For all its ludicrous ‘New’ prefix, Labour remains a corporatist political Party: a believer in Big and On Message and hubris-fuelled promises that quickly become a hostage to fortune. It likes One Size Fits all and universal largesse – both of which reflect the movement’s fundamental inability since 1997 to recognise the difference between the deserving and the desultory. It is this lack of discernment which lies at the heart of its abject failure to deal with the current fiscal, economic and human crisis.
The Party which belatedly dumped Clause Four clings still to the principle of No Means Testing. In practice, what this means is a Government genetically unable to accept the idea of targeted relief. This is a pretty fundamental problem given that in the current crisis, if Britain is not to finish up both morally and financially bankrupt, targeting should be central to relief strategy.
Being a Liberal, I do not attach the term ‘relief’ solely to the individual employee: I associate it equally with business. The sheer size of the bailout for banks doesn’t make them any different for me to any other welfare cheat; and equally, the innocent victim-families over-persuaded to borrow by banks are no different to the fundamentally healthy small entrepreneurs currently being strangled by those same banks. I’m not one for uncaring Survival of the Fittest, but I do think young primates deserve our help more than pea-brained dinosaurs.
Some of the damage done by untargeted relief is already in the past, worse luck. I have yet to find any economist or politician able to tell me why we didn’t just bail out the Northern Rock savers and let the corporate entity go to the wall. Equally, nobody seems able to explain why we spent more on rescuing our financial system than the Americans did – their economy being 37 times the size of ours, an’ all.
The biggest lesson of all I take out of Globalist Bourse-financed capitalism’s latest bust is that it is not a small world: that as some of us always suspected, Theodore Levitt was talking out of his hat, and Milt Friedman was a theorist whose daft ideas never produced anything other than chaos in practice. It is a very big, culturally and economically multivariate world. A world which – taken as one entity – the G20 leaders have been less than impressive to date in their ‘ideas’ as to how to get the show back on the road.
I think it should be the job of Lib Dems everywhere to put forward the following cogent argument:
Smaller, community-level targeted relief and growth-support policies carried out by devolved and accountable government is far more likely to build for the future. So far, national and supra-national schemes have had minimal effect, rewarding only those who failed in the past. Only targeted support will give the best opportunities for the most deserving businesses and individuals. We only have a limited amount of money: let us ensure we get the best possible value for that money.
This is merely one more strand in the stance that separates Liberal Democrats from the other two main parties. The Tories want devil take the hindmost – we want individuals to take responsibility, but also have a safety net. Labour want to make equality without effort the keystone of a lowest common denominator culture – we want equality of opportunity and the chance for everyone to achieve realistic aspirations. The other two like giving the big and powerful a free hand – we value the protection of small consumers and business people, and moral regulation of anyone who gets too big for their boo ts. The other two think Westminster has the answers – we have severe doubts about that.
I still think the Gordian Knot is planning a snap early election. In that context, focus on our relevant policy distinctions could be the difference between stagnation and breakthrough for our Party in 2009.
* John Ward is the owner and editor of www.notbornyesterday.org, a satire and advice site dedicated to promoting new ideas, better ethics and true reform of our constitution, economic model, and community policy objectives.
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7 Comments
Omg, well first things first who judges the ‘deserving’ and the ‘deslutory’? You? Some state appointed technocrat?? I really just don’t feel qualified to judge who get’s cast out of paradise myself…
You wont find me arguing anything of the sort incidentally as a Liberal Democrat; divorced as this entire article is from a reality of a country where big problems require big solutions….where arbitary judgments about the deserving and non-deserving cannot be made so simply….
Fair enough.
But…big solutions, big problems…er,no money.
Yes, some Labour people do have a fundamentalist belief in the all-seeing goodness of socialist State power, somewhat comparable to the fundamentalist belief of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
No, the answer is not for Liberal Democrats to develop a similarly fundamentalist belief in the all-powerful goodness of Liberal principles (whatever one thinks those are).
As Darrell points out, we would need a selection mechanism for the state to target favoured individuals and businesses. How shall we do that? By the highest bribe offered? By popularity poll? By Dragons’ Den? By giving the job to a quango? Liberal, illiberal, or just not a viable answer?
If we had rescued only Northern Rock’s savers, what would we have done with their mortgage payers?
Look at the US, and you will see widespread agreement that their big mistake was to let Lehman Brothers collapse. It was a mistake, not because Lehman was a fabulous business, but because the financial world is inescapably interdependent. Unravelling the collapse will cost far more than bailing out the firm would have done.
