Strangely Perfect

True

• I believe Thatcher was a stopped watch and the worst thing to hit Britain since the storms of 1703.
• I believe the Tories have continually failed the economy and the people. They don’t run it, they ruin it.

Incidentally, in 2013 there was a nice breakdown of all the Thatcher economic myths – see https://www.redpepper.org.uk/dispelling-the-thatcher-myths/    Every single one such as:

• No ‘economic miracle’
• Tax-cutter. She wasn’t. Overall tax burden (all taxes as a percentage of GDP) rose from 39 percent in 1979 to 43 percent in 1989
• Thatcher made  British people richer. She didn’t. In 1979 poorest fifth had 10% of after-tax income. In1989 their share down to 7%. Richest 1/5th rose 37% to 43%.
• ..and so it goes on, read the full thing.

However, Thatcher, just like a stopped watch, was sometimes correct. She was right when she more-or-less is supposed to have said, “the markets never lie”, so let’s check!  When making comparisons, the best way (to remove national incongruities about GDP calculations) is to look at the monetary exchange rates.
Recently, the rates have been influenced by external events like the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the latter of which has made Europe seriously susceptible to inflation due to its dependence on Russian hydrocarbons.
WE can see this with the rise of the USD-EUR rate following 24th Feb invasion as well as the USD-GBP rate. The USD seems to be recovering from the pandemic compared to the GBP & EUR.  See both charts below, yellow highlights.

However, despite the UK being hardly dependent on Russian hydrocarbons compared to the EU and rest of Europe, the EUR-GBP rate has wavered between two extremes as the conflict has progressed. Until yesterday and today….

The EUR took a massive hit on 24th Feb (orange) but then matched GBP (blue) until yesterday (green).
In essence, the UK has been shielded from its inadequacies by political leadership ditherings and distractions. Now we see massive interest rate rises and inflation at 10%+ despite minimal use of Russian hydrocarbons. How can this be?
Answer. The tories are useless at economics.
Now compare the final currency charts through 20 years+ of history for GBP.

Blue marks tory times. The financial crash of 2008 is well shown as GBP-USD and GBP-EUR.
Also to note is the appalling and continual slide in GBP-EUR whenever it’s blue and the marked rise of GBP against both USD and EUR during the orange Labour governments.

Thatcher’s economic miracle time in the 90s clearly shows against the EUR & USD to be a figment of Tory publicity.  It is crap.  The decline of heavy industry in the UK was mirrored in all of the major economies of the world during the 90s and yet, the UK’s GBP fared worse.  How is that?

A. Because Tories don’t manage the economy for the country. It is purely self & vested interests, which is them.

Conclusion

The markets don’t lie.

All 3 currencies have been all affected by world events, the USD less-so with the current Ukraine crisis since they are not dependent on Russian hydrocarbons.

It’s instructive looking at stuff like this and then comparing past events in history to the charts, trying to work out short term things to long term macro-economic policies.

To me, the key standout is from May 1997 until the crash of July 2007 with GBP-EUR when, paraphrasing Harold Macmillan, Britain never had it so good both in and with Europe. European holidays were great with 1.5 euros to the pound and a huge influx of Europeans into Britain, doing and creating jobs and adding to tax revenues…. It was a labour government, when you could go to A&E and be seen to almost straight away….
It’s fucking hard to find a Polish supermarket now and all those goodies…. Let alone find anyone to kill a pig.

WE are now in a Thatcherite 90s decline again.  It’s very likely, unless they can somehow be thrown from power, that inflation and massive interest rates will affect the UK worse in the coming years in just the same way as Thatcher’s 90s compared to similar economies. WEe’ll be in the G20 or even outside that at the current rate, except there will be no NHS because of this…………..

On the introductory page we see the words;

• “integrate” appear 7x,
• joined-up and joined up appear 8x
• wider system partners and similar

All of these are euphemisms for wholesale sell-offs of key NHS services to vested interests that set their own charges and through which Tories are major partners. – example today – https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/may/06/labour-question-tories-cronyism-row-donors-public-health-jobs-nhs there are daily occurrences of this conniving.

The page even includes an outright financial funding lie…. for which I’ll finish here.

The Health and Care Act is the most significant change to the healthcare system in a decade and will put it in the strongest possible position to rebuild from the pandemic, backed by our record funding.

It is “record funding” in that it is playing catch-up on £150 billion of historic under-funding which is barely a fifth and is even less than the £37 billion wasted on Track & Trace….Even the UK Parliament said so!!!!  See – https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/127/public-accounts-committee/news/150988/unimaginable-cost-of-test-trace-failed-to-deliver-central-promise-of-averting-another-lockdown/