AT last an elite member of the capitalist class has finally admitted what anyone with a scintilla of intelligence has always known; trickle-down economics, the dominant ideology in the UK since the 1980s, doesn’t work. Thank you President Biden for finally stating what has been obvious for the past 40 years.

All empirical evidence demonstrates that deregulation and tax cuts are an elaborate hoax, that the rich get increasingly richer and the poor get substantially poorer, that is the reality, because in the real world wealth never trickles down, and that is why it has been so assiduously championed by the elite all this time.

Idealists and thinkers make revolutions; hard and ruthless leaders consolidate them. In any venture, whether political or otherwise, once the revolutionary concept has been accepted, the ruthless will drive it to a conclusion. If the idealists seek to modify the direction chosen by the ruthless, challenge the conclusion, or criticise their decisions they will be persecuted, vilified and removed. That has been the lesson of the free market revolution, an experiment that soon became exposed as a false hypothesis, but, because it was a class-based revolution, operating solely for the benefit of the class in power and their supporters, it has been ruthlessly driven to its logical conclusion; obscene inequality, division, the collapse of respect, trust, and decency, and the rule of liars, fraudsters, and crooks. This must be the fundamental lesson for an independent Scotland. The free market is an ideology for gangsters and crooks and produces a political class of gangsters and crooks.

As it is a lie, the free market needs liars in government and it is not an accident that we have an entire political class of pathological and compulsive liars in the UK, the logical end product of Thatcherism in full bloom. Free market economics produces centralised and increasingly authoritarian politics and is why all free market politicians are Unionists, because devolution, and of course independence, are anathema to centralised control as they challenge the freedom of the market and the centralist policies of command and control, economically, socially and politically. Thus the free market is deeply undemocratic.

Dedicated to this poisonous ideology and the methodology on which it thrives, successive governments have purged their parties of critics and dissenters (we had an example of that just last week from Scottish Labour), resulting in a set of Unionist parties from whom all talent and critical thinking that may pose a threat to their leaderships has been removed. Thus we have a Westminster class of incompetents and lickspittles, but importantly, of people with a contempt for law, treaty, and obligation. The evidence of Westminster’s creeping authoritarianism is in their support for increased police powers and suppression of dissent and peaceful demonstrations, and how the Tories are flaunting their disregard for rules and common decency every day.

It is estimated that since the Stephen Lawrence inquiry and the admission of institutional racism, stop and search of racial minorities has actually doubled which reflects the inherent British racism and hatred of foreigners witnessed by the Brexit campaign and vote, thus allowing the police to act with increasing violence, intolerance of basic rights, and unaccountability.

This is the reality of Tory, free market and centralised modern Britain. It is the new expression of British values and is being accepted uncritically in England. It is not the Scottish way and I sincerely hope the Scots will reject it and seek a better way.

Peter Kerr

Kilmarnock