Preparing the way for austerity

When the chancellor says that "We`ve provided over £200bn of support to protect the economy", are we to assume he is including the Bank of England`s role in the government`s recent spending (Record borrowing lifts UK`s debt mountain to £2,076bn, 21/11/20)? The inference is that it is all taxpayers` money, and as tax receipts have fallen, the books have to be balanced and public finances put back on a "sustainable path". Could the reason the disingenuous Sunak does not mention the Bank's quantitative easing programme, which has provided the government with £875bn since 2009, including £350bn this year, with promises of more to come, is because he is going to announce what amount to austerity measures in Wednesday`s spending review? What Johnson calls the "A-word" may not actually be mentioned, but pay freezes, cuts and/or tax increases are certainly in the pipeline. Britain`s "debt mountain" only reaches the £2tn mark if the £875 of QE is included, and, as the Bank of England is a government entity, why should it be? The truth is there can be no excuses for not funding our social services properly, not extending the £20 a week extra benefit payments, and increasing public investments to create employment. Interest rates are at record low levels, with payments on the government`s debt costing £2bn this October, £4.4bn less, as your reporters Inman and Wearden tell us, than in the same month last year. No Tory urgency then for a return to the belt-tightening days, especially with the election looming! Increased government spending, furthermore, has the backing of the IMF and the OECD, especially with economic multipliers known to reduce costs significantly. The country, as a recent editorial pointed out, is being "softened up for austerity policies" (Vaccines will not end the unemployment crisis, even if they end the health crisis,17/11/20). Hopefully Starmer and Dodds are aware of the shortcomings of Sunak`s economic theories, and ready to put matters straight! Polly Toynbee is right to say the Sunak`s "underlying message" in his spending review, is to "prepare the way for a new austerity" (This week, Rishi Sunak is aiming to level down, not up, 24/11/20), as is the editorial when stating that a pay freeze would "undermine the government`s commitment to levelling up (A public-sector pay freeze is evidence of ministers clapping without caring, 24/11/20). The truth is that there can be no excuses for not funding our social services properly, not extending the £20 a week extra benefit payments, and increasing public investments to create employment. Interest rates are at record low levels, and increased government spending has the backing of the IMF and the OECD, especially with economic multipliers known to reduce costs significantly. Of course, countries like Japan have "run large deficits for years", with debt-to-GDP ratios of well over 100%, not that this will rate a mention in Sunak`s speech. Furthermore,the Bank of England is willing to add to the £350bn it has already created this year through quantitative easing, making £875bn in total since 2009, sums which the government need not repay immediately, if ever, so reducing its exaggerated £2tn national debt total by a third. . Preventing ordinary people spending money to boost local economies is madness in the best of circumstances, so any tax increases or pay freezes announced by Sunak should be focused on high earners and on capital gains, along with tougher measures to prevent tax avoidance and evasion. Hopefully, Labour`s leadership team are being primed to expose the error of the chancellor`s ways!

No mention of QE!

Two pages devoted to comment and analysis of "the full extent of the pandemic`s economic shock", and no mention of quantitative easing (Sunak refuses to rule out future tax rises and public sector pay freeze, 22/11/20). No doubt, the chancellor will also fail to mention it when delivering his spending review on Wednesday, when he explains why public sector workers, who until recently were referred to as "key workers", have to endure what is effectively a government-ordered pay cut. Presumably the British public is not expected to know about the government-owned Bank of England`s quantitative scheme which has created £350bn this year to help the government cope with the Covid crisis, and £875bn altogether since 2009. The only reason Sunak includes this as part of the national debt of over £2tn has to be to create justification for what he calls a public sector pay freeze, and what we know as the beginning of unwarranted austerity measures!

Tories` myopic view of defence

Making a "headline investment pledge" of £12bn in a "green recovery package", when "much of it has been announced previously", is typical of Tory political chicanery the country has become accustomed to since 2010 (A green revolution needs more than words to become a reality, 19/11/20). Agreeing at the same time to "a four-year £16.5bn increase in defence spending", days before the chancellor's spending review, when Sunak almost certainly will warn of impending austerity measures, necessary because of extra spending during the Covid crisis, like so many of Johnson's pronouncements, beggars belief (PM finds £16.5bn for defence as foreign aid budget faces huge cut, 19/11/20)! As he says, the "defence of the realm" must indeed "come first", but by equating "defence" with increased military spending, Johnson reveals the limitations of his political understanding. What is the point of increasing the defence capability of the UK against foreign adversaries when far greater threats exist from deadly viruses, killer diseases and global warming? Defending the people from illness and disease must also "come first", as must defending children from food shortages, poverty and lack of education. A population`s security does not depend on military capability, but on a government`s willingness to spend money wisely to create healthy, happy and prosperous communities, to fund public services sufficiently, and provide decent jobs and living accommodation for all. Defence against exploitation from greedy employers and landlords is essential, too. That`s the trouble with having a leader and ministers from privileged backgrounds; their wealth has prevented them from not only ever understanding ordinary people`s need for security, but from seeing defence as anything other than a military requirement!

Left-wing Biden and Starmer?

Your editorial suggests "the no-nonsense vice-president elect", Kamala Harris,should be given the job of keeping the left-wing of the Democratic party "in line" if they challenge Biden for slipping "into his old, middling ways" (Joe Biden faces a massive challenge. But, for now, let`s celebrate a powerful victory, 08.11.20). Isn`t this the wrong way round? As the editorial also states, Biden made a "calculated" move, "shifting leftwards" in order to gain votes by "embracing the progressive agenda". As the election victor, isn`t he now obliged to carry out his pledges? That is, after all, what a "decent, honest" leader would do, and, indeed, how democracy is meant to work! Harris is the one who should be ready to "pounce" if election promises are forgotten. The parallels with Starmer and the Labour party are obvious. Here`s another party leader so keen on party unity he was willing to pledge a left-wing manifesto in order to win his leadership election, and already being doubted for his sincerity. Both Starmer and Biden clearly need to remember their parties` recent histories, and reflect on the reasons for too many years of Conservative and Republican dominance.

For Biden, read Starmer!

Many of the observations made by Thomas Frank about the need for Biden and the Democrats to "confront their own past", and "acknowledge how their own decisions over the years helped make Trumpism possible" are clearly applicable to the UK`s Labour party and ten years of Tory governments (Now Biden must tackle the causes of Trumpism, 09/11/20). A preponderance of centrist policies which ignored "the grievances of blue-collar workers" cost Labour the 2010 election just as it lost the 2016 election for Clinton. Both Biden and Starmer were forced to include more left-wing ideas into their respective manifestos in their attempts to be seen to be unifying forces in their parties, and it is vital that they do their utmost to rubbish Republican and Conservative "preposterous claims to be workers` parties representing the aspirations of ordinary people" with action and policies respectively. Years of shrinking the state in both countries have proved disastrous, as have unfair taxation, deregulation and rising inequality, not to mention the abundance of corruption and cronyism. The US isn`t the only nation which has "grown sick of plutocracy", but if there is to be a new era of politics it is essential that Starmer, like Biden, confronts his party`s recent history and learns from it!

Work for Public Accounts Committee

The news that the government has awarded a £347m Covid-19 testing contract to Randox, "a Tory-linked private healthcare company", comes as no surprise, given the number of similar contracts awarded to the private sector, where profit is still the goal, regardless of a nationwide crisis (Tory-linked company awarded new £347m Covid-testing contract, 05/11/20). The facts that the Tory MP Owen Patterson earns more as a consultant for the company than he does working for his constituents, that the company`s previous work resulted in the recall of 750,000 kits because of their lack of sterility, and that no "other companies were asked to bid", all suggest an immediate investigation is required. As the role of the Public Accounts Committee is, according to parliament`s website, to "monitor public spending across the whole of the Government, with particular focus on ensuring value for money for the taxpayer", it is clearly one of the first ports of call for investigating such "cronyism", and has, indeed, started an inquiry into "Government procurement", with the deadline for evidence being 2nd December. Is a committee with 9 Tory MPs and only 5 Labour members really going to get to grips with the problem? What is evidently required is a demand from Labour for a public inquiry., not only into the awarding of contracts, but into the judiciousness of MPs having second jobs. A salary of over three times the national average, plus very generous expenses, and subsidised meals in the Commons, should be more than adequate for anyone dedicated to such public service. If not, the conclusion has to be that they`re in the wrong job!

