for the last 40 years. Does he accept that Thatcher messed up when she stopped being an authentic conservative and started undermining the society with Radical Right foolishness?
I will wait and watch. See if he prefers to be another historic failure. My mind is open for now.
‘Money Makers’ are Chieftains and Money Takers
The ‘reforms’ of Reagan and Thatcher did not improve wealth creation in either the USA or Britain. In Western Europe and Japan, they helped reduce the exceptional growth that many of those countries had enjoyed in the 1950s and 1960s (https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/problems-magazine-past-issues/the-mixed-economy-won-the-cold-war/).
Thatcher persuaded people that the advances made in Continental Western Europe were dangerous and had to be addressed. Her answers were mistaken, and the elements of the New Right programme that those countries adopted damaged their earlier successes.
Many businesspeople now recognise that something has gone wrong:
“Three-quarters of UK millionaires would be happy to pay more tax, research finds
“Despite concerns super-rich are leaving due to tax burdens, 88% of those surveyed were proud to live in UK and would pay more to fund public services”. (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/may/13/three-quarters-uk-millionaires-willing-pay-more-tax-research-finds).
Society is complex and depends on many activities that do not generate commercial profit. Some functions are performed worse when commercialised, with health care a notable example. When freed from regulation, businesspeople often take more for themselves, but this benefits them alone.
Here again, the conventional left-wing answer is inadequate. Tribes need chiefs in order to function, although chiefs require sensible regulation. There is also genuine skill involved in being an effective chief. But that does not make such people superior in other matters. Individual minds are often brilliant in some areas and weak in others. Chess offers a clear example: strong players can defeat dozens of ordinary opponents, yet this does not mean they possess broader wisdom. Bobby Fischer was a tragic example of someone highly gifted in one field but baffled by ordinary life.
A common feature of chiefs is that they seek to expand their own power, regardless of whether this benefits those they are meant to serve.
At present, Western politicians are preoccupied with the supposed danger of being overtaken by the rest of the world, even though people in the West are generally better off than ever before.
It’s not even that the West is in danger of losing its dominant position. It is true that the Soviet Union’s decline and the Reagan-Thatcher shift led much of the world to turn away from Western values. But do we have the right to demand conformity from others when our own confidence in those values is weakening?
The numbers may appear alarming. Muslims make up about 24% of the world’s population, although not all live in officially Islamic states. India and China, the world’s two largest states, account for another 18% and 17%. A further 20% belongs to the diverse countries of a broadly-defined Global South. Yet most of these societies have less in common with each other than they do with the West. They usually communicate with one another in English, because few people in any bloc speak the native language of another. Only a minority of Muslims speak Arabic.
Mao declared that China should never seek hegemony, at a time when few in the West would have thought it likely. Xi sticks to this wisdom. Meantime Islamic countries have great trouble collaborating with each other, and India seeks only to secure Hindu values on its own territory. No ‘clash of civilisations’ except in the minds of people determined to impose their own imperfect values on everyone else.
Snippets
Iran: Willingness to Suffer
Sylvester Stallone did his best work with the 1976 film Rocky. It offered a romantically exaggerated version of the real fact that some boxers are immensely difficult to knock out. A real referee would certainly stop the fight before the ‘tough guy’ suffered permanent brain damage, and the sequels were more realistic. But it plays to what most people want to believe.
And for much of the world, Iran holding out against the worst the USA can do is just as welcome. They suffered a lot more, but retained power.
Internal liberal opposition seems limited. People reluctant to suffer do not overthrow entrenched and self-confident autocratic regimes. The hard-liners have often won contested elections against more moderate candidates.
How did it happen? I think the US elite got so used to weak insincere US ‘Fundamentalists’ that they forgot what real religion could be like. Thought it would be fine to carry through radical economic reform and disturb traditional opinion while suppressing sincere secular left-wing radicals.
Iran as it now is may actually concede on enriched uranium. They no longer need nuclear weapons. And the USA had a point that some of Iran’s stockpile had become dangerously close to being suitable for a basic atom bomb. But drones and missiles with conventional explosives and incendiaries turn out to be very effective. Much less likely to be disapproved of by the wider world.
*
Poland and West Ukraine: Normal Hatreds Resumed
“Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has been stripped of Poland’s highest state honour, the Order of the White Eagle, over Kyiv’s decision to name a military unit after controversial World War Two fighters.
“Polish President Karol Nawrocki branded Ukraine’s decision late last month to name the unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) ‘outrageous’, ‘incomprehensible’ and ‘deeply disappointing’…
“Ukraine’s Foreign Minister … denounced Warsaw’s move, calling it a ‘strategic mistake’ and ‘disrespectful’.
“Many in Ukraine regard the UPA, which existed in the 1940s and 1950s, as heroes who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Soviet Red Army as well as Nazi Germany and Polish authorities. So for Ukrainians the title ‘Heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army’ is a major honour.
“Poland, however, accuses the UPA of carrying out a genocide of ethnic Poles in Volhynia (now Volyn in Ukraine) in 1943-45.” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr7xzg3dmj8o).
That’s the BBC ‘putting lipstick on the pig’. No Briton would speak of ‘the controversial World War Two Waffen-SS’, but that branch of the SS did less massacres of Jews and Poles than the West Ukrainian nationalists were once well-known to have done.
Well-known until 2014, when British media suddenly showed how to be selectively forgetful (https://mrgwydionmwilliams.quora.com/Ukraine-Western-Media-in-2014-Reported-Nazi-Links).
*
Trump and Musk’s Anti-State Folly
“Why Ebola came back — and a warning for the next pandemic.