No, I don’t like that conclusion either. But we mustn’t use the HitchHikers Guide technique for dealing with unpleasant reality (that is, pull towel rapidly over head and across in front of eyes).
This party needs to bring back pragmatism, balance, and realism. We sorely miss the wisdom of Roy Jenkins. Time for a new slogan:
BRING BACK THE SDP – LIBERAL ALLIANCE!
I’m mightily confused about what has happened to the economy since the summer – along with about 60 million other people in this country. Maybe John hasn’t got the complete explanation or solution, but as I struggle to understand what has happened and what the government is doing about it he says one very important thing: “We only have a limited amount of money…” That makes sense to me (I’m sure those who know more about economics will say it isn’t true), but the government seems to be responding to the crisis by pouring money into every void that opens up in the economy. Maybe, as David Allen suggests about Lehman’s, that is the only way to avoid a firestorm such is the interrelated nature of globalised capitalism. On the other hand, perhaps it is just stoking an even more disastrous future crisis when we find that, like Iceland, the country is bankrupt.
And on the subject of targeting relief, I have just had £250 from the government as my winter fuel allowance (because I’m 60). Nobody is going to turn that down (“I pay enough in taxes, it’s about time I got something back…” etc), but as someone earning more than the national average wage it’s bonkers.
All these comments point out a fundamental dilemma those of good heart must face: between doing what’s urgent and doing what’s important.
I’m not sure selecting the worthy (although reading it again I put it very badly,for which I apologise) would be as difficult as some make out…. it depends on one’s GOALS.
My goal remains what it’s been for a decade now: to oppose all nibbling at our human rights, champion small and creative versus big and controlling (Liberal) scale government down, get a better voting system and get rid of remote shareholders with conficts of interest (Democrat).
So if that is one’s belief, ergo chucking money at the decaying system may be urgent, but it is only delaying death…and the certain death of our current model of capitalism is perhaps the most important reality we face.
As for Northern Rock,somebody would’ve bought the mortgage book in the end (note deposits book bought by J P Morgan courtesy of employee A Blair, Ithengyoo) and yes, some people would’ve been unemployed. But where does bailout end? And who bails the Treasury out?
The point is this: we are now at $8.1 trillion around the world, and both the markets and the banks show not the slightest sign of lasting confidence.
Thus with the money fast running out (or being printed)I say don’t give moribund gas-guzzling car companies the money, don’t give me free presciptions, do give support to greenish emergent companies- and ensure the banks are doing the same.
Ultimately,it comes down to this: I think the Bourse-raised money from remote shareholders system is a crock. If that means I’m in the wrong Party, then fine: but I’m not a socialist and I’m not a Tory.
AsI’ve said before,we need to make the Party’s LIBERAL DEMOCRAT name more coherent through distinctive policies. Nick Clegg is trying to do this (the Libdem stimulation proposal was excellent and forward looking) and Vince Cable has succeeded in doing it by simply putting forward fair and common-sense solutions rather than knee-jerk VAT cuts.
Merry Christmas everyone
JW
John,
An interesting article and set of responses, thought provoking, but when you begin paragraph 2 with “The Party which belatedly dumped Clause Four clings still to the principle of No Means Testing.” its veracity seems to be immediately in doubt.
A quick Google brings up a list of means tested benefits as follows:-
Income Support,
Housing Benefit,
Council Tax Benefit,
Working Families Tax Credit,
The Social Fund,
Community Care Grants,
Budgeting Loans,
Crisis Loans,
Funeral Payment,
Maternity Payments,
Cold Weather Payment.
Ultimately, I think that the rest of the message is very good. Some people might quake at the thought of having to make a decision about where the money should and should not go – but whether the question is which individual, family, business, good cause or simply which front line service gets money – people in politics have to make decisions. Throwing our hands in air and saying “I can’t make a decision” or even worse “We shouldn’t make a decision” really is not an option.
Oh yes and a Merry Christmas to you.
David
David
I stand corrected on those means-tested items. To be honest,the main ones I had in mind (if for no other reason than their sheer enormity) are prescriptions (I get mine free,and I shouldn’t),winter fuel allowance (£250 I’m happy to have, but don’t need)and some other areas where Google may be happy with ‘means-tested’ as a definition but in reality, Newlabelspeak is once again in play.
However, as I said your point is well-made and accepted: I get so used to propagandizing on me website notbornyesterday.org, I forget that on this site there are lots of folks who already know the public finances are not (as Keynes always insisted they should be) ‘in good order’.
The muddle and double-talk of the Government is best revealed for me by the extraordinary decision to charge interest on Social Fund payments while all this other criminal waste is taking place.
I’d say Happy New Year but somehow I think it unlikely.
JW