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Traditionally, the left has always put inequality of income and wealth at the core of its appeal. All the way back to Marx, the argument was that a small number of rich people were rigging the system to benefit themselves, and if you are working-class and on a stagnating income, you need to band together with other working-class people through Labour and the unions to change matters. With middle-class sympathisers, this would potentially make up a majority.
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I suspect that Boris would be happy to go with the direction of travel of Gove and Javid. It's not an either/or.
Is Hammond really going to come in more than £10bn under forecast at the end of the fiscal year?
As I, and Mr. Smithson (I believe), implied last thread, he might even end up securing May in place for the next election if the PCP anti-Boris faction fears he could win a contest.
On topic, an excellent and thought provoking thread from Nick. There is a tendency, which the Tories have been particularly guilty of, to think that politics is economics and that the great god GDP (which Robert did an excellent demolition of in one of his videos) is all.
If anyone seriously believed this then the Brexit referendum should have convinced them otherwise but, as with Trump in the US, the response is always people are stupid, they don't understand, they don't realise what they have done instead of coming to terms with the fact that people have other concerns that the establishment were simply not addressing.
The challenge for this government, and indeed all governments, is to nudge us to a society where the majority want to live. I see almost no sign of such a vision. Today we have excellent borrowing figures yet again but they will not swing a single vote. People want action on housing, on education, on social care, on student debt, on local authority services, even on defence and most of the action involves spending significant additional sums of money. A government that focuses on the deficit or even GDP, as Major's did up to 1997, faces disaster.
Because there is this pressure to spend I agree with Nick (have I heard that somewhere before) that there is at least a soft left tendency in the country at the moment. How do Tories respond? I think that they have to go back to Cameron's mantra of "sharing the proceeds of growth" and then really make the case that these multiple goodies come from a successful economy and are not the source of it. Where is the Tory that can make that case? That is the real problem.
Link? ;-)
Interesting piece, thanks Nick. We're clearly more culturally liberal as a nation, and a good thing too viz. your examples of sexism, racism and homophobia.
However I think the economic picture is far more nuanced - e.g. attitudes to benefits, expectations of / desire for a job-for-life, consumer satisfaction with Amazon/Uber etc. all paint the younger generation as more classically right wing.
Lovely dry understatement there.
'The hard headed discipline of Macdonnell matters to Labour: commitments to push taxes through the roof and let public spending rip are notably absent.'
Were they? You mean, there were no pledges to increase borrowing to £300 billion, clear all student debt, provide free school meals for all and pay for it with taxes on private education that would have actually brought in no money?
Because if that's hard headed discipline I'd hate to see mindless profligacy.
The problem is our economy was in such a state we've spent the whole of an economic cycle dealing with the effects of the last crash. We're just starting to move on as we're due another slump (even if we hadn't run the real risk of bringing one on ourselves next April).
Public sector net debt (excluding both public sector banks and Bank of England) was £1,584.6 billion at the end of July 2018, equivalent to 75.2% of GDP, a decrease of £30.6 billion (or a decrease of 3.7 percentage points as a ratio of GDP) on July 2017.
And it's the way the Government (of any hue) seems to beat the rest of us to death...
Thank you for the thought-provoking piece, Nick and as someone more on the left side of the fence than many on here, I well understand the appeal of Corbyn. The current model of capitalism hasn't worked well in the last decade for me personally - I was much better off under Labour. As I was once told, I'd rather work an hour for 5 inflated pounds than 50 deflated pence.
The other less tangible aspect is that Conservative Governments simply run out of time - in 1964 Douglas-Hume looked completely out of touch against Wilson and in 1997 for all that the economic performance under Clarke had been impressive, the sense the zeitgeist had moved on past Major and his soapbox was palpable.
