Deborah Orr: A collapse that is long overdue
Labour deserves its fate. But the people it was supposed to represent do not
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Independent Minds
Could Hazel Blears be showing some small sign of comprehension? Resigning from her ludicrous cabinet post of "Communities Secretary", she says she wants to return "to the grassroots" and to "help the Labour Party reconnect with the British people". Is it dawning at last? Does Blears actually grasp that it is not just this Government, not just Gordon Brown, but Labour that is finished, perhaps forever?
It is all too fitting that the long- overdue collapse of this Government has been precipitated by the expenses scandal. Conservatives may have claimed for moat-cleaning and servants quarters. Their leader may have paid off the mortgage on one home, while leaving the taxpayer to pay the mortgage interest on another. But a sense of entitlement and a cavalier attitude to the subsidy of the privileged by the masses is the essence of Conservatism. Labour is supposed to challenge such attitudes, not lustily embrace them.
Blears, of course, was exposed early on as a "flipper". She paid no capital gains tax on flats she had previously designated as "second homes", seemingly oblivious to the notion that if you believe in progressive taxation, then you are glad to pay your share. Labour politicians should have used their position to abolish exemption from tax on unearned income, not to take sneaky advantage of it.
Insisting that she had done nothing wrong, Blears still tried to buy her way out of trouble. She wrote out a cheque for £13,000 and waved it in the faces of the nation. Did she not realise that a person working full-time on Labour's much-vaunted minimum wage earns less than that in a year, and still pays tax and national insurance on it? Did she not understand that people lie awake at night, wracked with worry over how they are going to pay back a loan-shark's grossly inflated £130? She and so many of her colleagues have a great deal of reconnecting to do.
Yet her resignation speech was still full of cant. Blears also claimed: "My politics has always been rooted in the belief that ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things." That's not a belief, it's a fact. And anyway, you don't help "ordinary people" to achieve "extraordinary things" by making it so damned difficult for them even to get on with the ordinary things.
Nevertheless, as an "ordinary" person, under Labour, you were invited to apply for a "tax credit" if you did something as ordinary as start a family, even if your employer was rolling in it. This travesty of a situation was actually admired by Labour's supporters, and held up as a proof of the party's progressive intent. Repulsive.
Now, 30 years on from the dawn of their last "renewal", Labour is preparing to start staggering around the wilderness again. Its politicians deserve their fate, even though so many of them are ultra-keen to avoid it, by securing for themselves a seat in the Lords, of all places. But the people that they were supposed to represent do not.
And those people are even more invisible now than they were three decades ago. They are working under contract or for an agency, detached from the culture, security and profits of the organisations for which they provide essential services, and utterly powerless to do anything but accept what little they are given – or sign on.
The most picturesque – and visually memorable – aspect of Labour's previous collapse was the Winter of Discontent, in which the most modestly paid of public sector workers rebelled against a pay freeze that had been imposed on them by the Government for several high-inflation years.
Billed as an example of how Labour could not control the unions, it was much more complicated than that. Powerful unions did secure large pay rises for their members in the private sector. The strikers of 1978-79 saw none of this largesse and were as furious about that as the most red-blooded proto-Thatcherite. But while the power of the unions was curbed – and needed to be – the powerlessness of the low-paid was never addressed, not by the Conservatives, not by Labour.
The nearest Labour ever came to arguing that having a large chunk of poverty-stricken and disenfranchised people milling round society was corrosive and destabilising was the introduction of its patronisingly paternalistic – and failed – plan to "lift" millions of children out of poverty. The rhetoric was that "hard-working families" would be supported by "making work pay". Yet beyond the pitiful minimum wage there was little or no attempt to "make work pay", except the "temporary" 10p tax band.
Poverty was merely subsidised by Labour, through the machinations of an inefficient state that knew that our burgeoning social problems – educational failure, parental abuse, violent criminality – were hugely exacerbated by lack of personal prosperity, but were too gutless to make a moral case for genuine fair pay and therefore a measure of independence from Labour's ghastly, intrusive, self- serving bureaucratic schemes.
