“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly: it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over” – Josef Goebbels.
Goebbels is not someone to feel comfortable about quoting, but this particular quote is an apt one. He knew all about the power of propaganda, which at its basest level was used to prepare the German people for deeply unpalatable acts and decisions. The future electoral success of Britain’s current Government is largely dependent on persuading voters to accept that current levels of public expenditure have got out of control and must be savagely reduced – and to continue persuading them of that.
It should not be forgotten that the one irredeemable economic fact of the recent and present crisis is that responsibility and blame lie with the private sector. Public finances have taken a massive hit due to the cost of bailing out the banks and the related measures of economic stimulation. This has nothing to do with public sector profligacy. However, the prevailing wisdom among the mainstream media and the chattering classes is that, in order to put the public finances back on track, levels of public spending must be drastically reduced in order to lay the foundations for a sustainable recovery.
This is the big achievement to date of David Cameron and George Osborne. They have succeeded in redefining the political landscape so that cutting the deficit is the now the be-all and end-all of policy. We are constantly told that this is the only choice we have and we should prepare for a period of great austerity. The Tories also argue that the state must empower people by stepping back and allowing them rediscover a sense of community to fill the void left by the retreating public sector.
They go further. The supposedly perilous situation we are in is largely the fault of the previous Government’s profligacy. That is why the public purse is empty and we can no longer afford current levels of spending. Outgoing Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne’s note to his successor was extremely foolish. Telling David Laws, even in jest, that there was no money left constituted a massive political gift to the slashers and cutters on the Tory benches, and was seized on with glee by new Chancellor George Osborne and ministerial team.
The Tories’ compliant messengers in the print media and the blogosphere may not realise their gullibility is being exploited, but the constant repetition that the deficit must be overcome and public expenditure must be slashed immediately is the coming decade’s big lie, and it shapes much political thought outside Tory circles. Both the BBC and ITN now accept that the Tory view on the deficit is the default position for the vast majority of the country. So debate about economics and politics is framed around this central tenet.
Elements in the Labour Party carry a heavy responsibility for allowing the Tories so much space to pursue their narrow Thatcherite argument of cutting the size of the state. The dispute between Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson over the nature of Labour’s response to the medium to long-term fallout from the financial crisis (which Mandelson won on points) was the seed bed in which the Tories were allow to cultivate their big lie unhindered.
The current British Government is led by post-Thatcherite Tories and Nick Clegg is one of them. They have no time for Geoffrey Howe’s holy grail of fixation with the money supply. Milton Friedman’s view of the political economy is regarded as passé in Tory ranks. They regard the state as a barrier to sound economic management and view some elements of public expenditure as a necessity rather than a duty.
The Prime Minister gave the game away when he said that the 25% of cuts to most ministerial budgets would never be restored. This is clear evidence that the economic policies of Cameron and Osborne are ideologically driven. Their maxim is: “Cut, cut and cut and never restore”. Labour needs to emphasise this point. The Tories are not cutting public expenditure because they have to, they are cutting it because they want to.
he temporary ring-fencing of the NHS and international development budgets is no acceptance that socialised medicine or philanthropy overseas are good things, but the product of a cold PR calculation that this would be the necessary cost of detoxifying the Tories.
A major problem for Labour and the trade unions is that the political climate in which cuts are being discussed is far more fortuitous for their opponents than it was when Thatcher came to power in 1979. For all her rhetoric about shrinking the state, she had to move cautiously because of significant opposition from “one nation” Tories in her own party.
Over the years, this internal Conservative dissent has been reduced to an ineffectual rump – and that includes so-called left-leaning Liberal Democrats. Cameron and Osborne and have a virtually free rein to follow their ideological convictions.
The only way to fight this Government is to remind people constantly that at the heart of the Conservatives’ core message is that lie. They will continue to argue that massive cuts are necessary because of the structural deficit. This, they claim, is so unsustainable that the coming cuts are unavoidable, while Labour’s supposed mismanagement of the economy seriously aggravated the situation. However, the structural deficit is an artificial construct that invents a theoretical basis for the diminished the role of the public sector as proposed by George Osborne and Danny Alexander. It should be a Labour mantra that the structural deficit is not the actual deficit. Tory interpretations rely on the contentious assumption that it is unsustainable.
During the debate on the Finance Bill, Treasury minister James Sassoon said that there must be “a complete re-evaluation of the Government’s role in providing public services”. This is not economics, but neo-conservative prejudice writ large.
Labour was already cutting the deficit and Alistair Darling’s March Budget would have halved the deficit in four years. Even the Tories’ new quango, the Office for Budget Responsibility, has agreed this is the case.
It seems that Osborne’s cuts, which will have the effect of reducing the gross domestic product of this country by a massive 10 per cent, are to be compensated for by increased activity in the private sector as it takes up the slack left by the public sector. In other words, the Tories are betting everything on a false premise based on a hypothetical interpretation of an inane analysis.
Because of the Tories ideological commitment to shrinking the state, we are now embarking on an extremely perilous economic programme that has little chance of success, is against the recommendations of the G20 group of nations and will almost certainly mean a double dip recession.
