Room at the top

The empty rhetoric that was David Cameron’s speech to the Tory Party conference speaks volumes about the dire state of the governing political class in Britain (and elsewhere) just as the global economy heads for the cliff.

Cameron and other Tories like chancellor George Osborne can criticise the inaction by eurozone governments over the sovereign debt crisis. But their own “leadership” amounts to no more than a call for the British to show some wartime spirit and create a “can-do” society.

As it has been noted elsewhere, patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Cameron’s bugle call to arms was delivered by a former (?) PR man in charge of a cobbled-together, weak government caught in the headlights of an historic crisis.

His claim to be a one-nation Tory is, of course, a sick joke. The term originates with Disraeli in the 19th century when British imperialism ruled large parts of the world and could afford to dispense some crumbs from the top table. It was also a feature of the post-1945 Tory governments which accepted the creation of a welfare state.

Since corporate-driven globalisation accelerated from the early 1980s, no government – neither Tory nor New Labour – has practised “one-nation” politics. Instead, politicians have extolled the market, deregulated the banks, rolled back the state, cut welfare, targeted the poor, privatised key services and utilities and introduced competition in health and education.

The budget crisis that propelled the ConDem coalition into existence has been offloaded onto public sector workers and service users. Tens of thousands have lost their jobs and are now fighting to keep their pension rights.

Standards of living have fallen dramatically as real purchasing power has slumped. Household spending on essentials has fallen to its lowest level in almost a decade as they struggle to meet fuel bills and the rising cost of food. A survey has found that another 11.5 million homes, around half, were in danger of sinking into debt along with large chunks of the population who are already.

Of course, you wouldn’t expect the Tories to do anything other than what they are doing. But the nervousness they exhibit over the potential impact of a eurozone crisis on the enfeebled British economy raises question as to whether they could cope in a full-blown crisis. Slick, motivational speeches without content that are Cameron’s forté will not cut the mustard.

The inability of the ruling classes to take measures to deal with the economic and financial crisis and restore the growth that capitalism depends on, is significant. It is apparent throughout Europe and in the United States and is due to a number of factors.

First, the forces at play – financial markets, global banks etc – are to a large extent immune to the actions of governments and agencies. For example, the sums involved in currency speculation each day are so vast that central banks, even working in concert, cannot buck the market.

Secondly, the crisis has gathered a momentum of its own. Once started, the “deleveraging” process that involves debt reduction and writing down of assets is impossible to stop. That is why the global economy is contracting. The bark of the British bulldog is lost in the noise of the crash.

Unfortunately, the crisis of leadership at the top does not equate automatically to a favourable outcome. The ruling class has other options, including national governments and states of emergency. In Greece, where society is close to break down as a result of spending cuts, the military is making threatening noises.

Nevertheless, the ruling elites have patently lost their confidence and popular support. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the mass of the people to put them out of power and begin to revolutionise society in a progressive way. That can’t and won’t happen spontaneously. To succeed, we will need to create a leadership of our own.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Bigger state no answer to 'Big Society'

David Cameron’s crusade for the “Big Society” should compel its opponents to question and reconsider the role of the state in our corporate-owned, profit-driven society. Unfortunately, it has done nothing of the kind.

Though difficult to pin down, the BS project could be understood as Cameron’s libertarian response to a top-down, bureaucratic state that vast swathes of the population despise and want nothing to do with.

Perhaps Tory prime minister Cameron understands that should this attitude to the state continue unchallenged, there’ll come a time when it loses remaining legitimacy. And that point, anything could happen, as events in Egypt have shown.

So the Coalition’s plan is to shed the state’s responsibility for things like forests and involve the unelected, unaccountable “third sector” of charities and the like to bid for services currently provided by local councils. Other community projects will be able to access funds from a BS bank and the rest of us simply have to volunteer.

Labour and trade union leaders like Brendan Barber have simplistic responses which reveal much about their fondness for the capitalist state and litle else. Labour crudely says the BS is a “cover for the cuts”, which is a bit rich for a party implementing the government’s draconian policies at local level without any resistance.