Labour needs to be more critical of Sunak`s policies

Whilst Anneliese Dodds is clearly right to say that the chancellor should have "introduced a job recovery scheme that incentivised employers to keep more staff on", Labour`s criticism of the government`s business and workers` support policies is, sadly, another example of Starmer`s opposition appearing to do "too little, too late" (Boost support for employers or face jobless surge - Dodds, 09/10/20)! Months ago we learned that despite many of the FTSE-100 firms turning to the taxpayers to pay the wages of furloughed workers, the pay of their bosses had largely remained unchanged (Bosses of only a third of top firms have taken pay cuts, 05/08/20). Now we find out that Restaurant Group will pay obscenely high bonuses to its CEO who has overseen the closure of 200 of its outlets with 4,500 job losses, despite the company "still making use of the government`s job retention furlough scheme". In a similar vein, greedy supermarkets like Tesco and Morrisons, pay out massive dividends to shareholders which equate approximately with the amounts saved from the government`s business rates holiday (Tesco to pay £315m dividend after enjoying rates holiday, 08/10/20)! Labour should have been demanding from the start, and with more measures on the cards for next week, repeating more vociferously now, that all government aid to the private sector should be accompanied by strict conditions. Reining in bosses`pay, tax commitments, closing pay gaps, suspending dividends, and pledges on new technology and apprenticeship schemes should be among the conditions for the receipt of any financial aid from the government. Instead we get murmurings from Tory propagandists about "unsustainable borrowing", questionable levels of national debt, and the need to cut back government spending, with hints of tax rises being necessary.. And they`re still claiming to be "one nation Tories"!!

The oxymoron that is "One nation Conservatism"

Well done all those Labour MPs who signed the letter organised by Richard Burgon to demand that "no worker is paid less than the national minimum wage if they are furloughed " during the current health crisis. Forcing workers on the minimum wage now to live on 67% of their earnings means the earnings they get will be , as the article says, £5.81 an hour! Not only is this typically callous, and typical of Tory governments, it illustrates clearly the nonsense that is Johnson`s government`s claim to represent "one nation Conservatism". Now there`s an oxymoron if ever there was one! This, of course, is the concept developed by Tories to win elections in the late nineteenth century. Faced with the unstoppable surge of increased suffrage, and therefore also with the need to win the votes of poor, newly enfranchised men, Disraeli`s party`s solution was to promise a country which would no longer be divided into two "nations", the haves and have-nots, an electoral ploy which helped Disraeli win the 1874 election. Johnson talks a lot about bringing the country together as one nation, but knows, like Disraeli, Tories cannot achieve it, as it would split the party and alienate too many donors. Johnson and Sunak constantly complain that increases to minimum wages and increased benefit payments cannot be afforded, but the reality is that they have no intention of doing any such thing. Disraeli couldn`t carry it out, and the voters kicked him out in 1880; Johnson won`t try it because his party would remove him long before the next election if he did! Starmer`s Labour should be aiming, therefore, to expose the true objectives of this government by illuminating the lies being told about the economy, the amount of debt that is really owed, and the full extent of the Bank of England`s role in supplying hundreds of billions through quantitative easing for the government to spend, and which should not be included in debt figures!

No hat-tricks for Starmer!

Although his three goals helped his team destroy formidable European opposition, Marcus Rashford`s truly "remarkable hat-trick" was scored off the pitch (Rashford`s hat-trick underpins ruthless dismantling of Leipzig, 29/10/20). Having succeeded in helping to provide food for impoverished and disadvantaged children, and forcing the government into at least one embarrassing own goal with the U-turn over free school meals in the summer holidays, he is also responsible for exposing almost single-handedly the true nature of this Tory government. Not only did 322 Tory MPs in a government of so-called "one-nation Conservatives" vote against an extension of the free schools programme, many of them went public with their reasons for doing so, which included what Angela Rayner rightly called the "stigmatisation of working-class families" (Ben Bradley urged to apologise over free school meals tweets, 24/10/20). What Rashford is also doing is putting the Labour party, especially its leader, to shame. Forcing governments into making policy changes leading to embarrassing and damning excuses for doing so, used to be the job of the Opposition. So did causing tensions in the Cabinet, dividing the prime minister and his inner circle from the machinations of any fellow Tory politician "who strives to be prime minister", as is clearly happening now (Rishi Sunak`s ambition is on a collision course with Boris Johnson`s ego, 27/10/20). Rashford`s success has illuminated what many in the Labour party must already know: Starmer puts in a good shift in the middle of the park, but his attacking instincts in the final third are limited! With Starmer insisting he "doesn't want a civil war in the Labour party", perhaps he should heed the advice from former party chair, Ian Lavery (Pro-Corbyn MPs may quit Labour amid fear of "mass purge", warns former chair, 31/10/20). To "reach out before it`s too late" would mean the Labour leader immediately having to calm the fears of all those on the left of the party who remember his promises during the leadership campaign, and who were persuaded by them to support his bid. Within days there needs to be reaffirmed commitments on taxing the rich, ending the scourge of tax avoidance, increasing pay for key workers, pledging more state ownership, and even supporting a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even before the Corbyn crisis, the excellent Marcus Rashford was putting the Labour party, and its leader, to shame, and causing many embarrassing government U-turns, so now is definitely the moment for Starmer to put his money where his mouth is! Replacing this "cruel and useless government", as Jonathan Freedland says, has to be the long-term priority, but that will prove impossible unless Starmer is able to stifle the left`s fears and show a united front (Labour and antisemitism: once again, it`s all about Corbyn, 31/10/20).

