London Diary 26/10/22

Kensington and Rishi as Raj of the UK

(Diary entries are off-the-cuff ruminations, not to be equated to an article, opinion piece, or analysis, even if they might resemble them at times - ed.)

It’s the automobiles that immediately tell you how affluent Kensington is compared to other neighbourhoods in London. The ratio of very expensively and extremely expensive cars to those that are medium-priced (or lower) is quite high. Makes sense, as only Mayfair is wealthier in comparison.

It’s been some time since I’ve been here, having only walked through the area possibly three or four times well over a decade ago (I’ve chosen to stay here this time, defecting from my typical base not too far away on the northern edge of Hyde Park). The scene is very professional, upscale, and utterly lacking in any hint of menace that one would feel in the eastern parts of the metropolis. The Arabs are all in designer clothing, the Brits look smart, and even the service employees in Kensington High Street seem more refined than those along Oxford Street.

You do not move to Kensington to find community. You move here because you have more money than you know what to do with, and because London is one of those places where you go to try and keep a low profile, while being as close to those managing your money as possible in order to not get bilked. Not all are passive residents, however. There are many who are active participants via deal-making, investment, and so on. For them, economic and political stability in the UK (which to them means London and London alone) is an absolute necessity. #Brexit was bad medicine, reluctantly swallowed. What has happened since is simply intolerable.

Which brings me to Rishi Sunak, the Raj of the United Kingdom. When I was last in Londinium, Liz Truss was making herself at home in 10 Downing Street, having inherited an economy headed for a crash from Boris Johnson, a media vortex who was turfed from party leadership for reasons that I have trouble remembering despite it being only three months ago. Queen Elizabeth II was being buried, as royal subjects queued up to pay tribute to her before she was entombed. The Carolignian Age had just begun! BTW, this was only last month.

Liz Truss, a Liberal Democrat turned Conservative, immediately stumbled out of the gate by issuing a tentative budget that pushed up to 90% of the UK’s pension schemes to the verge of collapse. A rookie mistake, but an unforgivable one. She had to go. Fund managers saw to that, and many fund managers reside here in Kensington.

Enter Rishi Sunak: Oxford educated, he is an alum of Goldman Sachs as well. Married into high wealth (I’ve seen reports that he and his wife are worth upwards of $700 million), Sunak is a UK-born product of Punjabi Hindus from colonial Eastern Africa. His GP father was born in Kenya, and his mother in then-Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania). A post-colonial, cosmopolitan pedigree, his education and work experience make him the perfect selection for a post-#Brexit International Britain to steer the financial ship back to safety.

“The grown-ups are back in charge”, is the delighted refrain of media mainstreamers, chuffed with the elevation of a dry technocrat to Managing Director of UK LLC.

The implication is that all those annoying populist complaints can now be safely ignored once again, and business can continue as usual. “Sod the proles!”

The brilliant UK satirist ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ made light of this arrogance:

“Look at how tolerant we are as we go back to fucking you over, as is tradition, as is right and correct”, think the banking elites, happy with themselves over the symbolism of selecting a non-white as Managing Director of UK LLC. Historian Edward Luttwak provides a perfect example:

Few really care about Rishi’s racial characteristics, because all already know that he DOES NOT represent the Subcontinent (from which he is a few generations removed anyway), but DOES represent the City of London, its bankers and its financiers. The racial attributes of the Chief Technocratic Fleecer do not really matter when you are getting fleeced.