Cameron’s Mythical Dragons

You know a Government is in trouble when they start slaying mythical dragons.

David Cameron announced this week that immigrants families would face being ineligible to apply for a Council house for up to five years. The Prime Minister has been under pressure from Conservative MPs since their appalling Eastleigh by-election result, where they slumped to third behind UKIP. The UKIP campaign was based strongly on an anti-immigration and anti-EU stance.

With a background of a stalling economy, poor poll ratings, internal conflict and a stress-cracked Coalition, the omens for the next election look poor for the Conservatives. With under three years to go, it would take a remarkable and unlikely turn around to reverse the trend.

So how does such a Government in this mess move forward?

They roll out their mythical dragons to slay.

For the Conservatives these are the EU, immigration, the public sector, unions, the welfare state and the so called deficit. Each is chosen for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the myth must be commonly shared. It is useful if your friends in the media will propagate helpful stories, using one-off extreme cases to demonstrate the rule. For example, a single mother with eleven children was the centre of a media storm last month. This case was used to demonstrate the ‘failing of an over generous benefit system’ , despite being a highly unusual case that represents a minuscule percentage of benefit claimants. The domination of the right-wing press ensures that such issues are rarely portrayed accurately, or with a fair evidential basis.

Secondly, each dragon should represent a group that is vulnerable and weak. This applies to immigrants and welfare claimants. These groups do not have the influence to seriously fight back.

Thirdly, the concept of scape-goating should apply. Are immigrants responsible for the lack of social housing? No, the issue is decades of not building them, while simultaneously selling the stock off. Are people on Job Seekers Allowance holding back the country and responsible for their own worklessness? No, our economy is so configured to ensure a permanent high level of unemployment to create a downward pressure on wages, and transfer wealth to global corporations and the super-rich.  Scape-goating also helps to ensure ordinary workers focus their rage on those they should unite with. Why should the elite fight everyone else, when they can have ordinary people fight among themselves?

The Conservatives know that organised labour remains a barrier to eroding employee rights and creating the  preconditions which would enable global capitalists to further asset strip the people of the United Kingdom. This is why the public sector and Unions are targets for slaying, not because they are bad, but for ideological reasons. The Miners strike in 1984-85 was a classic case of artificially constructing a fight, with the intention of destabilising the union movement and to justify a reduction in union rights.

The Conservatives always talk about the deficit as something Labour grew so large due to spending too much. This is nonsense, and even a cursory look at historical data blows this myth out of the water. The deficit is being used as a trojan horse to fragment and privatise our services for corporate profit.

So given the Conservatives inability to win the next election based on their performance or benefit they have brought to people, we can expect two years of further attacks on the classic Tory dragons.

Those on the left need to ensure that they fight every myth propagated by this Government, as it gets down and dirty heading towards 2015. No action should be done or speech made that gives credence  to these myths.

This lesson needs to be quickly learned by the Shadow Cabinet.

Are you listening Liam Byrne?

The Old Ideologies Have Withered

Where does politics lie in 2012?

In this article I will argue that both Labour and the Conservatives both have a crisis of ideology. I also believe Labour in particular must look for a new framework to guide them, and that the answer to what shape a new Labour-led Government would take does not lie in the past.

Following World War 2, the post war consensus dominated all Governments until the 1970’s. This consensus was based on:

• The nationalisation of key UK industries
• A welfare state based on the Beveridge report
• Keynesian economics

The 1970’s saw the UK economy come under pressure from the 1973 oil crisis, inflation and industrial action. The post war consensus was failing.

In 1979 Margaret Thatcher led the Conservative Party to victory. She was a protégée of Keith Joseph, with whom she created the Centre Policy Studies. The CPS promoted free-market economic and monetarism, and was influenced by the works of the Economist Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek.

The next 18 years saw the destruction of the post war consensus. By the time Tony Blair led Labour to victory in 1997, Labour had accepted much of this free-market model and moved to the centre of politics.

I firmly believe that the post war consensus had already failed by the time Mrs Thatcher had entered Downing Street. It was born of a nation rebuilding from the ashes of war. The UK had a different, tighter class system. The world and UK economy were a totally different shape, and less global in nature.

The new neo-liberal economy also failed, falling off the edge of a cliff during the banking crisis of 2008. Economic inequality been growing for years, but when the banks exploded the world financial system ground to a halt. The system that said that the market will always deliver what people need and is efficient simply overheated and blew up. The effect is still being felt, with years of austerity looming.

What is apparent is that as Labour looks for a new policy framework, trying recreate the past, a new 1945, is totally futile. The world of 2012 is unrecognisable from that of 1945. The world is a large, fast moving economy. Technology has made the world a small place, allowing diverse global relations to be maintained at the speed on an email. Recreating 1945 now is as impossible as recreating Victorian Britain in 1945.

New Labour’s triangulation of neo-liberalism and the post war consensus was trying pick the ‘best’ parts of two failed systems, joining them together and hoping they would work together. The result was a neo-liberal financial system, with some papering over the inequality cracks with policies such as the national minimum wage and tax credits.

A car made of the best parts of two wrecks is a ‘cut and shut’. Thus, New Labour failed – it’s ‘cut and shut’ ideology couldn’t prevent the inequality and shifting of power and wealth to a small elite that neo-liberalism always delivers.

So where does a new left go from here?

Firstly, serious reform of the financial system is needed, and on a global scale. Capital controls are required to stop global capitalists moving huge sums at the touch of a button that results in huge instability.

Secondly, the ever increasing movement of powers from the nation state to the EU, WTO and so on must be reversed. Power needs returning to the individual countries and the democratic rights of citizens enhanced.

Thirdly, consumerism must be replaced by sustainability. The world’s supply of oil and the other resources is being consumed at an unsustainable rate. Within a few decade they could run out. Global warming threatens the whole planet. We need to stop measuring growth simply in terms of the size of our latest LCD television and the model of car we own.

Fourthly, inequality must be reversed. Globally:

• 1% of the world’s population owns 40% of global assets
• 2% of the worlds’s population owns 51% of global assets
• The poorest 50% own less than 1% of global assets

Nationally, inequality has also grown. Wealth needs to be shared more equally within nations and within the whole global community.

This is a difficult shopping list to deliver. It requires tenacity and standing firmly to principles in the face of vested interests. However, this is the only way. A policy of being Tory light is simply the path to electoral and moral oblivion.