Raab & Hancock: Brothers Grim

After yet another Brexit farce and resultant resignations, Theresa May was forced to swirl the turds around in the Tory bowl.  Two of the beneficiaries were Dominic Raab (new Brexit Secretary) and Matt Hancock (new health Secretary); the most pungent turds rose nearest to May’s net.  (Update: Raab resigned from post of Brexit Secretary in November 2018)

Raab‘s tenure began with an arrogant display in the House Of Commons yesterday: He deliberately withheld copies of the latest Brexit bill from opposition MPs prior to a debate about the bill.  A pantomime followed where members of staff rushed in with recently printed copies for the members of the House.  The deliberate delay in issuing copies of the bill was intended as a show of contempt by Raab.  He wanted to be seen to be ignoring procedure and to be seen to be insulting opposition MPs.

Raab’s prime job is as a visible employee of the Institute Of Economic Affairs (IEA).  All his words and actions as an MP are directed by the IEA.  The IEA is a PR and marketing tool for extremist anti-society wealth terrorists who are determined to turn all public services into sources of unearned income for made-up businesses via privatisation and who want absolute full avoidance of tax for the wealthiest.  Adam Ramsey and Peter Geoghegan wrote about Raab’s work for the IEA and its financial donors in Dominic Raab: is he the IEA’s man in government?

Raab has also worked for another extremist anti-society think-tank, Centre For Policy Studies, for whom he published a pamphlet that advocated a complete removal of basic workers’ rights that have been acquired over more than a century.  The ten proposals of his Escaping The Strait Jacket were

1. Exclude start-ups, micro- and small-businesses from the minimum wage for those under 21; from the extension of flexible working regulations; from requests for time off for training; and from pension auto-enrolment.  
2. Introduce no fault dismissal for underperforming employees.
3. Strengthen power of employment tribunals to strike out and deter spurious claims.
4. Install a qualified registrar to pre-vet tribunal claims.
5. Promote greater use of alternative dispute resolution.
6. Promote flexible working for senior employees and manage the Default Retirement Age.
7. Require a majority of support from balloted members for any strike in the emergency and transport sectors.
8. Reform TUPE to encourage business rescues and to promote successful business models.
9. Abolish the Agency Workers Regulations 2010.
10. Abolish the Working Time Regulations 1998.

That is, a complete roll-back of protections for workers from exploitative employers. 

Raab’s comments throughout his notes on each of his ten proposals couched each in terms of assisting employees and reducing employment.  That is a common con of wealth terrorists who seek to enhance exploitative powers of employers.  The final sentence of his conclusion was “this package of measures will increase UK economic competitiveness and deliver greater social justice by focusing on creating new jobs for the economically most vulnerable section of our society: the unemployed.”  That lie has been debunked countless times since the mid-nineteenth century.  

What was particularly significant about his proposals, given his appointment as Brexit Secretary, was Raab’s complaint about EU employment law hampering British businesses’ ability to exploit.  “Britain’s right to allow its workers to opt out of the 48 hour week under the Regulations is subject to qualified majority – as opposed to unanimous – voting in the EU. This means the UK could be outvoted on the issue at any time.”  For Raab, leaving the EU is a celebration for extreme exploitative capitalism that will be able to operate unhindered by EU law.

His rancid outlook on humanity and his shameless dishonesty have been displayed often.  On BBC TV in 2017 he said “the typical user of a foodbank is not someone that’s languishing in poverty, it’s someone who has a cash flow problem episodically.”  In his book ‘Britannia Unchained’ Raab claimed “the British are among the worst idlers in the world. We work among the lowest hours, we retire early and our productivity is poor.”

Hancock has very close ties to the IEA.  Indeed, he received a regular salary from its chairman Neil Record.  One such salary payment occurred just prior to the Tories’ restrictions on charities to stop them “lobbying” government; the IEA was cited in the first line of the government’s first statement on these restrictions, written by Matt Hancock.  In The Rotten Basis for Government Anti-Advocacy Policy former board member of the Charity Commission Andrew Purkis detailed how problematic was the behaviour of both the IEA and Matt Hancock.  (Neil Record is also one of the owners of a crank climate-change denier gang called Global Warming Policy Forum.)

The IEA’s main target is the NHS.  Funded by a variety of extremist and opaque US think-tanks and ‘foundations,’ the IEA seeks the complete privatisation of the NHS as a means of providing a steady and large source of income for wealth terrorists.  Matt Hancock as Minister For Health means the IEA has its own man in charge and that means, even more so than Jeremy Hunt, the privateer vultures have their own man in charge of the NHS.

Raab and Hancock are, via the IEA, employees of gangsters who intend to extend the exploitation of workers after Brexit and to destroy the NHS.  Over a century of protections for workers and seventy years of healthcare are under attack and Raab and Hancock are agents of that attack.

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