'Austerity: The Demolition of the Welfare State and the Rise of the Zombie Economy' by Kerry-Anne Mendoza

When I was first starting to follow politics, I read quite a lot of Another Angry Voice and Scriptonite Daily. The latter was the blog of Kerry-Anne Mendoza, who went on to be a co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Canary, the leftwing news website. At the time I remember being quite excited by The Canary launching, and then being thoroughly disappointed when it turned out to be clickbait trash. 

Mendoza's Scriptonite Daily blog posts were collated, revised and expanded to form her first and so far only book, with the simple title 'Austerity' and the rather overlong and clunky subtitle 'The Demolition of the Welfare State and the Rise of the Zombie Economy'.

In the age of COVID and Brexit, it's a bit of an odd experience to return to a polemic criticising the austerity policies of the Cameron government. I had vague recollections of reading the blog versions of some of the chapters, and found myself in a sort of dialogue with my younger, only-just-starting-to-be-politically-engaged self.

The book is divided into three parts: the first two ('The Demolition' and 'Austerity and Democracy') are Mendoza's; part three ('10 Economic Myths') was written by two other authors and was added as extra material to this edition. This third part is only twenty pages and effectively debunks some economics myths which might be made of straw.

Mendoza is strongest where she is criticising a specific policy, describing the harm it is causing - for example the bedroom tax, benefits cuts, and Michael Gove's education reforms. The best chapters are therefore in the first half of the book. 

The book's origin as a series of blog posts hampers the flow between chapters. Despite Mendoza's attempt to add a frame narrative, there is no real sense of a narrative building across the chapters: they work as standalone pandemics about certain subjects, but are not linked very convincingly into a wider arc. I felt very little impetus to read more than one chapter at a time.

What's more, some of the chapters cover quite a range of topics, but only cursorily. For example, in Chapter 10, 'Outsourcing the justice system', Mendoza gives two pages on the growth of G4S, 2 pages of G4S failures, 3 pages about how awful the American justice system is, and 2 pages on Legal Aid cuts. These are all important topics, and none of them are covered adequately. Without the added material, the book comes to less than 200 pages: there was plenty of room for further expansion.

The frame narrative is the 'Rise of the Zombie Economy' part of the overlong subtitle. This is where the book starts to come apart, degenerating towards incoherence and conspiracism. It contains by far the worst parts of the book.

The story begins with the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, where the post-war economic order was established, and organisations such as the IMF and World Bank were founded: this 'set the roadmap for domestic and international economic policy to this day... they have overseen the transfer of power from the State to private institutions and corporations. This is the endgame of the neoliberal project - whether the key players know and intend it or not.'

It was somewhat surprising to encounter Bretton Woods presented as the beginning of Neoliberalism; most leftwing narratives date it to the late 70s with the elections of Thatcher and Reagan and the increasing influence of Milton Friedman. Neoliberalism is an imprecise and not entirely useful term, since you can stretch it to encompass quite a wide range of views; hence it becoming ubiquitous and almost meaningless in some online discourse these days.

Despite dedicating Chapter 2 to explaining the 'Zombie Economy', Mendoza never really makes clear what it is, only using vague comparisons to a 'real economy'.

It is 'a night-of-the-living dead economy that consumes value and defecates debt'. 

So the Zombie Economy is about destroying value and creating debt, got it.

'The Zombie Economy exists to overcome the barriers to capital growth. It creates financial instruments that increase the paper value of an asset by financialising it.' 

Ah, so the Zombie Economy is about using debt and finance to increase value, got it.

'The purpose of... the Zombie Economy is for creditors, investment banks and investors to make maximum profits from lending... The purpose is to move people away from making money by producing things, towards making money from money.' 

OK, I think I get it: the Zombie Economy is about restructuring the economy away from physical industries such as manufacturing towards the financial services industry.

'It's priority is rather to transfer public spending from the real economy, where things are made and people are supported, to the Zombie Economy, where profits are made and people are abandoned.' 

What? Are you saying that profits are not made in the 'real economy'? What does this even mean?

