Labour's Wish List of Six

 

 

Sir Keir Starmer’s list of six priorities are clearly dictated by what their Focus groups tell his team  are necessary to win the election.  They cast a poor light on the priorities of “the British People” as distorted by the Tory party’s sycophantic press but are, perhaps, wise, seeing the vast amount of money the Tories have at their hands to further poison the debate.  Only one of Starmer’s priorities, the NHS, overlaps with mine (more of which later.)

 In brief, the Starmer's "election winners" are:

1.     1. Deliver economic stability, but sadly under misguided financial constraints imposed by the Tories.  Let’s hope he has the courage to break them, and not waste the first two years, as Blair/Brown did.

2.    2. Cut NHS waiting times.  This is the one on which we agree: but it will be costly and won’t be easy.  We can’t just conjure additional doctors, nurses, other medical practitioners and stable buildings out of thin air.  It takes five years for a doctor to get through even the preliminary training, and three for a nurse and most other health-care workers

3.    3. Launch a new Border Security Command.  Notice the capital letters (presumably in the original) and the use of the military “Command.”  A tawdry attempt to sound tough on immigration when we actually need more of it.  I hope Starmer eventually feels ashamed of it, as I believe  Ed Miliband does over his anti-immigrant mugs.

4.    4. Set up Great British Energy. I agree this is urgent and ought to be on my list, but without the “Great.”  It is high time we stopped kidding ourselves, put “Greatness” to one side  and aimed for simple competence in this and every other area.

5.    5. Crack down on anti-social behaviour.  Well, there’s not much of it where I live (though people drop  too much litter.)  Another shameful piece of populism.  For a more honest and constructive approach see No 1 on my list (below.)

6.    6. Recruit 6 500 new teachers.  Good idea, but they take four years to train.    Better to concentrate on making the job more attractive so that the existing ones stop leaving.  Abolish OFSTED as a first step, get rid of the MATs and their over-paid super-heads and directors, restore responsibility to local government.

Rather, I suggest:

1.    1.  Tackling the Courts Backlog and Prison Overcrowding.  Courts and prisons,  like defence and law and order, are essentially the responsibility of the state.  The backlog of court cases is an affront to a civilised society.  I believe the aphorism “justice delayed is justice denied” goes back to Magna Carta. Keeping prisoner two to a cell built for one for 23 hours a day with a joint open lavatory shames us all.

2.    2. End child poverty.  Pot-holes in the road are a nuisance and repairing car springs adds to our motoring costs, but with the  will can be remedied in time. But the effects of deprivation in childhood last a lifetime. We are a rich country with an average income per head of over £30 000.  No child need be deprived of a comfortable upbringing.  On Day One end the two- child limit and restore the £20 cost of living addition to Universal Credit.  Begin restoring the Sure Start Centres.

3.    3. Tackle the housing shortage. End no -fault evictions, impose rent controls, abolish the right to buy, build more social housing.

4.    4. Properly finance and staff the NHS.  As with teachers, as well as trying to recruit new staff, improve the conditions of those already working in it to stop them leaving

5.    5. Restore Local government funding.  This is an essential level of government and should be properly resourced, either by grants or its own fund-raising powers.

6.    6. Set up Citizens’ Assemblies to consider Constitutional Reform.  Yes, I know, this is just an anorak’s interest: “ordinary” people worry about the NHS and the cost of living and don’t care about such arcane issues.  But Britain is in a mess because it is badly governed and it is badly governed because our government structures are no longer fit for purpose.  We need to examine our electoral system(s), how to put parliament in control of the executive (rather than vice versa as at the moment), the structure of the Union, devolution to the regions and localities, our relationship with international institutions, make commercial law responsive to the needs of the localities, and much more besides.

Yes, I know, my six might not win an election, but someone should be talking about these things.

J.K. Galbraith and the Liberal Society

 

 

This post is based on article which was published on Liberal Democrat Voice 15^th May and subsequent comments:

https://www.libdemvoice.org/j-k-galbraith-and-the-liberal-society-75215.html

 

A friend who hoards his newspapers for years has just passed on to me an interview by Roy Hattersley with J K Galbraith in the latter’s 90^th  year (1998)

The article is headlined “Sage of the Century”* and there is no doubt that, after Keynes’s  death, Galbraith  was the pre-eminent economist of the second half twentieth century.  He got most things right (including opposition to the Vietnam War) and many of the issues raised in the interview are as relevant today as they were a quarter of a century ago. Indeed, having ignored his views provides a good explanation as to why we are now in our present dire predicament.

The following quotes (in italics) are from the article;

To The Affluent Society we owe the prediction of “private affluence and public squalor.” Which we can see all around us, in spades after the Margaret Thatcher inspired dominance of the inadequately regulated market since 1979.