Just for the record, the previous New Labour government contracted out huge chunks of formerly state-provided services at vast cost to the taxpayer. Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes became a licence to print money for companies building hospitals and schools while Londoners are weighed down by the cost of rescuing a failed Tube modernisation contract.

Now it turns out that 25 for-profit Independent Sector Treatment Centres created by New Labour to do non-essential operations on behalf of the NHS have been overpaid by up to £250 million in the five years to 2010. This is because they were paid a fixed sum, even though the centres carried out fewer operations than the contract specified.

So the Coalition is deepening a trend set by Blair and Brown, which makes the claims that Cameron wants a “smaller state” more than slightly ludicrous. Barber, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, who bizarrely says the BS will create a failed state like Somalia, favours the Scandinavian approach, consisting of a massive (and oppressive) state apparatus and a welfare system paid for by taxing ordinary workers at around 50% of their incomes. (If he cared to check he would find Scandinavia is moving towards market states).

But we should we allow ourselves to be placed in a position of defending the role of the existing state (Scandinavian or otherwise) in opposition to the BS project? The present state reinforces the capitalist status quo, with its gross inequality and exploitation. It sanctifies profit by legally obliging corporations to put shareholder interests first. The “welfare state” in turn legitimises the notion of the deserving poor, forever dependent on the charity of the state.

Other parts of the state apparatus supply judicial and police powers to control the population lest they resent what passes for democracy, fitting up activists where necessary as they did over the Nottinghamshire power station action. So who’s for a bigger version of this wretched state? Only Ed Miliband and Barber because access to the state gives them privilege and limited power without ever having to challenge how things are.

We are obliged to develop concrete ideas for an altogether different system of ruling, one that does not sit above society while operating on behalf of the powerful and the rich. What is wanted as an alternative to the BS and Labour’s love of the state is a thoroughly democratic system based on a network of People’s Assemblies as a transition to real self-rule. At the heart of such a democratic system would be co-ownership and control of all society’s resources, including land, banks and corporations. Then we could truly say that society was much, much bigger than it is today.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Political crisis gathers momentum

The first thing to say about the divisions within New Labour over Gordon Brown’s leadership is that there are no principles involved on any side of the civil war that rumbles on at Westminster. All the plotters without exception are concerned about one thing above all other considerations – their political futures.

Principles and New Labour are, in fact, a contradiction in terms. It came into being precisely to ditch even the mildest of social democratic principles and ambitions about reforming aspects of capitalism that weighed down most heavily on the working population.

Last week’s attempted coup by former cabinet ministers Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt reinforced that understanding. Neither was putting forward an alternative programme or change of direction. They simply wanted Brown replaced by an unnamed candidate. Their plot descended into outright farce as the rest of the cabinet bottled out.

What’s at stake for the plotters is not the outcome of the election – most cabinet members apparently consider it lost (with some even hoping for that result if Brown stays) – but the position after polling day. Those like the Milibands who aspire to leadership want to prevent a rout which they believe Brown is leading them towards yet lack the courage to remove the incumbent.

Since 1997 under both Blair and Brown, New Labour has unashamedly aspired to one thing – to become the political representatives of the economic and financial masters of the universe. And to a large extent succeeded – until the second half of 2008 revealed what a hollow state of affairs the British economy was.

Confidence in New Labour has plummeted ever since the global financial meltdown hit British banks for six. With the government forced into record amounts of borrowing to cover the cost of bailing out the banks, establishment circles fear that the political plotting now dominating government affairs is not exactly what’s required right now of the British state.

The Tory Daily Telegraph, for example, accused Hoon et al of “working flat-out to position themselves for an autumn civil war”, adding: “In other words, the Cabinet is devoting itself to vigorous (but laughably amateurish) plotting at a time when the country is facing terrifying levels of debt, and the Government has no coherent plan to reduce them.” It reminded readers that even the Treasury select committee had poured scorn on the forecasts in chancellor Alistair Darling's pre-Budget report.

With the Telegraph in touch with ruling class circles, this ringing of the alarm bells is serious stuff. It is not as if the Tories under David Cameron are in a better position. Even the supportive Telegraph admits that the opposition has no coherent set of policies either, pointing to the fiasco of a “manifesto launch” at the beginning of last week when tax policies on married couples were out one minute and back in the next.

