As the FT reports this morning:
“Two parliaments of pain” is the phrase used by the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies to describe what is in store for Britain in the years ahead.
With the next government, of whichever stripe, needing to cut nearly £37bn a year from public expenditure by 2014 just to halve the deficit, can the welfare state survive?
“Not as we know it,” says Eamonn Butler, director of the rightwing think-tank, the Adam Smith Institute.
Andew Haldenby, director of Reform, another right-of-centre think-tank, agrees the fiscal deficit will force a reappraisal of the relationship between citizen and state. “The idea that the state can do everything, or even as much as it is doing, is just not tenable,” he says.
The FT’s glee is apparent, as it is in another article when it says:
Labour has added new welfare entitlements costing more than £8bn a year since 1997, the equivalent of 2p on the basic rate of income tax, according to Financial Times research.
Winter fuel allowances, free bus passes for the elderly and Sure Start make up a lot of that — services massively appreciated by those who have them.
But you can almost sense the excitement in Reform and the ASI at the idea of rolling back the state.
The FT does provide some balance:
Some believe the problem is overstated. Julian Le Grand, professor of social policy at the London School of Economics, says: “I am not convinced about the need for massive spending cuts. As soon as economic growth resumes, a lot of the red ink will disappear. I suspect both the political and the economic reality is that after the election, somehow the really big cuts won’t happen.”
Mr Butler sees this as “Micawberish — just hoping that something will turn up”.
No it’s not. The FT notes that research undertaken for the 2020 Public Services Trust shows the public are deeply unwilling to contemplate big changes to the boundaries of the welfare state. I have no doubt that the Tories will try to do just that if they can, alongside their plan to dismantle democracy itself, if they get the chance. But the reality is that whatever the bankers and economist form the Right say, who currently completely dominate this debate, society will not tolerate this. The backlash will be almighty when anyone tries to introduce these cuts. They just will no0t happen. People will not, in this country, at this time of massive national prosperity for most (and don’t deny it — as a country we are prosperous) see the safety nets that have allowed that prosperity to be created be dismantled by a minority for the benefit of fewer still.
There will be resort to tax reform. I guarantee it.
And there will be dramatic social change. I can’t predict precisely what yet. It would be foolish to say I could. But it is perfectly obvious that retrenchment to the ludicrous ideas of Victorian style philanthropy — the Tory response — makes no sense at all, and equally it makes no sense to presume the status quo will be maintained when that was built on the basis of unsustainable neo-liberal economics.
What we will develop will be a new social paradigm. An aging population. Unsustainable resource use. Oil being priced out of the market. And much more will guarantee it.
And we won’t go backwards.
Of that I am also sure. People will not tolerate it.
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Not sure about this Richard. Looks like Marina Hyde at that famously neo-con publication The Guardian is having doubts about your claims that “people will not tolerate it”:
“What a testament to the media-industrial complex that one day after the Institute of Fiscal Studies report warning of the most devastating cuts since the second world war, it should discover an even bigger story. When we are a nation in rags, with a skeleton NHS feeding powdered egg to the patients who somehow survive the 10-year waiting lists, and our terminally unemployed children ask us: “Did the news media just clear the schedules when they found about the IFS report?”, we will be able to say: “No, but they did the next day when the prime minster was overheard slagging off a woman from Rochdale. Now sling another chair leg on the fire and shut up.””
@mad foetus
Seems to me Marina (who I disclose I know) is entirely agreeing
What she’s saying is “Why didn’t the press jump up and down”
And the answer is, of course, that most of them want the welfare state cut back
I’m not sure but I think we can agree that the debate on the economy has been virtally non-existant this election. Everyone goes on about 1992, and how Labour could spring a surprise on polling day and/or how 1992 was a good election to lose. I think you could also argue that the legacy of 1992 was John Smith’s budget, which has scared off any party from being at all candid this election.
And as for tonight, it will be more of the same: Gordo trying to say he will carry on spending on everything while cutting the deficit by means unexplained, Cameron going on about the jobs tax, Clegg saying that they have explained more than the other parties “but is there more to do – of course there is”.
But if your contention is that this is a “time of massive national prosperity for most”, I’m not sure it feels like that to the average person on an average wage. Perhaps their expectations are unreasonable.
In fact, I’d go further. I think most young people (anyone under 30) have either been educationally deprived, is very rich, or else has or is worried about student debt. They see no prospect of owning their own home or of saving enough to have a decent retirement. I don’t think the objection is to the “size of the state” but the fact that people do not feel that they are realistically able to achieve long term goals such as a property of their own and a decent retirement income. And the solution is not simply building millions of new houses: Britain needs to cherish its green spaces.
I agreefully that we are on the point of a new social paradigm. It is just a shame that none of the political leaders are able to create a vision of what that paradigm could be. All this nonsense about a “big society” and a “future fair fo all” is just marketing speak. And I think the media has a big part to play in this: when any mildly controversial comment is endlessly reported as a “gaffe” we end up with politicians who spend all day saying nothing over than vague, aspirational nonsense when what we need is vision and courage.
@mad foetus
Much I agree with
But don;t deny we are prosperous
we have never been more so
But the prosperity is undermined by the sense of ill ease you note and the unfair distribution of it – destroying the benefit it creates by feeding that ill ease. This in turn fuels more resentment at fairer distribution
“But you can almost sense the excitement in Reform and the ASI at the idea of rolling back the state.” Doesn’t it make you feel sick when you see these statements from people whose political and economic philosophy has been central to bringing about the economic crisis we now have?
Apparently right wingers aren’t going to admit responsibility for this mess, they want to use it as an excuse to pursue the very people who are victims of their own wretched ideas!
These people are morally and intellectually bankrupt.
@mad foetus
Much I agree with
But don’t deny we are prosperous
we have never been more so
But the prosperity is undermined by the sense of ill ease you note and the unfair distribution of it – destroying the benefit it creates by feeding that ill ease. This in turn fuels more resentment at fairer distribution
Good post, mf.
There is nothing to strive for as a result.
There is no allegiance to the corp one works for, a distrust for the country you live in, and therefore a desire to believe that one’s indivual ‘achievements’ means more than the world around them.
There is no context to life.
The ‘State’ is a crude representation of ‘Society’, but without it to kickstart ‘Community’ the ‘Society’ cannot evolve.
We need structure as social animals. Believing in ‘Individuality’ as a way forwards will always fail. It has proven thus.
Small ‘State’ can only be achievable with co-operative ‘Societies’.
We’re miles off. We were closer decades ago. The politics of individualism killed the roots.
Avoid Tory. (from my favourite piece of grafitti “Avoid Cider” – on abridge somewhere).