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Britain in Decline and The Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism and Thatcherism

We Must Never Forget or Forgive the Enemies of progressivism and Progressive Values

collection of Guardian cartoons Composite: The Guardian

The Final Outcome: The Humiliation and Caricaturisation of Neoliberalism and Thatcherism  

Now it is glaringly obvious that Thatcherism and Neoliberalism, are nothing but a socio-political and an economic ideology that rewards psychopathic personality traits by inflicting inhumanity, anxiety, fear, hopelessness, pain, poverty, injustice, racism and chaos for the many, whilst facilitating thieving by the the few, for the few, and of the few. This inhumane and false ideology in turn has changed our ethics, values and our personalities, and has in the process brought out the worst in us.

The Fall and Humiliation of Liz Truss should Herald a New Beginning

Politicians in general and the Tory ministers in particular: Are You Hearing the Cries of your Constituents?

Time for Repentance and Humility. Time to Discover What it means to be Human

Time to Rebuild Trust with the British people

Enough of Decline and Humiliation, the Lies of Thatcherism to put Great back into Great Britain! 

The time is Now to Wake Up to a New Beginning

N.B. Amid all the misery, pain and repeated failure  of decades of experimentation with Neoliberalism and Thatcherism in Britain, Truss's socio-political and economic actions were wicked. They were nothing short of desperation and self-harm. Her actions also exacerbated the already tarnished image of the Tories in the face of a crisis of confidence, reputation  and trust in politics in general and the Tory  governments in particular.

To my mind, Truss’s humiliation alongside of her spectacularly discredited, dismal  so-called Trussonomics , surely  has, once and for all, put the final nail in the coffin of this inhumane and false ideology. Thus, perhaps we can now be more hopeful and feel more positive that her fall from grace will in turn herald a new beginning and a new story of progressivism to build a better country in the interest of the common good, as I had tried to press upon her only a few weeks ago when she was first ‘selected, by just 81,000 Tory Party members to lead our country: My Plea to Liz Truss: Our Country Needs Caring, Healing and Transformation

Conservative leadership race: How Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss curated their  personal image in their bid for PM Photo: Getty Images

Thatcherism Mark II like the one before it, Thatcherism Mark I Fell in Disgrace, Humiliation, and the Global Ridicule and Laughter

They Privatised Everything, Devalued Education, Devalued the Values and in the Process Devalued Themselves, Heartless, Souless, and totally Useless

‘Liz Truss is the nearest thing we’ve got to Margaret Thatcher'- Said the guy who got it spectacularly wrong on Margaret Thatcher, Liz Truss, Brexit and everything else on earth!

‘Back in July BBC’s Nick Robinson interviewed Liz Truss.

He asked: “Will borrowing billions of pounds, you say over £30 billion, increase or decrease inflation?”

Ms Truss replied “My tax cuts will decrease inflation.”

Mr Robinson interjected: “Really? You don’t point to a single Chancellor or a single Governor of the Bank of England, a single leading economist who thinks that cutting taxes with borrowed money does anything other than increase inflation.

Ms Truss hit back: “Patrick Minford. He’s written an article about it this weekend.”- The London Economic

Don’t you think the time has arrived to hold to account those who have lied to you, cheated and humiliated you and have insulted you and your intelligence ? 

Britain’s New Prime Minister Liz Truss Can Be a U.K. Powerhouse Just Like Margaret Thatcher Was

Trussonomics: who were doomed mini-budget’s biggest cheerleaders?

The Destruction of our World and the lies of Milton Friedman

The World brought down to its knees: The Fallacy of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and their disciples

Patrick Minford: maverick economist who inspired Truss and Thatcher

Economist who got it spectacularly wrong on Brexit says 'Liz Truss is nearest thing we've got to Margaret Thatcher'

The Damning Impact of a Toxic Philosophy: The Tragedy of Ayn Rand

The Neoliberal Road to Serfdom

On the Road to Serfdom, Death and Destruction With the Koch Brothers

Throughout history Britain’s ruling class has created crisis after crisis – just like now

‘Why Are Our Politicians So Crap?’ The rise and fall of Britain’s political class

Daily Mail front pages supporting Liz Truss

Photo via The Guardian

The Daily Telegraph also enthusiastically backed Truss, declaring she was the “competent and proficient” candidate who is “ready to assume the highest political office in the land”.

