“History is just one damned thing after another.”
– Attributed to historian Arnold J. Toynbee.
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From Reuben J. Rose’s (excellent) ‘Sons of Issachar Newsletter’:
“I was reminded of some of the extraordinary changes in Great Britain’s status and influence this week when I listened to an interview with the eminent historian Lord Roberts of Belgravia this week..
“Lord Roberts provided an overview of the life of Winston Churchill (1874-1965), a period which also traced the time when Great Britain’s influence started to wane in the world. He spoke of Churchill’s involvement (and near-death experiences) in the Boer War in the late 1800s, his time as First Lord of the Admiralty during WWI and his period in the trenches as a type of “penance” for the failure of his Dardanelles strategy. He was also Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1920s and then was a lone voice warning of the danger from the rearmament of Germany in the 1930s.
“Churchill’s return to power and, subsequently, leadership of Great Britain occurred with the declaration of War on Germany on 3rd September 1939. Churchill was appointed once again as the First Lord of the Admiralty. Neville Chamberlain was Prime Minister and remained in place until Germany invaded the Low Countries on 10 May 1940. Chamberlain then lost the support of the UK Parliament, and King George VI appointed Churchill to lead a coalition government. Everything seemed hopeless, but Churchill stirred the British people, and after many defeats, the tide finally turned in late 1942. However, with all the war expenditures, Great Britain was declining, and losing its colonies and resources eventually brought a day of reckoning.
“Churchill’s reward for leading Great Britain through the war was to have his government thrown out in July 1945 when Labour was elected in a landslide. Labour promised a better life for all – free health care via a national health service and nationalisation of the critical industries: coal, steel, rail, electricity, transport and the Bank of England.
“Unwittingly, with promises of lots of free “stuff” and government control of everything, the British had stepped into a socialist nightmare, which continues to the present day. Ironically, George Orwell’’s great novel Animal Farm was published just weeks after the socialist Labour government came to power..
“Since then, the British public has consistently been attracted back to a socialist agenda, and although Margaret Thatcher revolutionised Great Britain during her tenure as Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, her policies were an aberration in the overall trajectory of the UK. Thatcher is a hated figure by most on the left of UK politics today. A statue of Thatcher was rejected for placement in Parliament Square in London and vandalised after its placement in her hometown of Grantham.
“Jeremy Corbyn, effectively a Communist, was almost elected Prime Minister when he was Leader of the Opposition in the 2017 election called early by Theresa May . Corbyn was eventually removed as Labour leader after two election defeats. He was replaced in 2020 by Sir Keir Starmer, the former UK Director of Public Prosecutions.
“Starmer has made an art form of having no clear policies on anything. Such an approach has been effective and has disguised the antisemitic and communist core of the Party. Such has been the incompetence of the Conservative Party, that it is virtually indistinguishable from Labour. Both political parties promote “big government”, and the Conservatives even have a Minister for “Levelling Up” – to try to make everyone equal.
“This hopeless “conservative” government that has overseen the highest taxation in UK history, an uncontrolled border, disastrous performance by the National Health Service, ruinous lockdowns and forced vaccinations during COVID, and devolution of Wales and Scotland to become socialist enclaves. The Conservative government deserves to be thrown out of office later this year. Unfortunately, the UK will go further into the mire after the election of UK Labour.
“The current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, is a big government technocrat who doesn’t seem to have a free-market bone in his body. Recent opinion polls indicate that the Conservative Party may be left with fewer than 100 seats in Parliament (out of a total of 650 seats) after the next election.
“One of the major issues that no government has dealt with is migration. The control of immigration was a significant reason for the success of the Brexit referendum in 2016. However, since then, immigration has continued to increase, and there have been many dangerous Channel crossings in small dinghies. During the first months of 2024, there have already been 5,000 Channel crossings with costs of around £6 billion to the UK taxpayer..
“The “innovative” solution proposed in 2022, at the time that Boris Johnson was Prime Minister, was to send the illegal immigrants to Rwanda. Who created this solution that doesn’t even pass the pub test? Two years later, not one illegal immigrant has departed for Rwanda, but the UK government has paid Rwanda £240 million as of December 2023.
“The bureaucratic and government incompetence is shocking, and no solution is in sight. The House of Lords opposes the Rwanda policy, and the European Court of Human Rights can prevent the deportation of illegal immigrants. This is partly because Great Britain can’t decide whether to be in or out of Europe.
“Then there is the socialised medicine system – the NHS – that has overseen a steady decline in capability since its inception in 1945. President Reagan warned about the danger of socialised medicine back in the 1960s.
“The NHS is seen as an icon in Great Britain, and people were encouraged to leave their homes to clap for the NHS during COVID. What has happened over the past few years is a progressive decline in services, shocking statistics on waiting times for treatment and the almost impossible challenge of making a face-to-face appointment with a general practitioner. Doctors are continually striking, and new data demonstrate that 25% of patients can wait for more than 12 hours in accident and emergency. The UK Telegraph reported recently that:
“Figures compiled by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimated that there were 14,000 excess deaths last year and 1.5 million emergency patients waited 12 hours or longer. The risk of death started to increase after five hours and grew worse with longer waiting times..”
“No one has any idea about solving the health and immigration crises. The UK Labour Party, which is ideologically committed to socialism, will raise taxes, nationalise core industries and oversee an even worse economic disaster.
“What about UK Defence? All Great Britain’s weapons, already limited because the defence budget barely reaches 2% of GDP, have been shipped off to Ukraine. The former failed Prime Minister, David Cameron, has been recycled through the House of Lords to oversee a disastrous foreign policy, and with every interview it is clear that he has an arrogance:ability ratio well over unity. Naval ships cannot go to sea because of design and maintenance flaws, and UK military recruitment is only concerned about diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“Great Britain is also confused about its foundations and spiritual roots. With the influx of Muslim refugees, British “tolerance” has sought to accommodate a way of life that is in fundamental conflict with British Christian values. There is such concern about Islamophobia that when Muslim leaders call for jihad, the police and government look in the other direction.