And poverty was subsidised so badly too. There was negligible investment in an expanded housing infrastructure that would make it easier to live modestly and well, or in public transport infrastructure that would make it possible to travel and work cheaply and efficiently. Those things are more desperately needed now than ever, but the great, stupid, spending spree is over.
I don't actually understand why anyone would wish to step forward and run the country now, it is so totally screwed up. I can't understand why the left keeps arguing for huge public spending projects when there so clearly is no more money. I can't understand why economists seem to believe that rising house prices are a sign of "recovery", when actually they are a sign that the economy is not "rebalancing".
I can't understand where Brown finds the resolve every morning to get out of bed and face the day. I can't understand why there is so little realisation of how tragic and divisive the last 30 years have been, and what desperately few options are left to us. It's not just the Government that's in meltdown. It's the whole bloody shebang, and it will take another 30 years or so to fix it. Well done, Labour.
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Comments
Is Hazel Blears the epitome of the poisonous DWARF? Looks like it!!
I thank you
Firozali A Mulla
I don?t trust long also I trust me and the reporters to keep me updated on the cock eating the politicians. When did this happen or is it the computer games, how I wish our dreams come true, but alas they are but dreams
I thank you
Firozali A Mulla
The Labour Party, by its very name, was intended to help the working class and the most vulnerable members of society. It has failed them abysmally and in the most disgraceful fashion, as child poverty, income differentials and the payment of tax by those on low incomes have soared, Labour MPs have concentrated on enriching themselves with public money.
The single worst feature of the Labour administration since 1997 has been the massive increase in working poverty, those in full-time employment who, at the end of each month, have still not earned enough to survive and are obliged to apply for government assistance in the form of a subsidy, tax credit or some other form of begging.
The horrendously complicated benefits scheme that has evolved as a result is a Frankenstein-like creature that gobbles up resources rather than helping those in need. The solution is simple, cheap and very easy, raise the level at which the low paid have to pay tax and abolish the entire tax credit, family credit and other systems of subsidy.
Get increased income to those most in need by raising child benefit, pensions and unemployment benefits. The UK has the fourth largest economy in the world, but the largest percentage of its population living in poverty. This can be changed and must be changed.
That is what the Labour Party are about, and why the current sorry lot do not deserve the once-proud name.
The Brown / Balls axis demonstrated its strength as a (claimed) reforming force by shaking some pieces of the rotting remains of quisling Blatcherism out of the top branches of government. There is renewed hope that either a Cromwell or people's resort to the BNP as a means of giving Britain a measure of protection from more of the pseudu-democratic circus, will be rendered unnecessary. However, that reforming force, if real : a) can be kept on its toes; b) can be given weaponry with which to deal with the rotting remains of blatcherism in government (and fend off the gang of spivs in the wings led by a slippery toff Blair lookalike) by protest votes for the BNP. In other words an effective protest vote is a vote for your enemy's most feared enemy. If the circus prevents you from voting BNP, then utter the vote of a conscientious abstainer.
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After J.Rentoul's over indulgent/out of touch nonsense yesterday, (wondering what all the fuss was about!) this is an excellent piece. D.Orr really does address why so many past Labour supporters are wounded in the country today. The disappointment by the working man/woman in the street cannot be overstated enough.
I really feel until we see some police involvement with the likes of E.Morley etc, the reputation of the House will not be complete - regardless of any new faces we see.
NuLabour have put us back years. They have spun and lied their way to power ..and their sole interest is the retntion of power. They are dishonourable people and deserve to disappear.
The old Left will rise from its ashes and at some stage will get their turn in the sun again in 10 yrs time when people punish the Tories for the acts of destruction of public services that , as grown ups, will now be forced to undertake.
Where is our long term consistency of purpose and planning though as nation ? surely we can agree between the various some common ground on all major issues as to what are our sensible paths forward. Stop treating people like children and open up the debate we all know is there to be had.
