Mediterranean hegemon

"We must find a decent and decisive solution to the Greek incident." After reading the latest news from Germany, British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, a Conservative, sighed helplessly at the cabinet meeting, "Otherwise, the mood of the whole of Europe will be out of our control. More importantly, in such a turbulent situation at home, it is really not appropriate to create trouble."

Everyone nodded with a heavy heart.

The British government controlled by the Conservative Party is in a precarious situation at this moment. The meritorious prime minister who led Great Britain to win the war and successfully concluded the Treaty of Versailles and established the European order, Liberal Lloyd George, retired a year ago. The main reason for his resignation was the mess of the domestic economy.

After the war, Britain went from a creditor country to a debtor country. Although it successfully obtained a large amount of compensation from Germany, it was obviously impossible to get the compensation because Germany was also facing an economic crisis. The debt owed to the United States must be gradually repaid, and cash flow is a big problem.

Originally, the issue of delaying the repayment of US debt could be discussed, but because Lloyd George and French Prime Minister Clemenceau jointly pushed the Americans back to the other side of the Atlantic in order to maintain the European-dominated system, the angry US government refused to even participate in the League of Nations, and of course would not make concessions in this regard, and the debts had to be repaid as they should be. What's more terrible is that in the face of the unfavorable economic situation in the UK, Lloyd George listened to the advice of traditional economists and adopted austerity therapy, trying to cut spending, compress finances, reduce deficits, restore budget balance, and forcibly bring up the pound exchange rate again.

This is obviously a measure that runs counter to the actual situation. After the war, Great Britain has faced a series of problems such as insufficient work and unemployment. Continuing to tighten fiscal policy will only force the economy into a deeper contraction and cause more people to lose their jobs. The operation of forcibly raising the pound exchange rate and sticking to the gold standard has been used by international consortiums to speculate and arbitrage using gold pricing. They use various financial channels to raise pounds and exchange them for gold, making it very difficult for the Bank of England (the Central Bank of Great Britain) to cope with the gold standard. Gold from the British Isles continues to flow out, while the pound has always been spinning around in various departments of the financial system. It seems that there is a lot of currency, but it is not used in production. It has been speculating and profiting from the virtual.

The British government has also considered defaulting on or refusing to pay debts to the United States, but as long as they dare to do so, the credibility of the pound and British government bonds will immediately be destroyed. It is easy to default on a debt, but it is not easy to ruin the national credibility accumulated over centuries for defaulting on debts - no politician dares to choose this way.

So Lloyd George had to step down and hand over the position of prime minister to the Conservatives. Although the Conservatives verbally attacked Lloyd George for his incompetence, in fact, the methods they adopted were similar, which was nothing more than changing a group of people to carry out the work.

This resulted in only one result: the wealthy class, especially the powerful class that holds financial power, became richer and richer, and the deposits and income of the middle class began to shrink (on the surface, the pound did not depreciate, but asset prices rose rapidly, and the relative purchasing power shrank significantly, just like a certain East Asian country in the future. On the surface, it seems that income continues to grow, the exchange rate is stable, and ordinary living materials can be dealt with, but housing prices are rising like a rocket. Ten years ago, a young couple in a big city could barely buy a bedroom after working for a year, but ten years later, it was difficult to even buy a toilet, and income measured by housing prices continued to fall), and the lower class was at increasing risk of falling into poverty due to the rising unemployment rate.

In the final analysis, Britain has not yet faced up to the fact that the world's financial center has gradually shifted from London to New York after the end of World War I, and is still struggling in vain instead of going with the flow. On the contrary, countries like Italy have simply used currency depreciation to complete the economic turn. It's not that the British ruling class can't see the benefits of currency devaluation, but they are worried that it will cause a revolutionary storm. The currency devaluation in Italy triggered the rise of the Fascists, and the currency devaluation in Germany caused the National Socialist Party riots. If Great Britain dares to implement competitive currency devaluation, there will definitely be a revolution and a guillotine waiting for the decision makers, so they dare not vote.

This patchwork and at a loss policy made Lloyd George and the Liberal Party step down, and even the momentum that could compete with the Conservative Party was greatly reduced. After Lloyd George stepped down, Andrew Bernard Law and Baldwin successively became cabinet prime ministers as Conservatives, but the support rate of the Conservative Party was also very low. Law stepped down after being prime minister for half a year, and Baldwin, the prime minister, may also fall soon. According to the schedule, since the House of Commons passed the cabinet's vote of no confidence, although the House of Lords rejected it, Baldwin believed that this situation was unsustainable and decided to hold another general election next month. Many public opinions boldly predicted that the next prime minister would be a Labour Party member for the first time, but they didn't know when that day would come.

The decline of the Liberal Party and the sluggish Conservative Party were in stark contrast to the rise of the British Labour Party. The Labour Party not only clearly proposed to "abolish private ownership", but also stated that it would adjust the structure of fiscal expenditure and "transfer useless and extravagant military expenditure to people's livelihood". The most obvious thing was to cut the fleet - the Labour Party believed that after the German Grand Fleet sank, Great Britain had no maritime threat in Europe and there was no need to maintain such a large and easily obsolete fleet.

As for the Greek issue, the Labour Party repeatedly stressed that the Labour Party was not interested in such a war - a regional war caused purely by the support of certain countries for terrorism. This statement was welcomed by the war-weary masses, who were really unwilling to donate taxes and blood and sweat for the war. Although Labour leader MacDonald did not mention Greece, public opinion quickly interpreted this meaning. Many British people did not even know where Greece was, and heard that Greece had assassinated an Italian lieutenant general first. Whether based on their own interests or "simple" sense of justice, they did not think that Great Britain should go to war for this, and even believed that Britain should uphold justice and help Italy.

"Let these Mediterranean barbarians die!"

"Italians and Greeks can fight as long as they want!"

This voice is so strong that it adds points to the aggressive attitude of the Labour Party. Although Greece is a much more important ally than Italy in the eyes of the Conservative government, if this ally wants to drag Britain into the war, it is not a good ally. Mussolini's tough statement, the attitude of Italy and the public opinion in Britain forced the veteran politician Baldwin to make a quick decision: do not support Greece's war behavior, strive to solve the problem within the framework of the League of Nations as soon as possible, and if an agreement can be reached before the general election, there may be hope to save the declining election situation.