Hegel once wrote “...the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the coming of the dusk”. Minerva was the Roman version of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, and the owl was the goddess’s symbol. So what did Hegel mean by this remark? I am no expert, but one interpretation is simply that we learn only by reflecting on the day when it is passing.
HOWEVER, regular readers of this blog will be aware that I have spent the last FIFTEEN YEARS wearing a tinfoil hat and shouting at debt bubbles. With apologies to Hegel: all of what is happening to our society now, as a consequence, is blindingly obvious and has been so well, well before actual dusk.
Like, in the middle of the day.
Incidentally, I wanted to title this column after a quote by
Martin Amis - but changed my mind as I’m not a fan of making a swear. The quote
in question was made in passing to Robert Conquest, when he wrote his famous
1968 book on Stalin, titled “The Great Terror”. This work essentially vindicated
all of Conquest’s previous research – chiefly, centering on claims that Stalin
had killed millions - that no one on the left had ever wanted to admit, but was
now blindingly obvious to everyone and could no longer be ignored.
Martin Amis suggested the book be reissued under the title I
Told You So, You Fucking Fools.
And now, well…we are where we are.
The Roman Empire collapsed shortly after their silver mines
ran out of silver, and they started debasing their currency en masse.
Now to the UK: we have debased our currency to the point that
even left wing people are starting to notice.
Combine the above with the fact that our energy system is insane,
and increasingly centred around windmills - a 9th century technology
– and we have had no economic growth for two decades.
The tax base is diminishing rapidly as the minority who keep
the system afloat pay more and more tax, and are predictably checking out. Income
distribution is now - and this is unbelievable, but completely true - flatter
than it was in the USSR.
53% of the country take out more from the system than they
put in. It doesn’t take Minerva to work out that this is not sustainable.
On top of this, 13 million people - net - have emigrated to the UK
in the last decade and a half, and we now have a society made up of people with
very little in common.
And now global trade is dying, and because we have spent the
last two generations planning defence entirely around defending the Fulda Gap,
we don’t know how to defend our actual homeland, or our trade.
So what happens next?
Very obviously, property taxes will rise and rise. The Mansion
Tax threshold will be lowered next. Debasement will continue.
The non-state professional classes will continue to flee the
UK – particularly as AI is going to do to the vestigial middle what has already
happened to blue collar workers. Maybe AI is writing this? Who knows. (This is
only a problem as I have a Chinese laptop, so this will limit what I can write.
Just kidding! That’s not true at all - I can write whatever I Xi Jinping Is A Glorious
Leader.)
So – given we have debased our currency, increased taxes and
dramatically increased dependents on the state - what do we think is going to happen
next, gang?
The timing is, perhaps, hard to pin down, but the direction is not. Autumn budget, Spring ’27 election (on the rationale that the Right has never been more divided), Andrew (stop calling him “Andy”!) Burnham nevertheless fails to win a majority, coalition with the Greens, Economic Armageddon?
Then what – hyperinflation? Social disintegration? The subsequent
rise of a right-wing government version of a Potemkin village?
Either way, it’s not good.
Which leads me to my last point, directed to our Glorious Elites:
I told you so, you fucking fools.
