ACCORDING to a poll in More In Common, 52 per cent of the UK electorate would prefer Kamala Harris to win the US presidential election, compared with 25 per cent hoping for a Donald Trump victory.
I have no idea how many people were surveyed in that poll, but doubtless those hoping for a Harris victory would have been touched by a recent photo of Angela Rayner, UK Deputy Prime Minister, on the arm of US billionaire and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. How touching to see the girl raised in a council house, who made such a big deal of asserting she was still living in one until its sale in 2015, hobnobbing with someone so steeped in the corporate world.
The venue was the recent International Investment Summit in London attended by numerous corporate grandees. The Labour Government was indulging in a PR exercise that purported to show a host of international corporations eager to invest in Britain and that this summit was securing this investment.
The reality of course was much of this had already been agreed and indeed announced many months earlier, as illustrated in an excellent thread on X.
Even then, motormouth Transport Secretary Louise Haigh had a determined crack at alienating one of the leading attendees, DP World (owners of P & O Ferries) to the point that they were going to withdraw from their proposed £1billion investment in London Gateway until the Prime Minister personally intervened to push her to the sidelines.
As for the presence of other luminaries of international ‘stakeholder capitalism’ such as Bill Gates and Larry Fink, be sure that they would not have given up their time for nothing. They will be well briefed on the Labour Government’s spending plans on Great British Energy and Ed Miliband’s carbon capture project, amongst other vast government spending programmes. Billions of pounds of public spending is waiting to be hoovered up and they will doubtless be eager to get their share of the spoils. Even Labour-supporting publications such as the Guardian have been voicing concerns over this for months.
BlackRock are already major investors in several carbon capture projects across the United States including Occidental’s ‘direct air capture’ scheme in Texas and an aborted carbon capture pipeline across the Midwest. Occidental is reported to have plans for around a hundred plants despite repeated construction delays and cost increases, no doubt a harbinger of what lies ahead for any British project of a similar nature. Initial cost estimates for the plant in Texas have already soared from $800million in 2022 to $1.3billion.
BlackRock has been cosying up to the Labour Party for at least 12 months in anticipation of its return to government. The relationship can hardly be viewed as being born out of altruism. BlackRock with over $10trillion dollars of assets, and already the owner of major pieces of infrastructure, including airports and energy companies, will be sure to drive a hard bargain. It will also be a major player in deciding which other private infrastructure companies are allowed on board, as well as being a key source for funding any likely borrowing that is required.
Bill Gates would have been delighted to hear that Eli Lilly, a company with which he and his foundation have been connected, has been awarded a contract to provide weight loss treatments, including jabs, on the NHS. I wonder too whether rumours that farmland will no longer be exempt from taxation when passed on to the children of parents on their death will be confirmed in the forthcoming Budget. If so, it is a surefire way to erode and end the traditional private ownership of farmland in the UK. Gates, already the biggest owner of agricultural land in the US, would hardly be displeased at the opportunity such a policy potentially offers.
The UK has been definitively asset-stripped over recent decades, probably more so than any comparable Western nation. American corporations have steadily carved up so much of the British economy, often at the behest of short-sighted governments of both main political hues, that all that remains left is a bunfight over its corpse. As a country blessed with huge amounts of natural energy and fertile farmland, the UK ought to be completely secure in terms of resources. However much of it has been sold off to overseas corporations or sacrificed on the altar of Net Zero.
Returning to Angela Rayner, after a bumpy spell earlier this year the Deputy Prime Minister’s star appears to be on the rise. Reports suggest she is about to be given charge of a £1billion council house building programme.
She has also just been appointed to the UK’s National Security Council, which is tasked with assessing the biggest security threats to the UK. Maybe knowing that will help us sleep more soundly.
However, if and when Starmer is finally viewed as too toxic even for his own MPs, is it too fanciful to speculate that in the near future the fate and the security of the free world will rest in the hands of Kamala Harris and Angela Rayner? For those keen to get to know her better, permit me to recommend the parody YouTube channel Intel Lady, which hosts a series of videos called No Brainer With Angela Rayner. There’s so much material it seems to need a new video uploaded on an almost daily basis!
