Will Hutton said this yesterday in the Observer:
It is an incidental sentence, but it brought me up short. By 2018, general government consumption will be proportionally no larger than it was in 1948. So declared the Office for Budget Responsibility in its report accompanying the autumn statement. The work of three generations in building the sinews of a state that support systems of health, transport, education, environment, policing, science and the rest is to be summarily withdrawn over the next five years. It is a landmark moment in our national life.
Larry Elliott is on the same theme today:
The single most arresting statistic in last week's autumn statement was that by 2018-19, the squeeze on Whitehall departments means government will be smaller than at any time since at least 1948, when consistent data was first collected.
And don't for a minute think you've seen the impact of cuts as yet: they've hardly begun. As Larry points out:
Between April 2011 and March 2016, the IFS says that public service cuts will average 2.3% a year; from 2016 to 2019 they are scheduled to be 3.7%. Put another way, so far the coalition has cut spending on public services by 8%; by 2018-19 this will have become a cut of 20%.
So the cuts have hardly begun: and cuts they will be of a scale we can still, as yet, hardly imagine.
And despite this Labour has still not, as yet, built an alternative narrative. That's something I am in London talking about today.
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This is something the Government won’t dwell on when making cuts. I can’t think why!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/food-poverty-in-uk-has-reached-level-of-public-health-emergency-warn-experts-8981051.html
Yes the project to recreate the five “Giant Evils” in society: squalor, ignorance, want, idleness, and disease has only just started…
I first saw the return to 1948 flagged by Faisal Islam (or maybe Gary Gibbon) on C4 News last week, Richard. And yes, it is a truly chilling prospect as Hutton made clear yesterday (I’ve yet to read Larry’s piece).
But what I find must insightful is that it signals beyond doubt what some of us have suspected for a long time: modern day Tories – by which I mean an increasing number since 1979 – detest every single social and economic development that has benefited the ordinary working and middle class members of society in the UK that’s occurred since the end of the 2nd WW, and in fact, the interwar years too (e.g. social housing). They now have the opportunity to reverse every advance associated with social democracy – including one-nation Toryism – and return the mass of the people of the UK to the kind of economic and social circumstances of the 1900s-1920s, with the class and social relations that they have always believed should apply (witness Boris Johnson’s recent speech).
You say that you’re in London today helping Labour develop a narrative they can use – and believe in – through to the next election and beyond. Well, you can tell them from me that I hope they now have the ammunition to move away from the Osborne/Cameron/Clegg driven and dominated narrative of austerity. This has nothing whatsoever to do with that (as you, me and many who read this blog have always maintained). It is, quite simply, class war, however uncomfortable many people are with the use of that phrase.
You are spot on: this is class war
I have to be honest I don’t agree.
What the problem is now, to many corporates and not enough family controlled and run companies.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/06/lidl-expansion-modern-britain-supermarkets-jobs-low-pai?commentpage=1
Take this article, the companies aren’t looking after their workforce. In the old days, the family bosses did. Its not the tories who are the problem, its the Bankers down at Canary Wharf.
The latest government has done nothing different to the past 13 years of Labour, who didn’t do their job.
@ Richard and Ivan
It is indeed Class War, and I agree that this current Government of liars (if they’d told the truth, even about the NHS, in the 2010 General Election ,they’d not have received half the seats they did) really IS intent on un-stitching all the gains of at least the past 100 years.
But as you know, I’ve gone further.In another Blog I was criticised for describing their aim as the re-instatement of a neo-feudal society: no, my critic said, “It’s capitalism. Just call it for what it is. We’re just seeing a return to normal functioning – back to 19th century classical liberalism after the thorough smashing of all labour movements and anti-capitalist movements that presented an existential threat to capital.”
Well, there’s no doubt that, if that was all this shower could achieve, they’d be happy – but not content, because Thatcherism/Neo-Liberalism Mark 1 (i.e. 1979 to way beyond 1997) aimed to destroy all centres of working class power and solidarity, and even of consciousness (how readily people agreed that it was stupid to have the Government involved in the previously nationalized industries and services).
