Zack Polanski issued a Christmas message yesterday that demanded the country solve the problem of small boats crossing the English Channel.
As he pointed out, quite fairly, France is not a safe place for those refugees seeking asylum in the UK. It is deliberately inhospitable, a circumstance that we in the UK help to fund. In addition, to have a chance of seeking asylum in this country, which is a person's legal right, we require desperate people to immerse themselves in the bitter cold of the winter sea and take the risk of drowning. It is hard to think of a clearer way for this country to display its hostility to those people that politicians seek to describe as the “other”. That this then spills over into broader hostility towards those believed to be “foreign” within our population, however and whenever they arrived here, and however much they may have contributed to this country, is unsurprising and, undoubtedly, entirely deliberate.
I also noted the Pope's Christmas message, reported in the Guardian yesterday, in which he said:
Pope Leo has told Christians that the Christmas story should remind them of their duty to help the poor and strangers.
In his Christmas Eve sermon, the pope said the story of Jesus being born in a stable because there was no room at an inn showed followers that refusing to help those in need was tantamount to rejecting God himself.
Leo, who has made care for immigrants and the poor key themes of his early papacy, said Jesus' birth showed God's presence in every person as he led the world's 1.4 billion Catholics into Christmas at a mass in St Peter's Basilica.
It would be easy to think that this was aimed at Nigel Farage and Reform, but frankly, the target was just as much Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch, and their predecessors as leaders of their respective parties, with the exception of Jeremy Corbyn. All of them have rejected the message of Christmas in this way.
Zack Polanski's message was that we have to do something different. I am not entirely sure what he has in mind, because that was not laid out, and as one Green Party activist put it to me yesterday afternoon, that might itself be a mistake. I disagree. I am not sure that policy detail is the message of Christmas Day. Goodwill to all people is. But in a hostile environment, which is what we have in the UK, policy detail has to follow pretty quickly, and I am not sure that the Greens yet have that policy framework in place. In that case, let me summarise what is necessary, in my opinion.
First, we need an economic policy that faces up to the social and environmental world that we have created, with all the consequences that flow from it. The disruptions and conflicts, armed or otherwise, that arise from the stresses created by neoliberalism's insatiable desire to control places and resources for the benefit of a few in Western society require a radical reformation of the way in which we manage our economy.
That reformation is ideological. On the ground, the toolbox already exists. I have explained that recently. The problem is not that we lack the mechanisms necessary to deliver policies of inclusion that would benefit everyone in the UK, and those with a legitimate right to come here, but that we lack the political will and ability to use them. Politicians have never considered the possibility that there might be other ways of doing things than those with which they are familiar, and that in itself exposes the fact that they are not leaders at all.
I could expand on what follows from those observations quite considerably, and perhaps I will need to do so, but let me just run through, quite briefly, what is required to deliver what we need, because I have explained all of them previously.
First, we need a politics of care. This means focusing on meeting the needs of people, not the needs of finance. Post-financialisation economics is all about that. We need to:
- House people.
- Feed people.
- Deliver clean water.
- Ensure clean air.
- Educate people.
- Provide for their health.
- Deliver care when it is needed.
- Ensure opportunities for employment for everyone who wants it.
- Ensure people are fairly paid for what they do.
- Protect people against discrimination.
- Ensure they are fairly represented and heard within the political system.
- Deliver justice when it is required.
- Robustly defend the right to undertake these activities.
- Protect these freedoms.
- Ensure that we live within our environmental constraints.
- Actively plan to do so.
- Accept that we will, as a society, have failed if we leave successive generations with fewer resources than we ourselves have used.
- Protect our legacy, in other words, for the benefit of those who come after us.
This may seem like a considerable demand, but in practice, we know how to do all of these things. There are no surprises in this list. Nothing here is unknown. These freedoms are what we believed we would establish after the end of the conflict in 1945. The technological capacity to deliver what is necessary could very easily exist if we chose to make it so. The obstacle to progress is not that we do not know what is required or lack the skills to deliver it. The obstacle is the greed and self-interest of those who wish to accumulate financial wealth above all else, at cost to the vast majority of people in the world and to those yet to come into it. A few are destroying opportunity for the many. Let us not pretend otherwise.
Let me also not pretend that overcoming this greed will be easy. But unless we name the reason for change and then promote it, showing that it is technically possible, change cannot happen. As I have argued, we need a better song to sing. Now is the time to start singing it. If enough of us do so, change will happen.
So, in the economic sphere, about which I am best qualified to write, what must we do?
First, we must abandon fiscal rules and the associated full funding rule for government. The pretence that nothing can be done by government unless financial markets consent, which was the deliberate reason why these rules were created in 1997 and reinforced in 2010, must be abandoned. As is obvious, they are very modern constructs, created by neoliberal thinking to deliberately constrain government in order to serve the interests of the City of London and the financial greed embedded within it. They have no other purpose.
They also misrepresent the relationship between the City and government by pretending that government is dependent on tax receipts and borrowing to fund its activity, when in practice the capacity to pay tax and to save in government-sponsored accounts exists solely because government has injected money throhgh its spending into the economy in the first place and by running deficits, which are essential to the well-being of everyone, and perhaps most especially those with wealth, who accumulate a disproportionate share of the resulting funds.
When we understand that the government is free to act, it is liberated to do so, and that is why this change matters so much.
In practice, tax yields may need to follow government spending quite closely (but not perfectly) to manage inflation (although more can and should come from those with wealth, and I have shown how), and what are effectively bank deposit facilities may still need to be provided by the government for those with substantial savings. But, vitally, the understanding of the ordering of events is reversed. The government is in charge. Finance is not. Power is recognised as residing in the political sphere. A politics of care becomes possible.
At the same time, if we recognise that the whole basis of financialisation, and the politics built upon it, has been speculation, or what might more accurately be called gambling, then the vital task of government becomes to reconnect saving with the funding of investment. This connection has been almost entirely broken over the past fifty years. As I have explained many times, most savings are now entrusted to institutions that use them to speculate on the value of second-hand shares and property, while banks have no need for deposits to make loans, because we now understand that bank lending is not constrained by deposits.
I have set out mechanisms to recreate the link between saving and investment in two parts (see pages 277 - 299, here). One requires a total reform of the ISA system. The other requires partial reform of pension saving. Together, they could release at least £100 billion a year for capital investment in the UK economy, which is more than enough to deliver the investment needed, within real resource constraints, to achieve a politics of care, whether the need is housing, green infrastructure, or the replacement of crumbling schools and hospitals. All that is required is political will to stand up to the City of London and deny it the opportunity to extract value from us, so that we might instead create value for ourselves.
Do this, and a Green New Deal becomes possible. We could have:
- The new, sustainable housing we need.
- A carbon army to transform the 28 million homes and properties in the UK so they become the power stations of the future and dramatically reduce energy waste.
- Transformed industrial systems.
- Renewed public infrastructure.
- Training for everyone who needs it.
- Long-term employment for those who want to work in activities of genuine social value.
- All the supporting institutions required to make this happen.
In the process, we could transform this country into one where:
- Energy dependence is reduced.
- Food dependence is reduced.
- Domestic production replaces imports.
- Full employment becomes achievable.
- High productivity becomes possible through training and proper incentives.
- The culture of low productivity and labour insecurity is eliminated.
- Economic and social security increase.
- Community confidence rises.
- Hope is restored, especially for younger people who currently feel abandoned.
- A culture of care is rebuilt.
It would, of course, be naïve to imagine that this could happen overnight. Changing the direction of an economy takes time, and transition processes must be designed accordingly. Zack Polanski's commitment to addressing migration would still require the allocation of resources. But if we can imagine a society in which life is better for everyone, which is what I have described and which is technically possible, then the case for investing in the integration of those seeking safety rather than fear becomes compelling. Throughout the history of the UK, this has been how we have refreshed our culture, economy, and thinking: by welcoming new ideas, challenging norms, and adapting to new circumstances.
This could happen again, but only if we create an environment in which there is hope of employment, housing, care, and education for everyone, whoever they are. That is precisely what the current politics of financialisation seek to prevent, by choice, with all major political parties complicit in that exclusion.
Exclusion of the majority, which is what we have at present, is, therefore, what we must change above all else. If we do, the inclusion of a relatively small number of refugees each year becomes socially, culturally, and economically possible. The hostility we see now is rooted in the fact that those who already feel excluded often, rationally, believe that newcomers worsen a crisis created by a political system designed to be hostile to them. If exclusion of the majority is normalised, as it currently is, then exclusion of migrants becomes acceptable. If inclusion is normalised, acceptance of refugees and migrants follows.
My point, then, is simple. This is possible. By recognising that government creates money, that we are not dependent on the City, and that the City has failed to deliver the investment we need, we can change the direction of the economy so fundamentally that a caring society becomes achievable.
I will, of course, explain this in more detail in due course. For now, what matters is that this is not possible:
- If we retain fiscal rules designed to constrain government.
- If we indefinitely defer action on climate change.
- Unless we believe in the capacity of the people who live here, who want to do more and are capable of doing more, but are denied the chance.
Virtually, none of this requires that we discard most of what we already have: we just have to use it better by changing the ideas that govern its use.
I think Zack Polanski was talking yesterday about a politics of care. He did not use the phrase, but that does not matter. That is what he meant.
My argument is that we can also have an economics of care to support it, provided we meet the necessary conditions.
Almost everything required to change the direction and goals of this country is set out in this one post. Do what I suggest, and it would be possible to transform the UK so that, remarkably, the wealthy would still remain wealthy enough to feel themselves at the top, while the rest of us would have more than enough to live well. And if everyone can do more than merely survive, but can flourish instead, then we can build a society worth living in, and still leave a better world for those who come after us.
I hope that is what Zack is talking about, because that's what I want.
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Buy me a coffee!
“The country is full!” claim the hard of thinking never bothering to ask for how long and the implications of this question:-
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-birth-rate-child-care-costs-parents-b2797956.html
Thanks again to you, and your team, for two, so far, deeper Christmas messages!
Might the changes needed to getting all of us closer to the targets of achieving a less predatory, deceitfully run society be aided by?
1) Enabling our education system and our main stream media to be (much) more concerned with objectivity and less with controlling propagandas
2) The dominant use and expectation of transparency, objectivity and equity of knowledge, ideas and positive possibilities in their communications structures, systems and attitudes.
3) The evident adoption of individualism and equitable socio-economic cohesion rather than uniformity and subservience?
“Might we then become like liquorish allsorts – all different and always sticking together?”
(From ?)
P. S. Might H. M. G be using underpersonning, and other remediable forms of inefficiency, to obstruct and, possibly, make unkind, systems for managing immigration and, perhaps, remanding people in gaol, prior to trial?
Licorice or liquorice but not liquorish. Lol
Sounds like you are proposing a modern version of Beveridge. I like it.
The needs have changed slightly,but Beveridge would never been accepted in post war Britain if fiscal rules and the financial markets had to be considered.
I think Zack is appealing to our humanity and showing the reality of the current policies being persued. I’m not sure you need a full policy framework to address things to do this. It’s a complex problem, which the mantra ‘Stop the boats’ is both offensive and stupid. If we can shift the narrative from these people being criminals and scroungers trying to game the system, to people so desperate they will get on a dingy to cross the English channel, we can open dialogue towards more humane policies. Of course Zack is currently speaking to the converted, but he knows much of the Reform vote is a protest vote and with your politics of care many will slowly realise there is a better way of doing things and Reform will never do it.
I have been doing more work in this – I did wake rather early this morning. But it will have to wait until I have been birding, at least. And yes, maybe it is a new Beveridge, with a stronger economic underpinning.
We so need some hope. I think most people on the UK accept things are not working, but we’re constantly been told there’s no money to fix things. There was no money post war, but look at what was achieved.
Agreed
After Beveridge’s understanding of money creation where the state creates “broad money” simultaneously when it creates “base money” along came Margaret Thatcher and her economic version of Orwellian “Ninety-Eighty Three” Newspeak to do away with this threat to the rich:-
“One of the great debates of our time is about how much of your money should be spent by the State and how much you should keep to spend on your family. Let us never forget this fundamental truth: the State has no source of money other than money which people earn themselves. If the State wishes to spend more it can do so only by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more. It is no good thinking that someone else will pay—that “someone else” is you. There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers’ money.”
https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document%2F105454
From George Orwell’s “1984” novel we were introduced a year earlier to “Newspeak”:-
A purposefully ambiguous and confusing language with limited vocabulary to diminish the range of thought.
The implications of Polanski’s ‘message’ are huge and beyond doubt.
If you want to end the hostility to the boats, you need to invest in the services that have been reduced by austerity that has led to blame being apportioned by the populace to meeting the needs of immigrants – and others. This blame has been stoked up and exploited/encouraged by Farage and Badenoch.
His statement – including mentioning ‘scarcity’ and austerity – seems to suggest he knows the problem – but what is his answer?
Well, it’s not the reputed £10.2 million Reform has raised in political donations widely reported in the media. Their biggest contributor seems to be a crypto-currency advocate.
Much to agree with
I remember going and volunteering at the Calais Jungle refugee camp in 2016, nearly ten years ago. Jeremy Corbyn had been out there a few weeks before me.
What I saw there affected me so deeply that I went over for 4 separate weeks that year.
I think I met more kind and compassionate people in those four weeks than I have met in any other period of my life.
Even the guys in the camp insisted that we shared their tea with them.
So I am all in favour of a politics of care, and hoping that Zack Polanski doesn’t get distracted by the people who don’t want that.
Thanks, in several ways.
Graham. Have you written about your experiences there? I’d love to hear about them. We don’t get that side of the story from the MSN.
Thank you Richard. That is the best Christmas message anyone ever delivered.
I totally agree with every word
Thanks.
Thank you Richard for putting forth these visions of a better future (in a form well suited to new readers and watchers) at midwinter, the natural pause, where, after Christmas Day, many have some time to reflect, a time, despite the commercial hoo-hah, of care and goodwill. I am not a religious, but appreciate the reminders of the circumstances of Jesus’s birth and the extent that light is important in many religions and cultures.
As Wizzard said ‘I wish it could be Christmas every day’ – not for turkey and tinsel, but for peaceful reflection in the fallow darkness of winter for the northern hemisphere.
Have our Prim Minister and other politicians (the should-know-better ones) been listening to pope Leo I wonder? Has anyone in the upper echelons of LINO seen the ghost of Christmas future or been tipped to read your blog? Your readership and viewing figures are growing fast, people are joining the dots and seeing possibilities where before was only the shadow of antisocialist/neoliberal government policy.
Thanks
This morning I was catching up on Christmas news from Gaza, including this important and moving (it had me weeping) visit by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem to Holy Family Church in Northern Gaza
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D-PiUjwChyc
It’s not quite the same as Carols from Kings College, Cambridge…
(The 1st 15 minutes is from the Christmas Mass, then scroll forward through some adverts to the beginning of a live feed of the view of the ruined streets outside in N Gaza. Note the persistent sound of IDF drones during the mass. This church was attacked by Israel in June/July with fatalities). Imagine how the congregation feel hearing that, as they gather to celebrate Christmas, remembering also the destruction and death wreaked on their Gk Orthodox neighbours in St Porphyrius church.
