The Tory wet dream is to be a bigger UAE & Saudi Arabia.
By rewarding, empowering and amplifying key centres of economic power, Covid-19 has helped coalesce a certain model of capitalism that we term “rentier nationalism”. This seeks to capture the reassertion of the nation as an economic unit and “imagined community”, but also to specify the main beneficiaries of this mutation: asset-owning households, financial elites, platforms, and outsourcing contractors. A distinctive type of national capitalism is emerging, based around a larger state, with higher levels of public borrowing and spending, especially on healthcare; an electoral base made up of older homeowners and ultra-high-net-worth donors; para-governmental industries of public service providers and digital platforms; and an unstable combination of labour market “flexibility” and tight immigration control.
By rewarding, empowering and amplifying key centres of economic power, Covid-19 has helped coalesce a certain model of capitalism that we term “rentier nationalism”. This seeks to capture the reassertion of the nation as an economic unit and “imagined community”, but also to specify the main beneficiaries of this mutation: asset-owning households, financial elites, platforms, and outsourcing contractors. A distinctive type of national capitalism is emerging, based around a larger state, with higher levels of public borrowing and spending, especially on healthcare; an electoral base made up of older homeowners and ultra-high-net-worth donors; para-governmental industries of public service providers and digital platforms; and an unstable combination of labour market “flexibility” and tight immigration control.