The Daily Express went further, saying: “Thanks partly to her long involvement with centre-right thinktanks, no one at the top of her party has a better understanding of policy development, or a deeper knowledge of the British state and its failings.”

Allister Heath, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph, went further and declared Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget to be a “moment in history that will radically transform Britain”.

“The neo-Brownite consensus of the past 20 years, the egalitarian, redistributionist obsession, the technocratic centrism, the genuflections at the altar of a bogus class war, the spreadsheet-wielding socialists: all were blown to smithereens by Kwarteng’s stunning neo-Reaganite peroration,” he wrote.-Jim Waterson

Moreover, we must never forget that: ‘Every recent Conservative prime minister has placed the interests of transnational capital above the interests of the nation. But, to a greater extent than any previous leader, Truss’s politics have been shaped by organisations that call themselves thinktanks, but would be better described as lobbyists who refuse to reveal who funds them. Now she has brought them into the heart of the government.

‘Her senior special adviser, Ruth Porter, was communications director at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), an extreme neoliberal lobby group. An investigation by the democracy campaign Transparify listed the IEA as “highly opaque” about its funding sources. We know from a combination of leaks and US filings that it has a history of taking money from tobacco companies and since 1967 from the oil company BP, and has also received large disbursements from foundations funded by US billionaires, some of which have been among the major sponsors of climate science denial. When she worked at the IEA, Porter called for reducing housing benefit and child benefit, charging patients to use the NHS, cutting overseas aid and scrapping green funds… 

‘Her political secretary, Sophie Jarvis, was head of government affairs at the Adam Smith Institute (also “highly opaque”), and funded, among others, by tobacco companies and US foundations.

These groups represent the extreme fringe of neoliberalism…In his autobiography Think Tank, Madsen Pirie, founder of the Adam Smith Institute, explained how it worked. Every Saturday, in a wine bar in Leicester Square, staff from the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs would sit down with Conservative researchers and leader writers and columnists from the Times and Telegraph to plan “strategy for the week ahead” and “co-ordinate our activities to make us more effective collectively”. The Daily Mail weighed in to help the lobbyists refine their arguments and ensure there was a supportive article on its leader page every time they published a report.

‘But now the thinktanks don’t need a roundabout route. They are no longer lobbying the government. They are the government. Liz Truss is their candidate. To defend the interests of global capital, she will wage war against any common endeavour to improve our lives or protect the living planet.’- George Monbiot   

Lest we forget, there were many progressive observers, including myself that had tried to  show the now fallen Liz Truss how she might be a better PM. But sadly like her hero she remaind stubborn, arrogant and short-sighted until it was too late:   

My Plea to Liz Truss: Our Country Needs Caring, Healing and Transformation

As noted above, it is now glaringly obvious that: Thatcherism and Neoliberalism, are nothing but a socio-political and an economic ideology that rewards psychopathic personality traits by inflicting inhumanity, anxiety, fear, hopelessness, pain, poverty, injustice, racism and chaos for the many, whilst facilitating thieving by the the few, for the few,  and of the few. This inhumane and false ideology in turn has changed our ethics, values and our personalities, and has in the process brought out the worst in us.

Thanks to Liz Truss, a self-declared mad Thatcherite, this false and inhumane ideology  is now fully and officially discredited and ready to be dumped in the dustbin of history. This can best be seen today in the country that to all our shame and guilt gave the world the horror of Thatcherism over 40 years ago, lest we forget.

Now is the Time to Celebrate the Demise of Neoliberalism and the Timely Death of Thatcherism.  

Liz Truss, the fallen PM and her sacked Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, were amongst five Zombie Tory MPs  who  wrote an infamous  book  and called it ‘Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity’ The tragic socio-economic and political events in Britain in the last few weeks, since the two comical partners introduced their fancy ‘Mini Budget’ has now once and for all proved that Thatcherism is finally dead and buried.   

These two who between them have made ‘Unchained Britannia’ the butt of jokes and laughter at home and abroad, have also resurrected  Karl Marx by reminding us that, yes, he was so correct, so to the point: History does indeed repeat itself – the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.  

Thatcher Mark I was truly a disaster, destruction and tragedy. Thatcher Mark II (Liz Truss) is truly a farce, a joke that so nicely buried Thatcher Mark I. Thank you Liz for your services to Britannia Unchained!!

In the last few weeks the junking of neoliberalism in Britannia has clearly shown the world the inhumanity of Thatcherism, the so-called mumbo jumbo, voodoo economics. 