I live in Singapore..it is the best governed place in the world. Things work here , there is no QE.Its a painful time but the government lead from the front with self imposed pay cuts and spell out to their people what the various problems and options are . Singaporeans are intelligent and pragmatic folks..they know the score and know whats sensible.Why can't the UK gov treat UK citizens in the same way.
Good riddance to NuLabour ..a hollow , shallow party carried by the charm and charisma of a true political spiv(Blair) andf left in the hands of Commisar Brown and his cronies who were unable to continue the spin. May we never see its like again.
Only trouble is that voting for the Tories won't change things either.
I don't envy you Brits at the moment.
Odd how it works, but now I understand basic psychology better than I thought I did.
Yes, it will take decades, possibly generations, to deal with the consequences. And we'll do so whilst clambering over the wreckage of political system, society and economy which they delivered to us. Shame and disgrace for them: a lifetime of work for those who come next.
It is so easy to blame politicians for everything that goes wrong, for everything that has not been achieved. It is so much harder to get involved in the political and democratic process. Blame everyone else, especially politicians, most of whom, in spite of the relentless exposures, are decent, honest, committed and extremely hard-working men and women trying to make a positive contribution. How much harder to look at ourselves and our unwillingness to engage, to get off our backsides and make our democracy work.
Good riddance to Blears and any politicians who have milked the system. But do not wish for a political apocalypse. Such a thing would be quite terrifying in its consequences. And whatever you say, Gordon Brown is a giant amongst pigmies, and is by far and away the best person for the job of steering the country out of its present economic woes.
p.s. Can I also have my 10p tax-band back?
Or, better still, how about zero tax on the first 10,000?
That's the sort of thing a true Labour PM would have done.
Too late now, though.
As to the recovery in the housing market, well the average price is still one hundred and fifty thousand. The average wage is twenty five thousand. So to get back to the sensible maximum of lending four times income means, surely, that prices need to fall a lot more yet.
Thanks Deborah!
Tax Credits are in reality a means tested poverty trap and a back door pay policy, a continuation of the Calahan Healy pay policy by other means.
After all why ask for higher wages if its all going to be clawed back in reduced Tax Credits and Housing Benefit.
This is a monatarist policy, after all it was Milton Friedman (in the 70s) who said that it was impossible to have full employment without inflation because Unions kept wages artificially high.
He was wrong about this, as the problem was overcapacity saturated demand, and the rich attempting to use differential wage inflation to undo the post war re-distribution of wealth, the poor were mearly trying to maintain living standards and playing catch up.
New Labour are an monaterist party, it is the failure of the monaterist economic model that has caused this economic collapse.
Tax Credis and the minimum wage are a con.
A subsidy to bad employers, that encourages low wages.
Housing Benefit treats Tax Credits as income and claws back any income above JSA + 5 pouns at 65per cent.
JSA rates are 64.30 pounds (less if you are under 25).
Tax Credits mainly benefit those who do not claim Housing Benefit such as homeowners.
The real rate of clawback for the low paid is approx 80 per cent (ta, no wonder inequality is higher than at any time during Major or Thatcher.
85 per cent clawback ( from the cumlitive effect of ITax, NI, Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit, and Tax Credits) is iniqutus as the top rate of Tax is only 40 per cent (if they pay it).
The Speenhamland System in the 18th/19th centuary was a means tested benefit for those in work and all it did was encourage employers to pay low wages.
Low wages are one of the main reasons for this economic collapse and New Labour's massive deficiet.
Low wages mean low demand and collapsing prices and deflation without a unsustainable credit bubble.
Low wages mean much higher goverment spending on means testing benefit for those in work.
It is this and other forms of coarpriate welfarism for the rich and big buisness (such as PFI) that has caused New Labour's massive budget deficiet.
New Labour's economic policy is STATE MONATARISM, this is a curious mixture of Thatcherite free markets and Stalinism (Gordons 5 Yr plans and meaninless proformance targets), and was even less efficient than Thatcherism.
This is using taxpayers money to fund the private sector, without any government control.
This is why any green shoots will wither and die and child poverty will keep on increasing until the government abandons monaterist policies.