“There is only one path for the UK: continuing and rapid decline. The socialists will impose ruinous taxes, support bureaucratic institutional failure, and a welfare state where the government will eventually run out of other people’s money (Margaret Thatcher’s great quote).
“What Are Some of the Lessons?
“For the past two years, I have closely read the UK Times and Telegraph newspapers daily to discern the “signs of the times”. It is traumatic to read about the loss of moral clarity and decisions that constantly increase bureaucracy, impose restrictions on movement in cities and more and more “green tape”. There also are almost daily stories of wasteful government expenditure at the expense of the ordinary citizen and NHS failure. Perhaps Reform UK, the new conservative political party, may gain political traction. However, the Party is unlikely to win seats in the next parliament because the UK does not have preferential voting but a “first past the post” system.
“Australia and other Commonwealth countries are tied emotionally and legally to Great Britain, and I want to understand what is happening and what the lessons are for us. Unfortunately, Australia has elected state and federal socialist governments, and so, as a country, we are headed down the same road as the UK.
“Of course, my assessment of how dire things are in the UK may be off the mark. I will be happy to be corrected by my UK readers.
“However, here are a few of my conclusions about lessons for Sons of Issachar readers that I believe can be drawn from the UK’s trajectory .
- Socialised health care will ruin a nation. The NHS is a case study of what happens when governments control health. Healthcare in the UK has progressively declined, and millions of people are on waiting lists and will likely die before they receive treatment. Medical standards have declined due to relentless bureaucracy emphasising diversity, equity and inclusion. The bureaucrats have gained control of the entire health system, and it is impossible to move anywhere for even a simple consultation without completing dozens of forms. Recently, Rishi Sunak threw another £1 billion at the NHS, but the system needs fundamental restructuring and a radical change. Unfortunately, there is no possibility of this happening, and the UK will continue to muddle with an unfixable system.
- Failing to stand for traditional values and embracing multiculturalism will destroy a nation. Great Britain has its foundation and laws in Christianity. The Church of England is incorporated into the State and its legislation, with the King or Queen as Head of State and Head of the Church. However, UK church leaders are more concerned about diversity, equity, inclusion and climate change than the nation’s spiritual health. The UK presents a strong case for ensuring that church and state are not entwined.
Rather than being prepared to articulate the traditional values and laws of the nation, UK governments for the last 20 years have attempted to accommodate every view as it has embraced multiculturalism. There is now a large proportion of people opposed to UK law and want the UK system to submit to an alien way of life. Threats are continually being made against those who articulate traditional values, and now “hate speech” is being prosecuted while theft and other real crimes are being ignored.
- Controlling national borders is essential for national well–being. Great Britain has been trying to decide for the last 60 years whether or not it is European. President de Gaulle did the UK a great favour in the 1960s by blocking its entry into the European Common Market. Eventually, Ted Heath gave away UK sovereignty by signing up for the European Union. The cunning European bureaucrats continually beat the naïve UK politicians to a pulp. Great Britain gave up its rights to its territorial waters and its ability to control its borders and handed its legal system to the Europeans.
Eventually, ordinary Britons rebelled and voted to exit the European Union in 2016 (“Brexit”). However, this has proved to be an almost impossible task as the entanglement of the UK with EU law has proved challenging to resolve. Rishi Sunak promised a “bonfire or EU laws” but this has proved impossible. Now, the UK government is faced with an increasing number of legal and illegal immigrants. No one in the current government has the will to take the hard decisions to control the UK borders. The situation will only worsen when the Labour government comes to power in October or November. There is a simple equation: no border = no country.
- The welfare state and self-defence can’t coexist. Few of the NATO countries can meet the requirement highlighted by President Trump for the required 2% GDP expenditure on defence. Great Britain has sent most of its defence hardware to Ukraine.
Many in the UK have decided not to work, and recent data demonstrate that more than 20% of UK adults are not looking for work. Great Britain now has its highest taxation rate in 50 years and there will be worse to come under UK Labour.
This presents the UK government with a problem: how can it fund its defence? The short answer is that it can’t unless it dramatically changes the welfare system. Voters will not accept this (just like they won’t accept radical changes to the NHS), so there will be a defence crisis, as there was in the 1930s..
- Embracing and legislating a “green” agenda is a road to national suicide. In some type of national brainwashing, all political parties in the UK embraced a rush to “net zero”. The UK government announced in 2021 that it had “set the world’s most ambitious climate change target into law to reduce emissions by 78% by 2035 compared to 1990 levels”. This recommendation came from the “independent” Climate Change Committee, a committee of climate alarmist scientists who can be relied upon to promote a climate disaster narrative. The announcement in 2021 by then Prime Minister Boris Johnson saw various emissions reductions set into legislation. One of the results of these legislative changes has been to target agricultural production with requirements for farm “rewilding”, dramatic decreases in cattle and sheep numbers and elimination of fertiliser use. There is no political opposition to the climate disaster narrative, and Labour will likely go even harder for “net zero”. (NB I don’t see President Xi rushing toward “net zero”).
However, it is good to see that democracy in the UK is not dead just yet. Recently, farmers brought their tractors into Westminster to protest the threat to UK agriculture.
- Restricting freedom of speech is a final step toward totalitarianism. The UK government toyed with new online laws for several years before passing the UK Online Safety Act late last year. A central idea in this legislation is to try to prevent “legal but harmful” information from being disseminated. This, of course, would include information that highlighted potential adverse effects of COVID-19 “vaccines.” In essence, the Act is a way of preventing any information that the government doesn’t like. The legislation will be overseen by the UK’s own Ministry of Truth, called Ofcom. This is the bureaucracy that regulates communications in the UK and is a type of substantial bureaucratic Big Brother that seeks to regulate every area of communication in Great Britain.