This “victory” allowed Thatcherism/Neo-Liberalism Mark 2 (2010 to date), to mop up any remaining centres of resistance (e.g. the virtual abolition of Legal Aid and the evisceration of the Employment Tribunal system), so as to be able to move on to the rest of the 99% standing in the way of their neo-feudal dream (Boris’s speech was that of a neo-feudal Baron, NOT a capitalist, because it was concerned with class power, NOT mere means of production and wealth creation).
The trouble is that the “poor dumb bastards” who “nourish” their brains via the “Daily Fail” and “The Hun” haven’t cottoned on that they are the next group in the Government’s sights – consider the threat to have a retirement age of 70!! Who will be the “skivers and scroungers” then?.
No, this bunch of villains really DO want to re-instate the pre-Victorian world of the early 19th century, and maybe even earlier, where class and status were the ONLY determinants of wealth and success – consider Boris’s speech once again.
Labour needs to stop pussy-footing around, nail its colours to the mast and ATTACK. They have NOTHING to lose, since if they don’t win in 2015, they might as well dissolve themselves, as we’ll be a One-Party State.
I read somewhere/someone on Facebook today pointing out the fact that not one government economic adviser has come from the small band who predicted the crash. I just hope that Labour is doing something different. Since EdM was chair of the Treasury Advisers after EdB he must surely know that the old band, e.g. Shriti Vadera, were disasters.
I fear the advice will come from the same sources
It’s corporate capture
and that’s just the bit I don’t understand about regulars to this blog – if you have truly understood that the State acts in the interests of Capital, why do you want more State?
It’s a serious question – do people here say the State is subject to Corporate capture because it raises easy cheers or because the really know it’s true? If they know it’s true do they ask for more state because they actually approve of the State acting for Capital or because they haven’t thought it through?
The scorpion doesn’t sting because it picked on you. Stinging is just what a scorpion does. If you want a garden full of scorpions you are gonna get stung more. That’s why I keep scorpions out of my garden. People who choose to keep a large scorpion collection and complain about getting stung really confuse me.
It doesn’t make sense when people know the state acts in the interests of Capital, ask for more State, then get shocked that the State acted in the interests of Capital. Again. It’s just what the State does.
I write a whole book on this
Please read The Courageous State
Yeah I read that.
The scorpion will still sting you. The state is designed at the superstructure level to support capital.
It is an enduring source of disappointment to me that the left has forgotten the basics.
Utter nonsense
A better outcome is possible
I looked up the percentage of GDP spent by government in 1948. It was about 38%. Much of that was defence spending then. It was about that figure in the mid-sixties, fractionally higher late 80’s -early 90s and during 1997-2003. It was actually according to the Guardian datalog 34.5 in 2000-01.
However, this isn’t the whole story. In the sixties, you could get a job if you wanted one, and it would be enough to live on. I don’t know but in Labour’s first years they paid down debt and this might affect the calculation?
What is clear is the direction of Tory thinking. Cameron at the Lord Mayor’s banquet spoke of his belief in ‘a small state’. I put on the Parliament channel to find Boris giving his Margaret Thatcher memorial lecture and delighting in how she had been unmoved by the 200 plus economists who had written an open letter to her in 1980. He added she was then ‘able to deliver supply side economics’.
Small state and supply side economics is, as we know, neo-liberalism. Their values and aims are well known. If you want to see such a society, look at the United States. We only hear parts of this ideology e.g. ‘increased competitiveness’, ‘there is no magic money tree.’ and ‘the government has no money of its own’. We don’t get the full story of what they intend such as the privatisation of much of the health service. Labour could be emphasizing an alternative philosophy, not trying to pretend they could deliver this but ‘more compassionately.’ Labour has to be bold, or as your book title says, ‘courageous’!
You ignore the fact that this does not relate to total spending – including pensions etc
It relates to discretionary spends
The source I used, quoted Total govt. spending which surely includes pensions?