“The outbreak in the DR Congo is unlikely to spread worldwide. But it comes at a time of cuts to health budgets and exposes a worrying lack of preparedness for ‘Disease X’…
“Ebola is unlikely to be the cause of the next pandemic. The virus acts with such frightening speed, causing fluid loss, bleeding and organ failure, that it kills in weeks, if not days. That is a dead-end strategy for a virus bent on global domination.
“But the Congolese outbreak is a dress rehearsal for what might come next in an era when international funding for global health is shrinking faster than you can say Elon Musk and public trust in science and multilateral solutions is wavering.” (https://www.ft.com/content/e6e31057-aded-4109-9f5e-6808c7737b0d (pay site)/
“How the screwworm broke through US defences and returned to Texas cattle…
“According to an analysis cited by Senate Democrats … the USDA agency responsible for responding to animal disease threats such as screwworm, has fallen by more than half during the Trump administration in Texas following staff departures and restructuring efforts.” (https://www.ft.com/content/7857e93b-68a2-492b-802a-d128aceab01e (pay site)
And he’s even made a mess of a pool attached to the White House, getting a friend to do an expensive fix. It is now full of algae (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/climate/reflecting-pool-algae-green.html (pay site).
*
Losing the Moon? Or Losing Life on Mars?
Musk was brilliant in getting used rocket stages to descend and be caught for re-use. But he risks a massive loss of reputation if he does not deliver a moon landing vehicle that can work with the NASA-built Artemis rockets.
It should have been easy: the Apollo program managed it with a lander and an ascent vehicle sitting on top of the lander. But the intent was to have much better, and so far ‘better’ is not yet ‘working reliably’. Musk’s Space X has yet to manage it, and likewise Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.
Both are supposed to be tested in 2027 by the new Artemis III, which will check whether both could be used for the real moon landing. Humans on the moon are now Artemis IV,scheduled for 2028.
There are US worries that there will be delays, and China will get there first. China has spoken of landings in the 2030s. But though they have sent robotic probes as far as Mars, they have yet to send humans for even a passive loop round the moon. Both Apollo and Artemis did this, and I’d not expect the Chinese to risk their current zero-deaths record.
They may however be the first to return soil samples from Mars. Scheduled to begin in 2028 and return in 2031. An existing NASA / ESA program got cuts and delays: it is currently expected to return samples in 2035.
*
Children of Sixteen?
“Social media to be banned for under-16s in landmark government move to give kids their childhood back”. (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/social-media-to-be-banned-for-under-16s-in-landmark-government-move-to-givekids-their-childhood-back).
I don’t feel qualified to make rules for today’s teenagers, though my strong feeling is that protections regarding sex are correct and should maybe be strengthened. But I do note confusion in public thinking. Young people at sixteen are definitely not children. But they are also not adults.
For a science-fiction epic, I imagined a human settlement beyond our solar system that had rethought this. Its people abolished the idea of “teenagers”: at age 12, the young were no longer called children, but were officially classified as “Halflings”. All done with ceremonies and prizes, done separately from the religious coming-of-age ceremonies that the religious among them do separately. But the similar step up to be ‘MidRangers’ at 14. Then Thresholder at 16, Pre-Adult at 18, and Young Adult at 25. And since I based it loosely on what we have, I have them keep the current British age of consent at 16.
It may be a crazy idea, but try thinking about it.
*
Lowering the Cost of Motherhood
Almost every country has a bigger population than it had ever had. Ireland, blighted by the British Empire, is unusual in having fewer (https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/past-issues/isolated-labour-affairs-pages-before-2015/needless-suffering-in-the-1840s-irish-potato-famine/). But the same is found in parts of Wales and Scotland (https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/past-issues/past-issues-before-2016/isolated-labour-affairs-pages-before-2015/how-the-british-empire-blighted-britain/). Nice places to live, but the work was taken away by what I call Upper London. By a ruling class that looks after just the richest 5% or 10% and neglects the rest.
The same people get angry that fewer women have several children, or even one child. But it is part of a much longer trend. One which was largely ignored until a smooth decline caused the earlier panic over over-population to flip into a panic about the population dwindling and even vanishing.
‘Reforms’ that abolished neighbourly streets and crammed them into tower blocks were a cause. But it is also women having a lot more possibilities in life.
To me, the answer is a major new branch of the Welfare State. A well-funded Motherhood Support Agency. I’d gladly pay tax for it, since life would be meaningless to me if there were no future generations.
The human tradition has never been to have one lone woman tied to several dependent children, with or without a man to help. It has always been about a group of women knowing and trusting each other. So, make it a paid service, and with basic state regulation of licenced agencies that provide several occasional helpers for every mother who does not specifically refuse it.
‘Too expensive’, say MPs who can easily hire what help they need for their own children. And have plenty to spend on wars that generally end in political failure.
*
Green and Compromising
“Greens discuss downgrading some policies to prepare for possible UK coalition…
“The party would instead create a concise platform that would be non-negotiable in any talks to ally with another party, according to two people briefed on discussions.
“A wealth tax would be one of these non-negotiatiable policies, a senior party figure said.
“Among the policies that could be given less priority are pledges to outlaw private landlords, reduce the speed limit to 55mph and a migration policy whose ultimate goal is a ‘world without borders’.” (https://www.ft.com/content/c2eb5a75-ebc0-4981-9452-2b5aceab4fea).
Policies on transexuals are not mentioned. They could sensibly say they’d demand a free vote. Something their MPs would be required to support, but allies need not.
*
I write regular blogs – https://www.quora.com/q/mrgwydionmwilliams. I also post a lot on X (Twitter): https://x.com/GwydionMW
Labour Affairs 