WHAT sort of newspaper runs with headlines such as ‘We must arm ourselves for a class war’? I mean, not even publications of the kind that get flogged outside Dalston Kingsland shopping centre of a Saturday routinely urge the comrades to break out the Kalashnikovs. That sort of juvenile ultraleftism is just embarrassing.
If you were just about to say Socialist Worker in response to my opening question, you may be surprised to learn that the correct answer is the Daily Telegraph this morning. No kid.
In fairness to economics editor Edmund Conway, I suspect the subs were getting a little carried away. The piece at no point actively incites the bourgeoisie to stockpile automatic weaponry in anticipation of the need to gun down hordes of Jobseekers’ Allowance claimants on the rampage through the leafier parts of Richmond upon Thames.
But the article does offer an insight into what sections of the right are thinking right now. Maybe that headline was more of a Freudian slip than a genuine gaffe?
Conway buys into the double dip recession scenario. While the credit crunch and the banking collapse are more or less over, stage two will essentially be driven by a crisis of sovereign debt.
Whoever wins the next election, unprecedented spending cuts will be introduced, although the Tories have more relish for the task. Conway – who heard Tory economics spokesman George Osborne deliver the Mais lecture earlier this week – implicitly predicts that there will be resistance:
Osborne is terrified of imposing such deep and painful cuts. He privately despairs that he will end up as the most unpopular politician in modern history.
Probably not while Thatch is still alive. But I digress.
Which helps explain his plan, spelt out last night, to set up a three-man Office for Budget Responsibility to advise him on how far to cut spending. The hope is that the OBR will attract the opprobrium when state-sector workers are laid off or given pay cuts, when VAT is raised, when the retirement age is increased, and when public-sector pensions are finally tackled.
But the question that Osborne largely ducked was the issue of inequality. The gap between rich and poor is the widest since the 1930s, and is getting bigger, not smaller. After nervous acknowledgement of the current rioting in Greece, Conway reaches his conclusion:
Ed Balls's plan to pitch this election as a class war is, I'm afraid, on the button. Class, money and privilege will be unavoidable issues during the next parliamentary term. Rather than ignoring them, the Tories must take action. Better to start thinking about free-market reforms that share the wealth more equitably than to leave it to the Left to suggest that taxes on the wealthy are the only solution.
Mmmm. Not sure about Conway’s attempt to paint the Tories as the unwilling victims of some kind of recidivist New Labour reversion to neo-Marxist type. On, and the idea that the Tories have ever, at any point in their long existence, ignored class, money or privilege is risible.
Sure, the have rhetorically downplayed the defence of privilege when that has suited their purposes. But how many Old Etonians can you squeeze into one shadow cabinet before it becomes obvious which class dominates the Conservative front bench?
I’m also not quite sure what is meant by ‘free market reforms that share the wealth more equitably’. Off hand, I can think of few free market mechanisms that tend to redistribute towards the poor, and most have quite the reverse effect.
And of course, the left will be in opposition. It can suggest whatever tax hikes it likes; it won’t be able to implement them.
Yet it is noticeable that Conway’s concern is not to introduce egalitarian policies because they are desirable, or because they benefit the majority of the population. His chief interest is to shield the ultra-rich from unwanted attentions of the Inland Revenue.
Obviously, this column is Bleeding Heart Liberalism lite compared to the nasty Hayek porn purveyed by some of the Daily Telegraph’s other contributors, who would probably have few qualms about arming themselves for class war.
But the contradiction here is that no government – either Conservative or Labour – can mount the sort of full-frontal assault on state spending that all mainstream parties contemplate without making the current level of inequality look like the living embodiment of Acts 2:44. This is a circle that Osborne cannot possibly square.
Posted at 14:18, 25 February 2010
Comments (15)
I would hazard a guess that 'fairer inequality' (or whatever the phrase was) means more privatization and the 'co-ops' that the Tories were going on about the other day. Isn't that the policy for Europe, more and more privatization. There's not been much about the strikes in Greece in the media, and reading some of the on-line socialist papers, not a dickey-bird. Isn't there something brewing up in France? I sometimes say to my husband, as we sit of an evening with our bedtime cup of tea, 'what do you think Britain will end up like? Stalinist Eastern Europe? the Mediterrean? Somalia? etc' (talking here solely about living standards). We like to try and guess how far the capitalists are prepared to drive down the living standards of the average working class family. I mean, would it get to the point of food riots?
"I sometimes say to my husband, as we sit of an evening with our bedtime cup of tea, 'what do you think Britain will end up like? Stalinist Eastern Europe? the Mediterrean? Somalia? etc'"
Poor bastard.
