Plus Ca Change
The 2008 global financial crash was prompted by the deregulation of the financial services and banking industry. The deregulation led to a lot of very questionable financial decisions being made (home loans being dished out like Halloween candy to people unable to afford the repayments) that inevitably caused the whole system to crash.
Huge firms that were considered being "too big to fail" actually really totally and utterly failed. People's savings and pensions were wiped out. Some UK banks barely escaped destruction by the skin of their immaculate dentistry.
The Labour government led by Prime Minister Gordon Brown dipped heavily into the public purse to shore up Britain's extremely wobbly financial centre. Purse strings were pulled tight to see us through. (A financial advisor told me that she thought Gordon Brown saved the country with his actions and over time would be seen as a British hero on the same level as Churchill).
Come the 2010 election, the Conservatives (who hadn't been in power since 1997) blamed Labour for the Global Financial Crisis and subsequently became the new government, led by the extremely posh, ham-faced toff David "call me Dave" Cameron. Fuelled by a note left by a departing Labour representative that read "Sorry, all the money has gone", Dave and his Eton and Oxford University chum Gideon (aka George because it made him sound more relatable) set about dismantling the social net that had kept a lot of vulnerable Britons safe for decades.
He called it The Big Society.
The Big Society basically closed youth centres, shuttered all drop-in centres for people on drugs, removed work assistance programmes for people living with disabilities, stripped out adult social care, emptied psychiatric wards onto the streets and then declared that everyday people would have to Step Up and organise themselves to deal with all these previously government-run things he had taken away.
In reality it was a return to the kind of Austerity the country went through after the Second World War. Funding for local councils was cut, funding for the national health service was effectively cut, the prosperous Britain of the before times had gone. It was exactly the sort of thing Margaret Thatcher could only dreamed about doing.
Nearly fifteen years of successive Conservative governments then ensued. Austerity carried on, even when things seemed to be improving after the 2008 horrors, there was always "no more money" for anything (despite eye-watering amounts being spent on wars and pointless rail projects). Brexit - a referendum instigated by David Cameron, who immediately legged it when the vote didn't go his way - further hamstrung the British economy, creating a forty billion pound hole that still hasn't been anywhere near filled.
Sick of Conservative corruption and the massive erosion of our quality of life, us Brits went to the polls on election day 2024 and voted in a new Labour government with a colossal landslide, hoping it would mean the end of Austerity and a return to the sun-kissed, pleasant pastures of good old Blighty of yore.
What we actually got was more of the same "there's no money left" Austerity and a government that was fervently authoritarian, anti-immigrant, anti-trans and desperate to pander to business. Things previously unthinkable for a government run by an historically Socialist party. They were Conservatives in all but name.
It transpired that a lot of Conservative party donors had jumped ship to Labour before the election and were pouring their donations into the red party's pockets. Obviously with absolutely no expectations of the Labour government doing anything for them. Oh no, perish the thought! As IF!?!?!
So the US Midterms have happened and the Republican party has taken a total kicking to the bollocks from an America that seems to be sick of the high cost of living and a pointless war and possibly the seemingly corrupt nature of its government. The Democrats now control both houses, which theoretically can reign in the worst excesses of an increasingly unstable president.
Reading recent social media posts has been like looking out of the window onto massive celebrations in the street below. There's a sense of relief, that things could start to get better now.
There's been talk of the end of a pointless war, a reduction in fuel prices, a curb on recent excess, action over the financial influence of tech billionaires in national policy, the end of data centres, no more Russian social media trolls, PEOPLE BEING HELD TO ACCOUNT for the last two years of madness. There is hope that the future Democratic party that surely will take power in 2 years will be a new broom to sweep all the recent shit away.
Well. Going by what us Brits have gone through, I doubt that very much. The tech bros and AI twats will just turn off the tap labelled "Republican donations" and turn on the "Democrat donations" tap. Bezos and Musk and Zuckerberg and Altman and Ellison and Thiel and all the other grotesquely rich, mentally ill broligarchs will just buy their way into Democrat policymaking and it will be the same old America from the last few years. There will be no escape and a lot of people are going to be deeply disappointed.
But on the plus side, well done Americans for kicking Trump in the nards. Now do all the other mad bastards that are fucking up your country (and all of ours) whilst you're at it.