Prime Minister Boris Johnson has built his new Cabinet around the authors of a book that called British workers the “worst idlers in the world”.
Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Liz Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng and Chris Skidmore were regarded as the extreme right-wing fringe of the Tory Party when they penned Britannia Unchained after becoming MPs in the 2010 general election.
The book – recently spotted in the back of Johnson’s car – advocated a radical form of free market capitalism where legislation designed to protect workers’ rights would be swept away and the welfare state slashed, making it easier to sack staff and cut pay.
It talked up Singapore, South Korea and Dubai – where the rich thrive on low taxation but those at the bottom often struggle to survive with slave wages and barbaric conditions.
All five authors were last week given top Government posts, with Patel the new Home Secretary, Raab, Foreign Secretary, Truss, International Trade Secretary, Skidmore, Minister of State for Health and Kwarteng, Minister of State for Business and Energy.
Former Labour minister Brian Wilson has warned that the group being “implanted” at the top of Johnson’s team shows the new Cabinet are not only Brexiteers but also “ideologically hostile to the rights of working people that have been fought for over generations”.
One passage from Britannia Unchained criticises the UK’s “bloated state, high taxes and excessive regulation”.
It goes on to call British workers the “worst idlers in the world”, adding: “We work among the lowest hours, we retire early and our productivity is poor.
“Whereas Indian children aspire to be doctors or businessmen, the British are more interested in football and pop music.”
The politicians go on to argue that the UK should “stop indulging in irrelevant debates about sharing the pie between manufacturing and services, the north and the south, women and men”.
Another passage attacks people living on benefits. It states: “A further factor undermining the British work ethic is the rise of welfare dependency...It has ballooned beyond all recognition, corroding the UK work ethic.”
Rabb and Patel now hold two of the four Great Offices of State, with Johnson and newly appointed Chancellor Sajid Javid in the other two.
Wilson, a trade minister in Tony Blair’s New Labour government, said: “It’s no coincidence that the whole Britannia Unchained gang have been implanted into high levels of government.
“Johnson is lazy and will leave others to do his thinking for him – which makes the ideas of Raab, Patel and company in these policy areas even more dangerous.
“It would be a mistake to think that the clique now in senior positions of Government are united only by an anti-EU obsession – it goes much deeper and wider than that.
“They’re ideologically hostile to the rights of working people that have been fought for over generations – everything from the national minimum wage to protection against unfair dismissal.
“Most of these rights were delivered by Labour governments but some of them were driven by EU directives.
“That is at the root of their hostility to Europe – leaving the EU would quickly be followed by an attack on workers’ rights. The whole idea that the way to promote economic growth in the UK is by cutting wages and workers’ rights is primitive and counter-productive.
“The fact it comes from people who are also prepared to sacrifice tens of thousands of jobs for a no-deal Brexit tells us a lot about their mentality and ideology.”
Wilson, a key figure in Blair’s project to move Labour into the political centre ground, added: “There’s a desperate need for a Labour opposition that can fight all of this coherently and effectively.
“Every Labour politician from the top downwards must look in the mirror and ask if that’s happening or is even possible under current circumstances.
“Nobody who wants to see a Labour government – leader, trade union baron or MP – is entitled to sail blindly on in these circumstances without regard for the consequences.
“To do so will represent a historic failure to serve the interests of working people and their families in an hour of real need.”
While Javid is not one of Britannia Unchained authors, he has also given an insight into his world view through his taste in books.
In 2015, he admitted to reading the courtroom scene in the late libertarian author Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead twice a year.
The book – a bible to many American conservatives for its rejection of left wing politics – includes the line: “I do not recognise anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine, no matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.”
