Class War Is Back - Equality As Political Tool

The Guardian this morning has a story that tells us a great deal about the state of the New Labour Party. Apparently a 'fierce' debate has broken out on equality.

What passed for the Left in the Blair-Brown coalition is now attemping to drive the forthcoming election manifesto in a more traditionalist and 'progressive' direction.

We should always be cautious about this sort of story. It is 'kite-flying'. Proposals, as in this case, for an attack on high pay in the public sector and for increased taxes on family assets are flown high into the air to see if they can be sustained on the political breeze.

It does not take a cynic to see that the common denominator in these two proposals (touted to be responses to a report on equality commissioned by Deputy Prime Minister Hariet Harman) is money, both cutting its expenditure and raising more for the benefit of Government.

In the event of Labour returning to Government (increasingly unlikely but still not impossible), a 'progressive' Government is going to be forced to make massive spending cuts. It has to make this palatable to its core vote in the public sector.

These particular measures are designed to ensure that the highest ranks of the civil service set an example for lower level pay freezes and even cuts to preserve jobs across the sector and to raise funds from those in the upper middle classes who have managed to hold on to their assets in a recession.

They also increase the policy water between New Labour and the Tories. The Tories, if they have to make choices, will only make necessary tax increases to balance the budget. All their efforts, as we have suggested elsewhere, will be on cutting the fat in the public sector - and that means job losses.

We should not be too hard on New Labour but there is little idealism in the coming calculations. It is not just that New Labour is slipping towards unprecedentedly (at least since the 1930s) low shares of the vote or that a coming by-election seat needs to be held on a traditionalist Scottish Labour vote.

New Labour is now in survival mode. The next three or four months require tough calculations on how far to go towards Harman's 'progressive' agenda or whether to try a last-ditch effort to woo back the middle classes who voted for Blair.

The route that New Labour goes will tell us whether it thinks it can win or not. And by survival, we do not mean just as a Government, but as a party. The Sunday Times reported at the weekend on the depth of the party's financial crisis. Private sources have confirmed its seriousness.

Local parties are resistant to putting their assets on the line as guarantees for bank loans and they are politically right to do so. If the property assets in the localities fall into the banks' hands and are then sold off, the material infrastructure of a national party could be destroyed over night.

On the other hand, the trades unions are not in a position to bail out the party or offer their own guarantees. Their own memberships would not be universally happy and may have legal cause to challenge any funding that goes beyond the approved - approval for good money after bad is unlikely.

The pressure is also growing for increased working class representation on the Left. The loyalist representative of the Labour Representation Committee got a bit of a rough ride at an RMT-sponsored conference on the issue this weekend when she advocated working within New Labour.

Given their own limited resources and the fear that an incoming Tory Government will legislate their independent political role out of existence if they make a mistake, the trades unions must deliver a cogent traditionalist result for angry workers in a recession in return for any bail-out.

The 'progressive' agenda, increasingly associated with the trades union political officers, the New Labour Left (not to be confused with the 'real' Left) and the feminists, requires Government. Progressive Government requires progressive control of the main centre-left party.

The weight of criticism from both Left and the Tories simultaneously for a simple bail-out of a failed and defeated non-progressive New Labour Party would open up vistas of both division within and legislative action against the trades unions too terrible to contemplate.

Under current circumstances what this means is that the progressives are already making their own gamble on loss of office, driving legislation like the Equalities Bill and the anti-prostitution clauses in the Police & Crime Bill hard and seeking to position themselves for the civil war that will emerge on defeat.

This also helps to explain why an anti-inequality strategy, unexceptionable by historic Labour standards, appears to be being promoted at precisely the wrong time in history - when the Party is at an all-time low in the polls and is ready to lose power. Its purpose is not policy but power.

The puzzling thing to historians and idealists (though not to those who know the Party) might be - why now? The right time to promote such an agenda would have been 2001 when the Party had proven itself competent in office and had a reasonable mandate for a radical agenda.

Indeed the first reaction of angry centre-leftists seems to be not optimism and pleasure at the shift to the agenda that they have fought for but cynicism and renewed anger at the timing. History suggests that this is an opposition agenda, to be ditched when office can be smelled in the winds once again.

The active promotion of a full anti-inequality agenda, even if it gets past Brown and Darling which is to be doubted, moght well stop the drift of centre-left activists and voters from inertia or for voting for other parties. It may even push up Labour's vote by a few percentage points to ensure its survival.

But this is a time of recession when most middle classes are still filled with economic anxiety and distrustful of Government (and most voters see themselves as middle class).

Many small businesses are surviving only by dipping into family reserves. A tax assault on reserve wealth, while Government is bailing out banks, strikes this writer as the height of political ineptitude and a precursor to tax revolt.

