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subprime

The selling of dementia-related service products bears an uncanny resemblance to the selling of securitised mortgage products

August 2, 2014 6:21 pm / Leave a Comment

There is a need for high quality dementia services in the United Kingdom. There are about one million people living with dementia currently, and there are many services which might be relevant to them: like adequate signage to improve spatial navigation, good advocacy services, good advice for ‘dementia friendly wards’, good assistive technologies, and so on.

Some of them will be regulated, such as adaptations which are in fact ‘medical equipment’. And it is in a sense the buyers’ market, in that buyers can choose which product to go for. It is a booming economy.

Everyone likes a bandwagon. A bandwagon for dementia service products might be as lucrative as a bandwagon for securitised mortgage products, particularly if there’s a “buzz” somewhere.

For six years, the basic narrative – accepted by commentators and politicians – has been that securitisation, in essence a way of transforming one type of assets into another one, was the primary reason for the global financial meltdown, especially in the US sub prime market.

But the situation there is turning out to be more complicated than at first glance. US sub prime mortgage products aside, the performance of the securitisation market to date has actually been very creditable and, in some cases, better than other, more conventional investments.

Likewise, even before the Prime Minister’s Dementia Challenge, it is true that there were some very creditable offerings on dementia-friendly designs and assistive technologies.

There’s now a market for dementia services, like there was for securitised mortgage products. But when they go bust, there are three options for what to do next.

Firstly, one can blame Gordon Brown.

By this mean, the current Coalition government blamed Gordon Brown convincingly for ‘crashing the car’, when patently the economies suffered in other jurisdictions not due to Gordon Brown

If these dementia services products go bust, as such there will nothing that can be done, other than a market which has burnt out.

Secondly, one can blame the buyer.

The English law has a long tradition of ‘caveat emptor’, where the buyer is expected to do due diligence of what he or she is buying. There is an added complication here in that a failure of a duty of care by a middle man, such as an advisor, might be implicated if these products go bust. This can happen for securitised mortgage products, as well as dementia services products.

Thirdly, you can blame the regulator.

You could blame the financial regulator, or even abolish it (like what happened to the Financial Services Authority). In healthcare, likewise, you could simply abolish the regulator and start again hiving off parts into various functions. But this depends on how closely the regulator has been in promoting the product to begin with.

If a regulator has failed to do due diligence, the regulator will be blamed by people who have bought the product if the product goes bust.

In theory, the financial regulator can ‘stress test’ these products, to see how these financial products behave in a real environment. The options for the regulator means assimilating as much information about the product as possible.

In the case of financial services, this might include: does the product fulfil a legitimate need? In the dementia world, a dementia service product could make it easier to promote one of the 6Cs in nursing, or to prove your commitment to person-centred care; this is helpful for ticking boxes.

But again it’s a matter of due diligence; while regulatory capture can mean substantial competitive advantage for the seller of the dementia service product, the regulator is expected to show some understanding of the validity of the product.

So what can I conclude?

Nothing much. Just hope to hell that the luck doesn’t run out for the sellers of dodgy products; this might be as catastrophic for the dementia economy world, as the world macroeconomy.

Even the figures suggest Labour is more trusted on issues to do with the economy

October 23, 2013 7:13 am / 1 Comment

Ed Miliband in blue

It’s taken me a few days to think about the data which John Rentoul reported on a few days ago in the Independent. Aside from the headline figure that the Labour lead is only of the order of a few % points, the poll results make interesting reading even for those people like me who are normally totally uninterested in such rough population statistics.

As a disabled citizen, I am always quite touchy about the rhetoric of being ‘tough’ in the benefits system. This is because it took me approximately two years for my own disability living allowance to be restored, and this was only after I appeared in person at a benefits tribunal here in London. And yet the lead which the Conservatives have on benefits is massive: “Be tough on people abusing the benefits system: Conservative lead 39 points”. Here, I think usefully Labour can distinguish between people who deserve disability benefits for their living and mobility, whom they should be proud to champion, and people who are clearly free-loading the system. To try to get to the bottom of this, I tried to ask a 64-year-old friend of mine from Dagenham whether this notion of ‘benefits abuse’ is a real one. She explained ‘too right’, citing even that the council estates in Barking and Dagenham appeared to be stuffed full of immigrants who had somehow leapfrogged the social housing waiting list. I cannot of course say whether she’s right, but this is her perception. She went on to say  that there were blatantly people around where she lived, who were making use of schools and hospitals, “to which they were not entitled.” The truth and legal arguments surrounding this feeling are of course longstanding issues, but the margin of the Conservatives’ lead on this is not to be sniffed at.

The finding that, “Keep the economy growing: Conservative lead 14 points”, is not of course particularly surprising. This is also a fairly robust finding. I suspect most people are still unaware of the enormity of the challenge which the last Government find itself confronting, such that Gordon Brown describes having to consult a few Nobel prize winners in economics at the last minute about his plans for bank recapitalisation (in his memoirs “Beyond the Crash”). How the £860 billion contributed to our famous deficit has been played out ad nauseam on Twitter, but such a discussion does not appear to have dented in the minutest sense the mainstream media. When Conservatives are faced with the question what they would have ‘done differently’, most do not even offer any answer, though true libertarians argue that they probably would have done nothing learning from the ‘Iceland experience’. But certainly one of the greatest successes of the political landscape has been converge all issues to do with the economy on the question, “Who do you trust on the economy?”  The facts do actually speak for themselves, even though somewhat unclear. We may dispute we have had a double or triple recession since May 2010, but there is absolutely no doubt that the economy under this Coalition since May 2010 has done extremely badly (when the economy was indeed recovering in May 2010). That the economy may be dethawing a bit when the latest GDP ONS are released on Friday may not be a bad thing for Labour either. If voters are ‘grateful’ for an economy in recovery, and ‘trust’ Labour sufficiently, they may ‘hand over the keys’ to the Ed Miliband.

But would you like to give the keys back to the people who “crashed the car”? We, on the left, know that Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and Gordon Brown, did not single-handledly (or indeed triple-handedly), “crash the car”. Only, at the beginning of this week, JP Morgan was handed an eye-watering fine by its regulator over securitised mortgages. Nonetheless, this IS the public perception, and there are no signs of it shifting yet, given the sheer volume and brilliance of the lies from professional Coalition MPs. When you turn to issues to do with economy, which face, “real people”, the poll results produce an altogether different narrative.  Whilst the media and Westminster villages enjoy GDP figures and “the scale of the deficit”, most hardworking people in the UK don’t go to work thinking about the deficit. Car drivers may think about the cost of filling up a tank of petrol in their car, or worry about the monumental scale of their energy bills.

This is why in a sense it’s payback time which Labour intends to take full advantage of. The Conservatives are clearly hoping for ‘analysis through paralysis’, where voters will be bored to death over what is exactly causing such high bills, including ‘green taxes’. The fundamental problem is, arguably, reducing the competitive market from 14 to 6, in part, but the public appetite for blaming Labour for this appears to be surprisingly weak. The public appear to have gone somewhat into “I don’t care who caused it, but please do sort it out” mode. Therefore, the poll finding, “Keep gas and electricity prices down: Labour lead 20 points” is striking. The market is not anywhere near perfect competition. It is an ‘oligopoly’ as it has too few competitors, which means that they can arrange prices at a level suitable for themselves. This is called ‘collusive pricing’, and it’s notoriously hard to regulate. That’s why the ‘price switching’ approach is so banal. As soon as you switch from one energy provider,  you can land with another energy provider who is teetering on the brink of putting up energy prices themselves. They can do that. The latest intervention by Sir John Major provides that Ed Miliband has identified the right problem but arrived at the wrong solution. The irony is that Major himself has probably himself arrived at the right problem, but many disagree with the idea that a ‘windfall tax’ will ultimately benefit the consumer because of the risk of taxes and levies being indirectly handed down to the end-user. Nonetheless, it will make for an interesting Prime Minister’s Questions at lunchtime today.

The poll finding, “Protect people’s jobs: Labour lead 16 points”, also represents another powerful opportunity. The finding that there is a ‘record number of people in employment’ has always had a hollow ring, but Channel 4’s “Dispatches” programme managed to explain lucidly how millions were being duped into jobs with poor employment rights by multinational companies seeking to maximise shareholder dividend. The use of ‘zero use contracts’ has also raised eyebrows, as well as the drastic watering down of rights for employees under the unfair dismissal legal framework of England and Wales. And yet these are fundamentally important issues to do with the economy. Political analysts who do not comprehend this idea, in perseverating over their question “Who do you trust with the economy?”, are likely to be underestimating the problem which Cameron and colleagues face on May 7th 2015.

