Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party.

[DynamicSpirit]

Try comparing them to the Conservative party of the 1960's...

Sure. The Conservative Party the 1980s privatised extensively, made a big thing of cutting taxes and trying to cut spending, was very hostile to gay rights, and opposed to any kind of minimum wage. The Conservative Party of today has if anything reversed some privatisations, made a big thing of raising taxes to pay for increased spending, is very supportive of gay rights (to the point that it was the Government that legalised gay marriage) and has vastly increased the minimum wage.

Looks to me like the Conservative party of today is substantially more left wing than that of the 1980s on a wide variety of issues.

Besides being 'far right' is usually measured in absolute terms by such things as whether a party supports fascism, is overtly militaristic and racist, etc. etc., not by how it compares with 40 years ago.

EDIT. Just realised that I misread your post as 1980s when you said 1960s. The 1960s was arguably a time of much more consensus between Conservatives and Labour on many issues: Both parties were much closer to the centre - so I'm less sure how that comparison would work. But I think the point still stands that the Conservatives are not, by any reasonable definition, far right.

 

[GusB]

Really? Since when was paying everyone a salary to do nothing (if you want to look at it another way which amounts to the same thing, extending the welfare state so that everyone gets welfare payments whether they need it or not) 'centrist fare'? Since when was unbridled hostility to private enterprise 'centrist fare'? Since when was responding to almost every problem by demanding that the state spends more money 'centrist fare'?

Could you explain exactly what you mean by "paying everyone a salary to do nothing"? I suspect that you're referring to Universal Basic Income, but I wouldn't like to assume.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Could you explain exactly what you mean by "paying everyone a salary to do nothing"? I suspect that you're referring to Universal Basic Income, but I wouldn't like to assume.

I am indeed referring to UBI. And yes I am guilty of using slightly loaded language to describe it but I think my description of UBI is nonetheless accurate.

 

[GusB]

I am indeed referring to UBI. And yes I am guilty of using slightly loaded language to describe it but I think my description of UBI is nonetheless accurate.

Perhaps you should have said so in the first place, instead of making snide comments. Even you must know that UBI isn't purely a left-wing idea anyway.

 

[nw1]

And as to 'far right Conservative party'.... to my mind, 'far right' usually refers to groups like the BNP or the French National Front or Nazi or fascist groups. Of course the Conservatives are a right wing party, but to describe them as 'far right' is beyond ridiculous.

While the Conservative Party, and the Government, are not far right as a whole, I do think there are people in the parliamentary party, including one or two senior people in government, who, in my own personal view, do border on far right. In my view, a small number of senior Conservatives have come very close to hate speech directed against their political opponents, and others - perhaps there's an overlap here in the individuals concerned - have pursued an very authoritarian line on some matters related to law and order. I won't name names, though.

Put it this way, I think that there are senior people in the Conservative Party who are fairly close to the likes of Meloni and Le Pen, two people considered far-right by some, but not all.

I just wish Sunak would have a bit of backbone and kick the lot of them out, so that they can join their natural home in the Farage project.

EDIT. Just realised that I misread your post as 1980s when you said 1960s. The 1960s was arguably a time of much more consensus between Conservatives and Labour on many issues: Both parties were much closer to the centre - so I'm less sure how that comparison would work. But I think the point still stands that the Conservatives are not, by any reasonable definition, far right.

That, I think, was @Yew's point (apologies if not!). While before my time, people like Heath and Macmillan were clearly a lot closer to the centre than the current lot. So the Conservative Party can still be the Conservative Party without having to be excessively right-wing, and maybe they should learn from the likes of Heath, Macmillan and Major. In particular, I think they could do well to learn from Heath and Major on foreign policy.

 

[brad465]

I am indeed referring to UBI. And yes I am guilty of using slightly loaded language to describe it but I think my description of UBI is nonetheless accurate.

One of the main arguments for UBI is that it will be necessary if AI wipes out most human jobs, if it's paying people to do nothing it's because in that particular situation people cannot do anything even if they wanted to.