The right always like to test how far they can push the masses. The atomised society was created for this kind of class war mongering, they got away with with dismantling entire communities and running down public services to a position they are yet to recover from the last time they tasted power. They could be thinking if we got away with that we can get away with anything.
They may be right.
And who tucks you up at night, Johnno? Poor bugger. (I meant that in a Northern way and not in a homosexual way).
Remember that line from Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca about how there were parts of New York City he would advise the Nazis not to invade?
Perhaps someone should offer the Telegraph similar advice about parts of our major cities. They might find, if it does all kick off, that some of the inhabitants have extensive experience of stockpiling automatic weapons...
Not that I'm in any way advocating, etc etc.
Probably not while Thatch is still alive. But I digress.
Would have to add or Blair
"But the contradiction here is that no government – either Conservative or Labour – can mount the sort of full-frontal assault on state spending that all mainstream parties contemplate without making the current level of inequality look like the living embodiment of Acts 2:44. This is a circle that Osborne cannot possibly square."
Absolutely disagree. Spending can be cut in every government department with a minimal impact on job losses given the woeful ineffiency and wastage that the past 13 years have created. You only have to read a few headlines to realise that money is being spent in return for very little in various policy areas, and don't even get me started on public sector pay and pensions (which can be reformed to slash spending without any job losses, I might add).
Letters from a tory is pulling the wool over your eyes. Local authorities are already set very demanding efficiency targets by central government and are duty bound to deliver 'value for money'. The processes that go about achieveing this are extremely thorough. I should know I am tasked with delivering them being a local authority accountant.
What letters from a Tory doesn't want to say is that fighting 'waste' and 'inefficiency' means reducing service levels or getting rid of services entirley. We see where this can lead with the Stafford NHS debacle.
Now society should have a debate about what services the public sector should and shouldn't provide but the right do not want an honest debate. They want to pretend that their cuts have no implications but they do and any country calling itself democratic should be open about these issues.
As for pay and pensions, come on letters from a Tory, tell us what the problem is.
Now don't get me started about the low level of taxation on the rich and obscene bonuses paid in the banking sector or rising inequality.
Cuts without job cuts possible says Letters from a Tory.
Wot like a frictionless fuck?
The whole point is that there are battalions of highly-paid non-jobs in the public sector.
Are you really trying to say you've hired a man to dig pointless holes at £150 a day but now you've decided the holes are pointless you keep paying him?
Keynes might approve ... for a period of time.
And to anyone who counters perhaps I should point out that I am available to dig pointless holes at £150 a day and since it is agreed that the holes are pointless there is little point in digging them so the cheque can be put directly in my bank account and I can spend more time pissing myself on this blog.
Mr Read
"The whole point is that there are battalions of highly-paid non-jobs in the public sector."
Name them.
Now you appear to be a bigger fuck than letters from a Tory.
One way councils have begun to reduce costs and not cut jobs is by devaluing jobs. Design engineers are being employed on lower grades than current. So a design engineer may earn £35k a year but if he leaves he is being replaced by someone on £25k a year. Overtime payments are being withdrawn by intensifying work and changing shift patterns. Agency worker costs are being reduced and the additional work is being imposed on existing staff.
In short less people doing more work for less money.
very good article Dave
I noticed the piece in the Telegraph myself, and thought it needed attention drawing to it, so I am glad you did such a good job wth it
Rather than cut public services you could direct Quantitative easing money in their direction: away from the bwankers who are hoarding it.
"The whole point is that there are battalions of highly-paid non-jobs in the public sector."
Name them
Here (with, it must be admitted, the odd exception) you go...http://jobs.guardian.co.uk/jobs/government/
Personally, I'd rehire the binmen at council rates and parcel off the sinecures for polytechnic swine to Onyx.
Scratch,
Well name the exceptions and tell us which jobs form part of the battalions of 'non jobs' and why they should be considered non jobs.
I very much doubt you have even the faintest idea of what those jobs entail.
And do you consider any jobs in the private sector 'non jobs'? What is your definition of job and non job?
I very much doubt you have even the faintest idea of what those jobs entail.
That's a handy indicator of uselessness right there.
And do you consider any jobs in the private sector 'non jobs'?
Non-executive director perhaps...or human resources nabobs/similar non-productive bulwark between (proper) management and labour. They share the peculiar combination of titular sonorousness, futility and opportunitity for entitled, unearned psychologically disastrous meddling with the bourgeois job-creation schemes that seem to be the prime raison d'etre of local government.
What is your definition of job and non job?
See above.
"That's a handy indicator of uselessness right there."
I admit this is funny but avoids having to answer the question. Actually it does answer the question, your opinion is formed on zero knowledge.
"or human resources nabobs"
So we rip up employment law here and now?