Whilst aware of the consequences and the cost of this inhumanity, this ‘Bastard Economics’, and mourning its victims, nonetheless, now is also the time of celebration that finally Thatcherism is dead and buried. 

As a person who has been a life-time critique of Thatcherism and neoliberalism, I cannot be happier: At long last we now all know the TRUTH. 

Nota bene

The Broken and Dehumiased Economic Model

(First published as an email to the GCGI members in May 2011)

‘Do you remember Margaret Thatcher, the so-called Iron Lady!! She told the Brits that she was going to put the “Great” back into “Great” Britain. Do you remember? Then, she told us this can only happen if we accept and implement the “Washington Consensus”, the so-called dreaded neoliberalism. She told us that there was no alternative. She told us we will all prosper and develop more fairly and equitably. She won election after election. Everything was privatised, deregulated, self-regulated. Industry, manufacturing, (the real economy) was destroyed. Instead, the banks and the bankers were encouraged to rule the world. The economists with no principles and values were “bought” and the business schools, such as Harvard and Columbia were showered with money to act as “Cheerleaders” for the dreaded neoliberalism (see the Inside Job for evidence). Communities were dis-mantled and dis-organised. We were told that there is nothing as a society and community. We are all in it just for ourselves, we were told. Destructive competition at the expense of life-enhancing cooperation, collaboration and dialogue was greatly prompted. We were told to say no to love, kindness, generosity, sympathy and empathy and say yes to selfishness, individualism and narcissism, as these values will fire the engine of capitalism and wealth creation! In short, the hell with the common good, we were encouraged to believe.

``We were brain-washed. Our other Prime Ministers repeated her nonsense and have carried on her footsteps. It is now over 30 years since the neo-liberalism experiment in Britain. Are we any “Greater” than we were in 1979? Are we any fairer or more equitable? The country is nearly bankrupt, with public and private debt at unprecedented levels, with the greatest levels of poverty and wealth disparity ever. The house of neo-liberal capitalism is now at its nadir of decadence.”

‘You see, all those interested in life’s bigger picture, have been saying the same, over and over. The neo-liberals are not in touch with humanity. They will prostitute all in the interest of profit maximisation, cost minimisation, highest return to the shareholders, and the biggest and juiciest bonuses for the CEOs, the bankers and their lackeys.’

A Reflection on Neoliberalism/ Thatcherism: A Pick from our Archive and a selected few from the media

Welcome to the doom loop of Tory Britain: an austerity that kills, a democracy routed

The Broken Economic Model

People’s Tragedy: Neoliberal Legacy of Thatcher and Reagan

The Broken Economic Model and the Inhumanity of the Lost Decade of Austerity

Bastard Economics of Greedy Neoliberalism and the Killings of the Innocents in London Tower

Hunger in Britain: cruel and unnecessary

Economic Growth: The Index of Misery

Calling all academic economists: What are you teaching your students?

‘Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems.’

Neoliberalism has brought out the worst in us.

Neoliberalism and the rise in global loneliness, depression and suicide

Neoliberalism and Democracy

The Story of Thatcher’s Privatisation Series: Rewarding of Greed and Incompetence for fleecing the public

Selling off our Motherland: The Biggest Crime of the Broken Economic Model

The Observer view on Liz Truss and the sacking of Kwasi Kwarteng

Rightwing papers backpedal after helping Liz Truss reach No 10

Liz Truss’s resignation is the nail in the coffin for Britain’s love affair with political crankery

55 Tufton Street: The house that ‘influenced’ the UK economy’s downfall

A Humiliating End to Trussonomics

The Guardian view on Liz Truss’s resignation: a quitter after all

Britain Has Become a Sinking Ship of Systemic Corruption, Cronyism and Chumocracy

Corruption drives this government’s policies

David Cameron’s lobbying scandal

democracy versus chumocracy

The Moral Blindness of the English Posh Boys

Britain today and the Bankruptcy of Ideas, Vision and Values-less Education

Eruption of Corruption in British Education:Debunking the Moral and Spiritual Bankruptcy of Values-free Education

University Corruption and the Financial Crisis: The Theft of the Century by the Most 'Educated Thieves'- All with MBAs and PhDs! 

