What can the left and the labour movement expect from the Conservative administration that David Cameron – pictured - will probably be heading less than two years from now? Depressing though it is even to have to consider such matters, I’m afraid this is now an issue that must unavoidably be addressed.
Historically, the acid test of a Labour government has always been this; what have been the acts of omission and commission done that the Tories will feel impelled to rectify next time they get the keys to Number Ten?
Drawing up a balance sheet of the period from 1997 to date, the answer this time round is surely very little. One of the reasons that Cameron has had such difficulty in defining a philosophically coherent vision is that Labour has ensured that very few points on the ruling class wish list remain unaccomplished. For the right, there are no particularly urgent tasks to hand.
So the odds are that the Cameron government of 2010 will thankfully not evince the sort of radicalism radiated by Thatcher once she got warmed up. That woman was on a mission from God to smash trade unionism, privatise nationalised industries and wipe out Britain’s manufacturing base in the interest of the City. Bereft of divine instruction, Cameron - by contrast - will just have to busk.
The handover will mark an alternation within a consensus, parallel to what was seen during the Wilson/Heath/Callaghan era. But this time round, the consensus is a very different one, based as it is on the free market and social liberalism rather than social liberalism and the welfare state.
Cameron and Co are not going to hike the gay age of consent back up to 21, reverse devolution or scrap the national minimum wage. Nor will there be any policies as monumentally stupid as the poll tax.
In short, lefties are not going to hate the 2010s nearly as much as we hated the 1980s. Doubtless we will find plenty to disapprove of, just as we have disapproved of much that has been undertaken by Blair and Brown. But for most people, Cameronism will amount to little more than Blairism without the all too occasional cherry on top.
Posted at 13:43, 19 May 2008
Comments (24)
What is interesting about the Mayoral election is that for more contemporary public service experience the Tories turn to senior people in local government, many of whom have an uncompromisingly Thatcherite approach to how services are provided.
You will see fewer aspirational targets - like the end of 50% affordable housing already underway - and much more commissioning and outsourcing than under Labour. Look now at Wandsworth and Westminster.
Those who argued that Blair etc were "just like the Tories", will be rather surprised to see what the Tories are like when they are in power. If you want some evidence look at the areas where the Tories took from Labour in 2006 - like Hammersmith and Fulham and Camden...
Expect to see the end of decent pensions in the public sector and possibly a ban on strike action in areas of the public sector.
"end of decent pensions in the public sector and possibly a ban on strike action in areas of the public sector"
Doesn't that remind you of anything already happening?
Unfortunately, yes.
But the Tories regularly signal with their mantras of "unreformed public services" and "gold-plated pension schemes" that they don't think it's enough and would go even further even quicker than New Labour in taking apart the public sector.
Also, of course, expect the rolling back of the union recognition laws brought in in Blair's first term. Minor though they were, they have made a difference in quite a few, particularly smaller, unions.
Also, while Cameron won't scrap the minimum wage, I think we can expect it not to go up much, if at all.
"end of decent pensions in the public sector and possibly a ban on strike action in areas of the public sector
Doesn't that remind you of anything already happening?"
Actually the government has been quite good on public sector pensions. A Tory government would mena more outsourcing to firms with worse pension arrangements, more use of the voluntary sector (with poor pensions).
Agree that the NMW would not go up a readily as under Labour - look how it was frozen in the USA.
There's a good warning from Sweden about what a supposedly 'liberal' conservative government would do.
wot Rory said
Public sector pensions will be a flashpoint between the Tories and the unions. As unpleasant as existing reforms have been, this will be on a completely different scale as the Tories have already openly talked about getting rid of defined benefit schemes.
We ought to start building the trenches now, as I think this could be a much tougher/more damaging battle than the Tories expect if they really go for it. I'm not sure that (outside of headbangers like the TaxPayers Alliance) there is much enthusiasm for actively destroying good pensions, it will look very vindictive. In addition public sector management has just as much to lose anyone else.
I expect the unions have also learnt a few tricks from the LGPS dispute that can be put to good use.
"short, lefties are not going to hate the 2010s nearly as much as we hated the 1980s."
That statement assumes we don't hate the 2000s as much as the 1980s ;-)
I'd agree with everyone that's said the NMW will be frozen. We're also likely to see cuts in Corporation Tax, scrapping of employment legislation designed to protect workers, serious union-bashing and the return of idiocy like the Married Couples' Tax Allowance.
But, let's face it, saying "the Tories are nasty" is hardly an endorsement of Labour.