 

[ainsworth74]

One of the main arguments for UBI is that it will be necessary if AI wipes out most human jobs, if it's paying people to do nothing it's because in that particular situation people cannot do anything even if they wanted to.

Which is why personally, whilst I don't think we need UBI right now, I'm very keen for us to experiment with it because I can't help but feel the time will come when we're going to need it...

 

[nw1]

One of the main arguments for UBI is that it will be necessary if AI wipes out most human jobs, if it's paying people to do nothing it's because in that particular situation people cannot do anything even if they wanted to.

If that is a risk then we need to stop AI wiping out most human jobs, including by legislation if necessary.

It may sound "hard left" and "anti-free-market" to some, but perhaps drastic measures of this sort will be necessary to put limitations and restrictions on the use of AI, so that it's restricted to usages which benefit the human race and not just as a way of allowing companies to save on their wages bill. If we're all on low incomes (UBI) due to mass job losses, then we won't be able to spend much money.

And we'll all have poor mental health if we're stuck at home doing nothing on a low income all day, unable to work and unable to spend money on things which keep our minds active. It'll be like an eternal lockdown - and a few months of that was bad enough. It sounds like a future from hell - but we have the power to stop it if we want to.

 

[najaB]

Which is why personally, whilst I don't think we need UBI right now, I'm very keen for us to experiment with it because I can't help but feel the time will come when we're going to need it...

I prefer the idea of tax rates that go negative at the bottom end of the scale - effectively Universal Minimum Income.

If that is a risk then we need to stop AI wiping out most human jobs, including by legislation if necessary.

The genie is out of the bottle already. When have we ever been able to stop technological progress by legislation? The most we can hope to achieve is some degree of regulation to stop the gross excesses.

 

[nw1]

I prefer the idea of tax rates that go negative at the bottom end of the scale - effectively Universal Minimum Income.

The genie is out of the bottle already. When have we ever been able to stop technological progress by legislation? The most we can hope to achieve is some degree of regulation to stop the gross excesses.

It depends how bad the consequences are. Mass unemployment and poverty amongst the general population seems a frightening enough prospect to bring in legislation to control uses of AI and limit its use to benign ends. I recognise it will go against traditional free-market thinking, and will greatly upset a lot of very powerful people, but if the free-market isn't working for the good of humanity on this matter, maybe we'll have to accept that a different direction is needed.

I also suspect that as soon as AI starts eating into jobs significantly, there will be a popular mandate for such legislation and parties which stand on a platform of such legislation will start to do well. There is also of course the very real risk of destabilisation of society if people realise that large numbers of jobs are being lost for no apparent benefit other than to a small, select group of rich and powerful people.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

One of the main arguments for UBI is that it will be necessary if AI wipes out most human jobs, if it's paying people to do nothing it's because in that particular situation people cannot do anything even if they wanted to.

Isn't that basically the same concern people have had with just about every significant technological improvement since the beginning of the industrial revolution? But what has always happened is that different jobs emerge and the greater automation allows living standards to improve. Is there any reason to think it'll be different this time?

 

[brad465]

Isn't that basically the same concern people have had with just about every significant technological improvement since the beginning of the industrial revolution? But what has always happened is that different jobs emerge and the greater automation allows living standards to improve. Is there any reason to think it'll be different this time?

We need to actually make the investment and not wait too long if possible though. When we lost all the old mines/industrial facilities in the north in the 80s, the problem wasn't that they disappeared, it was that hardly anything came in to replace them. We see this with all this talk/need for "levelling up".

That said the way the world population is forecast to go, AI won't necessarily take a load of jobs, but it will fill roles that cannot be filled by people due to a shortage of workers. Population is forecast to peak later this century before declining, but long before that a demographic imbalance weighing towards old/retired folk will cause problems without proactive measures (and scrambling for immigrants and/or birth incentivisation is not a long term solution).

 

[nw1]

Isn't that basically the same concern people have had with just about every significant technological improvement since the beginning of the industrial revolution? But what has always happened is that different jobs emerge and the greater automation allows living standards to improve. Is there any reason to think it'll be different this time?

The difference is that AI, if it gets too good, threatens to make redundant technically-advanced, skilled, professional jobs, Given that there's already a move towards automation in areas such as retail, it could mean that a wide range of jobs across the board, of varying skill levels, are threatened.

At the moment, it's not good enough to do so (you can easily trip up ChatGPT, for instance), but I have concerns about the future. The question to me is: without regulation, what sort of jobs could not be replaced by AI or other forms of automation? There are of course some highly-skilled jobs (the medical profession, amongst others, springs to mind) for which AI and automation would be a poor substitute, but are there enough of those jobs to go round?

 

[jon0844]

The difference is that AI threatens to make redundant technically-advanced, skilled, professional jobs, Given that there's already a move towards automation in areas such as retail, it could mean that a wide range of jobs across the board, of varying skill levels, are threatened.

To a degree. Didn't some lawyer recently get into a lot of trouble for using AI, which effectively mixed up/made up case law? Would we let AI design a building?

I think some jobs will be relatively safe because AI really isn't as intelligent as some people are led to believe and will certainly need checking by someone properly qualified, even if it is still damn impressive for a doing lot of (less mission critical) things. I'm very impressed with asking for images to be created too, even if there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Personally, I think that once certain professions are at risk of AI and other tech getting rid of certain jobs, the Government will be lobbied to step in and impose regulations to protect those industries. Bankers/hedge fund managers, lawyers, architects etc etc.

Of course working class people in factories and warehouses won't get such protections.

 

[nlogax]

Isn't that basically the same concern people have had with just about every significant technological improvement since the beginning of the industrial revolution? But what has always happened is that different jobs emerge and the greater automation allows living standards to improve. Is there any reason to think it'll be different this time?

I'm reminded..Stan Boardman on a FGTH album back in 1986.

‘In the common age of automation, where people might eventually work ten or twenty hours a week, man for the first time will be forced to confront himself with the true spiritual problems of living”!

In industrial and professional terms AI is in its infancy but I don't think there's any doubt how quickly it will develop. We can rest assured without some degree of national legislation this will change the direction of careers and job prospects in a massive way. As a country - as a working population - we are woefully underprepared. This isn't 'the internet v2.0', this will be very different.

Seems to me that universal basic income is going to get some serious focus in coming years as a result of this.

 

[MikeWM]

The main issue with Universal Basic Income is that it seems inevitable to me that it will be about as 'universal' as Universal Credit currently is - ie. not universal at all, but dependent on conforming to quasi-arbitrary criteria set by unaccountable higher-ups, with sanctions for the most trivial of deviations from the 'requirements'.

Do we really all want to live in a society where the state sets arbitrary criteria - which no doubt will quickly be based on things such as how much carbon we use, or how closely we've followed the government wishes on lockdowns/masks/vaccines, or how many protests we've been on, or what we say on social media - that literally determine whether we're allowed to eat? Combined with CBDCs and digital IDs, the government, and the algorithms it puts in place (probably partly set by AI!) will have full control, down to a very granular level, as to what money you receive and how you're allowed to spend it.

Even if the state is wholly benevolent - and it isn't - is it really a good thing for us all to be so totally reliant upon it for every basic part of life? It certainly isn't a world I want to live in.

...and to bring the subject slightly back on topic, only a few years ago almost every single Conservative in the party would presumably have agreed with me on the above statements. Now, I'm not so sure at all. These current Conservatives seem to really like people being highly reliant on the state, which is quite a turn-around from not so long ago.

 

[WelshBluebird]

The main issue with Universal Basic Income is that it seems inevitable to me that it will be about as 'universal' as Universal Credit currently is - ie. not universal at all, but dependent on conforming to quasi-arbitrary criteria set by unaccountable higher-ups, with sanctions for the most trivial of deviations from the 'requirements'.

The thinking I've seen is that it is absolutely universal. No sanctions or criteria etc. But is combined with changes to the tax system to essentially replace the current tax free personal allowance with UBI and potentially tax higher earners more in order to avoid the "handing out public money to those who don't need it" issue UBI has.

Do we really all want to live in a society where the state sets arbitrary criteria - which no doubt will quickly be based on things such as how much carbon we use, or how closely we've followed the government wishes on lockdowns/masks/vaccines, or how many protests we've been on, or what we say on social media - that literally determine whether we're allowed to eat? Combined with CBDCs and digital IDs, the government, and the algorithms it puts in place (probably partly set by AI!) will have full control, down to a very granular level, as to what money you recieve and how you're allowed to spend it.Even if the state is wholly benevolent - and it isn't - is it really a good thing for us all to be so totally reliant upon it for every basic part of life? It certainly isn't a world I want to live in.

Absolutely none of that has anything at all to do with UBI.

Even if the state is wholly benevolent - and it isn't - is it really a good thing for us all to be so totally reliant upon it for every basic part of life? It certainly isn't a world I want to live in.

What you worry about is already the case for people who have to rely on the state anyway (e.g. those on existing benefits) - if anything a UBI scheme would improve the situation for them as they wouldn't have to worry about the sanctions etc that are part of the current benefit system.

And for everyone else, under a UBI scheme you obviously will always have the option to look for employment to earn money as you would now so wouldn't be reliant on the state if you didn't want to be. Infact the thinking behind UBI is essentially similar to the benefits system we have had for decades - that there exists a safety net for people should they so need it, but it isn't the only option for your life. The thinking is that most people would still want to pursue a career and do something with their lives, they just don't have to worry about being homeless or starving to death if it all goes wrong!

 

[MikeWM]

The thinking I've seen is that it is absolutely universal. No sanctions or criteria etc.

Of course, they start it off that way to get people to think it is a great idea. It was fairly trivial to claim unemployment benefit etc. 40 years ago - students could even claim it in university holidays. Try claiming it now and see how many ludicrous hoops you have to jump through, simply in order to claim a relative pittance.

Absolutely none of that has anything at all to do with UBI.

Yet.

What you worry about is already the case for people who have to rely on the state anyway (e.g. those on existing benefits) - if anything a UBI scheme would improve the situation for them as they wouldn't have to worry about the sanctions etc that are part of the current benefit system.

Assuming those sanctions go away under UBI, or aren't replaced by a different form of sanctions.

And for everyone else, under a UBI scheme you obviously will always have the option to look for employment to earn money as you would now so wouldn't be reliant on the state if you didn't want to be. Infact the thinking behind UBI is essentially similar to the benefits system we have had for decades - that there exists a safety net for people should they so need it, but it isn't the only option for your life. The thinking is that most people would still want to pursue a career and do something with their lives, they just don't have to worry about being homeless or starving to death if it all goes wrong!

But the marginal tax rates to pay for UBI for everyone would be so high that most people would be dependent on getting the UBI too. Even now large numbers of people are dependent on tax credits, which were a well-meaning policy but have merely resulted in employers getting away with paying sub-standard wages because the taxpayer picks up their slack.

None of which means I don't see some attraction to UBI in an ideal world. In many respects it is a good idea. But the last 3 years have opened my eyes to just how much the state wants to micro-manage every single aspect of our lives, and I have no desire to give them any more power to do so. (and I'm not just referring to covid, but also what we drive, how we heat our homes, what we eat, where we go, what we say on the internet, etc. etc. etc.)

 

[Yew]

If that is a risk then we need to stop AI wiping out most human jobs, including by legislation if necessary.

And live a life of Toil, rather than enjoying the spoils of the machine-derived wealth?

 

[Pete_uk]

But how much of the population will gain this wealth?

Not those who 'used' to do 'low skilled' jobs methinks..

 

[AM9]

But how much of the population will gain this wealth?

Not those who 'used' to do 'low skilled' jobs methinks..