Whatever the public’s eventual ‘verdict’ on who runs the economy or issues to do with the economy better, the Conservative-led government is clearly running out of time. In a week when they should be fist-pumping the air over the GDP figures, three years down the line, they are bogged down in a debate over ‘the cost of living crisis’. That is, because all of his ‘faults’ in leadership, Ed Miliband has managed to choose which narrative he wishes to discuss. Whatever the precise understanding of voters over complicated issues of economics, this Conservative-led government are proving themselves to be excellent at one particular thing. They appear confidently self-obsessed and ‘out-of-touch’ with ordinary voters. Recent announcements, also relating to the economy, such as the decision to build a new nuclear power plant and the privatisation of the Royal Mail, have merely been interpreted as Cameron and ‘chums’ looking after his corporate mates rather than having the interests of consumers at heart. Whereas the Independent poll did not examine the issues to do with the NHS, it is clear that Jeremy Hunt’s relentless smear campaign has not even produced the slightest dent in Labour’s substantial consistent lead. With an imminent A&E crisis over Winter, actions will speak louder than words anyway.

But for Labour things appear to be ‘on the right track’.  Even the figures suggest Labour is more trusted on issues to do with the economy, even if the answer to ‘who do you trust more on the economy?’ does not appear to be at first blush in Labour’s favour.  What is, though, interesting is that Labour appears, at last, to have some ‘green shoots’ in a political recovery after one of its worst defeats ever in 2010.

 

Even the figures suggest Labour is more trusted on issues to do with the economy

October 23, 2013 6:57 am / Leave a Comment

 

It’s taken me a few days to think about the data which John Rentoul reported on a few days ago in the Independent. Aside from the headline figure that the Labour lead is only of the order of a few % points, the poll results make interesting reading even for those people like me who are normally totally uninterested in such rough population statistics.

As a disabled citizen, I am always quite touchy about the rhetoric of being ‘tough’ in the benefits system. This is because it took me approximately two years for my own disability living allowance to be restored, and this was only after I appeared in person at a benefits tribunal here in London. And yet the lead which the Conservatives have on benefits is massive: “Be tough on people abusing the benefits system: Conservative lead 39 points”. Here, I think usefully Labour can distinguish between people who deserve disability benefits for their living and mobility, whom they should be proud to champion, and people who are clearly free-loading the system. To try to get to the bottom of this, I tried to ask a 64-year-old friend of mine from Dagenham whether this notion of ‘benefits abuse’ is a real one. She explained ‘too right’, citing even that the council estates in Barking and Dagenham appeared to be stuffed full of immigrants who had somehow leapfrogged the social housing waiting list. I cannot of course say whether she’s right, but this is her perception. She went on to say  that there were blatantly people around where she lived, who were making use of schools and hospitals, “to which they were not entitled.” The truth and legal arguments surrounding this feeling are of course longstanding issues, but the margin of the Conservatives’ lead on this is not to be sniffed at.

The finding that, “Keep the economy growing: Conservative lead 14 points”, is not of course particularly surprising. This is also a fairly robust finding. I suspect most people are still unaware of the enormity of the challenge which the last Government find itself confronting, such that Gordon Brown describes having to consult a few Nobel prize winners in economics at the last minute about his plans for bank recapitalisation (in his memoirs “Beyond the Crash”). How the £860 billion contributed to our famous deficit has been played out ad nauseam on Twitter, but such a discussion does not appear to have dented in the minutest sense the mainstream media. When Conservatives are faced with the question what they would have ‘done differently’, most do not even offer any answer, though true libertarians argue that they probably would have done nothing learning from the ‘Iceland experience’. But certainly one of the greatest successes of the political landscape has been converge all issues to do with the economy on the question, “Who do you trust on the economy?”  The facts do actually speak for themselves, even though somewhat unclear. We may dispute we have had a double or triple recession since May 2010, but there is absolutely no doubt that the economy under this Coalition since May 2010 has done extremely badly (when the economy was indeed recovering in May 2010). That the economy may be dethawing a bit when the latest GDP ONS are released on Friday may not be a bad thing for Labour either. If voters are ‘grateful’ for an economy in recovery, and ‘trust’ Labour sufficiently, they may ‘hand over the keys’ to the Ed Miliband.

But would you like to give the keys back to the people who “crashed the car”? We, on the left, know that Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and Gordon Brown, did not single-handledly (or indeed triple-handedly), “crash the car”. Only, at the beginning of this week, JP Morgan was handed an eye-watering fine by its regulator over securitised mortgages. Nonetheless, this IS the public perception, and there are no signs of it shifting yet, given the sheer volume and brilliance of the lies from professional Coalition MPs. When you turn to issues to do with economy, which face, “real people”, the poll results produce an altogether different narrative.  Whilst the media and Westminster villages enjoy GDP figures and “the scale of the deficit”, most hardworking people in the UK don’t go to work thinking about the deficit. Car drivers may think about the cost of filling up a tank of petrol in their car, or worry about the monumental scale of their energy bills.

This is why in a sense it’s payback time which Labour intends to take full advantage of. The Conservatives are clearly hoping for ‘analysis through paralysis’, where voters will be bored to death over what is exactly causing such high bills, including ‘green taxes’. The fundamental problem is, arguably, reducing the competitive market from 14 to 6, in part, but the public appetite for blaming Labour for this appears to be surprisingly weak. The public appear to have gone somewhat into “I don’t care who caused it, but please do sort it out” mode. Therefore, the poll finding, “Keep gas and electricity prices down: Labour lead 20 points” is striking. The market is not anywhere near perfect competition. It is an ‘oligopoly’ as it has too few competitors, which means that they can arrange prices at a level suitable for themselves. This is called ‘collusive pricing’, and it’s notoriously hard to regulate. That’s why the ‘price switching’ approach is so banal. As soon as you switch from one energy provider,  you can land with another energy provider who is teetering on the brink of putting up energy prices themselves. They can do that. The latest intervention by Sir John Major provides that Ed Miliband has identified the right problem but arrived at the wrong solution. The irony is that Major himself has probably himself arrived at the right problem, but many disagree with the idea that a ‘windfall tax’ will ultimately benefit the consumer because of the risk of taxes and levies being indirectly handed down to the end-user. Nonetheless, it will make for an interesting Prime Minister’s Questions at lunchtime today.

The poll finding, “Protect people’s jobs: Labour lead 16 points”, also represents another powerful opportunity. The finding that there is a ‘record number of people in employment’ has always had a hollow ring, but Channel 4’s “Dispatches” programme managed to explain lucidly how millions were being duped into jobs with poor employment rights by multinational companies seeking to maximise shareholder dividend. The use of ‘zero use contracts’ has also raised eyebrows, as well as the drastic watering down of rights for employees under the unfair dismissal legal framework of England and Wales. And yet these are fundamentally important issues to do with the economy. Political analysts who do not comprehend this idea, in perseverating over their question “Who do you trust with the economy?”, are likely to be underestimating the problem which Cameron and colleagues face on May 7th 2015.

Whatever the public’s eventual ‘verdict’ on who runs the economy or issues to do with the economy better, the Conservative-led government is clearly running out of time. In a week when they should be fist-pumping the air over the GDP figures, three years down the line, they are bogged down in a debate over ‘the cost of living crisis’. That is, because all of his ‘faults’ in leadership, Ed Miliband has managed to choose which narrative he wishes to discuss. Whatever the precise understanding of voters over complicated issues of economics, this Conservative-led government are proving themselves to be excellent at one particular thing. They appear confidently self-obsessed and ‘out-of-touch’ with ordinary voters. Recent announcements, also relating to the economy, such as the decision to build a new nuclear power plant and the privatisation of the Royal Mail, have merely been interpreted as Cameron and ‘chums’ looking after his corporate mates rather than having the interests of consumers at heart. Whereas the Independent poll did not examine the issues to do with the NHS, it is clear that Jeremy Hunt’s relentless smear campaign has not even produced the slightest dent in Labour’s substantial consistent lead. With an imminent A&E crisis over Winter, actions will speak louder than words anyway.