Implicit threats to redistribute pensions and then transfer the added value of the house from their children to an inefficient 'bloated' state are going to go down like the proverbial lead balloon. We can be sure that neither Tories nor Liberal Democrats are going to be silent on the matter.

The real purpose of 'equality' promotion at this time is to lay the ground work for the preservation of jobs in the Labour-voting public sector and regions and to mobilise those same workers to vote in their interest.

What was once a class war between workers and bosses is in danger of degenerating into a class war between those working in the market and those protected by the State. The margins of the latter may have nowhere else to go but New Labour within a few months.

We doubt whether Brown or his circle will let this happen but the progressive rhetoric is useful for bamboozling old loyalists and public sector activists into a re-commitment to a Party that is about to lose Government or may only regain it on terms that are unlikely to deliver their agenda.

The Harman Report appears in January so it is interesting to see the debate hotting up as early as November, indicating that something is going on behind the scenes to manage its content. January is convenient because its recommendations can be assessed for inclusion in New Labour's manifesto.

This manifesto will probably have more union input that any since the early 1990s. There are signs that, having been corralled into employment rights since 1996, union political officers are chafing to get a grip once again on social policy and that means the equality agenda.

The probability is that this report will be fine-tuned in content and presentation to make it 'realistic' so that what we will get in the end is a manifesto that drives the equality agenda in populist terms but which contains nothing that would genuinely unnerve Middle England or offer hostages to the Tories.

The prescriptions will be genuine enough but they will boil down to cover for redirecting funds into the white working class areas where New Labour is losing ground to the BNP and extending the tax base to allow New Labour more leeway in holding its attenuated coalition together.

But the stakes for Southern Middle England, potentially overwhelmed by the interests of London, the regions and the public sector vote, grow proportionately, especially if the 'egalitarians' gain power within the Party without an economic recovery funding their ambitions. Redistribution will mean just that.

If the equality 'punt' is managed into something that sells well into the mass of the population who are not well paid or with significant assets (and there is evidence that it might), then a revived New Labour Government now or in a few years could seriously damage upper middle class wealth.

Given Tory grassroots anger at Cameron's decision on Europe, a lot of middle class conservative-minded voters are going to have to choose between their heart (on the national question) and their wealth. History shows that they will tend to choose their wealth.

British Politics & Climate Change

Earlier this week, the CBI had been calling for greater efforts to build up national nuclear power capacity and for less reliance on the politically-driven commitment to wind power. This was part of its lobby in advance of the Government’s announcement of its ‘climate change’ proposals yesterday.

The CBI's argument was reasonable enough but Government is not likely to want to face a split in the environmentalist movement between fundis and realos in the run-up to a General Election.

Government Proposals

In the event, the Government’s carbon plan seemed to offer up an extremely costly burden to business with estimates that energy costs to business would rise by 17% - domestic bills would rise by 8% - in order to cut CO2 emissions by 34%.

But the bigger businesses who dominate the CBI see an opportunity. They can pass the costs on. Consumers and smaller businesses cannot - they will feel the pain long after the electorate has decided who will rule the country and on what terms.

On the day that unemployment surged to new levels, the Government also promised 400,000 new green jobs, Its commitment is that renewables will rise from 6% to 31% of national electricity generation by 2020.

Nuclear is down from 13% to 8% implying that Government is getting nervous about its ability to produce sufficient capacity, while gas is down from 45% to 29% indicating another purpose behind these policies – geo-political risk assessment for a declining mid-sized power

The rhetoric, however, is all about climate change and not foreign policy realism. The CBI seemed disinclined to put up much of a fight. Their deal seems to be that the Government will continue to drive for its new planning framework which is due in the Autumn. This suits big business.

Climate change is rhetorically needed not only to avoid uncomfortable foreign policy and defence discussions but also to provide cover for a planning regime that is contentious and extremely anti-democratic, designed to drive modernisation over the heads of local communities.

Eco-Politics

An aspect of this is the political importance to New Labour of not allowing eco-radicals to mobilise moderate environmental feeling against a programme of national energy modernisation that will be very costly to the public and to small businesses.

These policies could selectively damage the countryside and property prices and depend on further centralisation of power against local communities. Whatever happens, NIMBY Middle England must be painted into the naughty corner of selfishness.

But it has to be said that we should not be too cynical. The British Government is fully committed to tough emissions targets. The new religion of ‘climate change’ appears to be central to national policy. The other parties and business pay lip service to it as well.

It remains moot, of course, whether any official targets can ever be entirely met by a Government that has had a tendency to put numbers on paper and then find that is does not to have the powers or the means (or perhaps the competence or will) to carry the matter through.

