By Michael Faulkner – April 25, 2010
The last Letter from the U.K. (11th April) invited
readers to imagine a world without advertising and promised to return to the
subject in today’s column. That intention has been displaced by the launch, a
week ago, of the political parties’ general election campaign. The election
will take place on May 6th which means that, because of TPJ’s publishing
schedule, the first opportunity to comment on the results will be May 13th and that column will not appear until May 23rd. The ‘world without
advertising’ theme will be taken up next time in an article which will appear
on May 9th.
We are entering the second week of the election campaign.
The news media are full of it. The parties have published their manifestos and
they are all doing their best to persuade us that they stand for ‘Change’. And
yet there is little sign that the two main contestants for office – the
Labor and Tory parties – have any interest in telling the electorate the
truth about the seriousness of the problems facing them. The Liberal Democrats
and the Scottish and Welsh nationalists are better in this respect as is the
Green Party, but the best they can hope for is that they may, in the event of a
hung parliament, hold the balance of power. Either the Tories or Labor will
emerge with the largest number of seats in the House of Commons and therefore
be likely to form the next government. At the moment it still looks as though
the Tories will pull it off.
Let’s consider some of the big issues that have dominated
politics for most of the time New Labor has been in office. Since 2003
Britain’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan has probably been the main reason
for the steady erosion of support for the government. The Tories have supported
both these wars, and, indeed, without their support in 2003 Blair would not
have been able to join Bush in the invasion of Iraq. The Liberal Democrats
voted against the Iraq war but all three main parties are in favor of remaining
in Afghanistan though most people want British forces withdrawn. Since 2007 the
financial meltdown which led to the worst economic crisis since the 1930s has
eclipsed almost all other issues. The government’s multi-billion bail-out of
the banks saved the system from complete collapse, albeit at a terrible price.
The ‘quantitative easing’ that saved banks that were ‘too big to fail’ from
complete collapse and economic catastrophe has left a budget deficit calculated
to be in the region of £175 billion – the largest ever in peacetime.
Because none of the main political parties is prepared to contemplate really
radical Keynesian measures that would require longer term deficit financing,
they all agree that the deficit will have to be reduced by huge cuts in public
spending. But none of them wants to reveal the enormity of the cuts required
because they fear the response of the electorate. So they all dissimulate.
No serious, well-informed person doubts the scientific
evidence linking climate change and global warming to human activity. Unless
global carbon emissions are drastically reduced during the next twenty years or
so the long-term consequences will be catastrophic. Yet both main parties have
used the controversy over some emails emanating from the Climate Research Unit
at the University of East Anglia, which appear to condone withholding
information, to elide from their manifestos any reference to the need for
action to combat global warming. For the Tories in particular, this is an issue
because most of their members and a majority of their aspirant new MPs are
climate change deniers.
When the financial crisis broke with the collapse of Lehman
Bros. in 2008, leading to the part-nationalization of some U.K. banks, it was
widely assumed that measures would be introduced to prevent anything like this
happening again. Critics of the behavior of the financial sector demanded not
only strict regulation but the break-up into smaller units of banks deemed ‘too
big to fail.’ There were also demands for a new Glass-Steagall act compelling
the separation of investment and commercial banking. But, of the main parties,
only the Liberal Democrats have committed themselves to such reforms. Both
Labor and Tories have resisted taking any such action, and, despite talk of stricter
regulation, seem content to allow business to continue very much as usual.
When, in 2007, Blair needed parliamentary support for the
renewal of Britain’s nuclear submarine system, Trident, he had to rely on Tory
support as too many Labor MPs were against it. Aside from consideration of
whether Britain needs a ‘nuclear deterrent’ (admittedly a very important
question requiring the most serious consideration), there is the matter of
cost. It has been calculated that renewal of the Trident system, including all
its operational costs over the next thirty years could add another £97 billion
to the government’s basic calculation of £20 billion. Both Tories and Labor
take it for granted that Britain needs an ‘independent nuclear deterrent’. It
is not considered worthy of debate. Yet it is very difficult to see who the
deterrent is supposed to deter and, whatever it is, it is certainly not
independent. The war-head components are made in the USA and the missiles are
serviced in the US state of Georgia. Only the Liberal Democrats have pledged
not to renew Trident. Whatever else they may cut, we can be sure that any
incoming majority Tory or Labor government will not scrap Trident.
Most people probably have more than an inkling that the
future for the next few years at least, will not be bright. For very many it is
likely to be grim. To mention just a few examples, house prices put home
ownership, long treated as the goal to which we should all aspire, beyond the
scope of all except the most affluent younger people. Likewise, most young
home-seekers are also priced out of the rented sector. The draconian cuts to
come will reduce even further the inadequate provision of social housing. Local
government will be starved of funding. Education budgets will be slashed.
Universities will be starved of funds leading to course-cutting and fee
increases. There will be fewer places on undergraduate courses. Youth
unemployment will increase. We can expect the re-emergence of public squalor in
our cities as refuse collections are cut back and roads remain un-repaired. The
public sector will be hit hardest and unemployment is sure to increase. This is
not gloom-mongering. Given the scale of the budget deficit and the way the main
contestants for office have chosen to tackle it, such things are unavoidable.
But what are we being told by those now bombarding us with
propaganda designed to persuade us to vote for them? The election manifestos
are now in print. Very few will bother to read them, but a glance at the
pre-publication highlights tells us all we need to know.
Labor’s manifesto promises ‘A Future Fair for All’, its
cover illustrated with a strangely 1930s style bucolic idyll depicting an ideal
nuclear family, parents and two children, gazing across a serene English landscape
of fields and trees, into a glorious sunrise. The Tories manifesto, on a blue
background, carries the ‘Invitation to Join the Government of Britain’. Tory
leader Cameron tells us that ‘we are all in this together’ and, invoking the
U.S. constitution he says, ‘it’s not about me the individual, it’s about we the
people’. It’s all about the ‘big society’, not about ‘big government’, he says.
Brown says that ‘Labor will be restless and relentless reformers of the market
and reformers of the state’ and would replace ‘discredited and distrusted
politics with one where you the people, are the boss’. Both the Tories and
Labor are keen to present themselves as on the side of ‘the people’. Cameron’s
reference to the ’big society’ seems intended to reject Thatcher’s famous claim
that there was no such thing as society.
The Liberal Democrats have not yet launched their manifesto
but it is expected to contain a strong defense of civil liberties in its attack
on both the other parties.
But both the Tory and Labor campaigns insult the
intelligence of the electorate by avoiding any real attempt to explain the
reasons for the current crisis or to come clean about the social and economic
impact of the measures they have in store to deal with it. The Tories in
particular, in their concentration on Gordon Brown, have reduced electoral
politics to the level of name-calling and character assassination.
In this depressing election campaign there is one glimmer of
hope. It seems possible that the election will result in a hung parliament. If
that occurs, whichever of the two larger parties wins more votes, the Lib. Dems
and the nationalists will hold the balance of power. They will be in a position
to press for electoral reform which would mean the end of Britain’s grossly
unfair ‘first past the post’ system which can and does result in parties with
as little as 35% support forming large parliamentary majorities. Should Labor
emerge as the largest party in a
hung parliament, there would be strong pressure for Brown to step down in favor
of someone else – probably David Miliband. If the Lib. Dems were prepared
to enter into a coalition with Labor, they would be in a strong position to
insist that Vince Cable should become Chancellor of the Exchequer. This is all
surmise, but not entirely fanciful.
However, whatever the outcome, there is certain to be
growing social unrest. Despite the absence in Britain of any radical party of
the left, there is a growing mood of anger in large sections of the population
and the trade union movement is becoming more active in defending the interests
of its members. It is to be hoped that this mood of militancy will develop and
grow quickly. Contrary to David Cameron’s fatuous platitudes about ‘giving
power to the people’, it is the
people themselves who will have to take power if we are to avoid sinking again
into an even worse crisis with incalculable consequences.