But for Labour things appear to be ‘on the right track’.  Even the figures suggest Labour is more trusted on issues to do with the economy, even if the answer to ‘who do you trust more on the economy?’ does not appear to be at first blush in Labour’s favour.  What is, though, interesting is that Labour appears, at last, to have some ‘green shoots’ in a political recovery after one of its worst defeats ever in 2010.

 

It's all too easy to dismiss Miliband's attack on energy prices. It fundamentally blasts Thatcherism.

October 14, 2013 8:50 pm / Leave a Comment

 

Virtually all attacks on Ed Miliband regarding energy prices begin with the statement ‘Ed Miliband is right but…” That the Conservatives might be wrong on their basic economics is politically very worrying. And yet Ed Miliband has not sought to frame the article like a convoluted Oxbridge economics tutorial. Long gone are the days of Gordon Brown using logical inferences to explain why financial recapitalisation was needed to avert an even bigger global financial crisis. Nobody seemed to care. What did George Osborne wish to do exactly about Northern Rock. He didn’t say, and it didn’t seem to matter. Labour, the allegation, spent too much, and yet staggeringly George Osborne wanted to spend as much more. When asked to identify what it was about Labour’s economic policy which was so fundamentally awry, Tory voters invariably are able to articulate the answer. When further pressed on how the Conservative Party opposed this fundamentally awry policy, there’s a clear blank.

Ed Miliband and his team can explain how the market has failed, perhaps going into minutiae about how competitors end up colluding, except nobody can prove this. They therefore rig the prices, it is alleged, so that they can return massive shareholder profit, while the prices endlessly go up. The Tories will counter this with the usual reply that the profits are not that bad, and it was Miliband’s fault for introducing his ‘green taxes’. Anyone who knows their economics at basic undergraduate level will know the problem with this. It’s all to do with the definition of ‘sustainability’. Sustainability does not simply mean ‘maintained’, although you’d be forgiven for thinking so, on the basis of the mouths of PPE graduates from Oxford. It’s all about how a company can function across a time span of very many years, acting responsibly in the context of its environment.

It’s instead been framed as ‘the cost of living crisis’. The problem with the national deficit, while a useful tool in giving people something to blame Labour for supposedly, is that when somebody goes out shopping in a local supermarket he does not tend to think of the national deficit. Likewise, much as I disagree with the ‘Tony Blair Dictum’ that ‘it doesn’t matter who provides your NHS services so long as they are free at the point of need’, voters will tend not to care about NHS privatisation unless they have a true ideological objection to it. NHS privatisation as such makes little impact on the ‘cost of living’.

Energy prices are an altogether different bag. It is perhaps arguable that the State should not interfere in private markets, but surely this acts both ways? Should the banking industry, and more specifically bankers, be ‘grateful’ that they received a £860 billion bailout from the State as a massive State benefit to keep their industry alive? Or did they not want this money at all? Even you brush aside the need of the State to interfere legitimately with prices, it is commonplace for the State through the law to interfere with unlawful activities to do with competition. The prices are the end-product of an economic process of faulty competition, poorly regulated.

And there’s the rub. Ed Miliband’s ‘attack on energy prices’ is not just a policy. It is actually a political philosophy. It is more tangible than responsible capitalism or predistribution, although one may argue that it bridges both. The attack on energy prices, on behalf of the consumer whether hard-working or not, is indeed a political philosophy. Margaret Thatcher may have gone to bed with a copy of ‘The Road to Serfdom’ by FA Hayek under her pillow, and all credit to her for fundamentally believing, most sincerely, that the markets could be ‘liberalising’. With this attack on energy prices, Miliband effectively in one foul swoop demolishes the argument that markets are liberalising. In Thatcherite Britain, consumers are suffocated by the business plans of big business. Miliband’s discourse is not a full frontal attack on any business; it specifically targets abusive behaviour of corporates. And the energy prices are symbolic of much of what has proven to be faulty many times before. Andrew Rawnsley concluded his article at the weekend, advancing the theme that the current Conservative-led government is a bad tribute band to Thatcherism, by saying simply that we know what happens next. It’s not just gas; it’s everything which has been privatised, including water, telecoms, and so it goes on. Authors in the right-wing broadsheets can go on until the cows come home evangelising how privatisation is a ‘popular’ concept, but the criticism of the abuse of privatisation is far more popular.

And Ed Miliband doesn’t want to issue ‘more of the same’ as before. John Rentoul is so exasperated he is now left to write articles on how being called ‘Blairite’ is not actually a term of abuse. But these are yesterday’s battles. The battle over energy prices is a massive explosion in the world that the market knows best. Its shock waves are to be felt in how Labour conducts itself in other policy domains, putting people primacy ahead of shareholder primacy. And there’s a plenty of evidence that this is the Most Corporatist Government yet – ranging from the reaction to Leveson to how to allow ‘market entry’ in the newly privatised NHS. The public were never offered an antidote to the Thatcherite poison from Tony Blair, and, even after 13 years of Blair and Brown, many Labour members had been left mystified as to what happens next.

The beginning of that answer definitely seems to be end of Thatcherism. The answer seems to involve a new post-Thatcherite ‘settlement’ about politics, society and economics. Whilst distinctly populist in feel, it fundamentally blasts Thatcherism to the core, and is highly deceptive. Whilst easily dismissed, it intellectually is a lethal weapon.

gas stove

It's all too easy to dismiss Miliband's attack on energy prices. It fundamentally blasts Thatcherism.

October 14, 2013 8:05 pm / Leave a Comment

 

Virtually all attacks on Ed Miliband regarding energy prices begin with the statement ‘Ed Miliband is right but…” That the Conservatives might be wrong on their basic economics is politically very worrying. And yet Ed Miliband has not sought to frame the article like a convoluted Oxbridge economics tutorial. Long gone are the days of Gordon Brown using logical inferences to explain why financial recapitalisation was needed to avert an even bigger global financial crisis. Nobody seemed to care. What did George Osborne wish to do exactly about Northern Rock. He didn’t say, and it didn’t seem to matter. Labour, the allegation, spent too much, and yet staggeringly George Osborne wanted to spend as much more. When asked to identify what it was about Labour’s economic policy which was so fundamentally awry, Tory voters invariably are able to articulate the answer. When further pressed on how the Conservative Party opposed this fundamentally awry policy, there’s a clear blank.

Ed Miliband and his team can explain how the market has failed, perhaps going into minutiae about how competitors end up colluding, except nobody can prove this. They therefore rig the prices, it is alleged, so that they can return massive shareholder profit, while the prices endlessly go up. The Tories will counter this with the usual reply that the profits are not that bad, and it was Miliband’s fault for introducing his ‘green taxes’. Anyone who knows their economics at basic undergraduate level will know the problem with this. It’s all to do with the definition of ‘sustainability’. Sustainability does not simply mean ‘maintained’, although you’d be forgiven for thinking so, on the basis of the mouths of PPE graduates from Oxford. It’s all about how a company can function across a time span of very many years, acting responsibly in the context of its environment.

It’s instead been framed as ‘the cost of living crisis’. The problem with the national deficit, while a useful tool in giving people something to blame Labour for supposedly, is that when somebody goes out shopping in a local supermarket he does not tend to think of the national deficit. Likewise, much as I disagree with the ‘Tony Blair Dictum’ that ‘it doesn’t matter who provides your NHS services so long as they are free at the point of need’, voters will tend not to care about NHS privatisation unless they have a true ideological objection to it. NHS privatisation as such makes little impact on the ‘cost of living’.

Energy prices are an altogether different bag. It is perhaps arguable that the State should not interfere in private markets, but surely this acts both ways? Should the banking industry, and more specifically bankers, be ‘grateful’ that they received a £860 billion bailout from the State as a massive State benefit to keep their industry alive? Or did they not want this money at all? Even you brush aside the need of the State to interfere legitimately with prices, it is commonplace for the State through the law to interfere with unlawful activities to do with competition. The prices are the end-product of an economic process of faulty competition, poorly regulated.

And there’s the rub. Ed Miliband’s ‘attack on energy prices’ is not just a policy. It is actually a political philosophy. It is more tangible than responsible capitalism or predistribution, although one may argue that it bridges both. The attack on energy prices, on behalf of the consumer whether hard-working or not, is indeed a political philosophy. Margaret Thatcher may have gone to bed with a copy of ‘The Road to Serfdom’ by FA Hayek under her pillow, and all credit to her for fundamentally believing, most sincerely, that the markets could be ‘liberalising’. With this attack on energy prices, Miliband effectively in one foul swoop demolishes the argument that markets are liberalising. In Thatcherite Britain, consumers are suffocated by the business plans of big business. Miliband’s discourse is not a full frontal attack on any business; it specifically targets abusive behaviour of corporates. And the energy prices are symbolic of much of what has proven to be faulty many times before. Andrew Rawnsley concluded his article at the weekend, advancing the theme that the current Conservative-led government is a bad tribute band to Thatcherism, by saying simply that we know what happens next. It’s not just gas; it’s everything which has been privatised, including water, telecoms, and so it goes on. Authors in the right-wing broadsheets can go on until the cows come home evangelising how privatisation is a ‘popular’ concept, but the criticism of the abuse of privatisation is far more popular.

And Ed Miliband doesn’t want to issue ‘more of the same’ as before. John Rentoul is so exasperated he is now left to write articles on how being called ‘Blairite’ is not actually a term of abuse. But these are yesterday’s battles. The battle over energy prices is a massive explosion in the world that the market knows best. Its shock waves are to be felt in how Labour conducts itself in other policy domains, putting people primacy ahead of shareholder primacy. And there’s a plenty of evidence that this is the Most Corporatist Government yet – ranging from the reaction to Leveson to how to allow ‘market entry’ in the newly privatised NHS. The public were never offered an antidote to the Thatcherite poison from Tony Blair, and, even after 13 years of Blair and Brown, many Labour members had been left mystified as to what happens next.

The beginning of that answer definitely seems to be end of Thatcherism. The answer seems to involve a new post-Thatcherite ‘settlement’ about politics, society and economics. Whilst distinctly populist in feel, it fundamentally blasts Thatcherism to the core, and is highly deceptive. Whilst easily dismissed, it intellectually is a lethal weapon.

 

CV here

The article by Rachel Reeves MP is a 'two fingers' at disabled citizens, and will lose Miliband the election

October 14, 2013 5:14 am / Leave a Comment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is actually massively upsetting.

For many citizens, hardworking or not, Ed Miliband was finally beginning to show ‘green shoots’ in his leadership. His conference speech in Brighton was professionally executed, and it largely made sense given what we know about his general approach to the markets and State.

Amazing then it took fewer than a few weeks for his reshuffle to ruin all that.

Parking aside how Tristram Hunt MP had changed his mind about ‘free schools’ such that they were no longer for ‘yummy mummies’ in West London, Rachel Reeves MP decided to come out as a macho on welfare. She boasted on Twitter that she was both ‘tough and fair on social security’.

Rachel Reeves’ article was immediately received by a torrent of abuse, and virtually all of it was well reasoned and fair.

Yes, that’s right. In one foul swoop, we managed to conflate at one the ‘benefit scroungers’ rhetoric with an onslaught on ‘social security’.

Being ‘tough and fair’ on the “disability living allowance”, in the process of becoming the ‘personal independence payment’ is of course an abhorrent concept. I only managed to be awarded my DLA after a gap of one year, after it had been taken away by this Government without them telling me. At first, it was refused through a pen-and-paper exercise from the DWP. Then, it was successfully restored after I turned up in person at a tribunal in Gray’s Inn Road.

This living allowance meets my mobility needs. My walking is much impaired, following my two months in a coma. It also meets my living requirements, allowing me to lead an independent life.

I don’t want to hear Reeves talking like a banker but as if she doesn’t give a flying fig about real people in the real world.

For once, the outrage on Twitter, and the concomitant mobbing, was entirely justified. I had to look up again what her precise rôle was – yes it was the shadow secretary for work and pensions, not employment.

Many members of Labour were sickened. A spattering of people, would-be Councillors in the large part unfortunately, didn’t see what the fuss was about. They reconciled that ‘the sooner we face up to this problem, the better’.

The media played it as ‘the hard left of the Labour Party are upset’.

The “Conservative Home” website played it as a sign that the Labour Party were belatedly adopting the Conservatives’ narrative, but it was too little and too late.

Like Ed Miliband being booed at conference, a backlash against Reeves’ article can euphemistically be indicative of Labour’s success at ‘sounding tough’.

At yet, this is ‘short term’ politics from a national political party. The social value of this policy by Labour is not sustainable. In the quest for instant profit for headlines, it will actually find itself with no income stream in the long term.

For all the analysis with Labour marketing must have done through their ‘think tanks’ and ‘focus groups’, it is striking how Labour have missed one fundamental point. That disabled bashing in the media is not populism from the Left, actually.

Conversely, it could LOSE them votes from their core membership.

If they learn to love disabled people, they could WIN votes.

Simples.

So what’s the fuss about? She didn’t mention disability. Well – precisely. Disabled citizens of working age are known to form a large part of the population, as Scope reminded us this week in their session on ‘whole person care’ with Liz Kendall MP, so why did Reeves ignore them altogether?

Is it because she has only been in a brief only a few days? Some of us in life have taken the bullet for incidents in life which have lasted barely a few minutes.

What will it take for Labour to ‘get it’ on disability and welfare? Possibly, the final denouement will be when Labour finally realises it can’t ‘out Tory’ the Tories.

The Twitter defenders of the indefensible cite that ATOS are being ‘sacked’ – well, yippedeeeday. ATOS, who were appointed by Labour, are finally being sacked. When negotiating a contract in English law, the usual procedure is to ensure that there are feedback mechanisms in place to ensure the contract is being performed adequately? You can bet your bottom dollar that Labour wishes to do a ‘Pontius Pilate’ on that, like it does on all its crippling PFI contracts it set up for the NHS.

This is a disastrous start by Reeves, but ‘things can only get better’. It’s not so much that Rachel Reeves is Liam Byrne in a frock that hurts. It’s the issue that shooting the messenger won’t be the final solution in changing Labour’s mindset on this.

It is all too easy to blame the ‘subeditor’, but the subeditor didn’t write the whole piece. Any positive meme from Reeves, in a ‘well crafted speech’ to “out-Tory the Tories” (such as scrapping the ‘Bedroom Tax’), has been instantaneously toxified by the idea of people ‘lingering on benefits’.

The most positive thing to do was to explain how people might not be so reliant on benefits, such as work credits, if we had a strong economy.

Reeves chose not even to mention pensions, which is a large part of her budget.

Because the article was hopeless from the outset, it could not even get as far as how to get the long-term unemployed (or the long-term sick) safely back to work.

It was an epic fail.

It is, in fact, an epic fail on all three planks of Ed Miliband’s personal mission of ‘One Nation': the economy, not recognising the value of disabled citizens of working age to the economy; society, not recognising disabled citizens as valued members of society; and the political process, totally disenfranchising disabled citizens from being included in society.

It is no small thing to wish the Labour Party to fail as well as a result. But this may now be necessary, and Reeves should take the bullet for that if she doesn’t improve.

How the quiet man Ed Miliband managed to turn the volume up

October 3, 2013 7:12 pm / Leave a Comment

 

 

For Ed Miliband, this particular conference speech was a ‘coming of age’. It’s somewhat bemusing that political journalists have described Ed Miliband as “disappointing”, or “singularly unimpressive”, but Miliband does not need to impress these people who’ve got it wrong before.

Most people will converge on the notion that David Cameron gave a horrifically dull speech, more akin to a newsreader reading out a corporate’s executive summary of an annual report. The pitch of Nick Clegg, that he could permanently be Deputy Prime Minister, was frankly risible. UKIP managed to propel Godfrey Bloom into the limelight for all the wrong reasons, in their pitch to make cleaning behind a fridge more relevant than the ‘cost of living crisis’.

Ed Miliband’s moral triumph is that he can genuinely say he is going into the election, to be held in the UK on May 7th 2015, having tried his best to piss off the key players in the print press. The BBC’s news coverage, whether it includes not reporting the National Hospital Sell-off following the Health and Social Care Act (2012), or not reporting the closure of law centres in England, or not reporting a march against NHS privatisation in Manchester involving approximately 60,000 people, has become astonishingly irrelevant.

The ‘coming of age’ of Ed Miliband politically is an intriguing one. Whilst Miliband has really struggled, initially, to convince others of the need of ‘responsible capitalism’ or indeed ‘predistribution’, he managed to produce a populist synthesis which was strikingly popular.

Phone lines are typically inundated in any radio phone-in with callers moaning about how their utility bills have shot up. The ‘free market’ has not offered choice or competition, but has become a gravy train for greedy companies.