Now, the Scottish government has introduced “hate speech” laws, and police have been inundated with complaints, as you would anticipate when no one can define “hate speech”. The UK Telegraph journalist Ella Whelan reported a few days ago:
“Scotland’s new Hate Crime Act played out like an April fools with no end. Police Scotland have been inundated – about 60 reports an hour – with thousands complaining of alleged hate crimes committed by JK Rowling and the First Minister himself. Someone even made a complaint in Siobhian Brown’s name, Yousaf’s minister for victims and community, leading her to suggest that her government’s bill had caused “hysteria”.
Similar laws are being enacted in Ireland and the EU. The Telegraph journalist Ella Whelan concludes her assessment of various attempts to curb free speech as follows:
“The only way to fight bad speech – even hateful speech – is with more speech.”
I agree.
“Conclusions
“Great Britain has been one of the most influential countries of the West but as I read the daily UK news, it feels as though one is a witness to a slow train wreck. I think that we are witnessing a similar train wreck in Australia and also the US.
“Of course things were much worse in 1974. Tom and Dominic from The Rest is History podcast did a series on Great Britain in the 1970s.. They noted:
“Britain in the early 1970’s was a state in crisis, and by 1974, things had never seemed bleaker. Held hostage by the Trade Unions, British industry was flailing. England’s sporting record was atrocious, the economy was tanking and the prospect of a miners’ strike loomed large. Violence was surging in Northern Ireland, as the IRA escalated its bombing campaigns, and the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War would send oil prices soaring, with the miners on the verge on plunging Britain into darkness.”
“This mess resulted in Margaret Thatcher coming to power with free-market policies that transformed the nation.
“There seems to be no Margaret Thatcher waiting in the wings. Perhaps though, as stated by the English cricketer Cliff Gladwin in Durban, South Africa in 1948: “Cometh the hour, cometh the man”.
We are indebted to @Larus_Argentus for his recent recommendation on Twitter / X of Sir John Glubb’s short history ‘The Fate of Empires’. A key takeaway is that many empires throughout history share astonishingly similar durations.
Source: ‘The Fate of Empires’ by Sir John Glubb, 1976.
In Glubb’s analysis, the rot sets in during ‘the Age of Affluence’:
“There does not appear to be any doubt that money is the agent which causes the decline of.. strong, brave and self-confident people. The decline in courage, enterprise and a sense of duty is, however, gradual. The first direction in which wealth injures the nation is a moral one. Money replaces honour and adventure as the objective of the best young men. Moreover, men do not normally seek to make money for their country or their community, but for themselves.
“Gradually, and almost imperceptibly, the Age of Affluence silences the voice of duty. The object of the young and the ambitious is no longer fame, honour or service, but cash. Education undergoes the same gradual transformation. No longer do schools aim at producing brave patriots ready to serve their country. Parents and students alike seek the educational qualifications which will command the highest salaries. The Arab moralist, Ghazali (1058-1111), complains in these very same words of the lowering of objectives in the declining Arab world of his time. Students, he says, no longer attend college to acquire learning and virtue, but to obtain those qualifications which will enable them to grow rich. The same situation is everywhere evident among us in the West today.”
Then, during what Glubb calls ‘High Noon’,
“The immense wealth accumulated in the nation dazzles the onlookers. Enough of the ancient virtues of courage, energy and patriotism survive to enable the state successfully to defend its frontiers. But, beneath the surface, greed for money is gradually replacing duty and public service.
“Indeed the change might be summarised as being from service to selfishness.
“Another outward change which invariably marks the transition from the Age of Conquests to the Age of Affluence is the spread of defensiveness. The nation, immensely rich, is no longer interested in glory or duty, but is only anxious to retain its wealth and its luxury. It is a period of defensiveness, from the Great Wall of China, to Hadrian’s Wall on the Scottish Border, to the Maginot Line in France in 1939.
“Money being in better supply than courage, subsidies instead of weapons are employed to buy off enemies. To justify this departure from ancient tradition, the human mind easily devises its own justification. Military readiness, or aggressiveness, is denounced as primitive and immoral. Civilised peoples are too proud to fight. The conquest of one nation by another is declared to be immoral.
“Empires are wicked. This intellectual device enables us to suppress our feeling of inferiority, when we read of the heroism of our ancestors, and then ruefully contemplate our position today. ‘It is not that we are afraid to fight,’ we say, ‘but we should consider it immoral.’ This even enables us to assume an attitude of moral superiority.
Then follows civil dissensions:
“Another remarkable and unexpected symptom of national decline is the intensification of internal political hatreds. One would have expected that, when the survival of the nation became precarious, political factions would drop their rivalry and stand shoulder-to-shoulder to save their country.”
Then follows an influx from abroad:
“..while the nation is still affluent, all the diverse races may appear equally loyal. But in an acute emergency, the immigrants will often be less willing to sacrifice their lives and their property than will be the original descendants of the founder race. Third, the immigrants are liable to form communities of their own, protecting primarily their own interests, and only in the second degree that of the nation as a whole.
“Fourth, many of the foreign immigrants will probably belong to races originally conquered by and absorbed into the empire. While the empire is enjoying its High Noon of prosperity, all these people are proud and glad to be imperial citizens. But when decline sets in, it is extraordinary how the memory of ancient wars, perhaps centuries before, is suddenly revived, and local or provincial movements appear demanding secession or independence.”
Society is overtaken by frivolity:
“As the nation declines in power and wealth, a universal pessimism gradually pervades the people, and itself hastens the decline. There is nothing succeeds like success, and, in the Ages of Conquest and Commerce, the nation was carried triumphantly onwards on the wave of its own self-confidence. Republican Rome was repeatedly on the verge of extinction—in 390 B.C. when the Gauls sacked the city and in 216 B.C. after the Battle of Cannae. But no disasters could shake the resolution of the early Romans. Yet, in the later stages of Roman decline, the whole empire was deeply pessimistic, thereby sapping its own resolution..