It's more than "time for a change", more a recognition a long-serving Government remains anchored at one point culturally and in terms of the argument and the world has moved on around it. The language of austerity and 2010 sounds stale already and will be more so by 2022. No one, it seems, has a coherent and credible economic model for the 2020s and beyond.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2018/08/20/why-theresa-may-is-a-great-prime-minister/
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/mar/31/uk-households-savings-fall-record-low-warning-sign-economy
Britain is living on the never-never, but that balance of debt is shifting to individuals, particularly in the squeezed middle.
Knowing this government, they’ll post a notice on gov.uk that we’ve reached a budget surplus on a Tuesday afternoon during August.
"Taxes on income and wealth were 6.4 per cent higher than the same month last year. In July, self-assessed income tax receipts are often particularly high"
this implies to me that GDP might be revised up for the recent past?
"Public borrowing has remained on a sharp downward trend, creating scope for the chancellor to pause the fiscal consolidation next year and still meet his self-prescribed targets," said Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.
"If this trend persists, borrowing will total just £23.7bn this year, much less than the £37.1bn forecast by the OBR in the Spring Statement."
Ruth Gregory, senior UK economist at Capital Economics, was more cautious, pointing out that "an undershoot of this magnitude is unlikely".
She added: "The recent improvement has been partly due to temporary factors, such as the timing of gilt issuance and redemptions."
The only serious omission is it doesn't say what the author was smoking when he wrote it.
In the government’s defence, I suppose there’s no point trying to market successes while the media obsess over Brexit. Another reason to accept whatever May comes back with in October.
I'll get my coat...
Have a good morning.
I could see Boris positioning himself as Mr Brexit but also as very centrist, Green-as-Cameron, relaxing the purse strings, sharing the proceeds of growth and (importantly) hammering the excesses of business. He has a record now of not sucking up to business. Part of his long term
economicself-advancement plan?And you missed an apostrophe.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2016/whose-recovery
Such economic discontent was a major driver of the Brexit vote, and also a driver of the cultural conservatism that is the polar opposite to the header: A craving for well paid working class jobs, with stable communities, social housing and backed up by a welfare state. Global Britain neglecting Little Britain is not a recipie for Tory success. They are not two horses that can be ridden similtaneously.
Economics is not dead as cause of voting, but is changing.
I agree that no party is really persuading people that they've got the hang of economic wonderland - but that's why voters say oh well, let's vote for the party that seems closest on values instead and hope they can sort it out in that general direction.
On your second, it's a popular refrain there's no reason FOR voting Labour and I get that but why should I, or anyone, vote FOR the Conservatives? They seem completely bereft of ideas as to how the country should operate in the 2020s and beyond.
As for today's borrowing figures, yes it's all very encouraging yet as I see the crisis in local Government finance evolving I'm forced to wonder if, to paraphrase Eric Morecambe, we've got all the money just not in the right places.
Cheers, and apologies to Mr. L.
Mr. Paris, agree entirely. It was delinquent idiocy of the most obvious, and therefore unforgivable, variety.
Edited extra bit: King Cole, some people still try to claim John was a good king, so it's unsurprising some think May is a good PM.
By the time of the budget a more politically astute Chancellor and PM would see the opportunity to increase public spending by up to £10bn and reduce the borrowing target at the same time. This would allow them to address at least some of the pressures they are facing, if only they had some idea of what they want to do.
It makes May's alleged refusal to agree to a 3% increase in police salaries completely incomprehensible. Javid was clearly right about that.
(Subject to things not falling apart over Brexit, of course).
The down side is that it will be a big win for Boris's Bus. And so for Boris's ambitions to oust her. So no doubt she will be as stubborn as she was about police pay.
Now we have the current government who can't mount an argument over anything vs died in the wool marxist with well rehearsed patter.
It's now back to where it was when Blair took office....
Many people will vote Conservative because they loathe the values they associate with the Labour Left.
Whilst worth noting the media have also been utterly inept in that regard, that doesn't excuse the Conservative failure one iota.
