Home » Posts tagged 'left wing'
Tag Archives: left wing
Labour can make political weather on the NHS, but it shouldn’t be thrown off track by gale force winds
Political decisions will always be made, but are unlikely to be representative if certain people don’t wish to be part of the political process.
It is hard to know what has caused a decline in political engagement, but politicians not appearing to listen might be a major factor. The social media has empowered a plurality of opinions, which means that it is less easy for politicians to speak with a collective voice on issues. The traditional narrative is that people ultimately care about the economy, as economic competence is the sort of issue which can make or break political parties. However, it’s very likely that residents of Lewisham care about local hospital closures, and hospital campaigns can gain momentum and traction whatever the state of national politics.
Voices of Labour who are interested in social justice, solidarity, equality, equity, solidarity or cooperation are not in fact in a minority, whatever the current state of the Blairite arm of the political party. While think tanks prioritise concepts such as ‘accountability’ and ‘co-production’, authentic voices on the left do not feel that their brand of politics is irrelevant. The question inevitably arises – if the current party is doing what you want to do, why should you stand for election? It is possibly the case that many people will nonetheless vote for Labour, despite reservations on the ‘welfare cap’, because the modern political system does not offer them any realistic choice. ATOS were contracted to do welfare benefits in the last government, and it is likely that some other outsourcing company will assume the mantle.
Labour clearly will state that it is insufficient for political parties to lose elections for others to win them, and they should formulate coherent policies of their own. But likewise nobody will expect Ed Miliband to reveal his hand until much closer to the election. Many people do not come into contact with the NHS when young, although there are many who do, and it is possible that Labour will wish to hone its offering on general health issues as well as the National Health Service. The recent Clegg v Farage debates have highlighted some appetite for single issue politics, when charismatically explored in ‘leaders debates’.
The forthcoming European elections will give a good indicator as to the relevance of the NHS to people’s lives, arguably. The fate of Louise Irvine and Rufus Hound will possibly provide good clues as to whether people in the general public care as much about the NHS as much as NHS campaigners clearly do. The National Health Action Party – NHAP – to be national will need to have coverage throughout the country, but there has always been concern about whether they might realistically gain enough seats to prevent Labour from winning an overall majority. Nonetheless, this Party feels serious that the NHS is a major political issue, and it is a genuine policy issue what they feel they can achieve over and above what a Labour government might. It is possible that that the NHAP might prevent a Labour MP from being elected in Stafford. I met someone recently who was adamant that, with the right resources, NHAP could win in Stafford. Likewise, it’s possible that Clive Peedell could win against David Cameron in Witney, where arguably Labour do not have a realistic chance of winning.
With the second rabbit to come out of George Osborne’s hat in the form of pension reforms, the first being inheritance tax, it’s possible that Labour can’t take the running of the economy as a vote winner in the 2015 general election. Some people still blame Ed Balls as too intimately implicated in the economic policy of the last administration. It is therefore counterintuitive to imagine then that Labour will wish to ignore its potential strengths such as social justice. Despite the concerns over ISTCs and PFI in previous Labour government, and the events running to Mid Staffs, it is still controversial whether people feel strongly enough about Labour’s record not to vote for them. Even hardened Socialists might be keen to contribute to the election of a Labour government than to see the continuation of a Conservative one.
The £2.4 bn top down reorganisation resulting from the Health and Social Care Act (2012) is a major faultline in national policy. Most seasoned pundits are aware of the calamitous effects of competition on national policy, but it is far more likely that members of the general public are unconcerned about ‘section 75′. As sure as night follows day, it’s likely that Labour will oppose privatisation, but the logical conclusion of this is that it supports state ownership. Its inability to call for this publicly speaks volumes. And the people who argue that this country is fundamentally right-wing know they’re being economical with the truth. Unpopular policies from the right have included the astronomic pay of certain investment bankers, the cost of energy bills, the general failures of privatisation policies, perceived attacks on the welfare state, and an enthusiasm to introduce tuition fees in universities denying access-to-education. Whilst Labour is unlikely to voice loudly that ‘capitalism kills’, Labour potentially can make some political weather on the NHS and on health issues such as ‘whole person care’. This will require some strength in the leadership of the Labour Party, but it should not be thrown off course by the equivalent of gale-force winds.
We need to talk about Tony Blair
“Gordon did the economics”.
That’s precisely the problem. Tony Blair did not understand economics – excellent junior barrister, and outstanding communication skills and politician. There is indeed a plethora of substantial achievements for which all of us in Labour can be very proud indeed: the Northern Ireland peace process (the Belfast Agreement) and the formation of the Northern Ireland assembly, genuine advancement of LBGT rights, the Millennium Dome project, Scottish and Welsh devolution, the minimum wage. It’s critical also to note that public satisfaction with the National Health Service was at an all-time high, entirely due to the effort Blair put into this. This has always been the bête-noire of Labour, for example the public have been traditionally been somewhat reluctant to ‘thank’ Labour and Blair for this. (There have been theories proposed by Peter Kellner to explain why this might be so, such as voters believing that ‘they were the lucky ones’ and ‘they were bucking the national trend’). And indeed two of the very first things – and massive achievements – were the introduction of the Department for International Development and the Human Rights Act.
