LONG ago in the mid-1990s, just on the cusp of the “new” Labour counter-revolution which has got us where we are today, I went to a Tribune Christmas party in one of the further flung committee rooms of the House of Commons where I fell into conversation with the economist Will Hutton, then one of the leading ideologues behind “new” Labour.
Given the certain new orthodoxies that the Labour leadership had recently and cravenly caved in to, I wanted to know if there was any chance of creating a left-wing variant on monetarism. You know, firm on the money supply, but also committed to social cohesion as well, and not simply wedded to an economic theology at any cost. In other words, was there any scope for reining in public spending in such a way that it would torch the shibboleths of the right, such as nuclear weapons, the security state or the monarchy?
Hutton, to his credit, didn’t answer, and just looked at me with indulgent yet withering contempt. And, to be honest, I wasn’t being entirely serious (that’s not my job). The question itself, however, had a serious intent, which was answered by both by the way I framed my inquiry and by Hutton’s mute response. And the answer, in case you’re wondering, is obvious: that economics is wholly a subset of politics and that the purpose of monetarism is to provide a specious “scientific” respectability to a vicious and spiteful right-wing agenda, the victims of which would be exclusively the social parts of the public sector and, consequently, the poor and powerless.
Monetarism, of course, is now not just dead but sticky ashes, having collapsed beneath the weight of its own contradictions and then spontaneously combusted as it hit the deck screaming, its incineration fuelled by its own fat. That said, it frequently takes a long time to come to terms with bereavement – and many people remain in deep denial that their loved one is dead. Thus it is with the cabal of monetarist bankers in the Bank of England and the uppermost reaches of “new” Labour, who have festooned the corpse of the Thatcherite/monetarist economy with corn plasters, blasted it with CPR until the batteries are all flat and are now hosing it down with blood in the vain hope that some of it may soak through the sallow skin and serve as a transfusion.
In order to achieve what therapists call “closure”, it would be better all round to call it a day and have a proper funeral, imbued with all the redemptive rituals that funeral rites involve. Those might include obsequies, plated meats, a few solemn hymns and also, crucially, an admission that the evil old bastard is, in fact, dead, and that this is a relief all round. And because funerals only exist for the benefit of the living congregation rather than the dear departed, in a spirit of renewed hope (we could also have jazz bands and drink,) an opportunity would present itself, after the practices of the ancients, to chuck a whole pile of stuff on the funeral pyre.
Quite a few of the grave goods have already gone up in the flames with a satisfying woof. Things like the reputation of Nietzschean bankers for infallibility and all those retail outlets selling garbage no one needs, but which we were told we all had to have. But “New” Labour should go in there too, hurled onto the bonfire along with its birth certificate, proving it to be the true and legitimate, if monstrously deformed child of Thatcherism/ monetarism.
And while we’re about it, this is a golden opportunity to get rid of all the crap the loved one treasured, but which no one in their right mind would wish to be bequeathed. Like bullying managerialism, the denigration of the public sector, the infection of politics by the hubris of admen, the twenty-four hour news cycle, rabid acquisitiveness, the worship of markets… I could go on, warming my hands by this magnificent bonfire of the vanities.
But after the wake, once the hangovers have dissipated and the ashes have cooled, we need to move on, and in the following direction. All things being equal, it’s essential that all things should be more equal. As I’ve argued in this column before, there’s an abundance of anthropological evidence that it’s our natural human state to yearn for equality – of treatment, if nothing else. That’s backed by medical and sociological evidence, too: that physical as well as mental illness is linked to inequality.
In 1976, when we had 25 per cent inflation, the bottom 50 per cent of our nation’s population owned an admittedly pathetic 7 per cent of its wealth. But by 2007, after nearly three decades of rigorous monetary control, the bottom half owned only 1 per cent. So it’s worth recalling the conclusions of a recent study of our nation’s collective happiness over the years, which revealed that we were at our happiest in… 1976.
Of more immediate importance is the need for Labour to remember what is was created to achieve – and that will inevitably require it to repudiate entirely the poisonous philosophy it embraced for short-term electoral advantage. Otherwise, the Tories – who spawned the mess we’re in and who have inequality woven into their DNA – will inherit the lot.
