Another Tory trap for Labour

The clever trap Osborne and the Tories have designed for the Labour leadership candidates to jump into must be ignored (Osborne turns to "Micawber" economics,10/06/15). The obvious response from them is to point out that the Tories` desire to shrink the state back to levels last seen when laissez-faire principles dominated political thinking, and when inequality flourished, does not coincide with Labour values. Also, emphasising that having "tax revenues covering spending on both infrastructure and day-to-day running of the government" makes no sense whatsoever, and amounts to a dereliction of government`s duty. When the housing shortage needs urgent government attention, when the NHS and care are facing financial crises, when cities, as Owen Jones points out, need investment if they are to be made "fit for people", (We must fight to make our cities healthier places,10/06/15) and when borrowing, at what in real terms amounts to almost zero interest rates, makes economic sense, the suggestion that improving the quality of people`s lives can only be attempted when the books are balanced is nothing other than negligence.

 Failure to challenge Osborne now will again leave the Labour party open to attack from the Tory propaganda machine; this "new settlement" rhetoric is simply the continuation of Osborne`s preparation for the next election, which began with his "northern powerhouse" nonsense. It was announced earlier this week that work on the electrification of the Manchester to Leeds railway, announced by the Tories in 2011, still has not started, and no-one is prepared to suggest a completion date! Says everything really.

Labour "got it wrong on business". Really?

  What a shame Labour "got it wrong on business" and "didn`t celebrate the spirit of enterprise", as all the candidates for Labour`s leadership, bar Corbyn, claim. The least Miliband and his loyal band could have done was to praise those enterprising businessmen for their role in increasing inequality by generally refusing to pay a living wage to their employees, but ensuring obscenely huge renumeration for themselves. By paying wages so low, business chiefs ensured more of taxpayers` money was spent on in-work benefits and therefore less on hospitals and schools, but their "spirit of enterprise" means tax avoided now totals at least £40bn annually.

     Then there`s their clever trick of threatening to leave the country if they don`t get their own way, like bankers always do if their bonuses are threatened, or banks do, if they are to be regulated or taxed more. Almost as enterprising as their scams, fixing Libor and forex rates, mis-selling insurance to their customers, and laundering drug money. So many examples, so much to be celebrated! Like the financial institutions who get themselves represented on Treasury tax committees so that they can advise their customers on the best way to avoid paying their fair share, or the way they get their fees, by taking a percentage of the tax avoided. Really enterprising!

   What about those clever hotel owners who charge on average something like £130 for a room, but pay the room-attendants less than £3 a room? Or the CBI boss who threatens that, if rules on zero-hours contract are changed, wealth-creators will resort to hiring workers on a daily basis?

 So much to celebrate, Andy!

  I am sure there are decent employers in this country, who treat their workers fairly, but there are clearly far too many who don`t; until they all do, Labour should be far more careful about giving them its support! 

2 letters on joke that is "one-nation" Toryism

David Cameron is correct in thinking that his belief that it`s "not just the left who care about the poor" is not a sentiment "widely shared outside Planet Tory" (Cameron`s goal is to suggest that it`s not just the left who care about the poor,30/05/15). The empirical evidence, something the Tories are noted for ignoring, is there for all to study. That`s why Anne McElvoy is wide of the mark when stating that "scepticism... is not the whole story when it comes to Dave`s one-nation claim". Disraeli`s plan was to woo the working class voters, in his 1874-80 administration, with reforms designed to improve the quality of their lives, after Gladstone`s election defeat due largely to him basing the government on laissez-faire principles which had the effect of increasing inequality. Strange how Cameron`s aim to shrink the state, and take government spending back to 1930s levels, is so much more Gladstonian, in principle, than Disraelian conservatism.

 Indeed, similarities with Disraeli`s one-nation conservatism are rare: whilst Cameron aims to curb trade unionism and make it more difficult to strike, Disraeli passed the Conspiracy and Protection Act, which increased unions` right to picket. Whereas Disraeli wanted to improve the homes of the working people with his Artisans Dwellings Act, present-day Tories allow huge tax concessions for profiteering landlords, and "reduce  the country`s stock of affordable housing" (Extending right to buy makes no sense and creates divisions,31/05/15). Disraeli`s School Attendance Committees were designed to encourage as many children as possible to take advantage of educational opportunities, unlike Cameron`s government which scrapped the Education Maintenance Allowance within weeks of taking office in 2010. That same government cut staffing at its Food Standards Agency, leading to less inspection and more risk for consumers, but Disraeli`s Sale of Food and Drugs Act laid down stringent regulations on food preparation. Even Cameron`s policy towards the health of the nation, with more privatisation of the NHS, compares unfavourably with Disraeli`s Public Health Act, which laid down the compulsory duties of local authorities, and his Factory Act which enabled workers to participate in sports on Saturday afternoons.

