Owen Jones has written what he calls a a nine point Agenda for Hope in the Independent this morning on which he hopes those concerned for greater social justice can agree.
Agreement is often hard to secure, but I think this worth sharing, not least as I recognise a lot of it and have significant agreement with much of it:
1) A statutory living wage, with immediate effect, for large businesses and the public sector, and phased in for small and medium businesses over a five-year Parliament. This would save billions spent on social security each year by reducing subsidies to low-paying bosses, as well as stimulating the economy, creating jobs because of higher demand, stopping pay being undercut by cheap labour, and tackling the scandal of most of Britain's poor being in work. An honest days' pay for an honest days' work would finally be enshrined in law.
2) Resolve the housing crisis by regulating private rents and lifting the cap on councils to let them build hundreds of thousands of houses and in doing so, create jobs, bring in rent revenues, stimulate the economy and reduce taxpayers' subsidies to landlords.
3) A 50 per cent tax on all earnings above £100,000 — or the top 2 per cent of earners — to fund an emergency jobs and training programme for young unemployed people, including the creation of a national scheme to insulate homes and businesses across Britain, dragging millions of out of fuel poverty, reducing fuel bills, and helping to save the environment. All such jobs will be paid the living wage, supported with paid apprenticeships rather than unpaid “workfare” schemes.
4) An all-out campaign to recoup the £25bn worth of tax avoided by the wealthiest each year, clamping down on all possible loopholes with a General Anti-Tax Avoidance Bill, as well as booting out the accountancy firms from the Treasury who help draw up tax laws, then advise their clients on how to get around them.
5) Publicly run, accountable local banks. Transform the bailed-out banks into regional public investment banks, with elected taxpayers' representatives sitting on boards to ensure they are accountable. Give the banks a specific mandate to help small businesses and encourage the green industries of the future in each region.
6) An industrial strategy to create the “green jobs” and renewable energy industries of the future. It would be focused on regions that have been damaged by deindustrialisation, creating secure, skilled, dignified jobs, and reducing unemployment and social security spending, based on an active state that intervenes in the economy, learning from the experiences of countries such as Germany.
7) Publicly owned rail and energy, democratically run by consumers and workers. As each rail franchise expires, bring them back into the public sector, with elected representatives of passengers and workers to sit on the new management boards, ending our fragmented, inefficient, expensive railway system. Build a publicly owned energy network by swapping shares in privately run companies for bonds, and again put elected consumers' representatives on the boards. Democratic public ownership instead of privatisation could be a model for public services like the NHS, too.
8) A new charter of workers' rights fit for the 21st century. End all zero-hour contracts, with new provisions for flexible working to help workers. Allow all unions access to workplaces so they can organise, levelling the playing field and giving them a chance to improve wages and living standards. Increase turnout and improve democratic legitimacy in union ballots by allowing workplace-based balloting and online voting.
9) A universal childcare system that would pay for itself as parents who are unable to work are able to do so, and which would take on the inequalities between richer and poorer children that begin from day one.
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It’s doesn’t appear to be based on your work, it is. He’s says so in the introduction.
I think you mean ‘does’?
I have now noticed this
I did not before
This all sounds quite sensible to me. One could quibble about individual items, or argue that it is too ambitious – but manifestos are supposed to be ambitious and the general direction seems sound.
We need to construct an economy that employs more people for decent middle-class wages and that actually makes high-quality products. This kind of “Green New Deal” would go a long way towards doing that.
Point 10) Get the land back from the descendants of those who stole it by introducing a Land Value Tax, forcing it onto the open market.
Thank you, Bill. As you may have seen, I have already pointed this out to Owen on Facebook.
Absolutely -Labour should be reading Silvio Gesell!
Me too I suppose, I still haven’t read up on LVT yet so I only have a general idea. I’ve got George’s book itself here, in my growing pile 🙁
Yes Bill – ‘George’s’ book is on my shelf and I read about half of it some time back – it is very prolix in a 19th century way with labyrinthine sentence structure – I came across Gesell via a biography of Ezra Pound (!) and need to read the original myself. When you look at how many radical thinkers were around on economic issues and all we can come up with today is a variation of the ‘fallacy of composition’ argument -it’s sad. I imagine Balls hasn’t heard of Gesell -what did the man (Ball’s) do at Oxford other than date that BBC Flanders woman?
Gesell is very interesting. A contemporary of both George and Keynes, he ‘got’ both land and money.
Thanks, Bill. I added LVT to my reading list some months ago to learn more, I’ve not finished yet. It is a fundamental issue.
Lots of LVT explained on labour Land Campaign- this site’s contributor Carol Wilcox is secretary.
See: http://www.labourland.org/about_us/officers.php
Scottish greens are putting it forward powerfully
http://www.andywightman.com/docs/LVTREPORT.pdf
I have read this list, and can find little wrong with it, apart from the usual error of thinking that taxes or borrowing fund government spending. Literally outstanding, compared to the tiny steps to the left nervously mumbled by the Labour party, or even the Greens. Good on him.
