“The Conservatives lead on the economy”
“Labour is ahead on the NHS”
These appear to be the laws of nature of political philosophy in the UK.
And yet Ed Miliband has managed successfully to rearticulate the debate about the economy from the deficit to ‘what’s in it for me?’.
Ed Miliband wants the ‘squeezed middle’ to think that things have got much worse for them, with the cost-of-living far outstripping incomes, while the ‘super rich’ are happy on champagne on caviar.
Joking apart – the next general election, which will be intensively fought – will be dominated by the ‘cost of living crisis’, but the competence of the Conservative Party on the NHS (and their general approach to it) will be a factor.
Most people remember the famous sign in the Clinton campaign war room in 1992 as “It’s the economy stupid!” But what is often forgotten is the second phrase in the famous warning by Carville to Clinton campaigners to keep a sharp focus on the campaign’s message: “And don’t forget health care.” Andy Burnham MP now on numerous occasions has reminded supporters of this, including his fringe meeting for the New Statesman magazine in Manchester in 2012.
It’s obvious that Labour wishes to focus more on equality – or lack thereof.
Equality is more of a defining value in the Labour government than the liberal or social democratic philosophies, many believe. It is often politely derided in a textbook way, as by Michael Gove recently in a discussion of ‘One Nation’, as being rather ludicrous in that the Left appears to want to ‘force’ people to be equal.
Perhaps due to the rejection of “In place of strife” by a previous Labour government, the dying days of the Callaghan Labour administration was crippled by the activities of the Unions. The Conservatives hope that sufficient numbers of people will remember this misery from the 1970s to wish that a Labour government is never returned. That is why the “leveraging inflatable rat” is of such totemic political importance.
David Cameron has therefore vowed to crush Ed Miliband’s ‘1970s-style socialism’ as he put tax cuts, enterprise and opportunity at the heart of an election campaign to reprise the Tories’ defeat of Neil Kinnock. Cameron has condemned Labour’s ‘damaging, nonsensical, twisted economic policy’ and scoffed at what he called ‘Red Ed and his Blue Peter economy’ – saying it would heap ruin on Britain.
He has therefore asked the general public for the Conservatives “to continue the job” – not of continuing to stagnate the recovery, but to allow the UK economy to recover under his watch.
However, as Matthew d’Ancona observed today, the election of Bill de Blasio as New York’s 109th mayor is perhaps far beyond Manhattan and the Bronx. Campaigning against Michael Bloomberg’s 11 years in office as “a tale of two cities”, de Blasio easily won against his Republican rival, Joe Lhota. Since the formation of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council and the election of Bill Clinton, America has led the way in an avowedly centrist approach to progressive politics.
The question of equality in the UK is still hugely important.
When I went to Ed Miliband’s last ever leadership hustings in Haverstock Hill, I mentioned to him that Tony Blair’s autograph called “The Journey” doesn’t even have the word ‘inequality’ in the index. I remember him vividly smiling, and saying, “Oh really?”
One explanation for the rise in inequality under Thatcher, as measured by “the Gini coefficient”, is that the nature of inequality in the UK has changed. A ‘tax and benefit system by lifting incomes at the bottom, and by dragging down incomes at the top. Our top rates of tax remain relatively low by European standards (though certainly high by American ones), which means that redistribution to the poor tends to be paid for ‘by everyone’, not just by the rich.
More of our inequality is instead caused by top incomes ‘racing away’ from everyone else – with incomes at the very top of the distribution growing much faster than those in the middle under Labour. As Peter Mandelson famously said in 1998, “we (Labour) are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.” The dynamics of this inequality are particularly even now, and it is hotly debated as to whether inequality got any worse under Blair or Brown.
In an apparent boost for Osborne, the Treasury said it took £11.5 billion in income tax in April 2013 – a 10 per cent increase on the previous year. There had been fears the lower 45p rate could lead to a loss in revenue for the Government, with Labour branding it a “tax cut for millionaires”. However, Osborne had consistently argued that the 50p tax rate brought in by Gordon Brown in April 2010 did not substantially boost income tax receipts for Treasury coffers. The top rate of income tax had not been in existence for most of the 13 years of the Labour government just gone.
It is also argued that the Liberal Democrat policy of lifting more low and middle-income people out of paying tax altogether is resonating strongly with the general public.
Whatever is happening to the Gini coefficient currently, it has begun to unsettle the Right here in Britain that policies on the left now appear to be currying favour at a populist level:
the public is turning its back on the free market economy and reembracing an atavistic version of socialism which, if implemented, would end in tears. On some economic issues, the public is far more left-wing than the Tories realise or that Labour can believe. If you think I’m exaggerating, consider the findings of a fascinating new opinion poll from YouGov for the Centre for Labour and Social Studies.
The answers to two questions in particular made striking reading: “Do you think the government should have the power to control prices of the following things, or should prices be left to those selling the goods or service to decide?”; and “Do you think the following should be nationalised and run in the public sector, or privatised and run by private companies?”.
The results are terrifying: the UK increasingly believes that it is the state’s job to fix the “right” price, not realising that artificially low prices have always caused shortages and a far greater crisis whenever they have been tried. The great lesson of economics is that bucking markets with artificial price controls always fails; far better to address the root causes of the problem – high prices usually imply scarcity, or monopoly, or generalised inflation – or help those who are suffering directly.
The Liberal Democrats’ catchphrase is ‘a strong economy, and a fair society’.
While Clegg and Cameron appear to be quite chummy, it has been argued that their cultural background of affluence prevents them from understanding social justice and fairness properly.
The leadership, from the same public school roots, appears to have quite a lot in common, but there has been alarm at the schism between the grassroots’ feelings of the Liberal Democrats and Nick Clegg.
As symptomatic of an ‘unfair society’, today, five disabled people won their attempt to overturn the government’s abolition of a £300m fund that helps severely disabled people to “live a full life” in the community. The independent living fund helps 18,500 severely disabled people in Britain to hire a carer or personal assistant to provide round-the-clock care and enable them to work and live independent lives. The government proposed that the ILF be scrapped in 2015, and its resources transferred to local authorities. However, today’s Court of Appeal ruling found that the government had breached its equality duty in failing to properly assess what one of the judges called the “very grave impact” of the closure on disabled people.
The ruling, also at the Court of Appeal, in favour of Cait Reilly was also a two fingers salute at the fair society of Nick Clegg.
And bad luck seems to come in threes. At least.
For a Conservative-Liberal Democrat government which prides itself on ‘equality of opportunity’ for private providers competing with the NHS for taxpayers’ money, the NHS reconfiguration is going incredibly badly.
The Court of Appeal ruled last week that Health Secretary, Mr Jeremy Hunt, did not have power to implement cuts at Lewisham Hospital in south-east London. During the summer, Mr Justice Silber in the High Court had decided also that Mr Hunt acted outside his powers when he decided the emergency and maternity units should be cut back.
And equality keeps on rearing its head in the most unlikely (or likely) places. Take for example NHS resource allocation policy.
The most deprived areas will not lose out under the new formula for allocating funds to clinical commissioning groups, according to NHS England’s finance director Paul Baumann. During a Commons health committee hearing, Baumann revealed that the proposed new formula, to be described in detail in December 2013, will adjust for a health economy’s unmet need, where low life expectancy suggests people are not accessing health services.
It may all just be clever political positioning.
Indeed the Socialist Health Association believes in equality (“Equality”) based on equality of opportunity, affirmative action, and progressive taxation.
But, by reframing the question carefully, Miliband might find that it’s actually the Equality stupid…