The paper is right to suggest that Cameron does not strike voters as the “irresistible choice for prime minister, merely the obvious one” and is worried that he could win the election by default against a weakened Brown. “If that happens, Britain could pay a heavy price after the election,” the editorial concludes.

The implications should be stated more explicitly. Britain is facing state bankruptcy and the spending cuts required to balance the books to satisfy those who finance government borrowing are so enormous that only a government with enormous authority could carry them through. That is highly unlikely to be the outcome of the forthcoming general election. An historic political crisis is building in Britain and the shenanigans inside New Labour are just a pale reflection of what’s to come.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

A time for boldness

The apparent recovery of Tory fortunes as New Labour’s poll popularity plunges offers much food for thought. Support for New Labour is now at its lowest level since polling began in 1943. There are those who, fixated on the mood-swings expressed through parliamentary politics, see these trends as indicators of a general shift to the right.

But are the rising fortunes of Cameron really an indicator of such a mass enthusiasm for the right? Well, actually, no. They have a lot more to do with disaffection with New Labour than a born-again faith in the Conservative Party. Cameron’s image as the nice guy of Tory politics is about as wafer thin as that of Blair’s persona as a man of the people back in the 1990s, when he was dubbed Bambi. The fact is that the Conservative Party’s new image (and by implication, its popularity) is no deeper than the advertising for breakfast cereals.

Media experts like Matt Beaumont, quoted in The Sunday Telegraph’s analysis of the rebranding of Tory politics, are acutely aware of this: “The huge Conservative lead in the opinion polls suggests they are doing something right, though I suspect this has more to do with public ennui after a decade of Labour, combined with distaste for Gordon Brown.”

The “power-couple” behind Cameron’s throne are Steve Hilton and Rachel Whetstone, advertising experts whose relationship to Cameron is comparable to that of Peter Mandelson’s and Alistair Campbell’s with Blair and New Labour. Media mogul Maurice Saatchi, who helped Margaret Thatcher come to power, sees Hilton as his heir. He became Cameron’s director of strategy in December 2005 at a salary of between £180,000 to £276,000.

Hilton’s political philosophy (if it can be graced with that name) is of a socially responsible capitalism. His book, Good Business, ends with a paraphrase of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto: “Capitalists and anti-capitalists of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your guilt”. The new Tory outlook – which is essentially a freshened-up version of New Labour's - crafted by Hilton focuses especially on a green agenda, and indeed Conservatives have taken this seriously. Boris Johnson claims to oppose the third runway at Heathrow and there were some leading Tories on Saturday’s march against airport expansion. Zac Goldsmith, the archetypal Tory son of billionaire James Goldsmith, and editor of The Ecologist magazine, was selected as the party’s candidate for Richmond Park in March 2007.

But Hilton and others’ notion of a socially-responsible form of globalised capital is about as realistic as the Camerons leaving their Notting Hill home and moving into a council flat. And of course, these cuddly new Tories have no solutions to the problems, which their media gurus are able to identify, even while they pander to the many anxieties of the middle classes and the sections of the working class abandoned by New Labour

Just like Brown, Cameron and his ilk stand helpless in the face of the massive economic crisis now ripping through the advanced capitalist countries. The near-collapse of Bradford & Bingley today is only a taste of what is to come. A quarter of a million UK homeowners are already in negative equity with a million forecast by the end of 2009. Rising mortgage, fuel and food costs are eating into incomes and fuelling the economic recession as retail sales slow.

We are witnessing an historic disenfranchisement of wide swathes of the population who cannot relate either to the new smooth Tory Party or to Brown’s New Labour and who feel they have no power to influence events. This is accompanied by a deepening social and economic malaise for which there are no conventional answers. Behind Cameron’s superficial Tories stand sinister forces within the state who are preparing to intervene if and when things get out of hand. Seeking solutions solely at the level of parliamentary politics and parties is a futile and doomed activity. The circumstances call, above all, for boldness in advocating a revolutionary, new direction for society to sweep both New Labour and the Tories aside.

Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary