Like Thatcher declaring on the steps of Downing Street in 1979 that, like Francis of Assisi, “where there is discord, I will bring peace”, so Cameron in the Queen’s Speech debate has pledged a one-nation Britain – until one looks at the detail and reads between the lines. To take one example, the most recent government statistics show that the poorest 10% of households pay 47% of their gross income in direct and indirect taxes, while the richest 10% pay just 35% of their income in taxes. How is that to be addressed? Further, the higher tax-free personal allowance will do nothing for the 44% of adults, including pensioners, whose income is already too low to pay any income tax. – which is why raising the personal allowances will do more to benefit the well-off than the poor. Continue reading
Tagged with One Nation
For “better politics”, Labour must start at home
I thought that the Labour party’s recent “Education and Children” document was waffle-filled, tendentious, misleading and often wholly wrong. But even that did not prepare me for Labour’s consultation document “Better Politics”, which is aimed at the 2015 manifesto (amendments to be in from constituency parties and affiliates by 13th June).
To be fair, the document contains three worthwhile proposals, which I will explore below. But it has zero analytical content and the people writing it either approached the task with great cynicism or in utter ignorance of what was required. Continue reading
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2014: the year Miliband’s Labour turns left?
In 2014, Ed Miliband and his colleagues need to understand once more the reasons The Labour Party came into fruition. And they need to articulate a clear, radical alternative to Tory Austerity with a vision of a post neo-liberal Britain that appeals to swing voters, but also many of those ‘don’t knows’ and stay at home voters Labour needs to so desperately reclaim as its own. These are the people who will be sceptical about Labour as an alternative in 2015 and have been given little reason so far to see Labour offering anything systemically different to the current status quo.
The main problem is vision. It often seems Labour has no immediate and long term vision for the future of Britain. For all Ed Miliband’s talk of ‘a One Nation Britain’, policy announcements have been limited to the vague and populist. And with the government swiftly moving towards a Singapore style ‘winner takes all’ capitalism, we need something more. Continue reading
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Labour has always been the natural party of “aspiration”
Aspiration: its a political buzzword that has been hijacked by the right. The Tories have launched their “aspiration nation” tagline of helping those who want to “get ahead”. Indeed the Blarites in the party have laid the ridiculous charge that “Old Labour” did not understand the aspiration of people wanting to do well for themselves.
In fact such attacks only resurfaced recently on the Progress website which had an article attacking what it termed “Digital Bennites” (the mind boggles) for relying on the “politics of envy” which is out of touch with most people, who apparently see themselves as millionaires in waiting. Continue reading
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One Nation: a smokescreen or a curb on the power of wealth?
The one-nation slogan has many possibilities. It can clearly mean many different things to different people. There is already gross confusion as to what it means when used by Labour politicians. It is not a magic wand which will, when waved at a largely empty policy cupboard, suddenly fill its shelves. Neither is it an analytical concept that will, by itself, help us to understand our social reality with greater clarity.
The one-nation slogan (and for the moment it is hardly more than that) is a declaration of intent. It is meant to indicate a direction of travel, a purpose underlying all Labour’s policies. As such it could be a powerful way of summarising Labour’s central purpose and of unifying its various policies, as they become available.