What an age it seems since I last wrote this column. My October monthly dispatch was finished the day Ed Miliband started his paternity leave. Now he’s back at his desk, despite daft claims from veteran Guardian journalist Simon Hoggart that spending time with your partner and newborn child in the precious first days is “wussy”. New challenges must be faced, notably the continuing WikiLeaks saga and revolting students.
The Labour leader did interrupt his time with baby Sam to comment occasionally. Along with the Prime Minister, he joined the chorus to condemn Thatcherite retread Lord Young’s remarks that the ordinary people
had “never had it so good” in the “so-called recession”.
It would be easy to see his lordship as another out of touch dinosaur at home with his chums in a Cabinet of millionaires. David Cameron’s withering putdown of a man old enough to be his father – “I think he’ll be doing a lot less speaking” – was characteristically patronising and calculated to demonstrate that the former Bullingdon boy feels our pain. However, was the man who came out of retirement for an unpaid brief to think the unthinkable – and who was ignominiously given the boot for doing so – actually right? Perhaps. Let me explain.
In the all the recessions I’ve lived through, mass unemployment and record dole queues – despite repeated changes in counting methods – were a given. When Margaret Thatcher gave a three-fingered salute on winning her third general election victory, she could have been signifying three million people out of work.
Under John Major, record numbers of home repossessions affected families all over the country. This was sharply at odds with the Tory dream of a property-owning democracy. Interest rates reached15 per cent and at one point stayed at 10 per cent for a whole year.
Under Gordon Brown, unemployment did not hit the two-million right-wing analysts had predicted – although the threat still haunts us.
In truth, we went into the 2010 election with a situation where, if you were in work and had either a mortgage with a variable rate or were on the bank’s standard variable rate or took advantage of plummeting interest figures and were able to migrate to a lower fixed rate, you probably had not experienced as bad a recession as you would have endured in the 1980s and ’90s. In addition, mortgage protection schemes were put in place by the Labour Government and for 12 months VAT was reduced to 15 per cent for all high street shoppers – mortgage or no mortgage. As an election candidate myself this year, I remember making the point on the doorstep. Most voters were hard-pressed to say exactly how they lives had become materially worse since the “downturn”. (Labour used to avoid the “R” word.)
Prime Minister Brown’s overall stewardship and Chancellor Alistair Darling’s strategic caution steered us out of choppy waters. Results have been seen in growth that has accrued in figures released under the coalition. Young was on the right lines then, to label it a “so-called recession” – although Tory policies still risk a double-dip, fully-blown one.
Bafflingly, it was just a year ago that I heard Vince Cable speak at my workplace, Kingston University, where he said that when the crisis came, Gordon Brown had done the right things. Pumping money into the economy and effectively nationalising the banks (whose shares will be sold at a profit) was the correct call. These policies are now bearing fruit, although it seems Cable has since had a brain transplant, while the fragile recovery is at risk.
Of course, none of this amelioration of the worst effects of the downturn is the same as “never having it so good” – a phrase borrowed from Harold Macmillan. Young’s comment that thousands of public sector job losses were “’within the margin of error” was, as Ed Miliband said, “a disgrace”. These are people with families to feed, not just figures on a spreadsheet.
Howard Flight, another Tory peer suffering from foot-in-mouth disease, was more on the money when he claimed in somewhat colourful language that cutting child benefit for the middle classes was wrong. So Ed Miliband was right again. The “squeezed middle” will feel the pinch most acutely, having paid into the system all their lives. It is this demographic which needs attention. That is not to say the white working class should be neglected – the two scocial groups are not in any way mutually exclusive.
So some elements of Lord Young’s thinking had some merit – although there are huge qualifications and caveats. Whether or not people are mortgage payers, things are only going to get worse. VAT goes up to 20 per cent in January and that hits everyone. The broken promise on VAT can be added to those on control orders, student tuition fees, child benefit and so on.
Perhaps it is more accurate then to say that, under Labour, things were not as bad as they were at the equivalent point of the recessionary cycle as the last time the Tories were in power. Lord Young was right up to a point – and that point was May 6 2010. With every day that passes, his utterances become more and more wrong.