Galbraith’s first success was his analysis of “The Great Crash” of 1929.  In 1998 he predicted: “A slump will surely happen again, sooner or later. . .they are a normal feature of the market.” 

Well, it did happen again, in 2008, and we are still paying for the consequences.  Keynes was in favour of “animal spirits,”  but I think he had in mind investors in the “real economy” rather than manipulators of the financial markets, allowed to over-reach themselves by Mrs Thatcher’s Big Bang.

“The poor are politically emasculated.  They don’t vote so they don’t have a strong expression in Congress or the White House.” 

Or in Parliament or 10 Downing Street.  ID cards are hardly likely to encourage them.  PR to make voting more meaningful might.  This is not just a matter of justice, ethics or morality (or, as the Tories might try to ridicule it - “wokeness.”) In the Culture of Contentment [Galbraith] predicted that “unless the poor’s needs were met. . . the ghettos would explode.”

 In The Good Society Galbraith wrote that: ” the basic need  is to accept the principle  that the more equitable distribution of income must be a fundamental tenet  of modern public policy and to this end progressive taxation is central.”  Yet as we approach an election the Tories will tempt us with further tax cuts and Labour dare not remonstrate. Dare the Liberal Democrats?

 “Legal equality . . .is essential in a liberal democracy.  But freedom needs to be more than that.  There are social freedoms that depend on purchasing power.  Thus freedom in sum is increased by redistribution.  Equality and freedom go hand in hand.”

Not only that, but the likes of Wilkinson and Pickett (The Spirit Level, Penguin 2009, 2010) and umpteen others have demonstrated that more equal societies enjoy better levels of mental and physical health, less crime and are happier.

Finally, the article introduces “the malign influence of the military establishment,” to which one might add, the armaments industry. “They have a special appeal, the traditional identification with patriotic causes even when there is no perceptible enemy.”

And if there is, the likes of Rishi Sunak don’t hesitate to grasp the straw.

Unfortunately the self- evident and tried and tested truths which Galbraith promulgated are drowned out in our media and political debate by the rich and powerful, who pretend  that if they and their mates are unrestricted by regulations to protect we lesser mortals from chancers and cheats then the prosperity unleashed (it isn’t) will not only benefit them (it does, by their grabbing a bigger share of less)) but will “trickle down “ to raise “all boats” just as the rising tide doesn’t.  (It doesn’t)

We “progressives” have a much better and far more truthful story to tell. We should not be afraid to tell it.

Faith Schools should be scrapped, not uncapped

 

As a Liberal I believe that parents or guardians have a right to educate their offspring in the tenets and practices of their religion if they have one.  However, such “education” should be at their or their religious institutions’ expense.  It should take place outside the formal state system,  at Sunday School, Saturday School, or  in the evenings. If  faith groups and parents  absolutely insist on a complete alternative to a secular  full-time education offered by the state, they can run their own schools, but at their expense and not with the help of public funds.

I’m aware that for centuries the  Church was just about the only provider of education in this country, up to and including university level – hence all those lovey chapels and talented choirs at the Oxbridge colleges.  And, as a vestigial remnant of the system of mass education that has developed there remain         4 500 C of E schools in England (about a quarter of the total), nearly 2000 RC schools, 139 run by other Christian faiths, along with 50 Jewish schools to which can now be added 34 Muslim, 12 Sikh and two Hindu faith schools.

But this tradition and the recent additions are looking to the past.  We can be duly grateful for them, as I am.  I was educated in a church school and have taught in two of them. But today they are not only irrelevant but a positive hindrance to our development of a relaxed, co-operative multi-faith society.

That is why today’s announcement by the Conservative Government that the 50% cap on selection restricted to members of the faith in any new faith school is a step backwards.  The progressive way forward is for all faith schools to be gradually phased out or to become exclusively faith maintained.

 

It is interesting to see the importance of the Liberal Democrats in our attitude to this policy.  Apparently during the Coalition (2010 to 15) the Conservatives wanted to promote the expansion of faith schools.  The Liberal Democrats complied, but only with the provision that 50% of the places should be available to pupils not of the faith.  This is the sort of sensible compromise which coalition government produces.  The majority partner (305 seats) wishes to take a step in a direction the other thinks is misguided, the minority party (57 seats, I think it was) can’t stop it but limits what it sees as the damaging effect.

 Sir Ed Davey has had the courage to condemn the present Tory move.  I’m not aware of Labour’s official response, but Ruth Kelly, their Education Secretary under Tony Blair, is enthusiastically in favour of it.

 As we used to say, “Which twin is the Tory?”