The establishment is in tatters. Is there a profession that hasn’t seen its status go down the pan? After the MPs’ expenses scandal, the war in Iraq and broken manifesto promises, politicians have zero respect. The bankers’ reputations are deservedly trashed and the practices of mendacious journalists are being exposed daily at the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking.
Even the church found itself on the wrong side of Occupy London, supporting the financiers against the protesters. The bishops have at last woken up to the damage their stance is doing and have attacked Government benefit cuts.
New Labour rejected ideology. It adopted a philosophy rooted in neo-liberal economics. That led inexorably to a technocratic view that ownership didn’t matter. The only thing that counted was “what works”.
It was folly and meant that the City and the markets remained unfettered from the days of the “Big Bang”. Thatcherism was consolidated. New Labour bent the knee to the rich and the powerful. Even now, while apologies for a lack of regulation are routinely trotted out, City interests still trump social concerns. How else are we to explain the decision to oppose a Tobin tax that, as Nobel Laureate economist James Tobin said, would “throw some sand in the well-greased wheels” of currency speculation? Yet, as it would discourage short-termism, the tax fits into Ed Miliband’s central argument on the present dangers of predatory capitalism that he made at this year’s Labour Party conference.
Opposing a Tobin tax on the grounds that it needs to be internationally accepted puts the Shadow Cabinet on the same side as John Major, whose interventions on the subject act as a proxy for David Cameron and George Osborne. Opposition also put the Labour leadership against the vast majority of civic society in the United Kingdom. We probably need to view Nicolas Sarkozy’s and Angela Merkel’s support with some suspicion. Nevertheless, momentum does appear to be building up.
A Tobin tax is not a silver bullet, but it would go some way towards helping to shrink the bloated financial sector as well as imposing some form of payback on the reckless financiers who crashed our economy.
George Osborne will be seeking a different form of penalty when he makes his autumn statement. He will do what has come naturally to this Government – protect the City and penalise the rest of us. Even though we know this, news that he is planning to scrap the planned three pence increase in fuel duty at the expense of an up-rating in benefits in line with September’s inflation figure beggars belief.
The principle of universal benefit has given way to individual penalty. Universalism as a principle worth fighting for, as it binds a nation together. Too many of those who should know better have decried universal benefits such as travel concessions and the winter fuel allowance. This completely misses the point, since it allows the Chancellor to wield the axe.
Benefits for the poor end up being poor benefits, as the late general secretary of the National Union of Public Employees, Alan Fisher, wisely observed. If the reason is to “make work pay”, then increase the national minimum wage.
Perhaps the Liberal Democrat members in the unholy alliance that is the coalition Government will put a stop to this latest mean act which will deprive the poorest of as much £100 a year – but don’t hold your breath.
The day after the Chancellor’s autumn statement, millions of workers – many of whom have never gone on strike before – will tell the Conservative-led Government that its incompetence has been rumbled. It is Government policies and not the problems in the eurozone that have destroyed growth. It is Government policies that have led to the economy flatlining and it is Government policies that have put up unemployment. It always was a fantasy that the private sector would step in and create jobs lost in the public sector.
November 30 is about more than protecting pensions. As the technocrats take over in Greece and Italy without even the pretence of political cover and elections, the Occupy movements have gone some way to allowing the demands of traditional protests to fall on fallow ground.
