Alan Thornett suggests an alternative programme for a Labour government
There has been a remarkable collapse of Tory support in the opinion polls since the end of last year. The Tories ‘bullying’ campaign against Gordon Brown largely misfired and their opinion poll lead has halved. The Lord Ashcroft scandal has not helped them either. There is now a distinct panic in the Tory ranks over the possibility of a hung Parliament or even a Labour win, which is far from excluded.
More fundamentally there appears to be a growing realisation of that the Tory slash and burn policy would mean for the economy means deep cuts in public spending as soon as they get into office, a deepening of the crisis itself, and rapidly rising unemployment. The ‘vote for us for the biggest and most immediate cuts’, no longer looks like the vote winner that Cameron and his perceptive strategists thought it might be.
It can be argued, of course, that since Labour say that they will begin a programme of austerity and debt reduction in 2011, that the difference is ‘only’ about timing and is therefore cosmetic. This would be a big mistake. It is true that making the working class pay is fundamental to both parties but “immediate” is a very big word and its consequences could be very far reaching in terms of the medium term impact of the crisis on the working class is concerned.
The problem Labour will face, however, if they win the election, is that we are entering a new phase of the crisis — which may well be more difficult to manage than the first stage.
Double dip recession?
There has been a degree of economic stabilization particularly in the banking sector and in the stock markets, and unemployment has not reached previously expected levels. This, however, has been due to the various stimulus packages which have been pumped into the British economy not to any change in the dynamics of the crisis itself.
We have seen £200 billion put into the British economy in quantitative easing, £175 billion (according to the IMF) to stabilise the banking system, plus the reduction of VAT for a year, and other measures such as the various scrappage schemes. Interest rates have been reduced to an all time low of 0.5%.
It has been these measures and not any fundamental change in the crisis itself which has caused this stabilization. The structural and dual economic and ecological nature of the crisis of the crisis on the other hand continues unchanged, and the likelihood now is of a so-called double dip recession rumbling on into an extremely unstable and economic future.
The significance of this for the Brown administration is far-reaching, since his entire strategy of spending and investing a way out of the crisis was predicated on an expectation that the economy would ‘begin the road to recovery’ during 2010 and that normal economic conditions would resume, more or less, in 2011 or soon after. He could then get on with the task of repaying the debt to the international banking system by slashing the living standards of the working class.
But it is time that the left challenged this whole approach. Why is it so urgent to pay off the debt? The crisis was not caused by public debt. It was caused by private debt. This apparent urgency does not come out of economic logic but is a deliberate political choice, made by all three main parties, to create the framework in which to make the working class pay. It is a class-based political choice.
In any case if it is really so important to pay of the debt there is no shortage of ways in which this can be done. Ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be a good start. They could scrap Trident and the rest of Britain’s nuclear arsenal along or tax currency speculation.
In defence of nationalisation
As is said repeatedly money is always available for bankers and their bonuses, even with those banks which have been rescued by public money. The nationalised and loss making RBS is currently paying a hundreds of its top bankers bonuses in excess of £1m each — after receiving £20 billion from the taxpayer a year ago. The whole RBS bonus pot equates to £1.3 billion.
Labour should reject this approach and set out its stall for a fourth term in a completely different way.
It should stop insisting that the priority from 2011 will be to start a four year programme of debt repayment on the basis of a package of austerity measures aimed directly at the working class and in particular public sector workers. The working class is not responsible for this crisis.
- What is needed is not cuts in public spending but more public spending.
- What is needed is not less stimulus into the economy but more stimulus into the economy.
- What is needed is not cuts in the public sector but a bigger, stronger and better resourced public sector.
- What is needed is not handing money to the banks investing directly in public works in order to defend and create jobs.
- What is needed is a programme of nationalisation not just of the banks but of bankrupt industries in order to defend jobs.
The case for full nationalisation of the banks under democratic control is overwhelming. So too is the case for the nationalisation of bankrupt industries. Nationalisation provides a practical way to defend jobs and opens up a space in which socialist ideas can be developed. The perception of nationalisation, which was discredited by Labour in the 1970s and 1980s and demonised by the Tories in the same period has changed and public opinion is far more receptive to it.
Nor is it just a question of major programmes of public works. It’s about what kind of public works should be prioritised — and this is where the Brown administration has been completely inadequate.
We need programmes of public works which can employ and reemploy millions of workers. If tens of billions of pounds can be given to the banks the same can be done for programmes of public works. And such public works must be directed towards establishing a more sustainable society for the future, in order that the ecological crisis is tackled at the same time as the economic crisis.
Green jobs
What is needed is not just more public investment, but investment targeted in the most effective way. The key to this is the creation of green jobs. People directly by employed the government on work designed to create a sustainable economic infrastructure. In this the campaign for green jobs have got it exactly right. They call for a million green jobs. For the government to hire a million workers to start to reshape the economy on a sustainable basis and with renewable energy sources.
The priority should be the conservation of energy through the insulation of the national housing stock, window lift and roof insulation — a massive task in itself — which would involve the retraining of large numbers of workers in window fitting and other aspects of the insulation of buildings.
This should be linked to the conversion of jobs in industries which produce environmentally damaging product. Car and component factories, for example, are well equipped to switch over to the manufacture of renewable energy equipment as well as low carbon vehicles and public transport vehicles.
To spell out an approach along these lines would not only compound the problems of the Tories and increase Labour’s chances in the election. It would also present a positive way forward rather that the current course which is on a collision course with public sector workers.
This also creates the best conditions for a fight back. The more workers are thrown into unemployment and atomised as individuals the more difficult it will be to begin to organise. If workers remain employed or are taken on for public infrastructure work they are in a far stronger position fight back
3 Comments
Good article.
The article argues well what a New Labour government “should” do in the event of winning the General Election.
Unfortunately, New Labour being New Labour even if it likes to call itself “Labour” at election times, is not going to do any of the suggested things in the article that it should do in the event of winning
It remains fully committed and wedded to the US in contiuing it’s imperialist foreign policy,it’s war and occupations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
It says it will maintain it’s massive expense on trident and trident replacements nuclear weapons.
It remains fullly committed to neo liberal capitalist policy and continuing to implement further massive public sector cuts on jobs, pay,pensions and working conditions and attacks on the working class while implementing further privatisation of the welfare state and the sell off of further state/publicly owned assets.
It remians committed to letting the free market rule and run rampart except for emiotting occasional noises about supposedly bringing in some form of gentle regulation of the banks who the bvbailed out with public funds and got nothing in return apart from business as usual.
It has now suggested that it will present the country with a referenduum on electoral reform with a possible view to a hung parliament between New Labour and the Lib Dems to keep out the tories even though all are fully committed to making the working clas pay for the capitalist crisis. This might well be the best case scenario and as long as the two parties hold to or are held to their promise of a vote on electoral reform and the voting system this could,could “if” a referendumm were won, could bring about a relative realignment of centre Left/right neo liberal politics and a vital renewal of the fortunes of the fighting Left and the Greens in support of such reforms, with a possible openning for a new broad left party intervention and or a red /green convergence in the previously dominant mainstream electoral politics, “if” the fighting Left in all it’s 57 varieties could show itself both capable and mature enough to rise to such a challenge and create such an urgently needed Left party with significant trade union support and “if” reds and greens could fully unite in support of public ownership and against public sector cuts, in demand of a million green jobs,the dismantlement of Britain’s obscene and massively expensive nuclear weapons of mass destruction and the withdrawl of Britain from it’s very costly colonial involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan with the prompt withdrawl of all British troops.
This article is OK as a ‘what if’ and as such is good agitational stuff in realtion to economic and welfare policies; but of course New Labour has a different ideology from old Labour. Even in the latter case it would have been a question of struggling within the labour movement for the adoption of more progressive (‘socialistic’) policies – some of which might have got adopted with sufficient pressure and combativity developed. Although the experiences from 1964 to 1979 tend to largely mitigate against this, with some exceptions.
VOTING SYSTEMS
An interesting question is the current emerging debate around changing the voting system. Here the dynamics of power politics between the three main parties may throw up a historical change (partly by design and partly by accident – as is the way of these things at times of crisis).
Brown’s pre-election proposals, reflecting a vain attempt at some popularity is not proportional representation – but are designed to sustain the dominance of the three main parties and exclude minor parties. Hence continuing to block both the Green’s and any left alternative which might emerge historically.
But… the Lib Dems are technically committed to PR although I would not put it past Clegg to deal a limited and pro-main party formula. But it is precisely this tension (between Lib Dem politics and power-playing in the Executive) which may offer a better historical change.