There is not a single truly ‘free’ market. Virtually all free markets have needed some degree of regulation, to stop customers being abused.

It has become much easier to fire employees on the spot, and access-to-justice evaporated. Virtually all free markets have needed some degree of regulation, also to stop employees being abused.

Whilst then the ‘One Nation’ concept may seem a bit pie-in-the-sky, an economy and society which works for its citizens ‘for the public good’ is a worthy one. It is a bit of a stretch to make this sound like a return to 1970s socialism. It is entirely about making the State protect the interests of its citizens.

The media have long been gleeful at the personal ‘poll ratings’ of Ed Miliband being dire, but David Cameron impressed as a dodgy double-glazing salesman this week. Nick Clegg, having led his party to voting for NHS privatisation and the decimation of legal aid, has become a laughing stock with his argument that he is a ‘moderating force’.

Many people will therefore say begrudgingly that Ed Miliband had by far the best conference season. This was not because he had ‘rote learned’ a script rather than reading an autocue. This is because, whether it was synthetic or not, struck a chord with the concerns of ordinary voters not corporate directors.

The Westminster Class is clearly going to take a bit of time to readjust to the new mood music. Miliband has, whether they concede it or not, has been able to change the narrative from the deficit to the ‘cost of living crisis’.

The ‘cost of living crisis’ is a genuine one, with the cost of living outstripping real wages for the vast majority of the term of this government so far. It is shocking perhaps it is taken so long for the political class to realise that this is an issue.

This is not, of course, a rejection of the market in any Marxist sense. It is merely an acknowledgement that voters do not intellectually masturbate any more on the allegation of Labour singlehandedly bankrupting the global economy.

The bankers are the baddies, like the energy companies. They have failed to regulate themselves, and have been the beneficiaries of ineffective regulation from the State. The Unions are rapidly no longer becoming “public enemy number one”, not because there has been a sudden conversion of a mindset to valuing employees’ rights but because votes find disgusting the idea of faceless hardnosed hedgies and venture capitalists determining public policy behind the scenes.

And there’s finally the rub. Ed Miliband has managed to shove the volume up, when he was perhaps so quiet that people were wondering if he ever had anything useful to say. And he somehow has managed to make his ‘One Nation Economy’, ‘One Nation Society’ and ‘One Nation Politics’ seem relevant to many people who had previously given up on politics.

This is actually no mean feat.

 

Thanks to @labourmatters for correcting a factual misstatement in an earlier version of this blogpost.

youve never had it so good

Ed Miliband speech in Bedford on the economy: 10p tax rate and mansion tax (full text)

February 14, 2013 12:05 pm / Leave a Comment

It is great to be here in Bedford.

In 1957, the Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan gave a speech just across the river here, to celebrate Britain’s economic success.

New jobs, higher wages, greater opportunities for people to make something better for themselves and for their families.

It became known as the speech where he declared “you’ve never had it so good”.

Today in Bedford, in Britain as a whole, things are very different.

Small business-people are working harder than ever before.

People are working harder than ever before.

But for far too many, wages are falling and prices are rising. They’re getting worse off.

Far from feeling they have never had it so good, millions across Britain today fear they will never have it so good again. Life for them, and for their children.

The question that people ask me the most is “how do we turn this round?”

That’s why I have come to Bedford today.

Because I think it starts with a truth that we have forgotten as a country:

That economic recovery will be made by the many, not just by a few at the top.

Britain needs great, successful big business leaders.

It needs them to feel rewarded and supported.

But they know better than anyone that they can’t succeed alone.

It is only when working people have confidence and security.

When everyone’s sons and daughters have chances to work and learn new skills.

When enterprising small businesses can flourish and succeed.

And when together we build world-class services – from childcare for our kids to new roads and rail – that we will succeed again as a nation.

That’s not a Labour idea or a Conservative idea.

It is a British idea.

And it is what I want to talk to you about today.

Previous generations knew the truth: Our economic success depends on the success of all working people.

In the industrial revolution, it wasn’t just the mill owners and the factory bosses who drove our economy forward.

It was the people who went down the mines, spun the cotton, built the ships, and constructed the bridges.

Many of our world-leading engineers and inventors came from ordinary families, people like the great engineer, Thomas Telford, and the inventor of the railway, Robert Stephenson.

And in the 19th century, Britain improved housing, built proper sanitation, ensured good working conditions, not just because it was fair, but because it was essential for our economy to succeed.

Our country knew that economic success was made by the many, not just by a few at the top.

You know that here in Bedford better than anyone.

From the industrial revolution to well into the twentieth century, the Stewartby brick works, just down the road, gave jobs to thousands of people.

The bricks the people of Bedford made constructed the houses that they and so many others lived in.

And it was the good wages they earned that made it possible for them to afford those homes.

Economic success was built with the hands of working people.

But could only be sustained through the pockets of working people.

And Britain knew this lesson too after the Second World War.

We built great new public services to improve people’s lives.

But the NHS and free education didn’t just do that, they strengthened our economy as well.

I think of my dad, who came to Britain as an immigrant, was able to learn English at Technical College, went on to join the Royal Navy, and saw the new post-war economy built.

It was only possible, because Britain knew that only a healthy, better educated workforce could compete with the best in the world.

An economy made by the many not by the few.

And you know somewhere along the way we forgot that lesson as a country. We need to relearn that lesson.

People in Britain are putting in the hours – doing the shifts – as never before.

But something has changed in the last few years.

There’s less chance of promotion.

Less chance of a pay rise.

And prices just go up and up and up.

Petrol for the car. Tickets for the train.

Childcare for the kids. Deposits for a first home.

The “squeezed middle” has never been so squeezed.

And if we carry on as we are it will be like that for years to come.

It’s no wonder our economy isn’t growing when people can’t afford to buy the things that British businesses try to sell.

And then think too about the skills of working people that we need for our economy to succeed.

Young people here in this training centre are getting the help, but so many young people across Britain aren’t.

Every time a young person with ambition and talent can’t get on, it isn’t just bad for them. It is bad for our economy.

Some of you here today run small businesses.

Your businesses are vital to our economy.

But today, many small businesses across Britain just don’t have the orders to keep them growing, hiring and investing.

And all they hear from the banks are promises about how things will get better tomorrow.

But tomorrow never seems to come.

You know better than anyone that every time someone with a great idea for a business is knocked back, it isn’t just bad for them. Britain’s economy is weakened too.

So today, Britain’s economy is just not working for working people.

And that’s why it isn’t working for Britain. It’s no mystery as to why we’re in the trouble we’re in.

The squeeze on working people has deep roots.

Hard as it is to believe, over the last three decades or so, less than 15 pence of every additional pound Britain has made has gone to an entire half of the population

While 24 pence in every pound has gone to the top 1 per cent of earners.

The last Labour government took action to change this.

Labour helped families with the minimum wage and tax credits.

It made a difference.

But it wasn’t enough.

The problem now is that things are getting worse not better.

This Government promised change. But change isn’t coming.

They are cutting taxes for one group this year.

The very richest in society.

This April, people earning over a million pounds a year will get an average tax cut of £100,000.

Now, we need very successful entrepreneurs in Britain.

Making profits. Being rewarded.

But we can’t succeed as a country just by hoping wealth will trickle down from those at the top to everyone else.

Our economy won’t turn around that way.

That’s why it’s not right to be cutting taxes for the very richest when everyone else is just seeing their living standards squeezed.

You know, somebody said to me recently: this Government seems to be the first in our history to believe that you can base a whole economic strategy on the misery rather than the success of the working people of the country.

They cut the tax credits that make work pay for millions.

They take the side of the train companies, the energy companies and the petrol companies while we pay more for train tickets, energy bills and the fuel for the car.

David Cameron talks about a global race.

And it is essential that we can compete with China and India and others.

But I have to tell you, Britain won’t win a race to the bottom.

By competing in the world as a low skill, low wage economy.

You know this here, which is why you are working so hard, providing the training.

So all we are offered at the moment is the promise of wealth trickling down from the top, squeezing the middle further and a race to the bottom.

It doesn’t work.

And that’s been shown over the last two and half years.

We were promised that we could have growth and a lower deficit.

In fact, we’ve had almost no growth and the deficit is rising again. That’s because people aren’t in work paying taxes.

Too many are out of work and on benefits.

And, what’s worse, this approach can’t work.

Because we will only build prosperity, when everyone plays their part.

To do that we need a new One Nation strategy for the British economy.

The starting point is that the recovery will be made by the many not just by a few at the top.

We cannot go on with an approach that simply promises more of the same: year after year of squeezed living standards for the majority of working people.

It’s wrong for them and it’s wrong for our economy.

We have said we should start with a temporary cut in VAT as part of our 5-point plan, cancelling the millionaire’s tax cut, and not cutting tax credits this April.

The approach we need is not just different from this Government; it is also different from the last.

After the next election, there will be less money around.

We know that we will inherit a high deficit and we will face difficult choices.

But we have also learnt from this government that without a plan for growth, a plan to tackle the deficit will fail.

And it is different choices and new priorities that will turn our economy around.

That means starting by protecting the incomes of working people with new priorities in taxation.

The One Nation Labour government led by me will put a fairer tax system at the heart of its new priorities.

It is a crucial part of how we build an economy where everyone can play their part.

A One Nation Labour budget next month would lay the foundations for a recovery made by the many, not just a few at the top.

Let me tell you about one crucial choice we would make, which is different from this government.

We would tax houses worth over £2 million.

And we would use the money to cut taxes for working people.

We would put right a mistake made by Gordon Brown and the last Labour government.

We would use the money raised by a mansion tax to reintroduce a lower 10 pence starting rate of tax, with the size of the band depending on the amount raised.

This would benefit 25 million basic rate taxpayers.

Moving Labour on from the past and putting Labour where it should always have been, on the side of working people.

Showing our priority to do everything we can to make a difference to people’s living standards.

Sending a message about how Britain is going to succeed in the years ahead:

That when you play your part, when you make your contribution to the economy, you will be rewarded.

And that Britain’s economic success will be built by the many, not just by a few at the top.

That is why Ed Balls and I want a 10 pence tax rate and a mansion tax in government.

We’ve rightly said that we will only set out our tax and spending commitments at the next general election.

That is the way a responsible opposition should conduct itself.

However this is a clear signal about the priority we attach to a fairer tax system and the living standards of working people.

We would also be making different choices between the most powerful in our society and ordinary working people.

Working people are paying more than they should, from energy to credit, and we would take action to

Break the stranglehold of the big six energy suppliers.

Stop the train company price rip-offs on the most popular routes.

Introduce new rules to stop unfair bank charges.

And cap interest on payday loans.

But this is only a beginning of a plan to build a One Nation economy.

The biggest changes Britain needs will come from economic reform. Let’s start with skills.

As you all know, Britain needs to have the best skilled workforce in the world if we are going to compete.

The industrial revolution was built on the skills of the best workers in the world.

In more recent decades, Britain’s Universities have given us some of the world’s greatest scientists and innovators.

Today, however, we still lag well behind our competitors in productivity. Not because we don’t work hard.

We do.

We work longer hours than many of our competitors.

It is because we’re not doing enough to get the best out of everyone, in particular the 50% of young people who don’t go to University.

That is where the next wave of productivity and growth must come from in an economy made by the many not just a few at the top.

We need a revolution in vocational education and apprenticeships.

Of course, I want young people from all backgrounds to aspire to go to University.

But I also want young people who are awarded an apprenticeship to know that Britain values you.

That means our country has to change.

We must end the culture which says University is always best and vocational education is second-best.

It simply isn’t true.

That’s why One Nation Labour will create a new technical baccalaureate, to complement A-levels.

So a 14-year old knows the qualifications they should be aiming for at 18.

It will give employers the control of the money for training for the first time so that young people are trained in the skills they need for the future.

And we will demand that Britain’s employers step up and offer real apprenticeships and training right across the country.

I know that so many great British companies want to play their part in leading this revolution: training our workforce and investing in our future.

But we can’t just provide people with the skills and then sit back and expect the right jobs to be there for them automatically.

We must also work together to ensure that better jobs are being created in our economy.

Today, we are increasingly two nations: with high skill, high paying jobs for those at the very top but low-skill, low paid, long hours jobs for too many people.

That’s because over the last three decades, we have seen fewer and fewer middle-income jobs in Britain.

That’s fewer jobs in skilled trades and more jobs paying less, with greater insecurity.

We must turn this round.

So a One Nation economy needs to support businesses that create sustainable, middle-income jobs.

That means a modern industrial policy that supports the sectors that will create those jobs of the future like the green industries that are so important for our country.

And an end to the short-termism which prevents many businesses investing.

Let me give you an example. We will stop takeovers that are waved through on the votes of speculators and hedge funds who flood in to buy shares once a takeover bid has been announced.

Because when that happens it can destroy great British companies and the good jobs that go with them.

One Nation Labour will also work with companies and workers to encourage a living wage across our country.

We also need to understand another big change in our economy.

That many new jobs in the future will come not from a small number of large businesses, but from a large number of small businesses.

So we need a new One Nation strategy for small business.

There are more than 3.5 million single person businesses in Britain right now.

People with new skills and new ideas starting out.

Trying to make a difference.

Like many of you here today.

These small businesses need a government that is on their side.

A government willing to take on the vested interests, wherever they find them, in the private or the public sector.

One Nation Labour will be that government.

That’s why it is One Nation Labour that is leading the way on banking reform.

Following Labour’s call last year for real separation between casino and high street banking, the Chancellor has moved.

But not far enough.

He still refuses to put in place a comprehensive power to split the banks by law.

We need that in legislation so if the banking system does not change its culture, we can break the banks up.

And new small businesses need something else too.

They need opportunities to work together.

So a One Nation Labour government would change the way Regional Growth funds work.

Because at the moment they all too often prioritise the interests of big businesses.

We’d make them work for small businesses across the country too.

So that we could find new ways for businesses to build shared facilities and develop deeper connections with each other.

Enabling them to start to overcome the challenges they face.

Finally, businesses and working people need a whole nation that supports them.

In the 19th century, people argued for clean air and sanitation. That allowed people to move to the cities for work and the great new industries to prosper.

In the course of the 20th century, the school leaving age went from 11 at the beginning of the century to 16 by the end. This enabled people to do the jobs they couldn’t have dreamed of before and allowed Britain to compete on the global stage.

Now in the 21st century, we must remember those lessons.

Today, too often, Britain just leaves people on their own.

That means too many parents can’t work, even though they want to work because they can’t get the childcare they need.

Too many people have to drop out of work when their parents become old or ill, because they can’t get the social care they need.

Too many young people just don’t have enough money for a deposit on a first home. That is bad for them and bad for our economy because they can’t move to the jobs they need.

And too many businesses find they can’t succeed because we haven’t built the roads, rail and infrastructure that we need.

They all know that we can’t solve these problems on our own.

None of us on our own are going to build the roads we need, the railways we need, the housing we need.

It is only by acting together.

And that is the idea at the heart of a One Nation economy: that our recovery will be built by the many – by all of us working together – and not just by a few at the top.

And that is what we will fight for between now and the General Election.

There is a big choice that will dominate that election.

It is a choice between two different visions of our economy.

The Conservative vision of a race to the bottom in wages and skills, rewarding those at the very top but leaving everyone else squeezed as never before.

Or the One Nation Labour vision.

Our economy will only prosper when the vast majority of the people of this country prosper too.

When working families have confidence and security; when they can invest in their future; and when they can start businesses of their own.

Britain is at a fork in the road. We can carry on as we are: falling wages, low growth, failure to tackle the deficit.

Or Britain can take the path I have outlined: a recovery made by the many, tackling low growth and reducing the deficit, building not squeezing the middle, all of us playing our part in turning this economy around.

One Nation.

Not just a better way to live, but the only way to prosper.

It is how Britain has flourished in the past.

It is what the Labour government understood in 1945.

It’s what Harold MacMillan understood when he spoke here in Bedford more than half a century ago.

We can rebuild this country.

We can offer people hope.

We can make an economy that works for working people.

It’s a goal worth fighting for.

It’s what One Nation Labour will do.

bedford way

Ed Miliband's speech to the Fabian Society: full text #fab13

January 12, 2013 11:41 am / Leave a Comment

Fabian Society Annual Conference: Next State is taking place today Saturday January 12th and this year’s special guest is Ed Miliband. It is being held at the Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL. It has been fully sold-out.

The chair of the Fabians is Jessica Asato, @Jessica_Asato, also PPC for Norwich North.

The full programme is here on the website of the Fabians.

This is the text of Ed Miliband’s speech, which is clearly built around the three major planks of Labour’s ongoing policy review: the economy, society and political process.