Neoliberalism destroys human potential and devastates values-led education

Brexit, Trump and the failure of our universities to pursue wisdom

Climate crisis: Boris Johnson ‘too cosy’ with vested interests to take serious action

Oh Kwasi Kwarteng. You made this a Black History Month I’ll never forget

Trussonomics will be a reckless exercise in slashing the state when there’s nothing left to cut

Liz Truss and the Tories: it’s time to go

The Liz Truss Travesty Becomes Britain’s Humiliation

Do you have an eye for justice and sense of duty? Then, these questions are for you.

If you want to know the truth about Brexit, Trump, and the rise of Populism, then you must see this!

BREXIT Broke My Heart: The Moment that the Milk of Human Kindness Went Sour and Lumpy

...And now read about the possible paths on how we may put right what has so tragically gone wrong, on how to stop death and destruction and how we may begin to value and nurture life again

I am positive and hopeful. We can change the world for the better. Come with me on this journey of self discovery in the interest of the common good.

Yes, We can win over death and destruction, the neoliberalism, If we listen to the Voice of Hope, echoing across the world, Composing a New Life

Acting selflessly for the common good fills us with Joy – New Waves of Light

Our Journey to Healing

My Plea to Liz Truss: Our Country Needs Caring, Healing and Transformation

Boris Johnson: This is How to Become a Force for Good

Dear Prime Minister May-Britain needs a New Economic Model

Good Riddance to Trump: A Disgraced Man who Never Cultivated Goodness and Humanity

A New Decade and a New Vision for Education: Seizing the Moment, Realising the Value of Values-led Civics Education

Eruption of Corruption in British Education:Debunking the Moral and Spiritual Bankruptcy of Values-free Education

The Journey to Sophia: Education for Wisdom

My Economics and Business Educators’ Oath: My Promise to My Students

To All Striking Academic Colleagues in Britain: Turn the Strike to a Force for the Common Good

Remaking Economics in an age of economic soul-searching

The World would be a Better Place if Economists had Read This Book

In Praise of Darwin Debunking the Self-seeking Economic Man

Composing a New Life: In Praise of Wisdom

Small is Beautiful: The Wisdom of E.F. Schumacher

Brexit, Trump and the failure of our universities to pursue wisdom

Calling all academic economists: What are you teaching your students?

Values-free, Market- Driven Education: What a Disaster!

The Journey to Sophia: Education for Wisdom

Wisdom and a Well-Rounded Life: What Is a University?

My Economics and Business Educators’ Oath: My Promise to My Students

What might an Economy for the Common Good look like?

The Age Of Perpetual Crisis: What are we to do in a world seemingly spinning out of our control?

In praise of cooperation as an insurance at time of crisis: Lessons as coronavirus spreads around the globe

Wouldn’t the world be a better place with a bit more kindness? Harnessing the Economics of Kindness

What if Universities Taught KINDNESS?

Have We lost the Art of Knowing What it Means to Be Human?

A Businessman and an Economist in Dialogue for the Common Good: Dubai 2004

The World would be a Better Place if Economists had Read This Book

COP26 Glasgow: Hope and Humanity to Save Our Mother Earth and Nature, History Will Judge the Complicit

Make COP26 The Dawn of a New Beginning

Towards COP26: Education to Heal the World

Ten Love Letters to the Earth: “Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet”

Values-led education, hope and resilience to build a better future: A Pick from our GCGI Down to Earth Archive

Environmental Crisis, Hope and Resilience: A Pick from our GCGI Down to Earth Archive

…and now, finally a reflection on Thatcherism, Britain in Decline and the xenophobic, pseudo-nationalist Brexit

“And Britain Broke” : Brexit What a Terrible Act of Self-harm

Economy in crisis, Tories in meltdown: how I have told the sad, strange story of Britain

The Most Compelling Story of Boris Johnson’s Madness and his Nonsensical Brexit

Brexit and Dictatorship

Racism in Britain in the post-Brexit age

Boris Johnson the architect of Brexit is the modern-day Enoch Powell

I was Boris Johnson’s boss: he is utterly unfit to be prime minister

Independence’ and the Lies of Brexit

BREXIT: When England Betrayed Churchill

THIS ENGLISH BREXIT

“Darkness Over Britain?”: ‘Britons are peering into the abyss after Brexit vote’

And So, They Got Their Brexit Done!

Happy Aesthetics Wallpapers - Wallpaper Cave

The Aesthetics of Joy, illustration by Ingrid Fetell Lee

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