Ed Miliband will need to engage a different spirit in 2015, seventy years after that needed for 1945. The Conservatives have become the presentational unit of multinational corporates, and many citizens of the United Kingdom resent this. Whereas instead decades ago, the Unions could be validly criticised as ‘holding the county’ to ransom, now it is the bankers. There is no proof for any ‘trickle down’ effect, where allowing millionaires to keep more of their income and wealth benefits the county at large. David Cameron strikingly did not win the General Election in 2015, meaning that he has been reliant on the Liberal Democrats ditching any principles to vote for legislation which is clearly totally illiberal, such as secret courts. Rather than working in the national interest, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have been operating entirely in their own self-interest, doggedly pursuing policies which serious commentators have long criticised for being a perfect recipe for producing economic turmoil. Members of this Coalition confront serious issues with extreme arrogance and disregard for the facts, as demonstrated by Baroness Shirley Williams and Lord Clement-Jones in the recent section 75 NHS regulations debate in the House of Lords.
Labour has been blasted for not having any policies. This changed today, but don’t expect the BBC to cover any of them well, in the same vein as how they totally ignored the changes in legal aid and the NHS the point of absolute ridicule. Labour’s idea of a “Jobs Bill”, which introduces a Compulsory Jobs Guarantee, a paid job for every adult who is out of work for more than two years, is a serious way of addressing the problem of youth unemployment. Generally, unemployment has been creeping up under this Coalition, and the only reason there are so many in employment is that they are many more with very little employment rights, doing short term contract work to try to pay the bills. There is absolutely no economic case for the tax cut for millionaires, but the political case of nudging them into voting for a discredited Coalition is quite potent. The idea of requiring large firms getting government contracts to have an active apprenticeships scheme that ensures opportunities to work for the next generation is a very attractive one, and is very much in keeping with an idea very popular in the United States of making corporates behave like ‘responsible corporate citizens’. Indeed, Ed Miliband introduced this idea to an unconvinced general public in his now famous Labour Party Conference speech of September 2010 on ‘responsible capitalism'; this was clearly before we’d all even heard of ATOS and welfare benefits, corporates and phone hacking, fires, explosions and collapses in Texas and Bangladesh.
Also, a “Banking Bill” is much needed. The aim of this is to reate a real British Investment Bank on a statutory basis, at arms length from government and with proper financing powers to operate like a bank. One of the persistent criticisms of the current government, which Nick Clegg had criticised of Labour in 2010 but subsequently totally failed to address himself, is the issue of how to get banks lending to small businesses. Project Merlin is well known, and the purpose of this intended legislation by Labour is to support small and medium sized businesses, including across the regions of the UK through regional banks. Labour intends to provide a general backstop power so that if there is not genuine culture change from the banks they can be broken up, to put in place a “Code of Conduct” for bankers, and to toughen up generally the criminal sanctions against those involved in financial crime. Furthermore, Labour’s idea of an “Immigration Bill” is very noteworthy, given how Gordon Brown was caught famously unawares by Gillian Duffy in the now famous “Bigotgate” incident. Labour intends to double the fines for breaching the National Minimum Wage and give local councils the power to take enforcement action over the national minimum wage, extend the Gangmasters Licensing Authority to other sectors where abuse is taking place, and change NMW regulations to stop employers providing overcrowded and unsuitable tied accommodation and offsetting it against workers’ pay.
There is now a crisis in social housing, not least because the Thatcher government sold off valuable social housing stock during her period of government. However, unfortunately, we can’t ‘turn back the clock’ to his very socially divisive period for the UK. The economy has become too much on the side of exploitative private landlords, and Labour intends to introduce a national register of landlords, to allow local authorities to root out and expel rogue landlords, including those who pack people into overcrowded accommodation. Labour also intends to tackle rip-off letting agents, ending the confusing, inconsistent fees and charges, and to seek to give greater security to families who rent and remove the barriers that stand in the way of longer term tenancies. Labour fundamentally does not know to what extent the UK will be recovering by the time of the General Election in 2015. The public are already sick to the back teeth of the trite “the economy is healing” pathetic PR by the Coalition, particularly since the economy WAS healing in May 2010 before the Coalition totally destroyed it. Labour’s proposed “Finance Bill” would reintroduce a 10p rate of income tax, paid for by taxing mansions worth over £2m, stop immediately the cut to the 50p rate of income tax for those on the highest incomes to reverse cuts to tax credits, reverse the Tory-led Government’s damaging VAT rise now for a temporary period – a £450 boost for a couple with children, and provide a one year cut in VAT to 5% on home improvements, repairs and maintenance – to help homeowners and small businesses. Courageously, Labour intends to put in place a one year national insurance tax break for every small firm which takes on extra workers, helping small businesses to grow and create jobs
There is a growing feeling that the economy is fundamentally imbalanced towards the interests of shareholders in fragmented oligopolies, rather than the concerns of the general public. Labour wishes to introduce a Bill where it would abolish Ofgem and create a tough new energy watchdog with the power to force energy suppliers to pass on price cuts when the cost of wholesale energy falls. This would be a very popular move with many in the general public, not just traditional Labour voters. This legislation would require the energy companies to pool the power they generate and to make it available to any retailer, to open the market and to put downward pressure on prices, and force energy companies to put all over-75s on their cheapest tariff helping those benefiting to save up to £200 per year. The railway industry is another fiasco of the utterly discredited privatisation doctrine of the Conservatives. Labour intends to apply ‘strict caps’ on fare rises on every route, and remove the right for train companies to vary regulated fares by up to 5 per cent above the average change in regulated fares, and to introduce a new legal right for passengers to the cheapest ticket for their journey. Finally, many members have become increasingly irritated by the propensity of the Conservatives to call pensions ‘welfare payments’. Labour now has concrete plans to tackle the worst offending pension schemes by capping their charges at a maximum of 1 per cent; and to amend legislation and regulation to force all pension funds to offer the same simple transparent charging structure so that consumers know the price they will be paying before they choose a particular scheme.
So finally we are getting a sense of the direction of travel of Labour, and this is in stark contrast to the hapless ipeptidude and incompetence of the Liberal Democrats, UKIP and the Conservatives.