 

It is great to be here at the Fabians.

Today I want to talk to you about the idea of One Nation.

The idea of a country which we rebuild together, where everyone plays their part.

It is not an idea rooted in Fabian pamphlets.

Though I bow to nobody in being an avid reader of them.

It is not an idea either rooted in academic studies of Sweden or any other country.

Though as some of you know, again I can talk at length about these subjects too.

It is an idea rooted deep in British history.

Because it is rooted deep in the soul of the British people.

Deep in the daily way we go about our lives.

Our relationships with our family, our friends, our neighbours.

We know this idea is a deep part of our national story because we have so many different ways of describing it.

“All hands to the pump.”

“Mucking in.”

“Pulling your weight.”

“Doing your bit.”

And every day we see it at work in our country.

On Christmas Day, I helped out somebody down the street from me who makes Christmas lunches for elderly people in the area living on their own, it’s that spirit.

The same spirit we saw last year in the Olympic Games.

Now because this idea is so much part of who we are as a nation, of how we think of ourselves, all politicians try to embrace it.

But its real potential, and what I want to talk about today, comes when we understand the deeper lesson for the way we run our country.

Turning this spirit of collective endeavour, of looking out for each other, from something we do in our daily lives, to the way our nation is run.

That is what One Nation Labour is about.

Taking the common decency and values of the British people and saying we must make it the way we run the country as well.

And why does this idea – the idea of One Nation – speak so directly to the state of Britain today?

Because we are so far from being One Nation.

While a very few people at the top are doing well, so many people feel their prospects diminishing, their insecurity rising.

They feel on their own.

Not part of a common endeavour.

You know, a young woman came up to me recently and told me she had decided to go to University in Holland because she said she couldn’t afford to do so in Britain.

Believe it or not, to a government minister her departure will seem a success because if more people leave the country it will help them meet their net migration target.

But it doesn’t feel like a success to me to have talented young people fleeing abroad.

In Britain that young woman doesn’t feel part of a country where she can play her part, she feels on her own.

And it’s not just our young people who are finding it so hard to do their bit.

There are so many people across Britain who want to play their part but don’t feel they can.

Those running small businesses are struggling just to keep their business afloat in the face of rising energy bills and banks that won’t help.

They don’t feel part of a Britain we rebuild together, they feel on their own.

And then take all the people struggling to make ends meet, to pay the bills, doing two or three jobs, they feel on their own with nobody on their side.

So what do so many people in Britain have in common today?

They believe the system is rigged against them.
They believe that the country isn’t working for them.
And you know, it’s not that any of them thinks Britain owes them a living or an easy life.

All they want is a sense of hope, they want to believe there is a vision for a future we can build together.

And that is why One Nation is such a powerful idea right now: because it is about our country and what it faces.

Can David Cameron answer this call for One Nation?

This week shows yet again why he can’t.

What did they call it on Monday?

The Ronseal re-launch.

But what did we discover?

The tin was empty.

And they have no vision for the country.

And what have we also seen this week?

The appalling attempt to denigrate all those who are looking for work.

To pretend that a Bill that hits 7 million working people is somehow promoting responsibility.

And all the time an attempt to divide the country between so-called scroungers and strivers.

To point the finger of blame at others, so people don’t point the finger of blame at this government.

Nasty, divisive politics which we should never accept.

It should be the first duty of any Prime Minister to be able to walk in the shoes of others.

This week he has shown he just can’t do it.

No empathy.

And no vision either.

So my overwhelming feeling in looking at this government is simple:

Britain can do better than this.

I have said what it means to be a One Nation Prime Minister.

To strive always to walk in the shoes of others.

But One Nation tells us more than that.

It tells us that we need to bring the country together so everyone can play their part.

And let me explain what One Nation is about in our economy, our society and our politics.

Let me start with the economy.

One Nation Labour is about reshaping our economy from its foundations, so that all do have the opportunity to play their part, not just a few.

And to understand what a One Nation economy means, we need to recognise how it differs from what New Labour did and also how it differs from the current government.

New Labour rightly broke from Old Labour and celebrated the power of private enterprise to energise our country.

It helped get people back into work, and introduced the minimum wage and tax credits to help make work pay.

And it used tax revenues to overcome decades of neglect and invest in hospitals, schools and the places where people live.

There are millions of people who have better lives because of those decisions.

It is a far cry from what we see today.

We’re back to the old trickle-down philosophy.

Cut taxes for the richest.

For everyone else, increase insecurity at work to make them work harder.

In other words, for the 99 per cent: you’re on your own.

Sink or swim.

For the top 1 per cent: we’ll cut your taxes.

We don’t need a crystal ball to know what this will mean, because the last two and a half years have shown us.

Business as usual at the banks, squeezed living standards, a stagnating economy.

No plan for rebuilding the British economy.

But the One Nation Labour solution is not to say that we need to go back to the past, to carry on as we did in government.

One Nation Labour learns the lessons of the financial crisis.

It begins from the truth that New Labour did not do enough to take on the vested interests and bring about structural change in our economy.

To make it an economy that works for the many not just the few.

From the banks on our high streets to the City of London to the big energy companies.

Now, New Labour did challenge the old trickle-down economics by redistributing from the top.

But again it didn’t do enough to change our economy so that it grew from the middle out, not from the top down.

One Nation Labour is explicitly about reshaping our economy so that it can help what I call the forgotten wealth creators of Britain.

The millions of men and women who work the shifts, put in the hours.

Who are out to work while George Osborne’s curtains are still closed.

And are still out at work when he has gone to bed.

Those who have gone to university and those who haven’t.

The people who don’t take home millions or hundreds of thousands, but make a hard, honest and difficult living.

These are the people on whom our future national prosperity truly depends.

So what do we need to do today?

We need to reform our economy.

To take on the vested interests that block the opportunities for our small businesses and for all the other forgotten wealth-creators.

We need a new deal for our small businesses who have been let down by the banks.

We have to tackle short-termism in the City to enable companies to play their part to contribute to long-term wealth creation.

We have to work with business radically to reform our apprenticeships and vocational education, so we use the talents of all young people, including the 50 per cent who don’t go to University.

And we have to promote a living wage to make work pay.

That is the way that we rebuild our economy.

From the middle out.

Not from the top down.

That’s what One Nation Labour is about in the economy.

So we learn the lesson of New Labour’s successes, embracing wealth creation.

We learn the lessons of what it didn’t do well enough, reshaping our economy and creating shared prosperity.

And we recognise there will be less money around because of the deficit we inherit.

That’s why Ed Balls rightly came to this conference last year, to say if we were in government today we would have to put jobs in the public sector ahead of pay increases.

And in a way that we did not have to be under New Labour, we will have to be ruthless in the priorities we have. And clear that we will have to deliver more with less.

So One Nation Labour adapts to new times, in particular straitened economic circumstances.
And the power of the idea of One Nation also shapes the kind of society I believe in.
One Nation Labour is based on a Britain we rebuild together.
That means sharing the vision of a common life, not a country divided by class, race, gender, income and wealth.

And that’s so far from where we are in Britain today.

We can only build that kind of society, where we share a common life, if people right across it, from top to bottom, feel a sense of responsibility to each other.

Now, New Labour, unlike Old Labour, pioneered the idea of rights and responsibilities.

From crime to welfare to anti-social behaviour, it was clear that we owe duties to each other as citizens.

It knew we do not live as individuals on our own.

And it knew that strong confident communities are the way that you build a strong confident nation.

All of this is so far again from what we have seen from this government.

This government preaches responsibility.

But do nothing to make it possible for people to play their part.

They demand people work, but won’t take the basic action to ensure that the work is available.

They talk about a “big society”.

But then it makes life harder for our charities, our community groups.

But here again the answer is not simply to carry on where we left off in government.

New Labour was right to talk about rights and responsibilities but was too timid in enforcing them, especially at the top of society.

And it was too sanguine about the consequences of rampant free markets which we know can threaten our common way of life.

Learning from our history, One Nation Labour is clear that we need to do more to create a society where everyone genuinely plays their part.

A One Nation country cannot be one:
Where Chief Executive pay goes up and up and up and everybody else’s is stagnant.
Where major corporations are located in Britain, sell in Britain, make profits in Britain but do not pay taxes in Britain.
And where at the top of elite institutions, from newspapers to politics, some people just seem to believe that the rules do not apply to them.
To turn things round in Britain, we all have to play our part.
Especially in hard times.
We are right to say that responsibility should apply to those on social security.