As I understand Larry Elliot’s article, he is saying that the target is the same percentage of GDP as in 1948 but areas like pensions have grown tremendously since then, so to achieve that share of the GDP, other areas will have to be severely cut. Bad news for the ordinary citizen.
Total spend is not the same as controlled departmental spend
It is the latter that is being referred to I belueve by the OBR et al
I agree with most, if not all, of what has been said above. I would disagree, though, with Andrew’s use of the term ‘neo-feudal’, but only because it does not go far enough.
When viewed at an international level what becomes clear is that the neo-liberal agenda goes way beyond feudalism. International agreements such as TAFTA and TTIP would render future governments, both here and abroad, incapable of delivering worker’s rights, green energy, public health-care and much else that many of us regard as vital.
What they (the Neo-Liberal movement) have realised is that the only circumstances in which ‘democracy’ and ‘capitalism’ can happily coexist is in the conditions witnessed in ancient Greece. None of what is being done makes any sense, unless you start from the premise that their avowed intent from the start was the creation of a global slave-state, wherein the profits (both in terms of personal wealth and freedom) are enjoyed by an international elite only.
Of course we ‘ain’t seen nothing yet’. The cuts demanded by Osborne’s government are self-defeating, and will always necessitate more cuts. But that is the point, isn’t it?
If I recall correctly, since 2010, Osborne has promised to balance the books, successively, by 2013, 2014, 2015-16, and now 2018. If anyone wants to know when the job will really be done, look at modern Greece (or Spain, or Portugal).
Some weeks ago there was much talk, on Richard’s blog, of revolution in this country. It will come. But by then it will be too late. Why, does anyone imagine, the last budget saw a decrease in the funding for consensual policing and, at the same time, an increase in the funding for the surveillance services? Oh yes, of course, that nebulous old bogey-man, terrorism. (can anyone remind me are we at war with Eurasia or Eastasia?)
The Labour party MUST wake up if any of us is to stand a chance. They are that which stands between us and oblivion. There is an anger in society, a deep and unaddressed rage at what is being done to normal people in this country. You only have to scratch the surface, and it streams forth.
If you, Richard, are helping the Labour party tell them this. I could give you ten policies that would win the next election. Landslide. Simple as that. But first they need to learn to understand the people who would deliver that victory, and then show them that they have understood.
Foreward 5 years from now and they’ll be wondering why the riots keep recurring.
But they don’t -there’s a bizarre somnolence. We need to ask why – I’m inclined to agree with Jas as the narrative has changed from the class war paradigm. neo-liberalism relies on the loss of this paradigm. In my view the narrative is about crony capitalism versus wealth diffusion (as Mill thought capitalism should deliver). Using the class paradigm cannot work anymore, I would even say it is unhelpful.
In the sense there may be just two classes you are right
But I still think it useful
The problem is not somnolence, it is the lack of leadership. The divide and conquer narrative has worked well… there are still three classes, they simply don’t recognise themselves as such. I am working class, and proud to be so, but fewer and fewer people share my conviction. Who, after all, would wish to be associated with a social group continually portrayed as feckless, drunken and work-shy?
We are still controlled, by and large, by the same oligarchy that controlled us since the battle of Hastings (give or take a few arrivistes).
Riots?
Returning troops are receiving training in control of public disturbance. They´re armed.
That training is routine for police. They´re armed.
Rioters are not armed. In a few years water cannon and plastic baton rounds will be ready for deployment again. The lethal option has always been present.
The lower classes riot. The lower classes do not matter. They can be dispensed with. Look at the rise in the prison population due to the ¨disturbances¨ of a few years ago.
You are not aware of the planning going-on NOW in expectation of the coming disturbances.
If labour lose in 2015, a returning conservative government will destroy their funding supply almost overnight.
Oh: ¨troops will never fire on the people¨…………..yep, another bulls### statement, seen in the press a while ago, troops will fire on who they´re ordered to fire upon.
Planning.
1% style planning.
And hence the removal of the strong regional identities of regiments…