“The heroes of declining nations are always the same—the athlete, the singer or the actor. The word ‘celebrity’ today is used to designate a comedian or a football player, not a statesman, a general, or a literary genius.”
In the late stage of empire, Glubb highlights the role played by the provision of welfare:
“When the welfare state was first introduced in Britain, it was hailed as a new high-water mark in the history of human development. History, however, seems to suggest that the age of decline of a great nation is often a period which shows a tendency to philanthropy and to sympathy for other races. This phase may not be contradictory to the feeling described in the previous paragraph, that the dominant race has the right to rule the world. For the citizens of the great nation enjoy the role of Lady Bountiful. As long as it retains its status of leadership, the imperial people are glad to be generous, even if slightly condescending. The rights of citizenship are generously bestowed on every race, even those formerly subject, and the equality of mankind is proclaimed. The Roman Empire passed through this phase, when equal citizenship was thrown open to all peoples, such provincials even becoming senators and emperors..
“It may perhaps be incorrect to picture the welfare state as the high-water mark of human attainment. It may merely prove to be one more regular milestone in the life story of an ageing and decrepit empire.”
Glubb concludes as follows:
“As numerous points of interest have arisen in the course of this essay, I close with a brief summary, to refresh the reader’s mind.
(a) We do not learn from history because our studies are brief and prejudiced.
(b) In a surprising manner, 250 years emerges as the average length of national greatness.
(c) This average has not varied for 3,000 years. Does it represent ten generations?
(d) The stages of the rise and fall of great nations seem to be:
The Age of Pioneers (outburst)
The Age of Conquests
The Age of Commerce
The Age of Affluence
The Age of Intellect
The Age of Decadence.
(e) Decadence is marked by:
Defensiveness
Pessimism
Materialism
Frivolity
An influx of foreigners
The Welfare State
A weakening of religion.
(f) Decadence is due to:
Too long a period of wealth and power
Selfishness
Love of money
The loss of a sense of duty.
(g) The life histories of great states are amazingly similar, and are due to internal factors.
(h) Their falls are diverse, because they are largely the result of external causes.
(i) History should be taught as the history of the human race, though of course with emphasis on the history of the student’s own country.”
Glubb’s analysis of the typical durations of empires (circa 250 years) is perhaps not to be taken too literally. We would merely observe that if we take the start of the American Empire as 1776 (the date of the Declaration of Independence), then readers may wish to consider the following mathematical formulation, namely 1776 + 250 = 2026.
In our piece ‘New Year’s Revolutions’ of 6th January 2024, we quoted Jeffrey Tucker of the Brownstone Institute:
“Finally, there is the loss of trust in everything: government, public health, pharmaceuticals, academia, science, media, and each other. Society cannot function without trust. Not even churches are immune from broad incredulity since most went along with the Covid response in every detail.
“This only begins to scratch the surface of what we’ve lost and what has replaced it. Ultimately all such tragedies come down to individual lives. These days you hear them only among friends and families. And they are terrible stories of sadness and personal despair. The pain is only intensified by the silence on the part of all corporate media, government, and other commanding heights. Because of the news block on the whole topic, there is mass and festering anger beneath the surface.”
We reiterate what we wrote in January. We know where to point fingers. US and global alphabet agencies, unaccountable lobby groups with the pompous adjective ‘World’ affixed to their names, the UN, its laughable 2030 Agenda for Sustainable [sic] Development..
All of these agents of malevolent cretinocracy can be summarised simply as the grim return of the Big State.
“The state is a human institution, not a superhuman being. He who says “state” means coercion and compulsion. He who says: There should be a law concerning this matter, means: The armed men of the government should force people to do what they do not want to do, or not to do what they like. He who says: This law should be better enforced, means: The police should force people to obey this law. He who says: The state is God, deifies arms and prisons. The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.” (Ludwig von Mises, ‘Omnipotent Government’, 1944, Chapter 3).
Our formal brief, though, is not to advocate for political causes, but rather to act as responsible stewards of our clients’ valuable capital. This is not as easy as it sounds in an environment of deeply unsound money and in the run-up to monetary system regime change.
Monetary systems change all the time. They changed in 1914, for example, when the combatant powers all abandoned the gold standard, because staying on it whilst continuing to prosecute the war would have bankrupted them almost immediately. (Sound money saves lives.) They changed for the UK in September 1992 when the pound sterling was ethnically cleansed from Europe’s exchange rate mechanism because the UK could no longer bear to maintain the peg with the Deutsche Mark. And they will change in the months and years to come as the world increasingly comes to realise that the petrodollar is no longer the indisputed unchallengeable force in global finance given the offensive scale of the US’ unpayable debt burden.
So we seek safer harbours in assets (not the Big State’s liabilities) that are independent, scarce and permanent – gold and silver amongst them.
Arguably the most important short assembly of words in the English language is the phrase ‘This Too Shall Pass’. Consider, for example, the cultural and economic situation of Britain in the 1970s. Stéphane Porion (‘Reassessing a turbulent decade’):
“Britain was hit throughout the 1970s by skyrocketing inflation and unemployment (stagflation, in other words), a wide range of strikes, power cuts, and states of emergency. Trade unions could be called “robber barons”, as they opposed the Conservatives’ statutory incomes policy and brought down the Conservative government, thereby answering the question asked by Edward Heath, when he called a general election in February 1974: “Who Governs Britain?” After 1975 they were also deemed responsible for tearing to pieces Labour’s Social Contract, paving the way for the 1978-1979 Winter of Discontent which in turn sealed the Labour Party’s defeat. British people suffered from a sense of despair and pessimism, while Britain struggled in the 1973 oil crisis and, on the brink of bankruptcy in 1976, was forced to ask for a loan from the IMF. At the same time, academics started to argue that the country was “ungovernable” or “dying”, while the power of the trade unions seemed impossible to curb.”
