David Craig, on February 22nd, 2024Thursday-Friday blog
This catch phrase – “It’s the economy, stupid “- originated on a sign in the Little Rock headquarters of James Carville, political adviser to Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential election. He posted it as a constant reminder that the main focus of the campaign was the economy. The expression was widely used during the campaign and is credited with helping Clinton win election.
I suspect some of Clinton’s other key phrases, such as (I imagine) – “hey babe, wanna suck my d*ck?” and “is that my c*m on your dress?”– weren’t so widely reported.
Why I mention this was that on Wednesday this week, I saw an interview with a leading writer for our supposedly leading newspaper. Before becoming an important columnist for said newspaper, this person was adviser to the hapless John Major, former prime minister and for four wonderful years paramour to the delectable MP Edwina ‘salmonella’ Currie, and the possibly even more hopeless former Conservative leader William ’14 pints a day’ Hague. Due to his tremendous contribution to our nation’s wellbeing, this individual was appointed to the House of Lords in 2013 and named political commentator of the year at the Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards in 2010, 2011 and 2013.
I must admit I switched off almost as soon as I heard the direction of the interview. But I do remember, I think, this wise and sagacious person opining that were the British economy to start showing signs of growth towards the end of this year, then more people might be tempted to vote for the Tories so a Labour landslide wasn’t guaranteed.
This was in my humble opinion one of the stupiest and most ill-informed statements I have heard for some time. Here are two reasons why:
Reason 1: The economy cannot grow
As I have repeatedly and repeatedly and repeatedly written – Britain has some of the highest energy costs in the developed world even though we buy much of our oil and gas from the same medieval hell-holes as the rest of the world. Why is this? Because Britain is intent on becoming a ‘renewable energy superpower’. This means we get more of our energy from expensive and unreliable solar and wind which require multi-billion pound subsidies which are shoved onto our electricity bills. Recently we saw the economic consequences of this when about 2,800 steelworkers at Port Talbot lost their jobs and 400 out of 500 workers at the Grangemouth oil refinery were scheduled to be fired as the refinery closed in order to become just an oil-importing terminal.
On our high streets shops, restaurants and other businesses are giving up often due to massive increases in their energy bills and UK bankruptcies are shooting up to record levels:
(left-click on image and left-click again to see more clearly)
Meanwhile, the UK economy is being asphyxiated by ever-increasing taxes to cover the cost of an ever-increasing number of public-sector non-jobs. There were an estimated 5.90 million employees in the public sector in September 2023, which is 35,000 more than in June 2023 and 135,000 more than in September 2022.
Yet this former political adviser, leading journalist and (IMHO) utter buffoon is blethering on about the economy possibly improving in a few months!
Reason 2: The Tories are loathed
Now let’s deal with the second proposition put forward by this genius – that an improving economy will tempt more people back to voting Tory. This is, I believe, garbage. This individual, probably like most of the London ‘elites’, seems to have no idea about how much former Conservative voters loathe the Tories. People feel they have been lied to and betrayed by the fake Tory Party:
- most Tory MPs tried to water down and even to block Brexit to keep us in the failing EU
- immigration has reached record levels – 1,200,000 people last year – under the Tories in spite of Tory claims that they would reduce this to the ‘tens of thousands’
- the absurd Net Zero is crippling us and yet the Tories plan to force us to buy useless and expensive electric vehicles and even more useless and expensive heat pumps
- all our public sector is failing even as we are taxed to exhaustion as ever more money is poured into our collapsing public services – the NHS, the police, councils, the military – none of them work and the incompetent Tories do nothing
- crime is rampant and thieves, muggers, shoplifters, burglars etc are never caught and thus never punished
- the spread of woke is crippling both the public and private sectors as people get jobs due to their skin colour and sexual orientation rather than their abilities
- our social cohesion is being undermined by out-of-control, Third-World immigration
- the elites seem to hate Britain and want to hand over control of our country to multi-national bodies like the WHO, the UN and, of course, the WEF
- there are probably more things I have forgotten.
But due to these issues, many people feel that they have been lied to and betrayed by the utterly incompetent, self-serving fake Conservative Party. And when someone has repeatedly lied to you and so comprehensively betrayed your trust, you tend not to be in a forgiving mood. Obviously Britain’s failing economy will have some influence on people’s voting decisions. After all, wasn’t economics the one area our unelected multi-millionaire PM Sunak claimed to have some competence? But, in spite of what this political expert claims about the possibility of an improving economy saving the Tories, I believe that this time the reasons for the coming well-deserved wipe-out of the Tories are much broader than just the economy. So my message to the London ‘elites’ and our spineless, do-nothing PM is ‘it’s NOT the economy, stupid’.