PQA will not solve university admissions problems

As Peter Lazenby rightly says, the current "university admissions system puts working class students at a disadvantage". As well as the possible introduction of post-qualification application (PQA), there is the matter of the actual qualification; after all the fuss of Gove`s assessment reforms, and the provision of highly regulated A-levels containing more "rigour", and described by Ofqual as "national qualifications based on content set by the government", it is ridiculous that universities should accept, as academic entrance qualifications any other exams! The lightly-regulated Pre-U exams, set and marked by teachers in private schools, mostly for their pupils give far too much advantage to entrants from the private sector. Yet Oxbridge and others are allowed to get away with such bias, allowing hundreds of undergraduates to study in their colleges every year without A-levels. This year saw massive A-level grade inflation of 4.7% increase in A*/A grades in independent schools, but we saw no media outrage, or even clarification of whether this included Pre-U results! It seems ridiculous that in the academic year 2017-18, there were 125 Oxbridge undergraduates with three or more Pre-U qualifications but no A-levels, and 1075 students with a combination of three or more A-level and Pre-U qualifications. The phasing out of Pre-U exams is to be welcomed , but it still means that for another few years, the privileged will continue to have their university places guaranteed, and their monopoly of "educational advantage" continued. Universities should accept the so-called "privilege cap", which would limit the proportion of students accepted from private schools at the national figure of 7%. This would force universities into adopting contextual admissions policies, and make more room for pupils from the underfunded schools, from underprivileged families and from economically deprived areas, whose potential remains largely untapped. Oxbridge`s insistence on interviews hardly helps matters! Could there be a more effective deterrent to getting able pupils from working class backgrounds to apply to Oxbridge than the thought of an hour-long grilling by academics? Test their ability after three years of their education, not after eighteen years of being disadvantaged! The introduction of PQA might help, but so many barriers would still remain!

Re-writing history

It was recently reported that Dominic Cummings was advising the prime minister to be more robust against attempts to rewrite British history in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protest. Consequently, Johnson has stated that the removal of statues is "to lie about our history", as if history is actually set in stone and cannot be changed (Boris Johnson says removing statues is 'to lie about our history' ,12..06.20). Although he has written what many have described as "history books", he clearly does not understand waht history.actually entails. Of course it changes! Isn't that what historians are seeking all the time to achieve? Researching, finding new primary evidence, interviewing participants and detecting bias all mean that history cannot stand still, as this government presumably wants us all to think. The story about the new evidence emerging, revealing a previously secret role of Henry VIII in the execution of Anne Boleyn, is timely (Chilling find shows how Henry VIII planned every detail of Boleyn beheading, 25.10.20). The fact that he explained "precisely how he wanted his second wife to be executed" does not mean that all Tudor history books have to be re-written, but it will have a significant effect on how historians approach the execution in the future, and how the blame should move away from Henry`s "trusty adviser Thomas Cromwell". Thanks to the work of our academic historians, the story of British history is changing, albeit more slowly than many would like. Gradually, much of the mythology is being eroded; no longer is it accepted, for instance, that Britain was actually "alone" in 1940, or that Germany was defeated in both world wars by only Britain. That erosion would be certainly enhanced if Johnson, true to his word about the lies in history, actually allowed our academics to study the millions of history files which governments for years have secreted away in Hanslope Park! Those documents, however, could well prove the non-existence of British "exceptionalism", a concept which helps to explain both Brexit, and Johnson`s election victory!