Or, as Dominic Sandbrook puts it (‘State of Emergency: The Way We Were’):
“The defining characteristics of the Seventies were economic disaster, terrorist threats, corruption in high places, prophecies of ecological doom and fear of the surveillance state’s suffocating embrace. The 1970s have merely been lurking, like a mad woman in the attic, waiting for a suitable moment when they can re-emerge and scare us out of our wits all over again.”
And then, at the 1979 General Election, Margaret Thatcher was elected, and she would go on to become the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century.
That we do not yet see the Margaret Thatcher of 2024 does not mean that she, or he, is not out there, quietly mustering resistance to the corrupt predations of the overlarge State. The unique energy of the genuine free market – as opposed to the crony corporatism that has largely held sway these last four years – is an endless capacity for reinvention.
“This, too, shall pass.”
………….
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Tim Price is co-manager of the VT Price Value Portfolio and author of ‘Investing through the Looking Glass: a rational guide to irrational financial markets’. You can access a full archive of these weekly investment commentaries here. You can listen to our regular ‘State of the Markets’ podcasts, with Paul Rodriguez of ThinkTrading.com, here. Email us: info@pricevaluepartners.com.
Price Value Partners manage investment portfolios for private clients. We also manage the VT Price Value Portfolio, an unconstrained global fund investing in Benjamin Graham-style value stocks.
“History is just one damned thing after another.”
– Attributed to historian Arnold J. Toynbee.
Get your Free
financial review
From Reuben J. Rose’s (excellent) ‘Sons of Issachar Newsletter’:
“I was reminded of some of the extraordinary changes in Great Britain’s status and influence this week when I listened to an interview with the eminent historian Lord Roberts of Belgravia this week..
“Lord Roberts provided an overview of the life of Winston Churchill (1874-1965), a period which also traced the time when Great Britain’s influence started to wane in the world. He spoke of Churchill’s involvement (and near-death experiences) in the Boer War in the late 1800s, his time as First Lord of the Admiralty during WWI and his period in the trenches as a type of “penance” for the failure of his Dardanelles strategy. He was also Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1920s and then was a lone voice warning of the danger from the rearmament of Germany in the 1930s.
“Churchill’s return to power and, subsequently, leadership of Great Britain occurred with the declaration of War on Germany on 3rd September 1939. Churchill was appointed once again as the First Lord of the Admiralty. Neville Chamberlain was Prime Minister and remained in place until Germany invaded the Low Countries on 10 May 1940. Chamberlain then lost the support of the UK Parliament, and King George VI appointed Churchill to lead a coalition government. Everything seemed hopeless, but Churchill stirred the British people, and after many defeats, the tide finally turned in late 1942. However, with all the war expenditures, Great Britain was declining, and losing its colonies and resources eventually brought a day of reckoning.
“Churchill’s reward for leading Great Britain through the war was to have his government thrown out in July 1945 when Labour was elected in a landslide. Labour promised a better life for all – free health care via a national health service and nationalisation of the critical industries: coal, steel, rail, electricity, transport and the Bank of England.
“Unwittingly, with promises of lots of free “stuff” and government control of everything, the British had stepped into a socialist nightmare, which continues to the present day. Ironically, George Orwell’’s great novel Animal Farm was published just weeks after the socialist Labour government came to power..
“Since then, the British public has consistently been attracted back to a socialist agenda, and although Margaret Thatcher revolutionised Great Britain during her tenure as Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, her policies were an aberration in the overall trajectory of the UK. Thatcher is a hated figure by most on the left of UK politics today. A statue of Thatcher was rejected for placement in Parliament Square in London and vandalised after its placement in her hometown of Grantham.
“Jeremy Corbyn, effectively a Communist, was almost elected Prime Minister when he was Leader of the Opposition in the 2017 election called early by Theresa May . Corbyn was eventually removed as Labour leader after two election defeats. He was replaced in 2020 by Sir Keir Starmer, the former UK Director of Public Prosecutions.
“Starmer has made an art form of having no clear policies on anything. Such an approach has been effective and has disguised the antisemitic and communist core of the Party. Such has been the incompetence of the Conservative Party, that it is virtually indistinguishable from Labour. Both political parties promote “big government”, and the Conservatives even have a Minister for “Levelling Up” – to try to make everyone equal.
“This hopeless “conservative” government that has overseen the highest taxation in UK history, an uncontrolled border, disastrous performance by the National Health Service, ruinous lockdowns and forced vaccinations during COVID, and devolution of Wales and Scotland to become socialist enclaves. The Conservative government deserves to be thrown out of office later this year. Unfortunately, the UK will go further into the mire after the election of UK Labour.
“The current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, is a big government technocrat who doesn’t seem to have a free-market bone in his body. Recent opinion polls indicate that the Conservative Party may be left with fewer than 100 seats in Parliament (out of a total of 650 seats) after the next election.
“One of the major issues that no government has dealt with is migration. The control of immigration was a significant reason for the success of the Brexit referendum in 2016. However, since then, immigration has continued to increase, and there have been many dangerous Channel crossings in small dinghies. During the first months of 2024, there have already been 5,000 Channel crossings with costs of around £6 billion to the UK taxpayer..
“The “innovative” solution proposed in 2022, at the time that Boris Johnson was Prime Minister, was to send the illegal immigrants to Rwanda. Who created this solution that doesn’t even pass the pub test? Two years later, not one illegal immigrant has departed for Rwanda, but the UK government has paid Rwanda £240 million as of December 2023.
“The bureaucratic and government incompetence is shocking, and no solution is in sight. The House of Lords opposes the Rwanda policy, and the European Court of Human Rights can prevent the deportation of illegal immigrants. This is partly because Great Britain can’t decide whether to be in or out of Europe.