     "One-nation" Toryism requires "compassionate conservatism", which seems more a product of the Tories` propaganda machine than a plausible concept, or even a realistic prospect.

 Martin Kettle urges us to "look at the whole picture" of the Tories in power, and "take an objective view", yet fails to take his own advice, and instead ignores the empirical evidence (A reality check - the Tories aren`t all wicked and wrong,05/06/15). A brief study of the cruel and callous actions of the Tory-dominated coalition, 2010-15, makes a mockery of Cameron`s claims to want "the economy to work for everyone" and "bring people together". Within weeks of that government`s creation, Gove had destroyed the aspirations of thousands with his ending of the Education Maintenance Allowance, Osborne had raised VAT, and the imposition of austerity policies especially hurt the weakest and most vulnerable; the bedroom tax, cuts to disability allowances and the sanctioning of thousands of benefit claimants, whilst simultaneously cutting tax rates for the very wealthy and doing next to nothing about £35bn annually of tax avoidance, except reducing staff at HMRC by 20,000, all suggest “compassionate Toryism” is a figment of imagination, produced by the Tory party`s propaganda machine. According to Cameron himself, there is even worse to come, with £12bn welfare cuts, and government spending reduced to 1930s` levels. He may claim to emulate Disraeli with his "one-nation" rhetoric, but his preference for retrenchment and laissez-faire is far more Gladstonian! 

     Kettle wants us to believe that there is more to Cameron than "soundbites and wickedness", so he has clearly forgotten all about "making work pay", lobbying being "the next big scandal", and of course, "all in this together"!

Letter to Guardian on Labour`s defeat

"Distracted" ten times? (The undoing of Ed Miliband,04/06/15)  The fact that the decision for "Labour`s six election pledges" to be carved into an "8ft 6in slab of limestone" only "got through 10 planning meetings" because the advisers "were all distracted" by the Tories` tactics, beggars belief. How many last-minute voting decisions were made, how many Tory seats saved, on account of their failure to pay attention? Presumably, they were also "all distracted" when they agreed to patronise half the electorate with their pink mini-bus, or when they failed to cope with Crosby`s "trademark black cat strategy"? That some of them "confessed a lingering admiration" for such an obvious Tory response to Labour`s "non-dom proposal", says it all.

    Sadly, Labour leaders do not appear to have learned their lesson; with so many Tory "distractions", like "a recovery running out of steam", and warnings from the OECD about "public spending being slashed back too fast", the Labour leadership candidates prefer to concentrate on bickering about their pro-business credentials and their "southern middle-class aspiration and northern working-class solidarity(George Osborne is free at last - free to indulge his ideological zeal and his political cunning; The age of machine politics is over.But it thrives in the Labour party,05/06/15). They seem oblivious to the devastating damage done to the party`s election prospects by the last leadership campaign. How ironic, then, that the challenge to the nonsense about "compassionate conservatism" and "one-nation" Toryism is being led, not by them, but by Miliband, the ex-leader they are so keen to disparage (Miliband` questions Cameron`s one-nation stance,05/06/15) He, at least, realises that, with Osborne free to unleash his political vandalism on the welfare state, it is essential that Labour does not allow him to get away with it unscathed, particularly as the Tory propaganda machine is already preparing for 2020.

Labour leadership candidates

Steve Richards is only partly right when he says that the gullible Labour leadership candidates have fallen into a "trap" with their apologies "for their government being responsible for the global economic crash", and that Tory leaders would never resort to "saying sorry" for previous administrations` failings (Labour`s next leader should look to Cameron, not Blair,01/06/15) For a start, Tories never face such hostility from a media, 85% overtly pro-Conservative, but what Richards also fails to mention is that these would--be leaders of the Labour party are also "apologising" for ever having appeared to support Miliband`s election proposals. With the mansion tax being accepted by all as the "politics of envy", and the Blairite propaganda about failure to meet the demands of both the so-called "aspirational middle" and of business being seen as the real reasons for the defeat, we can expect yet more examples of candidates in Miliband-denial mode.

     At least Cooper has said that she "would keep Labour`s 50p top rate" which is something, though rather than follow Richards`s suggestion of copying Cameron, perhaps the candidates should, in this respect, be emulating Margaret Thatcher? (Stop obsessing over aspiration, Sadiq Khan tells Labour hopefuls,01/06/15). Under her leadership, the top rate of income tax, between 1979 and 1988, was kept at 60%!  We clearly need not only a candidate, who, as Richards says, refuses to apologise for the past, but who also has the bottle to say that there was little wrong with Miliband`s policies, and that business, with its unfair pay policies, its zero-hours contracts and propensity to pay as little tax as possible, will get support from Labour when it deserves it.