But we need to say that responsibility matters at the top too.

That’s the essence of One Nation Labour.

It shares New Labour’s insight about our obligations to each other.

And it learns the lessons of what New Labour didn’t do well enough, ensuring responsibilities go all the way through society from top to bottom.

And what does One Nation Labour mean for the way we do our politics?

It starts from the idea that people should have more power and control over their lives, so that everyone feels able to play their part, not left on their own.

New Labour began with a bold agenda for the distribution of power in Britain.

And it stood for a Labour party not dominated by one sectional interest, but reaching out into parts of Britain that Old Labour had never spoken to.

Inviting people from all walks of life to join the party and to play their part.

It wanted too, to open up our system of government and oversaw the biggest Constitutional changes for generations, including devolution to Scotland and Wales.

The contrast with this government is clear.

The way they operate, the high-handed arrogance of their way of doing things.

They cannot claim to be opening up politics.

And they certainly cannot claim to be rooted in the lives of the British people.

But once again we have to move on from New Labour, as well as from this government.

Because although New Labour often started with the right intentions, over time it did not do enough to change the balance of power in this country.

That was true of the Labour Party itself.

Of our democracy.

And of our public services.

By the time we left office, too many people in Britain didn’t feel as if the Labour party was open to their influence, or listening to them.

Take immigration.

I am proud to celebrate the multi-ethnic, diverse nature of Britain.

But high levels of migration were having huge effects on the lives of people in our country.

And too often those in power seemed not to accept this.

The fact that they didn’t explains partly why people turned against us in the last general election.

So we must work to ensure that it never happens again.

And what is the lesson for One Nation Labour?

It is to change the way that power and politics works in our own Party right away.

That is what you will be seeing from One Nation Labour in 2013.

Opening up in new ways.

Recruiting MPs from every part of British life: from business to the military to working people from across every community.

Seeking support in every part of the United Kingdom, across the South of the country as well as the North.

Building a party that is dedicated to working with people to help them improve their own lives—even before government.

So for example, Labour Party members going to door to door offering people practical to help switch energy suppliers and cut their bills.

Creating a policy-making process that enables people directly to shape our policies so that they reflect their own concerns.

Jonathan Primett from Chatham wrote to us recently, complaining about rogue landlords at a time when the private rented sector is growing fast in our country.

Today I want to respond to him.

Britain is in danger of having two nations divided between those who own their one homes and those who rent.

If we are going to build One Nation, people who rent their homes should have rights and protections as well.

That’s about rooting out the rogue landlords.

Stopping families being ripped off by letting agents.

And giving new security to families who rent.

So we will introduce a national register of landlords, to give greater powers for local authorities to root out and strike off rogue landlords.

We will end the confusing, inconsistent fees and charges in the private rented sector.

And we will seek to give greater security to families who rent and remove the barriers that stand in the way of longer term tenancies.

That is a real example of how a One Nation Labour Party, by opening up our politics, is responding to the new challenges that the British people care about today.

One Nation Labour is also practising a new approach to campaigning—through community organising—which doesn’t just seek to win votes but build new relationships in every part of Britain.

For example, taking up local issues from high streets dominated by betting shops to taking on payday loan companies.

And, of course, a One Nation Labour government should open up too.

If devolution to Scotland and Wales is right, so it must be right that the next Labour government devolves power to local government in England.

And reforms our public services so that the people who use them and the people that work in them, feel as if they have a real chance of shaping the way they operate.

That’s the way to ensure we can all work together, to rebuild our country, with everyone playing their part.

That’s what One Nation Labour is about.

It learns the lesson of New Labour’s successes, seeking to reach out to parts of Britain that Old Labour ignored.

It learns the lessons of what it didn’t do well enough, of where New Labour left people behind.

And it recognises that in 2013, as the world has changed, politics has to change with it.

I talked about it in my Labour Party conference speech a few months ago about why I came into politics.

It was because of my personal faith.

A faith that we are better, stronger together than when we are on our own.

A faith that when good people come together they can overcome any odds.

For me, that’s what One Nation Labour is all about.

This faith isn’t unique to me.

It is deeply rooted in our country.

One Nation Labour is different from the current government.

And from New Labour and Old Labour too.

It will take on the vested interests in order to reshape our economy in the interests of all.

It will insist on responsibility throughout society, including at the top so we can build a united, not divided, Britain.

It will strive to spread power as well as working for prosperity.

We must build One Nation.

It is what the British people demand of us.

And, together, it is what we can achieve.

Gordon Brown bike

Gordon Brown did not bankrupt the economy, like Andrew Mitchell perhaps did not say some things as alleged

December 24, 2012 1:17 pm / Leave a Comment

Whilst it is for Andrew Mitchell ‘to clear his name’, with the help of the Tory-led media, it is perhaps time to right another wrong. And that is that Gordon Brown did not single-handedly cause a global recession. Whilst the newspapers are full of Andrew Mitchell’s rigorous defence, it is perhaps time, especially ahead of Christmas, to knock on the head what has been the biggest lie of all time. That due to the Labour government led by Gordon Brown Britain nearly became bankrupt.

A reminder from Hansard from 22 April 2009 reminds us of the magnitude of the problem facing HM Government’s at that time,

Meanwhile George Osborne had wished to meet the spending commitments of Labour – and in fact exceed them, as he proudly boasted in front of the Tory-led BBC one breakfast morning.

The “deficit myth” is of course well rehearsed elsewhere. See for example this now seminal outstanding article by Ramesh Patel which has been shared more than 5000 times on Twitter, which establishes some of the main points. Indeed, yesterday the Guardian provided (again) the data in all their full clarity, demonstrated in this graph here. This graph shows that the Tories ran a formidable deficit themselves during the tenures of Norman Lamont and Ken Clarke, and that the deficit did explode as a result of the global financial crisis (to repeat, a global financial crisis not caused by Gordon Brown).

Well does it matter? Of course it matters hugely. The whole raison d’être of this “wretched coalition” is “to sort out the mess that Labour left”. When most people are asked why they don’t blame Labour for the state of the NHS during their period of office, when indeed it has been reported that there was a record level of patient satisfaction, many people apparently respond that “they were one of the lucky ones”. Quite often, at this point the line of attack then changes to personal attacks on Gordon Brown, “selling off gold”, completing ignoring the issue that George Osborne’s record on selling gold is not spectacular itself.

And it clearly does matter, given that borrowing continues to be a problem in the UK, and whilst the Coalition inherited an economy which was growing – albeit in a fragile way in May 2010 – it then entered double-dip recession, which a period of temporary recovery, boosted by some creative accounting. George Osborne and his media team obviously did not take too kindly to Evan Davies’ excellent questioning of George Osborne over the use of the 4G [future] receipts in presenting the GDP figures. The evidence indeed now points towards a “triple-dip recession“.

Indeed, the line of attack has always thus far be to compare us to Greece, and how we are at risk of losing our ‘gold-plated triple A rating‘. However, Downing Street has hard to embark on a propaganda war saying how because of the Eurozone crisis it might be inevitable we will now lose this rating, with bad news ‘which keeps on coming’. The risk to our triple A rating, as is widely known, long predates the Eurozone crisis, with eminent Keynesian economists, who know considerably more about economics than the Chancellor, warning about the dire consequences of pursuing a lack of growth. Such economists have of course included Prof Paul Krugman, Prof David Blanchflower, Prof Joe Stiglitz, and Lord Skidelsky (two of whom have won the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in economics).

And of course the ‘parlour state of the nation’s finances’ provides the raison d’être for the ‘slash and burn’ failed economic policies of the UK government since May 2010. I remember very clearly when Sunder Katwala, Director of “British Future” but at that time Chair of the Fabian Society, with speakers including John Denham MP, told a packed breakfast meeting at a fringe meeting in September 2010 how, even if the reduction of the deficit in the UK went successfully, there would be an invitable aftermath of social destruction which would be hard to remedy. Since then, the Government has embarked on a £2bn (estimated) reorganisation of the NHS amongst opposition from the BMA and the Medical Royal Colleges, libraries have been shut, withdrawal of “education maintenance allowance”,  and the welfare reforms have been a disaster (with 30-40% of “fit-for-work” claim decisions overturned on appeal).

So before we lose too much sleep over Andrew Mitchell, it’s perhaps time to think about another wrong that should be righted, as we tell this current lot to “get on their bike” in 2015.

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