The economy is teetering on the brink of disaster. The National Health Service is heading for wholesale privatisation. The state education system is under its most serious threat since the Second World War. Welfare benefits are being transformed into retributive weapons of the Treasury. Yet the voice of the official Opposition is almost inaudible.
Yes, I know it’s been the summer recess, when the platform of Parliament is denied to Labour spokesmen. But if the Opposition put up the shutters for the holidays, the Government certainly didn’t. The onslaught on everything Labour has traditionally stood for has continued with barely a pause for breath. It is almost as if Ed Miliband and company were, by their silence, purposely allowing ministers plenty of rope in the hope that they will hang themselves with it. Well, maybe they will. But by that time the entire edifice constructed by the post-war Labour Government will be so much historical rubble, like the heartbreaking wreckage at Ground Zero. Something needs to be said before that happens, even if (in the words of the old army joke) it is only goodbye.
True, the trade unions are gearing themselves up for a concerted fightback, some of them being unions that aren’t even affiliated to the Labour Party. That is an unqualified Good Thing. But under laws that the last Labour Government failed to repeal, the unions are debarred from organising mass industrial action against the broad sweep of Government economic policy; they are required to stick to specific matters impinging directly on their members, such as pension cuts. What we need, though, is a generalised offensive against George Osborne, Andrew Lansley, Michael Gove and the creepy Iain Duncan Smith. There is no sign of anything of the kind coming from the Labour Party.
So what is the problem? Surely there must be some members of the Labour front bench team who are bursting to have a go at the genuinely bad men ranged against them on the opposite front bench? Who or what has stuffed the hankie in their mouths? I suspect that the answer is that they are all so fixated on producing a programme on which to fight the next general election that they dare not say anything they fear might prejudice that process. In the old cliché, they are scared to offer anything that might turn out to be a hostage to fortune. The result, as more than one newspaper and television commentator has pointed out with varying degrees of glee, is that it has been the much-reviled media which has supplied the most effective opposition to the government in recent months. Perhaps the most striking example is the Daily Telegraph’s increasingly brutal “Hands Off Our Land” campaign – vigorously supported by the National Trust – in the face of David Cameron’s and Eric Pickles’ proposed relaxation of planning law in favour of property developers. This, don’t forget, is the paper we used to call “the Torygraph”.
Its slightly bonkers sister weekly, the Spectator, has also weighed in, as has its once passionately anti-socialist and professionally eccentric columnist, Charles Moore. But the conversion that has given me most satisfaction is that of Simon Jenkins, onetime editor of The Times and now the highly unpredictable (though usually rather right-wing) columnist of The Guardian. In a blockbuster piece published last week, he advanced a thesis on the current economic crisis which is striking similar to the view I have been plugging in this column over the past year.
Jenkins’ technique as an analyst is to take a rusty machete to the jungly thickets of orthodox thinking on major issues, and to offer a radically different and extremely simple alternative. Thus, on defence, he denounced most of the weaponry bought by the Government as so much decorative junk, and cheerfully declared that we didn’t need all those soldiers, sailors and airmen. And so with the economy. His opening paragraph is worth quoting in full: “Forget ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’ Switch to ‘It’s demand, stupid.’ If the 20th century revolution in economics meant anything, it was that unless people go out and buy things, there will be no jobs, no incomes, no growth. Governments can worry about borrowing, lending, inflation, fiscal rectitude, whatever, until the cows come home – but without demand there is recession.”
Coupling this apercu with the latest figures on collapsing retail sales, Jenkins junks all the customary remedies such as the weirdly-named quantitative easing, which he says simply hands invented money to the banks, which then put it away in their vaults so as to top up their balance sheets against the threat of bad debts. It has no impact whatever on the wider economy. Instead, says Jenkins, the money should be given to people who will go out and spend it in the shops, thereby supporting factories and service industries. He recommends various schemes to achieve this, including a Christmas benefit surge. Well, hooray, I say. John Maynard Keynes (whom Jenkins acknowledges, but rather grudgingly) would have approved. And so, I suspect, would Uncle Karl up there in Highgate Cemetery. I just wish the Labour Party would get the hankie out of its mouth and say something with similar impact. Otherwise, I fear, it may indeed be goodbye.