Chapter 2 begins with a section titled 'Understanding Value', where Mendoza explains that value is:

'A Good Idea + Skill + Usefulness = Added Value'

That is certainly an idea of value. 

Mendoza does not explain the difference between 'Value in use' and 'Value in exchange': utility versus price. Mendoza does not talk about the price mechanism or of "value being in the eye of the beholder".

Indeed, her presentation of the Zombie Economy seems to rest on the belief that 'Value in use' is the correct, good, proper, real, value, the one used in her so-called real economy, whereas 'Value in exchange' is the evil, false value used in the 'Zombie Economy'.

After giving her definition of value, Mendoza then complains that 'the problem is, this has ceased to be the way our economy has actually worked for some considerable time (if it ever was)… The way most wealth is accumulated today is not based on this simple premise of adding value by creating something useful and being rewarded for that contribution.' Sounds like there might be something missing from this analysis.

There are many things missing from her analysis. 

I expected the topic of 'Zombie Banks' to come up at some point in a book about a 'Zombie Economy'. Nope. I would expect a book about Austerity to talk about the international bond market and bond yields. Nope. The famous, and famously debunked, paper 'Growth in a Time of Debt' gets a brief mention in explaining the turn towards austerity, but there is no real attempt to understand the motives behind those implementing austerity: they may as well be cartoon villains.

In her overall conclusion, Mendoza returns to her frame narrative to talk about 'The endgame of Austerity':

'The inevitable endgame of neoliberalism is corporate fascism, and the de-civilisation of our world. The only way out is to abandon capitalism in all its forms... French poet Charles Baudelaire once wrote 'the devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.' This is the trick pulled by the neoliberal project. Convince billions of people that there is no plan'

We've reached the part of the book about sinister plots to take over the world and destroy civilisation.

And the only way out is to reject all forms of capitalism - unfortunately she does not explain this solution in detail, as 'the purpose of this book is not to present solutions in detail.' She teases a future book that will explore this, but it hasn't come out yet.

There are good things in this book - the polemics against specific policies are well done - but the whole is ultimately frustrating and unsatisfying. There are better books out there which feel like complete, properly structured books, with a proper narrative and consistent argument. 

'Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialization' by Grace Blakeley covers what I think Mendoza was trying to say with her 'Zombie Economy' stuff, but with coherence and an actual narrative arc.

'Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea' by Mark Blyth gives a thorough rundown of the theoretical underpinnings of austerity and the effects it has had when variously implemented across the world.

'Operation 10' by Hardiman Scott

Hardiman Scott's justifiably forgotten and out of print first novel is, ostensibly, a fast-paced thriller about Margaret Thatcher being kidnapped by IRA terrorists. I heard of it via an advert at the back of my old edition of A Very British Coup by Chris Mullin, and purchased a copy in the hope that it had fallen out of print due to the subject matter not being topical anymore, and possibly having become distasteful in the aftermath of the Brighton bombing, rather than as a sign of it lacking quality.

I gave up at the halfway mark.

Part of the problem for the book is that the blurb does an excellent job of getting you ready for a fast-paced, but probably trashy, thriller which opens with Thatcher being kidnapped and then excitedly follows the various characters as they try to discover her whereabouts, negotiate with the terrorists, investigate leads, perhaps reveal that one of her special advisors had been an IRA agent in deep cover or something - y'know, standard trashy thriller stuff. 

Alternatively, it might have been a more thoughtful book of political intrigue and ideology, exploring the complexity of the Troubles, and perhaps posing a direct challenge to Thatcher's stance at the time. The blurb's description of the 'the price on her head is outrageously high, and the government refuses to pay' could perhaps hint at a questioning of Thatcher's belief in the price mechanism and market economics.

The book is in fact neither of these things, it is ruthlessly boring. 

I gave up at the halfway mark because Margaret Thatcher had not yet been kidnapped. At least half of the novel is devoted to following the IRA members as they meticulously plan and rehearse the kidnapping, over and over and over again, for months. And it feels like months. The terrorists are not even interesting characters - they have a few character traits each, so they are slightly more than one-dimensional.