According to the Action-without-Theory blog, Cameron has been briefing media bosses that he would get rid of the union recognition laws that faciliate union organising in Britain.
Those laws, and the parallel shift to a organising culture in some unions, allowed the labour movement to stablise the proportion of workers in unions and allow for hope that a future union movement could make real gains. I think we can safely take it that the Tories would want to sink that possibility ASAP.
http://action-without-theory.blogspot.com/2007/03/cameron-wants-to-make-work-even-more.html
Repeal of the Hunting Act and a full scale blood bath unleashed on British wildlife, hare coursing, fox hunting and chasing deer and stags all back.
A calamity for animal welfare and values of decency and social progress.
It depends partly on how big the Tory majority is. A relatively narrow victory might turn out as Dave suggests. But if they win big, then there's plenty of room for their kind of radicalism. Others have mentioned stuff like the unions, hunting and minimum wage. Based on what the Tories do when they've been elected locally and their already announced policies, others might include:
*Some really nasty welfare reform, based on the American system, particularly if the economy is in a bad way. The safety net is a lot weaker and there is less social solidarity than in the 1980s. The stuff Purnell is pushing is bad enough, but the Tory plans are directly worse.
*Abortion limit cut (how far depends on which Tories end up getting elected).
*No more money for international development (similar to the NMW, they'll just freeze spending on this).
*No increases in tax credits and hence a rise in levels of poverty.
*Even less action on climate change (particularly if a lot of the Tories who think it is all a communist myth get elected).
*Big cuts in funding for groups who work with people who the Tories don't approve of.
*Less social housing (even compared to the massively inadequate amounts being built/planned at the moment).
*Party funding reform which effectively breaks the union link for Labour.
And that's just based on what they've said/done in the last couple of years, even before we get on to the nasty surprises they aren't telling us about.
I'm sure a Tory Government would be horrendous, but then so would any Labour Government. All the gains of the working class that have been smashed by the present government (and let's not forget that was their precise purpose and intention)will not be restored outside of another war. LOTB will no doubt accuse me of 'sourness' but that is just the way I feel. I realised the other day how vindicated the classical Trot position is on the Soviet Union, that it was a 'deformed workers' state'. Quite frankly, the EU and the Americans would not have had the gall to take on the working class movements if the Soviet Union was still in existence. Of-course, it also shows how skin deep many so-called communists 'communism' was, they evaporated faster than snow on a summer's day, but I do think now that we cannot say that teh fall of the Berlin Wall was a totally wonderful thing.
I don't remember the Soviet Union being much use during Wapping, the miners' strike or the poll tax. Thatcher and Reagan's attacks on the working class long preceded the fall of the Berlin Wall. Winning the Cold War made them much much more confident and cockier, but confident and cocky aren't the same as stronger - as Sarkozy's currently finding out.
And I'm sure the Tories will be worse. They might launch attacks on migrant workers for not carrying ID cards, for instance.
By the time we came to Wapping, the miners' strike and the poll tax, the Soviet Union was in its own trouble and loss of direction. Does the term 'Eurocommunism' mean anything to you, chjh?
Having just watched the Dispatches programme on UK Christian fundamentalists trying to gain increased influence in politics and society, it was striking to see that the politicians they were gaining access to were Tories (Lord Tebbit and Nadine Dorries). The most prominent MPs speaking out against the proposed laws on human-animal hybrid embryos and 'saviour siblings' were - yes - Tories. And I'm willing to bet a fair amount that most of those voting to restrict abortion rights tomorrow will be Tories as well. The most vocal objectors in Parliament to scientific progress and women's rights do always seem to be Tories.
Labour's record on standing up to religious privilege and prejudice is not fantastic. There are of course many god-bothering Labour MPs. However, would anyone be surprised if a Conservative government gave even more ground to noisy religious groups? All secularists should be very concerned.
Sue R is, I take it, a bun short of a picnic for lamenting the fall of the Berlin Wall, a symbol of working class oppression by the Kremlin Empire - no not USSR, for what was socialist and soviet about a one party Leninist ditatorship based on a State Capitalist economy ?
Does she not realise the first people who wanted to be free of the wall were the Germans? Good luck to her if she tries explaining the good sides of that wall to a German worker!
The avowedly pro-capitalist only have their ideologial strength because of pseudo-socialist fools like Sue R, who have supported the non-socialist authoritarian Leninists and thus put back the case for real socialism by a century.