See also a report of visit of evangelical Bethlehem pastor Jack Sara to our own UK parliamentarians on 15th Dec, as reported by the independent R/C publication, The Tablet (I didn’t see this reported in any MSM – I have met Jack Sara and heard him speak in Bristol).
https://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/christian-families-struggle-to-imagine-a-future-in-palestine-bethlehem-pastor-tells-uk-parliament/
Palestinian Christians have been saying this for years, but are routinely ignored by the Western church and many in politics.
“The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” But many of our MPs choose, like our government to walk in the darkness and silence of deafness, denial and deceit.
As the outside world begins to gain access to Gaza, I fear we will see a doubling down of repression of protest and free speech here in the UK, to keep the light of truth from shining through mainstream media or through popular protest – if you want news about Gaza and W Bank you will have to actively search for it.
But the light WILL shine, it cannot be quenched.
I suspect that in 2026 we will experience revelations about what has been happening in Gaza and the W Bank that will cause the sort of shock and shame that was experienced when Belsen-Bergen, Ravensbruck and Dachau were liberated.
Thank-you for keeping our focus on light. We need it.
Thanks, Robert. I appreciated that report from The Tablet.
You keep saying “we” should do this that or the other, when you should be saying “they”. Unfortunately “they”, meaning our political leaders, are all totally in thrall to ideology that is put about by likes of the IEA and that benefits those seeking power.
No, I mean we. They have to go.
Yes, I was being mischievous. But I find it hard to think of practical ways in which “we” can bring about the sort of change in leadership we need when the vast majority of the population believe the propaganda that the MSM put out. Perhaps the Cambridge conference can come up with some? Short of physical activism. No supergluing ourselves to the Thames Crossing. I’m afraid I don’t see Polanski being the answer. His economic policies can easily be rubbished in the run up to the next GE, and I bet there’s an army of investigators trying to dig up a crumb of dirt on him.
It is really refreshing to hear Zack Polanski speak with genuine compassion about migrants. I was able to share my documents on ‘Collaborative Circular Migration’ with Zack when I met him briefly at a recent event. I hope his Christmas message indicates consideration of these policy ideas that have also been shared with the Green Party Working Group on migration..
I believe that these Collaborative Circular Migration policies could radically change public perception regarding the economic value of migrants. We have become ‘Prisoners of Mother England’ as politicians attempt to establish ‘Fortress Britain’ to our detriment. Meanwhile, the wealthy retain the option to send their children to university overseas plus fund an exciting Gap Year. We are constantly reminded that they can relocate or retire, with all their money, anywhere in the world!
Collaborative Circular Migration would democratize that freedom by introducing options for all people in this country, young and old, poor as well as the wealthy, to explore a wider world beyond our shores. This would greatly benefit all of the recipient countries, with earned investment far beyond the easily corrupted, and recently reduced Foreign Aid funding.
We know that conflict driven exodus is the result of poverty, lack of employment and, in some cases, our disastrous military intervention. Impoverished developing countries, including former exploited colonies, descend into political instability. Reducing Foreign Aid will further exacerbate the crisis that has forced desperate people to resort to dangerous journeys culminating in risking death crossing the English Channel!
The Collaborative Circular Migration policies seek to reverse these driving forces, while also creating safe routes and humane processing of refugees while in work. It would end the morally bankrupt scavenging of medical, and other professionals, from countries that can ill afford to train them. Those granted ELR ‘Earn, Learn and Return’ visas could fill genuine employment need roles, incentivised to return with funds and extra skills. The visa system would no longer be utilized to pay 20% less while our Resident Doctors still seek employment.
I am appalled by the hypocrisy of current political leaders, who profess ‘Christian’ values as they capitalize on the well-wishing of Christmas, despite their despicable policies of hostility. I hope that Zack Polanski has read and considered the solutions I have proposed. I would really appreciate earning Richard Murphy’s economic ‘seal of approval’ for these Collaborative Circular Migration policies.