Prem Sikka argues that all major political parties now represent the 1%

The 1950s horror film “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and its subsequent remakes provide a metaphor for understanding contemporary life in dystopian Britain. A large proportion of the population has been psychologically restructured to become clones of their former selves. Despite the evidence, they cling to the hope that the political institutions which have stripped them of hard-won economic and social rights would somehow restore them.

Unlike the film, the UK has not been infiltrated by extra-terrestrial “pod people” bent on duplicating people to achieve control. Actually, they were already here in the form of 1% bent on amassing wealth and power. They never got over the fact that after the Second-World War working class loosened the shackles of servitude and demanded equitable share of income and wealth.

By the 1970s the 1% felt strengthened by the ideologies propagated by the likes of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, and found a willing accomplice in Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. A key phase of cloning was to reconstruct people’s common sense and promote the view that the values of the 1% were the only way of life. They funded numerous think tanks to add credibility to their prejudices. Political parties, legislators, journalists, media outlets, academics and opinion formers were enrolled to advance their agenda.

Media and opinion formers incessantly told people that their way of life was under threat from the European Union (EU), trade unions, gypsies, the disabled, Roma, black/brown people, the poor, the sick, pensioners, social security claimants and more. A key skirmish was the 1980s strike by coal-miners seeking to protect their jobs and local communities. This was constructed as a threat to power and wealth of the 1% and Thatcher portrayed the unions as “the enemy within“. The full might of the state was used to defeat the working class. A series of anti-trade union laws followed and none were repealed by the 1997-2010 Labour administration.

The 1% struck it rich as whole swathes of publicly-owned industries were privatised at knockdown prices by successive governments. These included oil, gas electricity, railways, buses, steel, coal, auto, shipbuilding, aerospace, airlines, biotechnology, information technology and more. The state was restructured. Instead of investing in key industries, such as aerospace and information technology, it became a guarantor of corporate profits. The Private Finance Initiative and outsourcing of public services were key developments.

Many looked towards the EU where state ownership persisted; workers elected directors to the boards of large companies, and enjoyed a modicum of rights. Such social rights were an anathema to the 1% and in 2016 withdrawal from the EU was engineered. Leading politicians and newspapers told people that membership of the EU was dangerous and would enable 77 million Muslims from Turkey to descend upon the UK. Majority of the electorate voted to come out of the EU as people were told that Brexit would bring new prosperity, democratic control and £350m a week additional investment in the National Health Service. None of this ever materialised.

The Labour Party, under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, sought to challenge the power of the 1% and in 2017 significantly increased its share of popular vote. He was incessantly smeared, and Labour’s right wing secretly worked to ensure that the party did not win the general election. A senior serving general warned that a Jeremy Corbyn government could face “a mutiny” from the Army.

Governments increased the retirement age and people in England lost the right to free education. But they found unlimited resources to bailout banks and hand nearly £1 trillion of quantitative easing to speculators. By June 2023, public debt reached £2.6tn or 100.8% of GDP, compared to £1.03tn, or 65% of GDP in May 2010. Taxes reached the highest for 70 years. But the riches did not trickle-down to the masses.

In 1976, at the dawn of the onslaught of the 1%, workers’ share of gross domestic product in the form of wages and salaries was 65.1% and by 2023 it shrank to around 50%. In August 2023, the real average wage is lower than in 2005, and 14.2m Brits live in poverty. Some 7.6m are waiting for a hospital appointment. Malnutrition, rickets and scurvy have returned to Britain. Between 2012 and 2019, some 335,000 people died from government imposed austerity. The UK recorded record number of billionaires.

Rather than examining changes to life, the clones were once again distracted by the Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s claim that their way of life was under threat from an “invasion” of “billions” of asylum seekers arriving in small boats. The government passed laws to resume human-trafficking by sending asylum-seekers to Rwanda. The clones did not notice that their basic rights have vanished.

The Public Order Act 2023 banned “disruptive” protests, gave police powers to stop, search and detain people without any suspicion on the basis that they might join a protest. Journalists reporting on protests have been arrested. The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 made it almost impossible for workers to take strike action. The Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021 enabled the government to authorise agents to commit murder, rape and torture of its own citizens “in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom” (Section 1 (5) (5c)).. The government is now considering withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights.

There is little difference in the policies offered by major political parties. They have all become a Party of the 1% and make no promises to reverse any of the lost economic, social and political rights. But people still flocked to them. As George Orwell’s book 1984 put it, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” What the Party fears most is the freedom of thought. So, the government has ordered schools not to use literature which seeks to abolish or overthrow contemporary democracy or capitalism. The Prime Minister explained that the predominant purpose of higher education is to prepare people to be cogs in the capitalist machine and university degrees offering anything less need to be phased out. Apparently, human life is all about pure survival and nothing else.

Those not yet fully converted to pod persons continue to remind that another world is possible. The clones point fingers at them, disparagingly referring to them as tofu-eating wokerati, unpatriotic, lefty and socialists who must somehow be silenced and exiled. Yet the future remains full of emancipatory possibilities because the 1% has been unable to diminish human capacity for love, emotions, care, justice, fairness, compassion and community building.

Prem Sikka is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield, a Labour member of the House of Lords, and Contributing Editor at Left Foot Forward.

Image credit: Marc Barrot – Creative Commons

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