The truth of his words, and their effect on the vile stream of neo-liberal propaganda spewed out by the elites and their lick-spittles, can be seen by the vitriolic schoolboy-swearing responses of his opponents in the blogosphere.
Several commenters (commentators?)on the Independent website have correctly pointed out that much of what Owen Jones says has been Green Party policy for some time. I suspect that he harbours a fantasy that Labour will enact this programme. They won’t.
I came to the realisation some time ago that Labour isn’t going through a phase. It is not now, nor will it probably ever be, the party of the people. I suspect there are a lot of people like me, party members and voters, who have clung on since the Blair years in the misguided hope that the Party would somehow see the error of it’s ways. I think that dream is definitively over and done with. There’s no such thing as a Neo-Liberal Labour Party, it’s an oxymoron.
I wonder how long it will be before some of the wonderful people on the left recognise that and start voting with their feet…
Green Party entrance this way, Ladies, Gentlemen and Honourable Members.
I think his point is of vast importance that Labour should be educating the public about the ‘hardworking’ subsidising the last thirty years of housing bubble/buy-to-let scams-instead they have allowed them to re-channel it creating enmity and division. Why, Why, Why are Labour so consummately useless!
The problem Balls has,harking back to that for a moment, is he’s not a Labour Chancellor but he has to appear like one. Miliband has similar problems. They’re not useless, but they’re not Labour either.
A hugely socialist agenda. I won’t quibble with individual points (though am happy to if people want to discuss them), other than to say that these things have either been tried before with disastrous results. Just look at, on a sliding scale, France, Argentina and Venezuala – let alone all the historical examples.
Why is it that Owen Jones seems unable to learn from argument, example or history?
Socialist?
Get real
It’s what got the US through and out if the 30s
This agenda for change is certainly not hugely socialist. Indeed it retains capitalism as its productive core. It is more radically redistributive than economic policy has been for a generation or more. It also begins to face up to the enormous environmental challenges that confront us. If pro-capitalists won’t accept this modest agenda for change, then change will be forced upon them. And not, I hope, as a result of violent insurrection, but the implosion of their beloved but flawed system and a planet that simply can’t sustain it any longer. There’s still hope we’ll swerve before we drive off the edge of the cliff.
“A hugely socialist agenda. I won’t quibble with individual points (though am happy to if people want to discuss them), other than to say that these things have either been tried before with disastrous results. Just look at, on a sliding scale, France, Argentina and Venezuala”
You’re at it again! With the exception of France, both Argentina and Venezuela are doing quite well. Both certainly have issues with inflation, particularly Venezuela, but both are actually strong economies.
Who has done well in the past with an agenda to tax the better off and raise spending?
The UK
France
Germany
USA
China
Norway
Spain
As for today, there is Brazil, the already mentioned China, and many of the South American countries are all doing well through spending and investment too.
Let’s not forget that the economy of South Korea, as Ha Joon Chang points out, was almost completely created by Government ‘interference’ in the economy…
Interesting to see the confusion within the hysteria surrounding Labour’s promise to bring back the 50% rate.
One lot tell us that it runs the risk of snuffing out the “recovery”, because of its deleterious effects = pots of money being drawn out of the economy. Set against that, Digby Jones tells us it’s pointless because it won’t work, because it won’t raise much = the exact opposite. And William Hague tells us it sends out the wrong signal about the British economy and represents the old Labour refrain of “tax and spend”.
They haven’t agreed on their narrative yet, which is exactly why this “9 point Agenda” (SHOULD be 10 point – I agree with Bill Kruse – allowing the Norman invaders a millennium of grace strikes me as a bit excessive!) needs to be supported, pushed, promoted, BEFORE the Tories settle on their narrative.
Most of all waved under the noses of Ed “two steps forward, and three steps back” Balls, and the Labour Party’s NEC, especially the point about how even Tories support the return of some major industries to local democratic control – Ed M needs to know that this is no longer being “Red”, but being in tune with the majority’s wishes.
They need to outface the forces which are seeking to take us back to 1940, or probably 1840!! – see http://worldobserveronline.com/2014/01/22/uk-govt-hid-1-million-jobless-todays-unemployment-figures/, especially the final paragraph which reads:
“If the Coalition stay in power or their spending plans are continued (as Labour has all but pledged) to 2018 — it will have taken them just eight years to roll back the UK welfare state sixty years. It is long overdue that compassionate citizens presented a credible and committed resistance. Not only to this renegade government, but an entire political and economic system that has enabled corporations to buy the parliamentary system, neuter any diversity of political voices, and dismantle the promise of a fair chance for all.”
I will vote for the Party that published this in their manifesto. Over the last 44 years I have only voted for one Party, in the past 10 years I have had a real problem in deciding how to effectively use my vote and have decided not to vote for Labour if it continues with a neoliberal agenda. ‘Green’ sounds good but will likely be a wasted vote in the short term. This general election will be the break point for me.
Point 8) will include equal rights for categories where inequality and bias exist. I would like to highlight the urgent need for improved employability for citizens with mental health issues.