Although big industrial plant should be able to make major step changes in reducing emissions targets, the real challenge is reducing emissions in homes and in transportation where the costs will be very immediate to the electorate - after the election! 

The public is already feeling the pressure of economic down-turn and is about to face the pressure of other stealth taxes, public spending cuts and possibly inflation. But many will still not be fully aware of what is about to hit them and so may blithely support the principle without understanding the cost.

The Political Context

The problem of fuel poverty (and the cost of the Government’s plans to deal with elderly care announced this week) means that such plans cannot be undertaken without a major redistributive funding programme that will place disproportionate pressure on the working middle classes.

We can see now why New Labour needs to win its election quite quickly and then establish a level of pain that might bring the country to the very edge of civil unrest - but on its terms. New Labour needs a full five year control of the State to fight off and exhaust street protest and demonstrate competence.

Whether over internal security matters, planning, increases in quasi-redistributive taxation, the drive for massive spending cuts or the oversight of recovery within a free market model that accepts mass unemployment and suffers commodity-driven inflation, New Labour has to grab long term power.

Any trick or wheeze is acceptable in these last days before Gotterdammerung. If New Labour fails, it is not just a case of Tweedledum replacing Tweedledee, New Labour will see its political opponents pursue similar policies of pain but blame these policies, with some justification, on their predecessors.

The Tories may also use their mandate for legislation to break the labour movement’s access to funding and patronage. There may be little sympathy by then for the trades unions or for the petty corporatism of the British regions amongst a vengeful southern English middle class.

Much is at stake. The politics of climate change and elderly care (and so much else) provide a means to mobilise both progressive opinion and much of the business community against small town conservatives and environmental sceptics ...

... so expect more initiatives of this type, filled with promise but far too late in the day to be meaningful within this Parliament and likely to crumble in the next on the reality of a post-election fiscal crisis and deep political resentments.

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Update On The Afghan War & British Politics

The pressure on the Prime Minister from the Army to increase the long term British military presence in Afghanistan has been intensifying after 15 deaths in 12 days in Helmand Province. The Army wants a rise in British troop levels from 8,300 to 9,000 in November and it is backed by the Tory opposition.

The media consensus tends to back the Army and the Tories but without much enthusiasm. Opinion polling either shows the country to be evenly split on whether the British should even be there at all. Many want the British to pull out.

Politicians Play At Statesmen

Given a lack of engagement in the war by the public, the political class of all parties once again appears to be detached from reality. The criticism is still not of the war but of the conduct of the war.

However, the Tories are beginning to demand some strategic explanation of why losing lives in Helmand province is so important to national security. Privately, most intelligent politicians know that, without massive American engagement, this war is not winnable – and perhaps not even then.

So why are British soldiers being permitted to die! The rhetoric of Government has given up on Blairite high ideals (democracy and human rights) and it has shifted to the threat to British streets. But this is scarcely credible.

British actions in West Asia are likely, eventually, to re-target terror to the UK, whether to extend the war to bring it home to us or perhaps to exploit popular doubts or as an act of desperation in defeat.

The real reason for British engagement is solidarity as junior partner to the US and as an attempt to make NATO relevant but these are truths that dare not be spoken too loudly after Iraq.

The Prime Minister is also personally asserting that the Army has the right equipment and manpower to do the job this summer – he is claiming military support for his contention.

It is as if he is waiting for some short term success, based on US determination not to let the British fail, to enable him to shift funds back from butter to guns later in the year - perhaps relying on some patriotic tabloid surge of popular support based on a victory in the field and on signs of economic recovery.

Bluff & A Possible U-Turn

But what is not credible is the assertion of military backing for the Government. The military probably accept that they will get little now but their fear is that their men are dying to give cover to a dodgy election. The ground won to put Karzai and his cronies back in power will be ceded.

Yes, military chiefs will try to stay out of politics and will get the strong hint from New Labour that further direct comments are unwise – but this will not silence the informal dialogue between angry military figures and both media and opposition.

There is no credible source that does not know that the military are furious that political dithering has turned a serious military operation into a bargain basement effort, threatening to repeat past blunders (through poor resourcing and management) in Iraq.

Beneath this is the sense of being used as a blunt instrument for ill thought out political ends. We can sense an eventual political u-turn in the making, with some face-saving formula to limit the political damage, but, as a political ‘fix’, when it comes, it may be too little, too late.

What the Army wants is a permanent rise in numbers on the ground after the Afghan election in order to hold ground. This is an open Treasury cheque for a period when the Government knows that it will be preparing the public for post-election spending cuts on services.

The British Army may get the political traction for a permanent presence in Afghanistan but not before proof of the military pudding on the ground - that is, unless the Government really cannot hold the line against dissenters. And that is now quite possible.

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