“Then there is the socialised medicine system – the NHS – that has overseen a steady decline in capability since its inception in 1945. President Reagan warned about the danger of socialised medicine back in the 1960s.
“The NHS is seen as an icon in Great Britain, and people were encouraged to leave their homes to clap for the NHS during COVID. What has happened over the past few years is a progressive decline in services, shocking statistics on waiting times for treatment and the almost impossible challenge of making a face-to-face appointment with a general practitioner. Doctors are continually striking, and new data demonstrate that 25% of patients can wait for more than 12 hours in accident and emergency. The UK Telegraph reported recently that:
“Figures compiled by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimated that there were 14,000 excess deaths last year and 1.5 million emergency patients waited 12 hours or longer. The risk of death started to increase after five hours and grew worse with longer waiting times..”
“No one has any idea about solving the health and immigration crises. The UK Labour Party, which is ideologically committed to socialism, will raise taxes, nationalise core industries and oversee an even worse economic disaster.
“What about UK Defence? All Great Britain’s weapons, already limited because the defence budget barely reaches 2% of GDP, have been shipped off to Ukraine. The former failed Prime Minister, David Cameron, has been recycled through the House of Lords to oversee a disastrous foreign policy, and with every interview it is clear that he has an arrogance:ability ratio well over unity. Naval ships cannot go to sea because of design and maintenance flaws, and UK military recruitment is only concerned about diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“Great Britain is also confused about its foundations and spiritual roots. With the influx of Muslim refugees, British “tolerance” has sought to accommodate a way of life that is in fundamental conflict with British Christian values. There is such concern about Islamophobia that when Muslim leaders call for jihad, the police and government look in the other direction.
“There is only one path for the UK: continuing and rapid decline. The socialists will impose ruinous taxes, support bureaucratic institutional failure, and a welfare state where the government will eventually run out of other people’s money (Margaret Thatcher’s great quote).
“What Are Some of the Lessons?
“For the past two years, I have closely read the UK Times and Telegraph newspapers daily to discern the “signs of the times”. It is traumatic to read about the loss of moral clarity and decisions that constantly increase bureaucracy, impose restrictions on movement in cities and more and more “green tape”. There also are almost daily stories of wasteful government expenditure at the expense of the ordinary citizen and NHS failure. Perhaps Reform UK, the new conservative political party, may gain political traction. However, the Party is unlikely to win seats in the next parliament because the UK does not have preferential voting but a “first past the post” system.
“Australia and other Commonwealth countries are tied emotionally and legally to Great Britain, and I want to understand what is happening and what the lessons are for us. Unfortunately, Australia has elected state and federal socialist governments, and so, as a country, we are headed down the same road as the UK.
“Of course, my assessment of how dire things are in the UK may be off the mark. I will be happy to be corrected by my UK readers.
“However, here are a few of my conclusions about lessons for Sons of Issachar readers that I believe can be drawn from the UK’s trajectory .
Rather than being prepared to articulate the traditional values and laws of the nation, UK governments for the last 20 years have attempted to accommodate every view as it has embraced multiculturalism. There is now a large proportion of people opposed to UK law and want the UK system to submit to an alien way of life. Threats are continually being made against those who articulate traditional values, and now “hate speech” is being prosecuted while theft and other real crimes are being ignored.
Eventually, ordinary Britons rebelled and voted to exit the European Union in 2016 (“Brexit”). However, this has proved to be an almost impossible task as the entanglement of the UK with EU law has proved challenging to resolve. Rishi Sunak promised a “bonfire or EU laws” but this has proved impossible. Now, the UK government is faced with an increasing number of legal and illegal immigrants. No one in the current government has the will to take the hard decisions to control the UK borders. The situation will only worsen when the Labour government comes to power in October or November. There is a simple equation: no border = no country.
Many in the UK have decided not to work, and recent data demonstrate that more than 20% of UK adults are not looking for work. Great Britain now has its highest taxation rate in 50 years and there will be worse to come under UK Labour.
This presents the UK government with a problem: how can it fund its defence? The short answer is that it can’t unless it dramatically changes the welfare system. Voters will not accept this (just like they won’t accept radical changes to the NHS), so there will be a defence crisis, as there was in the 1930s..
However, it is good to see that democracy in the UK is not dead just yet. Recently, farmers brought their tractors into Westminster to protest the threat to UK agriculture.
Now, the Scottish government has introduced “hate speech” laws, and police have been inundated with complaints, as you would anticipate when no one can define “hate speech”. The UK Telegraph journalist Ella Whelan reported a few days ago:
“Scotland’s new Hate Crime Act played out like an April fools with no end. Police Scotland have been inundated – about 60 reports an hour – with thousands complaining of alleged hate crimes committed by JK Rowling and the First Minister himself. Someone even made a complaint in Siobhian Brown’s name, Yousaf’s minister for victims and community, leading her to suggest that her government’s bill had caused “hysteria”.
Similar laws are being enacted in Ireland and the EU. The Telegraph journalist Ella Whelan concludes her assessment of various attempts to curb free speech as follows:
“The only way to fight bad speech – even hateful speech – is with more speech.”
I agree.
“Conclusions
“Great Britain has been one of the most influential countries of the West but as I read the daily UK news, it feels as though one is a witness to a slow train wreck. I think that we are witnessing a similar train wreck in Australia and also the US.
“Of course things were much worse in 1974. Tom and Dominic from The Rest is History podcast did a series on Great Britain in the 1970s.. They noted:
“Britain in the early 1970’s was a state in crisis, and by 1974, things had never seemed bleaker. Held hostage by the Trade Unions, British industry was flailing. England’s sporting record was atrocious, the economy was tanking and the prospect of a miners’ strike loomed large. Violence was surging in Northern Ireland, as the IRA escalated its bombing campaigns, and the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War would send oil prices soaring, with the miners on the verge on plunging Britain into darkness.”