Mental health treatment in the NHS is substandard and too slow to obtain appropriate help to be effective. There are large numbers of able citizens stranded due to episodical illness and too little workplace flexibility [and awareness/legislative structure] of their needs. Mental health problems does not equal ‘unfit to work’. Neoliberal policy has sufficient manpower capacity to waste vast swathes of the population in idleness.
Well put Andrew -in 1943 -the Tories voted, en masse, against the Beveridge report -they are trying to accomplish that now! Sadly, the mendacity and cruelty seems to be the flavour of this era.
Great stuff from Owen. I think all the ideas on here would find a wide spectrum of acceptance from Compass on the soft left, through the Green Party, all the way to Left Unity and the hard left groups and there is also quite a lot that would attract apolitical and more centrist people too. The main thing we need is an electoral vehicle to fight – and win – an election on this platform. Despite the best efforts of Owen and many other Labour party activists, it looks unlikely that the Labour party will deliver more than a tiny proportion of this plan if it wins in 2015. The Green Party would deliver at least the bulk of it, but is only at 3% in the opinion polls.
So – what do to in practical terms?
I wish I knew the answer Howard
I suspect Caroline Lucas would say it is vote Green
Without PR a green vote will be wasted in most cases – I’d like to vote green but will be obliged to vote tactically to lessen the Tory vote which will mean Lib Dem(!)
What indeed, Simon? After thirty years of voting Labour, albeit at times through gritted teeth, I joined the Green Party last year. I suspect Attlee would do the same, were he alive today.
Yet I am also a pragmatist who sees no hope for this (or any) nation under the Neo-liberal agenda (except of course the Global Nation of Wealth). I would vote tactically for the Labour Party, were they to commit to an agenda like this.
Current signs from them however give me no reason to believe that they will. I have the strong suspicion that Messrs Miliband, Balls et al are relying on disaffected Labour voters to return to the fold come election day. But if they are offering nothing more than reworded Osbornomics, why would we. I would rather use my vote for something I believe in than prop up a Labour party who offer nothing better than Cameron and his cronies.
Most of those who are on the receiving end of this Government’s policies will simply be left cold by Labour and stay at home in May 2015.
Perhaps the coming collapse in the Labour party vote will shake them up enough to remember who and what they are supposed to be. I worry that that will simply be too late though.
Maybe MPs like Austin Mithcell will come to the same decision and quit Labour for the Greens, along with MPs like Carswell and Baker from the Conservatives. I did say a new anti-Neolberal party would eventually arise, perhaps the seeds for it are being sown now.
we could conceivably see an alliance of anti-neo libs from all quarters running on an anti-cronyist/distributist ticket. Like martin, I feel the neo-lib capture of international finance will create fear of change and a strengthening of the TINA effect – which nation can challenge the international banking system? perhaps all we can hope for is a two tier system where local banks run alongside the rehypothecating money launderers!
The only wasted vote is a vote for a party you don’t believe in. If you support the generality of Green Party policy then join it.
You ask “what to do in practical terms?” If there is an active Green Party where you live then you could help them. Just delivering leaflets in your street can make a difference. It can also confer unexpected benefits: you get to meet people you didn’t already know. You discover parts of the locality of which you had been unaware.
“1) A statutory living wage, with immediate effect, for large businesses and the public sector, and phased in for small and medium businesses over a five-year Parliament.”
I wonder if the author could state how much would that be and what about the differentials? Can’t see the TUs going for a ‘living wage’, if the skilled members of the TU aren’t going to get an uplift too. If the chap at the bottom doing the unskilled work gets a huge pay rise, then those in the middle and top are going to want one too – after all they’ve gone out and got skills etc.
Plus what about our competitors who don’t want to pay UK pay levels? How would the author protect UK jobs?
“An all-out campaign to recoup the £25bn worth of tax avoided by the wealthiest each year, clamping down on all possible loopholes with a General Anti-Tax Avoidance Bill, as well as booting out the accountancy firms from the Treasury who help draw up tax laws, then advise their clients on how to get around them.”
Great idea, but what about the EU – will they agree? What happens if they don’t?
It is EU policy to tackle thus issue
It is also EU policy to allow the free movement of capital within the EU, which is what causes many of the totally legitimate and often totally reasonable tax avoidance measures that you so despise….
😉
The EU is also suggesting rules to tackle that
So they are going to unwind the fundamental ethos of the EU?
Did you not read what I said?
This is EU policy
Mr. M., does that mean tax harmonisation? The same tax rates for everything throughout the entire EU so there are no benefits to be gained from tax planning?
Has anyone told HMG and the Irish govt. that assorted schemes to allow companies to pay less tax will all have to go? What about family trusts, will they get the chop too – can’t see the Chair of the PAC nor Ol’ Cast Iron going with that one.
No, it doesn’t and you know that
I was pleased to see the demand for an enforceable living wage. As well as large businesses and the public sector this should immediately cover outsourced and privatised sectors, and also all employment businesses and gangmasters.