Just more crumbs from the rich man's table.

 

[nw1]

It's official, it seems:

Three Hundreds of Chiltern

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has this day appointed Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson to be Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern.

www.gov.uk

All hail Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, new Crown Steward and Bailiff of the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham. And he formerly held the Manor of Northstead too - wonder if he's the only person to have ever held both such esteemed posts?

Lucky he got the Chiltern Hundreds, it's next door to Uxbridge, practically.

One thing did surprise me, according to the Wikipedia page and sourced from Ashcroft Polling:

2023 Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

that opinion polls give the Tories 50% for the seat, versus 33% for Labour. This sounds entirely unexpected, I thought it was a given Labour would take the seat, and is entirely at-odds with national opinion polls. Admittedly the 50% was assuming Johnson would be the candidate.

And live a life of Toil, rather than enjoying the spoils of the machine-derived wealth?

Trying to work out if this is ironic or not! I'm normally fairly good at that, but not sure here.

 

[JamesT]

It's official, it seems:

Three Hundreds of Chiltern

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has this day appointed Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson to be Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern.

www.gov.uk

All hail Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, new Crown Steward and Bailiff of the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham. And he formerly held the Manor of Northstead too - wonder if he's the only person to have ever held both such esteemed posts?

Not by a long way. Someone has even managed both positions twice - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Charles_Beresford

One thing did surprise me, according to the Wikipedia page and sourced from Ashcroft Polling:

2023 Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

that opinion polls give the Tories 50% for the seat, versus 33% for Labour. This sounds entirely unexpected, I thought it was a given Labour would take the seat, and is entirely at-odds with national opinion polls. Admittedly the 50% was assuming Johnson would be the candidate.

I think a lot of the commentary around Boris losing Uxbridge was predicated on the new boundaries that will be in place at the next General Election (assuming it’s after October).

 

[DynamicSpirit]

One thing did surprise me, according to the Wikipedia page and sourced from Ashcroft Polling:

2023 Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

that opinion polls give the Tories 50% for the seat, versus 33% for Labour. This sounds entirely unexpected, I thought it was a given Labour would take the seat, and is entirely at-odds with national opinion polls. Admittedly the 50% was assuming Johnson would be the candidate.

That opinion poll is specifically if Boris Johnson is the candidate. You can get more details of the poll here. The accompanying analysis suggests that it reflects Boris being popular as a constituency MP (which I have to say does seem to be surprising) rather than the Conservative Government being popular.

Sceptics will make several points about this result, all of them valid. One is that constituency polls have rather a mixed history. Another is that projections based on detailed national trends have suggested that the seat is Labour’s for the taking. A third is that the voters of Uxbridge have not yet heard the Committee’s findings, which could contain some shattering further revelation – or that devastating Johnsonian WhatsApp messages might find their way into the public domain en route to the covid inquiry. A fourth is that a big-name minor-party candidate might change the game locally (for polling purposes, in the absence of an official Green contender we used the name of their 2019 candidate, and named the potential Reform UK candidate mentioned in some news reports but not officially adopted). And who knows what else might happen in Boris World before any by-election comes to pass, if it does.

But there are good reasons to accept the picture at face value. We know that Johnson is able to command extraordinary affection and loyalty. During the 2008 Henley by-election campaign, when I oversaw Conservative Party’s internal polling, one of our early concerns was that local voters might take umbrage at Johnson’s decision to leave them for his tilt at the London mayoralty – but not a bit of it. We had never come across such a popular MP and his soon-to-be former constituents wished their local hero nothing but success. That was in a very different era, of course – but 15 years later in Uxbridge, could it be that the more is thrown at Johnson, the more his voters want to rally round? If it really is true that Johnson is looking for a safer seat for 2024, maybe the task is not as urgent as he feared.

(Note the above quote was written before Boris resigned as an MP)

Perhaps you should have said so in the first place, instead of making snide comments. Even you must know that UBI isn't purely a left-wing idea anyway.

