11.22.08
clear blue water
(Photo by willhowells on flickr)
The overriding problem with British politics in recent years is, in my view, straightforward – with little to choose between the two major parties and a first-past-the-post voting system which excludes everyone else (even the Lib Dems, realistically) from the race, democracy has been looking increasingly pointless with each passing month.
The Tory surge we saw a few months back, where Cameron’s rehabilitated party opened a 30-point lead in the polls, wasn’t really on the back of any crucial difference in policy. Sure, the Tories don’t like ID cards (which is good) and David Davis managed to whip them into opposing 42 day detention before his principled stand in calling a by-election for his seat gave his nervous colleagues a golden opportunity to defenestrate him from the party’s day-to-day running. Both of those things are laudable.
On almost everything else, though, what’s to choose? The Tories are every bit as repugnant as Labour on key issues like immigration, and perhaps even more unpleasant on questions of crime and enforcement. Despite the frequent attacks on “the welfare state” from Conservative supporters, the party itself doesn’t actually have any policies to reduce welfare dependancy that Labour isn’t already implementing (some of them desperately unfair and discriminatory, placing huge, unnecessary burdens on genuinely disabled and ill people).
On privatisation, the Conservatives are as deeply enamoured with PFI and other such dishonest wheezes as Browns’s treasury has ever been. On transport, they’re big fans of private cars, as they’ve always been – proved admirably by Boris Johnson’s recent decisions to halt various public transport, walking and cycling focused projects in London because they would have inconvenienced drivers. (Let’s be realistic – if you’re driving in Zone 1, you deserve to be inconvenienced, preferably by being beaten with sticks until you learn some bloody sense and regard for your fellow man.)
None of this is surprising. After all, both the Tories and Labour are chasing the same dragon – they both want the love and support of Paul Dacre and Rebekah Wade, the editors of the Daily Mail and the Sun respectively. By extension, they’re both seeking the support of Daily Mail & General Trust and News International – the two most powerful and influential media companies in the United Kingdom.
They’re also, coincidentally, the same companies which make tons of money out of screaming about our BROKEN SOCIETY on a daily basis (because “Crime Figures Approach Record Low” or “Number of Child Abuse Cases Actually The Same As It’s Always Been Pretty Much” doesn’t sell many papers). Oh, and they both despise the BBC, because they don’t like having to compete with a publicly funded body that doesn’t have to fill its broadcasts with adverts and appeal to the lowest common denominator in its current affairs reporting.
Anyone notice how those two strands – Broken Britain and Bastard BBC – seem to have dominated both our media discourse and political discourse in recent months? Watching Brown and Cameron alike lapping from Rupert Murdoch’s wrinkly Australian teat is enough to make me feel furious and ashamed, and I’m only an adopted son of this nation. For those of you born here, it should be enough to create a spike in sales of Guy Fawkes masks and dynamite.
However! The past couple of weeks have been fascinating, because there’s suddenly a gulf of policy opening up between Labour and the Conservatives – where previously you’d have had a tough time passing a razorblade between them.
It’s the economy, of course, that’s driving this. Up until now, the Tories haven’t liked talking much about their economic policy. There’s a sneaking suspicion that this is because the shadow treasurer, George Osborne, is actually even more of a repugnant, over-privileged and insolent little oik than Cameron, and much worse at hiding the fact – so the less he says, the better. Certainly, he hasn’t seemed capable of opening his mouth without sticking his (expensively shod) feet straight into it in recent weeks. He’s so bad, in fact, that during the Northern Rock crisis (and ever since) his Lib Dem opposite number, Vince Cable, became the go-to guy for media looking for an opposition statement, completely bypassing the bumbling Tories.
Anyway, they’re still not talking about their economic policy – much. But they’re saying enough for us to understand that little has changed in how the Tories think, no matter how many times they put the word “compassionate” into their speeches and press releases.
The Tory approach to the global recession is this. They will cut taxes for big business. They will cut back on spending – although they won’t say what’ll be affected, it’s safe to say that the NHS, policing and transport will see at least some cutbacks in order to balance the books. Note that in London, Boris Johnson (the country’s most senior elected Tory) has cut back on the Metropolitan Police’s budget, despite running his election campaign partially on a law and order ticket. That move was probably formulated by his advisors from Policy Exchange, a thinktank hugely popular with Conservative Central HQ and whose recommendations are likely to form the heart of any national Conservative administration.
The Labour approach is almost the opposite. They will cut taxes for individuals. They will increase spending – borrowing money in order to implement both tax cuts and major government projects. The idea is that as the private sector declines temporarily, the government can borrow money cheaply and use it to generate work for the economy – big, headline infrastructure projects that will keep money flowing through the economy and unemployment nice and low.
The Tory approach, which owes much to Reagan-era trickle-down economics, is exactly the same kind of attitude they had in the early Eighties, under Thatcher. Then, their approach to inflation and recession was to allow the unemployment numbers to swell – in the process causing untold damage to many British communities, especially in the North of the country, where the social impact of widespread unemployment is still being felt. Next time you hear David Cameron talking about “Broken Britain”, bear in mind who broke the bloody thing in the first place.
Labour’s approach is being derided by the Tories for creating a “tax timebomb”. If you borrow now, they say, you’ll have to pay back later – so we’ll all be taxed more heavily down the line.
Well… Yeah. That much is obvious. But, while I don’t like everything (or, indeed, very much at all) about Brown’s handling of our economy in the past, on this topic – he’s dead right. We’re facing a recession, and in the face of that, the right thing for a government to do is to cushion the blow until such time as things start improving. The Tories’ policies, in contrast, would see the Government crawling back into its shell for the duration, keeping the Treasury’s books balanced at the expense of deepening and lengthening the recession, and causing untold human misery as the unemployment figures soar.
We are a socialist nation, a nation whose heritage from centuries of parliamentary democracy is a state which looks after its people, engages in moderate redistribution and, crucially, puts its citizens ahead of its economy – at least nominally. That’s a reflection of the will of the British people. American-style economic focus, and the recoil they feel from concepts like redistribution or socialism, are alien to these shores.
Yet even in America it’s accepted that big Government spending is going to be needed to keep the hounds from the door during the coming recession – while in Britain, Cameron’s Tories would happily batten down the Treasury’s hatches, say “fuck you” to struggling families and individuals, shrug as the unemployment lines grow, and then look cheerful when the economy booms again and pat themselves on the back for “responsible fiscal policy”. Meanwhile, just like last time, entire familes, estates and towns will never quite recover…
Labour’s alternative is that we’ll pay a little bit more when times are good, in order to prevent things from getting REALLY unpleasant when times are bad. That seems reasonable to me. It’s good enough to make me realise that as much as Labour’s period in government has angered me in many ways, the alternative is (still) much worse.
It seems reasonable to everyone else too, it seems. This week, MORI put the Tories’ lead over Labour at… Three percent. Not enough to put the Tories in government if an election were held tomorrow. With the veneer of party unity sliding from the Conservatives as Osborne proves an increasingly divisive figure, the common belief that David Cameron will be on the steps of No.10 some time in the next couple of years seems to be looking less and less certain.
Technorati Tags: Boris Johnson, Conservatives, Daily Mail, David Cameron, economy, Gordon Brown, immigration, Labour, Lib Dems, Liberal Democrats, London, politics, Rupert Murdoch, The Sun, Tories