The Respect MP George Galloway yersterday did not vote in any of the Embryology Divisions.Despite voicing his opposition to the Bill in his Newspaper column,the MP found himself in a difficult position with the two strands of his remaining party.The Islamist wing supports Galloways Newspaper views,the small remaining band of left wingers oppose him.Abstention was the easy option.
It is likely he will do the same today,but an abstention will play into the hands of those seeking to reduce the Abortion limit.The smaller the number of votes today,the more likely the religious and the conservative are to get their reduction
"Dave" Cameron has also pledged to end future investment in SureStart and to replace outreach workers with health visitors: "trained professionals who *really* know what they're doing".
What an arsehole.
Secular Socialist, the future is already here in Ipswich (and in France, where Sarko is aiming at pension rights and at providing a 'minimum service' in the public sector - schools, trains etc - to break strikes).
Under the Iron Heel of the ruling Liberal-Tory Junta, which has retained power here (despite, fact pretty unique, losing seats in municipal elections to Labour who in this neck of the woods are pretty decent democratic socialists), they are encouraging 'faith groups' willy-nilly. Some kind of Forum for Faith (they suppressed the joint TUC-Council Trade Union Forum, Chair a certain Coatesy, to give you an idea of their blatent class politics). Equal opportunities religious bigots, they gave a few hundred thousands to one of the local Mosques to build new extensions. Dosh flows through their coffers to all kinds of bogus causes: privatising the local authority's Community Resource Centre and have set up a 'trust' with god-botherers well represented. And so it goes.
The scum, having suppressed the much loved International Community centre (aka, the Caribbean Centre), now have centralised their day cultural resources in a Church, in Dial Lane, St Lawrence's, where the genteel may partake of some scone and Early Grey, and the great unwashed (aka; above) may peer at them.
Finally on the subject of the docu, which secular rightly raises, I noticed a refernence to the Pentecostals. The (prob spelt wrong) Elim grouping. They are one of our main enemies: cheap poison under the gravey.
A dear old type, whom I knew extremely well, got involved with them. But, error, she had got connected with leftist causes. She was spotted drinking in a local pub with 'heretics' (that is me). Denounced from the pulpit for this she was deeply distressed and left the Church (shunned by their members). That dear old type had a name: Hazel. She died about eighteen months back, not a nice death, multiple illnesses and so on. I think of thee, Hazel, and the anguish you felt when all this happened, every time I see the ugly mugs of these fundamentalists talking about the love of Jesus.
Given the already diverging political trajectories of the administrations in Scotland and Wales from the current Labour administration, I would have thought that the return of a Cameron administration which advanced a good deal of the projected agendas outlined above would probably lead to an unplanned consequence namely, an acceleration of the breakup of the UK
That mug-shot of Camemberton strongly reminds me off:
http://www.45-rpm.org.uk/dirk/SEG8297.jpg
Don't think Diddy was responsible, but their attitude to taxes will probably have a generic, if not genetic similarity.
I suspect they will continue to worship at the privatisation altar, although New Labour was soon converted to this claptrap.
What's left for the fat cats and mutlinationals to get their grubby hands on?
Royal Mail and the Post Office.
Forestry Commission.
Network Rail (a private company in reality, but one that can become a proper PLC ripe for takeover by the US railroads).
English Heritage's and CADWs properties? (Stonehenge, anyone)
Scottish Water
Northern Ireland Water
Oh yes, and just to complete the job New Labour began:
The NHS (bit by bit, eh. Get ready to buy that nice insurance from BUPA Education (City Academies run for various bigots and greedy scumbags, but only with a bit of their own money).
What's left of council housing.
No doubt this will give them ideas, but I'm sure some little Tory twat thought these up long ago.
Mond you, if by some miracle Brown remains in office after 2010, he'll be all for carrying out all or most of the above.
Sorry, something went wrong with my posting.
The NHS (bit by bit, eh. Get ready to buy that nice insurance from BUPA Education (City Academies run for various bigots and greedy scumbags, but only with a bit of their own money).
should read
The NHS (bit by bit, eh. Get ready to buy that nice insurance from BUPA, if they want to sell it to you. A new dimension to "your money or your life")
Education (City Academies run for various bigots and greedy scumbags, but only with a bit of their own money).
I forgot the BBC (of course) and Channel 4.
It has been brought to my notice that someone else called "robbinghood" is posting comments to the cif site. Sadly, I don't agree with these comments, and I am not the same person as THAT robbinghood.
So now I'm redrobbinghood. Not the other one.