Describing UBI as a 'salary for doing nothing' is hardly a snide comment. It's a bit loaded to the extent that it's phrased to highlight the main problem that (I believe) UBI has, but it's that's as far as it goes.

If you object to that phrase, then could you clarify specifically what your objection is? Which bit of 'salary for doing nothing' is not factually correct?

 

[ainsworth74]

Which bit of 'salary for doing nothing' is not factually correct?

It's not a salary as that is a payment from an employer to an employee which UBI would not be. It's also not for "doing nothing" as a recipient can be working for a salary from an employer, they can be self-employed, they can volunteer their time in their community, they could be caring for a disabled or elderly relative, they may themselves be disabled, and so on and so on.

The right wing have this weird lack of faith in their fellow citizen that they'd all rather sit on their arse all day and so we must make any out of work benefit a punitive experience as otherwise they'll stay at home with their £84.80 per week (UBI would clearly need to be more) and live an 'easy' life. As well as devaluing any existence that isn't defined by having a paying job or self-employment.

And yet in the decade I've been working with these very same people who are all 'scrounging' from the taxpayer I've seen perhaps a handful who I thought were on the fiddle. The most common refrain are variations on "I want to get back to work", "I'll be back to work as soon as I can I just need a little support", etc etc.

But yeah, I'm sure that UBI would be paying people for "doing nothing". UBI has been tried I a few places now, have any of them had huge numbers of participants doing nothing?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

The difference is that AI, if it gets too good, threatens to make redundant technically-advanced, skilled, professional jobs, Given that there's already a move towards automation in areas such as retail, it could mean that a wide range of jobs across the board, of varying skill levels, are threatened.

But again, I don't see how that's different from the past. I'm pretty sure that many of the jobs that have been lost to technology over the last century were advanced, skilled, professional jobs.

At the moment, it's not good enough to do so (you can easily trip up ChatGPT, for instance), but I have concerns about the future. The question to me is: without regulation, what sort of jobs could not be replaced by AI or other forms of automation? There are of course some highly-skilled jobs (the medical profession, amongst others, springs to mind) for which AI and automation would be a poor substitute, but are there enough of those jobs to go round?

Here's how I would see it:

One of the things I've noticed here in London over the last decade is the high proportion of people I meet whose job is basically providing personal support to other people: Lifestyle coaching, interior design, spiritual coaching, personal trainers, health and nutrition advisors, even dating coaching, etc. These are the kinds of jobs that didn't significantly exist a couple of decades ago, but they exist today because increasing automation allows people to start thinking about enhancing their lives with that kind of support. Add to that growing numbers who work in things like alternative (non-NHS) healthcare: Physiotherapists, osteopaths, etc. as well as care workers. And I think this calls out a fundamental misconception amongst those who think that AI will somehow take away all our jobs: The old thinking is that jobs are primarily about making things (or occasionally providing services) - and yes, making-things jobs increasingly have been automated away. But having a job isn't just about making things: It's more about that you are doing something that helps other people and you are getting rewarded for doing that. And no amount of automation or AI is going to take away that human beings generally have a deep need for contact and support from other human beings - which means there will always be a huge need for people to do jobs in which they are helping and providing human contact to other people. The nature of those jobs will change with time, but I would be very confident that we will always be finding new ways that people can help and serve other people and make a living doing so.

And that highlights one of the fundamental problems with UBI: It basically says that, you don't need to do anything at all: Everyone else will provide a living for you out of their taxes anyway. But if someone isn't willing or interested in doing anything to play a part in their community or to work to help other people, then why on Earth should everyone else pay out of their taxes to provide that person with a living? (Note: I'm talking about people who are unwilling to do anything, not people who are retired or who are interested in principle in working but for reasons beyond their control are unable to do so)

 

[Typhoon]

That opinion poll is specifically if Boris Johnson is the candidate. You can get more details of the poll here. The accompanying analysis suggests that it reflects Boris being popular as a constituency MP (which I have to say does seem to be surprising) rather than the Conservative Government being popular.