I don’t particularly care about what Alastair Campbell and numerous others say about Blair winning three elections – I feel that this is a red herring, and on principle what matters is what political ideologies he put into action. If you’re talking actual facts anyway, Blair’s support started to erode long before the Iraq War, at around 2002. Alastair Campbell’s latest diary reports an extremely dysfunctional Cabinet. Blair and Brown blatantly hated but respected each other, and with each trying to undermine each other but pretending their best to form a sense of unity. What Alastair describes is a pitiful state of affairs. Sure Campbell is a master-strategist in the way that Osborne will never be capable of being. However, what he reports is an organisational culture with two separate Blair and Brown styles, culture and ways of doing things. They fundamentally disagree, but it’s no good saying that Brown “did the economics”. Brown is a Keynesian, and he had the UK on a path to recovery before he was booted out in 2010.
Blair’s economic policy, or business model for UK plc if you prefer, is completely incorrect in my view. It takes no account of behavioural economics. He led members of his government completely down a blind alley of overcommoditisation of everything. His greatest sin was to embark on a strategy of overcommoditisation of the public services, completing spitting in the face of acknowledging value of people. People lie at the heart of the Labour – that’s why we have the Unions. In my personal view only, Blair’s effect on Labour, despite winning three elections, was to set the UK back decades. A donkey could have won the General Election against Major, and Blair failed to capitalise on producing a UK fit-for-purpose. The economy is still unbalanced, the Unions do not feel valued, and we are left with a sick Britain which is extending Blair’s plans albeit in a more extreme way. The Beechcroft Report and NHS Act are exactly what happens if you do not value hard-working people in the public sector.
Gillian Duffy represented an approach to immigration which was pathological. The Fabians’ response has to formulate this in terms of insecurity of voters, elegantly described in ‘Southern Discomfort’. However, I find the whole concept of ‘aspiration’ entirely phoney, and summarises well Blair’s government – a chic marketing exercise in making Labour palatable to the general public. It was extremely cynical, and the public saw through it, forcing Mandelson to declare New Labour clinically dead in 2010.
Ed Miliband needs to embrace behavioural economics and corporate social responsibility – in real terms, this means valuing all people who contribute to the society and economy of the UK. We need to talk about Tony, in that he is not some Messiah that walked the earth. He may have been an election-winning machine, but the fact that he could not integrate an understanding of economics to the heart of government speaks volumes. A generation of people currently at University are keeping up the intellectually-bereft idol worship of Blair, but they are doing Labour a massive disservice. Labour has to be inclusive of everyone, wherever they come from, to move forward. I believe, personally, that the whole of Labour Left and the Fabians have been extremely helpful in this regard.
Is Labour uniting behind a new leader for an autumn of discontent?
People who dislike Labour love reminding themselves of when Denis Healey had to ‘beg’ to the IMF for a loan to keep Britain afloat. Labour took a long time to shrug off the notion that unions were intrinsically evil, and served to destabilize the effective running of Britain. Britain in the late 1970s couldn’t even to bury the dead.
Unfortunately, in the 2010s, Britain may not be able to look after the living adequately. The over-zealous attitude by the spending review has been observed by many pundits as being rather macabre, and misfiring in a number of critical areas. For example, Iain Duncan-Smith has provided a programme of welfare reform, but has been unable to put a figure to it. In the meantime, many genuine disabled people who indeed aspire to go to work have been terrified by what it all means, by the continuous torrent of mistrust from the Coalition politicians towards the poor and/or the disabled.
We all know where intuitively the autumn of discontent would be likely to happen, but the Unions have now specified that the strikes are going to be due to spending cuts, pay and pensions in the public sector. The tables motioned for the Trades Union Congress have called for co-ordinated action by various unions.
The scale of this is not going to be a joke. The reason for this is many hard-working citizens, especially the low paid, feel embittered. They realize that the state owes them nothing, contrary to popular media, but the issue is that they do not feel responsible for the mess that Britain is in. They are simply not accepting the argument that “there’s no money left”, put forward by Liam Byrne of all people. Instead, they have fully accepted that spending in a recession was necessary to stop the economy going into a complete standstill, and the proof of the success of this policy has already been demonstrated by stable growth figures and a lack of inflation thus far. However, the cuts threaten to lessen investment in both the private and public sector, produce inflation, increase unemployment, and therefore increase substantially the benefit budget.
Unison, Britain’s biggest public sector trade union with 1.3 million members, has called on unions to join a Europe-wide day of action in September. Unite has been hard at work, or non-work, in Manchester. Workers at the Manchester office of one of Britain’s largest finance firms are being balloted for strike action in another outbreak of industrial unrest. Staff at Capita Life and Pensions have begun voting over proposed changes to their pensions, which Unite national officer Rob MacGregor said were a “clear attempt by the company to profit at the expense of our members”. Unite have provided that staff at Capita Life and Pensions will lose thousands of pounds in retirement income if the plans go ahead.
“Our defence must be built on generalised strike action and community resistance,” said the RMT general secretary, Bob Crow, predicting the biggest public mobilisation since the anti-poll tax riots of 1990.
That things have come to a head so early on has caught many by surprise. If Labour elects too supine a leader, who won’t support its major paymasters and adopts a “wait-and-see” approach, Labour will achieve nothing for the poor and/or vulnerable. Many are yearning for a true left-wing agenda with a leader with the courage of his convictions, who won’t come to this with any populist overly right-centrist baggage. Ed Miliband could therefore, as the only electable socialist candidate, be the right man at the right time.
David Cameron, who is likely to be on paternity leave during the TUC conference, has declined an invitation to address the congress. Quelle surprise?