Compassionate conservatism? Oh please!

Why is Rafael Behr being so lenient in his criticism of the Tory government (Wanted: Tory moderates brave enough to halt their party`s lurch to the right,27/05/15)? Cutting £12bn out of welfare spending, "with a disproportionate impact on the low-paid and disabled", will not "look vindictive", it will be vindictive! This nonsense about "one-nation conservatism" is simply the product of the Tory propaganda machine, as is Osborne`s harping on about "northern powerhouses"; after five years of reducing grants to Labour-held cities and towns north of Watford, and developing plans for high-speed railways and another runway for London, both designed to increase the wealth of the capital and its hinterland, can anyone realistically expect "compassionate conservatism" to suddenly emerge, especially when the "hard right is calling the shots"?

    Just because Michael Gove last March, obviously in a panic over supposed impending election meltdown, called on fellow Conservatives to "stand as warriors of the dispossessed", doesn`t mean anyone will forget his own lack of "true compassion". Within weeks of becoming Education Secretary in 2010, for example, he curtailed the aspirations of thousands of would-be sixth form students with his ending of the Educational Maintenance Allowance.

     Tory confidence after the last election, with a cobbled-together coalition, led them to impose savage cuts whilst reducing taxes for the very rich; if, with a majority government, their "hubris is now through the roof", heaven help us after the "emergency" budget in July!

Labour candidates on wrong track

In a letter to the Guardian this week, Michael Meacher, the Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton, reminded readers of a few pertinent facts about what he called "Tory yarns":

Osborne promised in 2010 to eliminate the structural deficit by 2015, but it now stands at £92bn;

he reduced the £97.3bn deficit of 2013-14 by £7.1bn in 2014-15, but expects us to believe he will eliminate it completely by 2017-18, reducing it by £15bn this year, £36bn next year, then £27bn , then a further £17bn.

Since Darling`s reduction of the deficit, "Osborne`s austerity budgets have reduced the deficit by £26bn in three years".

 If he pushes through futher cuts, the economy, now only growing at 0.3%,will cease to grow at all.

  Shouldn`t facts like these be the ones being emphasised by the candidates for the leadership, rather than bickering between themselved about which one of them can meet the demands of both the "aspirational middle" and of business? The point is that Labour needs to be opposing the Tories constantly. They failed to challenge them back in 2010 and the result was that most voters believed the Tory propaganda about the economic crash being the result of Labour`s mismanagement. If they fail to challenge myths about the Tories` "long-term economic plan" now, blatant untruths about Labour`s policies will again become the key element underlying the Tories` attempts to win again in 2020. The more the Labour government`s overspending, despite the fact that it built schools and hospitals, is seen as an example of Labour`s incompetence by the candidates, the more it will be remembered by voters, especially with the full weight of the Tory party`s propaganda machine behind it. Imagine what the moderate idea, originally proposed by those lefty revolutionaries, the Lib Dems, of a "mansion tax" will become, after a few weeks of Tory spin! They won`t even have to think of a slogan, as Burnham and the others stress how it`s indicative of the "politics of envy". For goodness sakes, it`s merely a sensible extension of council tax, and would cost the owners of these homes, most of them in London, around £3-5,000 annually, an amount almost certainly exceeded by the increase every year in the house`s price! The candidates are providing the fodder for the Tory propaganda instead of exposing the Tory leadership as hypocrits, and standing up for a fair society.

 How many of the would-be leaders of the Labour party are focussing their message on the need to expose the Tories for what they are? Is there not an urgent need to challenge their nonsense about "compassionate" and "one-nation" Toryism? The latest report of the Office of National Statistics shows that at some point between 2010 and 2013, 19.3 million persons had an income below 60% of the national median! The party of "aspiration" for all, as Tories  now are ludicrously claiming? Within weeks of becoming Education Secretary in 2010, Michael Gove scrapped the Education Maintenance Allowance! How many thousands of young peoples` aspirations were ended at a stroke? Labour needs to challenge the Tory party`s hypocrisy now, before it is too late.

 Labour must never stop accepting that this country`s population believes in social justice; that means fairness for all, that the UK`s position of 28th out of 34 in the OECD`s equality league table is a disgrace, that tax avoidance costing up to £40bn annually needs more employees at HMRC, not 20,000 job cuts which the Tories have imposed.

  There is a real danger that, given the policies proposed by the candidates, Labour will lose yet more of its core support; it is the party of the "wealth creators" as long as it never forgets who the real creators of wealth are, the workers who currently enable many bosses to be renumerated to the tune of 150 times the pay of their average workers.

  With all respect to Michael Meacher, hopes for Labour`s future should not lie in his letters to the media, but at the moment he, at least, is showing what is needed. Shame the same cannot be said for the candidates!