We really don't hear any new ideas how as a society we are going to deal with all of this. Jezza "ban the driverless train" is the worst option, but the current government appear clueless. At least the coalition started to try and get some handle on things like pensions i.e. very sensible move to increase the retirement age.
AI rising just as we're developing autonomous killer robots is a very human coincidence.
But you are not being frank about what cultural leftism really means, I am afraid to say.
Take this - “. When I grew up, it was common for people to express mildly sexist, racist or homophobic views: it’s now seen as downright embarrassing.”
True. It was also common for people to express mildly anti-semitic views. But now, rather than being seen as downright embarrassing by some on the cultural left it is seen as practically de rigeur. It ought to be embarrassing but it isn’t.
And you contrast a pro-Brexit Tory party with an anti-Muslim fringe with a mildly EU agnostic Labour party which is culturally in tune with the times. Come off it! We have a Labour party which has a decidedly anti-semitic fringe (at best) and which also has a remarkable capacity to embrace parts of the Islamist agenda (talking to gender separated audiences is being anti-sexist is it? Attacking female MPs who speak up for girls raped and trafficked is being anti-sexist, is it? Wanting to limit free speech when it comes to talking about Islam is liberal, is it?)
The cultural left is good at talking about being against bad things. But in its actions it has rather more in common with the fascists it claims to be against. And in so doing it is helping to squeeze out real cultural liberalism.
16 years!
Congrats!
Promising jam today without the foundation of secure public finances is irresponsible, and unfortunately, par for the course for the Labour Party. It would be nice if at some point they could adopt the fiscal rectitude of some of their continental peers (ie Gerhard Schroeder’s SPD).
Once the budget is balanced, the taps can open. The government can then celebrate progress at a national and new personal level, and reap the electoral rewards. Let’s hope they do.
And surely that is thank you enormously for your fabulous contributions and goodbye to Alastair Cook?
And Root just got 9 in an over
And then he made himself a papal serf, surrendering England to the Pope as a papal territory and becoming the Church's favourite son.
I have been anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, anti-racism since I was a teenager. The Tories were definitely not a cultural fit when I was young but have made moves in the right direction in recent years, though now I am less certain about them. But Labour seem to have moved away from liberalism not towards it. And it is not all down to Corbyn either. The attitude of veteran politicians like Roy Hattersley to the Rushdie fatwa started opening my eyes to the willngness of some on the left to abandon their principles when faced with threats of violence and the desire for votes, even when these came from some of the most sexist, homophobic and illiberal groups around.
Events can stretch a person's loyalty until it snaps and it's interesting to see when that happens. Usually the explanation given is that 'I have not left the Party, it has left me'.
Parties do change, sometimes quite quickly, and many members probably spend a lot of their time only partly satisfied with their chosen party. The same goes for general voters, would Proportional Representation help?
What I find difficult to take with Nick's post is that it is, as has been pointed out on here already, turning a blind eye to some of the less attractive, not to say repugnant tendencies of the modern left. All well and good if they turned up to conference, put a stand up in a side corridor and hoped for a few visitors. But these people are running the Party.
Jeremy Corbyn is probably not an anti-semite. Possibly. But it is unarguable that he has presided over a Labour Party within which anti-semites feel emboldened. It is plausible deniability.
We all laughed at his supposed faux pas when asked about the cemetery, but it was more acute than we realised. Jeremy Corbyn's position on anti-semitism is the very definition of being involved but not present.
Time to find a new Geoff Boycott who can stay at the crease for a decent period.
Edit - Make that four wickets.
Yes most Labour voters are now socially liberal and supportive of LGBT rights but even Tories, especially younger Tories, support those too. Where there is a wider cultural divide comes over issues like immigration and Brexit but there it is the LDs, not Labour, leading the opposition to the Tories and UKIP, same with Macron in France opposing Le Pen and the Front National
Live now, (someone else) pay later is not a good reason.