However, that this ‘expert’ should make the claim that the economy might soon improve and that this might help the Tories does show how economically ignorant, politically benighted and out-of-touch many of the London ‘elites’ are.
Category: 
The only hope for this country is if the current edition of the ‘Conservative’ party gets the thorough thrashing it richly deserves at the next GE, through actual conservative voters either staying at home or voting for Tice’s ‘Reform UK’ party.
Then after Sunak and his Globalist crew all slide sideways into lucrative sinecures in the EU, WHO, Davos, the Tory grassroots must seize control of their party back from Central Office. And specifically, control of which candidates they’re going to put up for the next election. But it will have to be done quickly.
Because Sir Kneel and his unsavoury bunch of Hamas supporters will run out of other peoples’ money soon enough, and there will be a severe outbreak of infighting as Labour’s various competing political, ethnic, sexual, and environmental fanatics tear into each other.
So genuine conservatives will need to be prepared for another election within a couple of years.
I agree. I expect a financial crisis under Sir Kneeler. But if Kneeler lowers the voting age to 16 a true conservative party will never again be elected.
Would not TWO thrashings be more apt Jeremy ?
Firstly in the “election” of course, the second physically ? One may be assured of an enthusiastic bunch of volunteers, just call it a “sport” of some kind or other. Wembley might be a suitable venue, plus TV rights and so on.
Both Jeffrey and you, David, are correct, as you know. One of Sir Kneeler’s priorities will be to lower the voting age to 16, which will herald the end of whatever pathetic shreds of common sense remain in UK politics. I did not personally agree with lowering it to 18. I heard the reasonable argument that young people can marry, go out to work and become tax payers and could well be parents at that age, which mitigated somewhat the argument against. However, given the extended infantilization of our young now, meaning that at the age of 22, even 23, some are still in so-called “higher education”, dependant on Mum and Dad and learning nothing much other than how to sign on for benefits, few of them seen qualified to decide who should govern our nation. There are two well-raised 16 year olds in my family, delightful youngsters who are doing well at school and have plans for “sensible” professions, but neither has anywhere near the breadth of knowledge or experience to qualify them for voting for our next Government. The only hope, other than an utterly improbable Reform victory, is for Kneeler’s lot to get in and to make such an utter catastrophe of the economy (not to mention immigration) that they will be chucked out (forced into another Election) before they’ve had a chance to reduce the voting age. As a natural conservative, who believes in traditional values and voted for Brexit in order to regain our sovereignty, never again would I trust the Tory party in anything remotely resembling its current make-up.
I wonder if this will actually be the case?
I read that polling in Europe has recently been showing a significant shift to the Right (naturally, branded by the Globalist media the ‘Far Right’) amongst the younger generation.
To the point where the EU is hiring online celebrity ‘Influencers’ as paid Globalist propagandists to try to counter the trend.
I don’t think that the politicians know what they mean by growth. Some talk of GDP when it is GDP/capita that matters but it is all averaged and seems meaningless to me. There are many views that GDP is an inadequate measure of the state of the economy. To the 5.9 million public sector employees add in the 5 million or so who are on benefits and supposedly unable to work. I also suspect that there is quite a large black economy.
Your list of problems is excellent, but the Labour Party has contributed to them. Reform might seem to know about the problems but they haven’t a clue what to do about them.
It is the economy in my view because that is what gives stability to everything. The problems are not new, they go back to the the early 20th century and the creation of the Federal Reserve which eventually ended the gold standard and created an endless supply of worthless fiat currency. Without endless money the two world wars and other American wars would not have happened. A successful economy needs peace and trade. Wars create money for the banks and give more power to the policies and hence control over us.
After over 100 years of fiat money the western economic system is on the point of collapse. It is why we have talk of a reset, but I believe the controlling cabal are clueless about what to do and too afraid to do anything. All we have seen from this is a transfer of money from the poorest to the richest. It has made profit a private issue and socialised losses and debt which we will have to pay with taxes and the debt is now impossible to pay. There is not enough work for people because of increased efficiency and transfer of jobs to China. We pay several times over because good are less reliable and the propaganda convinces us to replace with newer technology. Effectively the west has become socialist by the back door and as Thatcher said it will end when they run out of money. That is where we are. I envisage the dollar will collapse and the west’s dominance with it.