(Note the above quote was written before Boris resigned as an MP)

An interesting quote from the Ashcroft piece:

Among 2019 Conservatives saying they would vote for a non-Johnson candidate, nearly half (49%) said this was because they wanted a change of government nationally; only 12% said it was because they wanted a different MP in their constituency.

That must be the concern for the Conservatives; it is like 1964, 1979, 1997, 2010 - 'It is time for a change!'. And Johnson's resignation statement (widely fact checked) will have done his Party (and probably himself) no good at all.

 

[ainsworth74]

And that highlights one of the fundamental problems with UBI: It basically says that, you don't need to do anything at all: Everyone else will provide a living for you out of their taxes anyway. But if someone isn't willing or interested in doing anything to play a part in their community or to work to help other people, then why on Earth should everyone else pay out of their taxes to provide that person with a living? (Note: I'm talking about people who are unwilling to do anything, not people who are retired or who are interested in principle in working but for reasons beyond their control are unable to do so)

Because if, and I stress if as I'm not convinced that this will ever arise, we do end up in a situation where there just aren't enough jobs for people to do we have the choice of either consigning millions of our fellow citizens to misery on benefits which barely cover their living costs with no possibly hope of ever escaping that or we can look at something like UBI as a way of ensuring at least some minimum standard of living that isn't utterly precarious.

I certainly don't think we need UBI right now, I'm not sure we'll ever need UBI (for reasons of both history and those that you've outlined yourself) but I can certainly foresee a future in which we do need something like it so we might as well toy with the idea now and try running experiments to see if our assumptions are borne out in reality. Better to have it as tool in our locker and never need it because, as has always been the case, new jobs arise to replace those that are lost than the reverse of having millions out of work, with no prospect of finding work and no ideas what we can do with them other than consign them to misery.

 

[Yew]

But again, I don't see how that's different from the past. I'm pretty sure that many of the jobs that have been lost to technology over the last century were advanced, skilled, professional jobs.

I would disagree, in terms of sheer job numbers. But it does raise the question, why are we automating things enjoyable jobs like the production of Art and Literature, as opposed to mundane and repetitive tasks.

 

[Tetchytyke]

And as to 'far right Conservative party'.... to my mind, 'far right' usually refers to groups like the BNP or the French National Front or Nazi or fascist groups. Of course the Conservatives are a right wing party, but to describe them as 'far right' is beyond ridiculous.

I said increasingly far right. Boris defenestrated the moderate wing, people like Dominic Grieve, and so the extreme wing have been left to take over. All political parties have their extreme wing, it’s the same in Labour. The difference is that previously the National Conservative faction would have been an irrelevance but now, with Braverman and Rees-Mogg, they’re running the show.

How are Unilever and Heinz ripping people off? What's your evidence? (You may note that (a) prices being higher than you'd ideally like is not the same as 'ripping people off', and (b) the food business is very competitive, so a food company that was actually ripping people off would probably very quickly go out of business)

The food business isn’t competitive, though, it’s controlled by a small number of suppliers. Companies like Heinz and Unilever are making record profits, both in raw numbers and as a percentage margin. Heinz were troughing so much Tesco pulled their range. Greedflation is very much a thing.

Since when was paying everyone a salary to do nothing (if you want to look at it another way which amounts to the same thing, extending the welfare state so that everyone gets welfare payments whether they need it or not) 'centrist fare'? Since when was unbridled hostility to private enterprise 'centrist fare'? Since when was responding to almost every problem by demanding that the state spends more money 'centrist fare'?

Universal Basic Income isn’t a left-wing idea, unless we’re describing Milton Friedman as a lefty now.

As for your other points, examples please. I’ve only seen the LibDems criticise privatised utilities. And, let’s face it, there’s not much “entrepreneurial spirit” in abusing a monopoly position to return huge ROCE margins to the water companies and the train companies. I don’t take criticising United Utilities for pumping the Lake District full of sewage as “anti-business”, but YMMV.