A side-plot involves a Special Branch Superintendent worrying - for months - that a major IRA operation will be happening soon, because nothing has happened for a while and his informants have revealed that the IRA cells across the country have been instructed to lie low for a bit. We periodically check in on him, and discover that he is still worrying and that nothing has happened.

At the halfway mark, both the reader and the characters themselves are still waiting for the promised story to start. Chapter 9 begins (page 106 of 252) with the date for the kidnapping finally being chosen, and the terrorists then finding stuff to kill time 'just to pass the hours'. We then cut to the side-plot and learn that for the superintendent 'also the time passed slowly' BECAUSE NOTHING IS HAPPENING.

Time passes slowly for both the reader and the characters in this supposedly pacey and gripping thriller. I became so bored and so uninterested that I didn't care enough to continue to find out when the story would actually start and whether it would somehow improve in quality once it did. Time passed so slowly while reading this that I struggle believe that I only read half of a short novel when it felt so excruciatingly long.

'Dangerous Hero' by Tom Bower

When Corbyn was Labour leader, I found it very difficult to get any real idea of how good or bad he was doing, because the reporting of him was so blatantly polarised. He was vilified in the mainstream press, and hailed as a messianic figure on social media. The mainstream reporting was so brazenly hyperbolic that it was easy to disregard it all as a smear campaign; when anyone criticised Corbyn, they could be dismissed as part of the Establishment campaign against him. Two hyperpolarised mythologies developed around the Labour leader: Corbyn the Messiah, who would champion the downtrodden and lead Britain to a golden age; Corbyn the Destroyer, who hated Britain and sympathised with terrorists.

Tom Bower's book is all of the Corbyn the Destroyer mythology condensed into one handy volume, published in 2019 (it was also serialised in the Daily Mail). It is not a good book, sometimes it is comically bad, and it is riddled with errors and inaccuracies.

Sources are not provided for most of the information - 'for legal reasons... unusually the book has no references'. When a source is named, such as the notoriously untruthful George Galloway, it becomes clear that Bower has largely been in contact with people who disliked Corbyn or had vendettas against him: he has no interest in getting a proper understanding of Corbyn as an actual person, only in presenting him as an incompetent Marxist cartoon villain. 

The sources of quotations from books, magazines, and newspapers are also frequently not given: we are just meant to trust that the magazine or newspaper did say it, but are not given the date or issue number for us to find the quote ourselves. We also have to take it on trust that Bower has not deliberately omitted positive comments from his various sources. The few times that a source does say something positive about Corbyn, Bower immediately tries to defuse it:

'"People thought he was a nice bloke," conceded Allcock. "He made them feel comfortable. He even charmed his adversaries." In his constituency dealings at least, Corbyn had perfected a genial mask, despite not yet proving himself as an effective MP.'

Bower pretends to understand Corbyn's inner thoughts and motivations, which are invariably sinister and malicious: he acts not out of concern for the unfortunate, but out of hatred for the upper and middle classes. For example, before he was an MP, councillor Corbyn pushed to for houses to be built on some parkland; if we are to believe Bower, Corbyn's main goal here was to annoy the middle classes who would lose their park, not to help people without homes.

'Annoying Haringey's middle classes game him particular delight. Faced with a huge housing problem after the arrival of thousands of Cypriot refugees in London, Corbyn proposed building homes on green parkland. Local residents were outraged. The rich, he scoffed, clearly disliked living alongside immigrants - but they would have no choice.'

Racist dog whistles are common throughout. The reader is meant to be suspicious of Corbyn's anti-imperialist beliefs and championing of refugees and immigrants; we are meant to see him as anti-White, anti-British, a self-hating white British man who sides with foreigners against his own people: 'He would black up if he could,' one Labour MP said of Corbyn, according to George Galloway.

This characterisation is appalling, and I think it tells you a lot about the author. Indeed, throughout Bower comes across as an intensely repulsive man; this is not helped by the two author photos, in which his body language and facial expression make him look like an absolute prick. 