“This mess resulted in Margaret Thatcher coming to power with free-market policies that transformed the nation.
“There seems to be no Margaret Thatcher waiting in the wings. Perhaps though, as stated by the English cricketer Cliff Gladwin in Durban, South Africa in 1948: “Cometh the hour, cometh the man”.
We are indebted to @Larus_Argentus for his recent recommendation on Twitter / X of Sir John Glubb’s short history ‘The Fate of Empires’. A key takeaway is that many empires throughout history share astonishingly similar durations.
Source: ‘The Fate of Empires’ by Sir John Glubb, 1976.
In Glubb’s analysis, the rot sets in during ‘the Age of Affluence’:
“There does not appear to be any doubt that money is the agent which causes the decline of.. strong, brave and self-confident people. The decline in courage, enterprise and a sense of duty is, however, gradual. The first direction in which wealth injures the nation is a moral one. Money replaces honour and adventure as the objective of the best young men. Moreover, men do not normally seek to make money for their country or their community, but for themselves.
“Gradually, and almost imperceptibly, the Age of Affluence silences the voice of duty. The object of the young and the ambitious is no longer fame, honour or service, but cash. Education undergoes the same gradual transformation. No longer do schools aim at producing brave patriots ready to serve their country. Parents and students alike seek the educational qualifications which will command the highest salaries. The Arab moralist, Ghazali (1058-1111), complains in these very same words of the lowering of objectives in the declining Arab world of his time. Students, he says, no longer attend college to acquire learning and virtue, but to obtain those qualifications which will enable them to grow rich. The same situation is everywhere evident among us in the West today.”
Then, during what Glubb calls ‘High Noon’,
“The immense wealth accumulated in the nation dazzles the onlookers. Enough of the ancient virtues of courage, energy and patriotism survive to enable the state successfully to defend its frontiers. But, beneath the surface, greed for money is gradually replacing duty and public service.
“Indeed the change might be summarised as being from service to selfishness.
“Another outward change which invariably marks the transition from the Age of Conquests to the Age of Affluence is the spread of defensiveness. The nation, immensely rich, is no longer interested in glory or duty, but is only anxious to retain its wealth and its luxury. It is a period of defensiveness, from the Great Wall of China, to Hadrian’s Wall on the Scottish Border, to the Maginot Line in France in 1939.
“Money being in better supply than courage, subsidies instead of weapons are employed to buy off enemies. To justify this departure from ancient tradition, the human mind easily devises its own justification. Military readiness, or aggressiveness, is denounced as primitive and immoral. Civilised peoples are too proud to fight. The conquest of one nation by another is declared to be immoral.
“Empires are wicked. This intellectual device enables us to suppress our feeling of inferiority, when we read of the heroism of our ancestors, and then ruefully contemplate our position today. ‘It is not that we are afraid to fight,’ we say, ‘but we should consider it immoral.’ This even enables us to assume an attitude of moral superiority.
Then follows civil dissensions:
“Another remarkable and unexpected symptom of national decline is the intensification of internal political hatreds. One would have expected that, when the survival of the nation became precarious, political factions would drop their rivalry and stand shoulder-to-shoulder to save their country.”
Then follows an influx from abroad:
“..while the nation is still affluent, all the diverse races may appear equally loyal. But in an acute emergency, the immigrants will often be less willing to sacrifice their lives and their property than will be the original descendants of the founder race. Third, the immigrants are liable to form communities of their own, protecting primarily their own interests, and only in the second degree that of the nation as a whole.
“Fourth, many of the foreign immigrants will probably belong to races originally conquered by and absorbed into the empire. While the empire is enjoying its High Noon of prosperity, all these people are proud and glad to be imperial citizens. But when decline sets in, it is extraordinary how the memory of ancient wars, perhaps centuries before, is suddenly revived, and local or provincial movements appear demanding secession or independence.”
Society is overtaken by frivolity:
“As the nation declines in power and wealth, a universal pessimism gradually pervades the people, and itself hastens the decline. There is nothing succeeds like success, and, in the Ages of Conquest and Commerce, the nation was carried triumphantly onwards on the wave of its own self-confidence. Republican Rome was repeatedly on the verge of extinction—in 390 B.C. when the Gauls sacked the city and in 216 B.C. after the Battle of Cannae. But no disasters could shake the resolution of the early Romans. Yet, in the later stages of Roman decline, the whole empire was deeply pessimistic, thereby sapping its own resolution..
“The heroes of declining nations are always the same—the athlete, the singer or the actor. The word ‘celebrity’ today is used to designate a comedian or a football player, not a statesman, a general, or a literary genius.”
In the late stage of empire, Glubb highlights the role played by the provision of welfare:
“When the welfare state was first introduced in Britain, it was hailed as a new high-water mark in the history of human development. History, however, seems to suggest that the age of decline of a great nation is often a period which shows a tendency to philanthropy and to sympathy for other races. This phase may not be contradictory to the feeling described in the previous paragraph, that the dominant race has the right to rule the world. For the citizens of the great nation enjoy the role of Lady Bountiful. As long as it retains its status of leadership, the imperial people are glad to be generous, even if slightly condescending. The rights of citizenship are generously bestowed on every race, even those formerly subject, and the equality of mankind is proclaimed. The Roman Empire passed through this phase, when equal citizenship was thrown open to all peoples, such provincials even becoming senators and emperors..
“It may perhaps be incorrect to picture the welfare state as the high-water mark of human attainment. It may merely prove to be one more regular milestone in the life story of an ageing and decrepit empire.”
Glubb concludes as follows:
“As numerous points of interest have arisen in the course of this essay, I close with a brief summary, to refresh the reader’s mind.
(a) We do not learn from history because our studies are brief and prejudiced.
(b) In a surprising manner, 250 years emerges as the average length of national greatness.
(c) This average has not varied for 3,000 years. Does it represent ten generations?
(d) The stages of the rise and fall of great nations seem to be:
The Age of Pioneers (outburst)
The Age of Conquests
The Age of Commerce
The Age of Affluence
The Age of Intellect
The Age of Decadence.
(e) Decadence is marked by:
Defensiveness
Pessimism
Materialism
Frivolity
An influx of foreigners
The Welfare State
A weakening of religion.
(f) Decadence is due to:
Too long a period of wealth and power
Selfishness
Love of money
The loss of a sense of duty.
(g) The life histories of great states are amazingly similar, and are due to internal factors.
(h) Their falls are diverse, because they are largely the result of external causes.
(i) History should be taught as the history of the human race, though of course with emphasis on the history of the student’s own country.”
Glubb’s analysis of the typical durations of empires (circa 250 years) is perhaps not to be taken too literally. We would merely observe that if we take the start of the American Empire as 1776 (the date of the Declaration of Independence), then readers may wish to consider the following mathematical formulation, namely 1776 + 250 = 2026.
In our piece ‘New Year’s Revolutions’ of 6th January 2024, we quoted Jeffrey Tucker of the Brownstone Institute:
“Finally, there is the loss of trust in everything: government, public health, pharmaceuticals, academia, science, media, and each other. Society cannot function without trust. Not even churches are immune from broad incredulity since most went along with the Covid response in every detail.
“This only begins to scratch the surface of what we’ve lost and what has replaced it. Ultimately all such tragedies come down to individual lives. These days you hear them only among friends and families. And they are terrible stories of sadness and personal despair. The pain is only intensified by the silence on the part of all corporate media, government, and other commanding heights. Because of the news block on the whole topic, there is mass and festering anger beneath the surface.”
We reiterate what we wrote in January. We know where to point fingers. US and global alphabet agencies, unaccountable lobby groups with the pompous adjective ‘World’ affixed to their names, the UN, its laughable 2030 Agenda for Sustainable [sic] Development..
All of these agents of malevolent cretinocracy can be summarised simply as the grim return of the Big State.
“The state is a human institution, not a superhuman being. He who says “state” means coercion and compulsion. He who says: There should be a law concerning this matter, means: The armed men of the government should force people to do what they do not want to do, or not to do what they like. He who says: This law should be better enforced, means: The police should force people to obey this law. He who says: The state is God, deifies arms and prisons. The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.” (Ludwig von Mises, ‘Omnipotent Government’, 1944, Chapter 3).
Our formal brief, though, is not to advocate for political causes, but rather to act as responsible stewards of our clients’ valuable capital. This is not as easy as it sounds in an environment of deeply unsound money and in the run-up to monetary system regime change.
Monetary systems change all the time. They changed in 1914, for example, when the combatant powers all abandoned the gold standard, because staying on it whilst continuing to prosecute the war would have bankrupted them almost immediately. (Sound money saves lives.) They changed for the UK in September 1992 when the pound sterling was ethnically cleansed from Europe’s exchange rate mechanism because the UK could no longer bear to maintain the peg with the Deutsche Mark. And they will change in the months and years to come as the world increasingly comes to realise that the petrodollar is no longer the indisputed unchallengeable force in global finance given the offensive scale of the US’ unpayable debt burden.
So we seek safer harbours in assets (not the Big State’s liabilities) that are independent, scarce and permanent – gold and silver amongst them.
Arguably the most important short assembly of words in the English language is the phrase ‘This Too Shall Pass’. Consider, for example, the cultural and economic situation of Britain in the 1970s. Stéphane Porion (‘Reassessing a turbulent decade’):
“Britain was hit throughout the 1970s by skyrocketing inflation and unemployment (stagflation, in other words), a wide range of strikes, power cuts, and states of emergency. Trade unions could be called “robber barons”, as they opposed the Conservatives’ statutory incomes policy and brought down the Conservative government, thereby answering the question asked by Edward Heath, when he called a general election in February 1974: “Who Governs Britain?” After 1975 they were also deemed responsible for tearing to pieces Labour’s Social Contract, paving the way for the 1978-1979 Winter of Discontent which in turn sealed the Labour Party’s defeat. British people suffered from a sense of despair and pessimism, while Britain struggled in the 1973 oil crisis and, on the brink of bankruptcy in 1976, was forced to ask for a loan from the IMF. At the same time, academics started to argue that the country was “ungovernable” or “dying”, while the power of the trade unions seemed impossible to curb.”
Or, as Dominic Sandbrook puts it (‘State of Emergency: The Way We Were’):
“The defining characteristics of the Seventies were economic disaster, terrorist threats, corruption in high places, prophecies of ecological doom and fear of the surveillance state’s suffocating embrace. The 1970s have merely been lurking, like a mad woman in the attic, waiting for a suitable moment when they can re-emerge and scare us out of our wits all over again.”
And then, at the 1979 General Election, Margaret Thatcher was elected, and she would go on to become the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century.
That we do not yet see the Margaret Thatcher of 2024 does not mean that she, or he, is not out there, quietly mustering resistance to the corrupt predations of the overlarge State. The unique energy of the genuine free market – as opposed to the crony corporatism that has largely held sway these last four years – is an endless capacity for reinvention.
“This, too, shall pass.”
………….
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Tim Price is co-manager of the VT Price Value Portfolio and author of ‘Investing through the Looking Glass: a rational guide to irrational financial markets’. You can access a full archive of these weekly investment commentaries here. You can listen to our regular ‘State of the Markets’ podcasts, with Paul Rodriguez of ThinkTrading.com, here. Email us: info@pricevaluepartners.com.
Price Value Partners manage investment portfolios for private clients. We also manage the VT Price Value Portfolio, an unconstrained global fund investing in Benjamin Graham-style value stocks.
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