Furthermore, in the introduction and author bio, Bower says he used to be a Marxist himself back at university, and was known as 'Tommy the Red', and yet he seems completely incapable of understanding Corbyn & co's ideology and motivations. Leftist descriptors such as 'Marxist' are used almost as synonyms for 'evil' or 'villainous'. Corbyn is variously described as 'ideologically inconsistent', 'obsessed with ideological purity', 'Marxist', 'Trotsykist', 'committed to Stalinism', and 'anarchist'. These words have incompatible meanings which you would expect a supposed former leftist to understand; Bower's 'ex-Marxist' backstory reminded me of the unconvincing 'ex-atheist' backstories encountered in works of Christian apologetics. If he genuinely was Tommy the Red, my assumption is that he was motivated by teenage rebellion and a temporary dislike of middle class Britain, and he is projecting those remembered feelings onto Corbyn & co.

The book's subtitle is 'Corbyn's Ruthless Plot for Power'. As a result, Corbyn's lack of both ruthlessness and ambition for power throughout are hilarious recurring themes. Bower repeatedly tells us that Corbyn is ruthless without backing this up; often he clunkily adds implied ruthlessness when it manifestly isn't there.

'Lenin would have expected him to act ruthlessly, but... <proceeds to describe a lack of ruthlessness>'

It is clear throughout that Corbyn is not power-hungry. He was quite happy as a backbench MP focused on his constituency and protesting global injustices; he had never aspired for ministerial positions or put in the work to develop policies. In 2012, he was considering retiring to Wiltshire to focus on beekeeping and growing vegetables. On page 311 out of 348, describing the 2017 election campaign, Bower says:

'The campaign had transformed Corbyn himself. The veteran protester understood that politics was no longer just a series of battles within the Labour Party, but actually about winning real power. His new ambition was to become prime minister.'

It is on page 311 out of 348 of a book supposedly about 'Corbyn's Ruthless Plot for Power' that Corbyn is first described as wanting power.

The book ends with what is meant to be a mic-drop by Bower, but it is such a failure of a mic drop that it perfectly illustrates how lazy and perfidious the book is. Bower does not believe that 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' is Corbyn's favourite poem, as he has claimed in interviews.

'His enthusiasm for it was dubious, not least because Wilde himself was no believer in socialism.'

Bower then closes the book with a part of the poem which ends with,

'For none can tell to what red Hell

His sightless soul may stray.'

The implication is that Wilde was somehow warning of a socialist hellscape like the USSR, but the poem is about someone being executed by hanging at Reading Gaol, the British prison, and the 'red Hell' refers to - you know, well - the afterlife hell to which 'his sightless soul may stray', not to socialism.

That's not the worst of it. After reading this I had to look around for a bit thinking I was going mad or had fallen into a parallel universe. Hadn't Wilde wrote an essay advocating socialism? The Soul of Man Under Socialism? Wasn't this essay a socialist classic?

'Socialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by converting private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and insure the material well-being of each member of the community.'

Either Bower didn't bother to check Wilde's views on socialism (even just by Googling 'Wilde socialism'), or he doesn't care, because it doesn't matter if the book is truthful or accurate: its only purpose is to damage Corbyn's reputation.

There are of course grains of truth in the book, as there was in other Corbyn coverage, (I think it is quite clear that Corbyn's administration would have been disappointing, that the bond market would have savaged him, that he was out of his depth as leader, that he had some weird views, and that there was a serious anti-Semitism crisis*) but they are so thoroughly buried in falsehood and hyperbole that it becomes easy to dismiss it all as smears and nonsense. Those hoping for an accurate insight into Corbyn and his leadership would best look elsewhere.

*When Corbyn was leader, I had absorbed, from friends and social media, the narrative that the anti-Semitism crisis was largely an Establishment smear against Labour and Corbyn. I wasn't following politics or the story very assiduously, and I wasn't on social media that often. However, by the time Rebecca Long-Bailey was sacked from the Shadow Cabinet, I was on social media more often, and on the day of her sacking I saw a huge explosion of anti-Semitic comments and posts from leftwing sources. This was a moment of Great Disillusionment for me, the scales fell from my eyes.