"Red, White and Blue Brexit"

In a little over 70 pages, Theresa May has confirmed the worst nightmare for Remainers. Not only is Britain leaving the EU, we are leaving the single market and the customs union too. This may mean immigration controls are being placed before economic growth. The political is being put before the economic. This is what she meant when she engaged in such sloganeering as “red, white and blue Brexit”.

Speaking at Lancaster House, May deployed the language of internationalism, Theresa May laid out the contours of the plan for Britain to leave the EU and become a “great, global trading nation”. She was careful to talk about diversity, multiculturalism and fairness. It was not a speech at a UKIP rally. Instead, May has tried to rearticulate the centre ground as a nationalist space.

In the aftermath of the June referendum, Britain was left in a state of shock. Even the Leave voters could not believe they had won, for many the vote was an opportunity to register their distaste with the establishment. Not many people expected Brexit to go ahead, certainly not in the Remain camp where people felt they had fallen into a parallel universe.

Nearly eight months on, the unknown is still here. It haunts us all every day. We voted for it, and we don’t know what will happen next. The pound has been degraded, and some people have lost thousands from their pension pots. Inflation and instability are on the rise. And this is just the beginning. The process has not even started yet.

Mayday, Mayday!

Electoral strategy has trumped economic stability. Withdrawing from the EU will allow the Conservatives to ward off the threat of UKIP and satisfy their own Eurosceptic backbenchers. The question of European integration has been a crucial question for Conservative administrations going back to Ted Heath. Those were the days when the Tories were passionate Europhiles.

Since then Euroscepticism moved across the aisle and became embodied by right-wing mavericks on the Tory backbenches. Despite her reputation as ‘anti-European’, Margaret Thatcher signed Britain up for the Single European act and took the country into the ERM before her resignation. Yet it would be John Major, whose government would be lacerated by infighting over Europe. David Cameron would offset the issue until 2016 when he finally held the referendum.

Unlike her predecessors, Theresa May wants to resolve the European problem once and for all. She hopes she can save face by taking Britain out of the single market and the customs union. May promises she can do this with minimal pain. This is akin to David Cameron’s promise to cut spending without hurting public services. It was wrong in 2010, and it’s wrong in 2017. But this is not May’s consideration.

Freedom of movement with the EU will come to an end, but it’s unclear what this may mean. Contrary to popular misreading, the end of free movement with the EU does not necessarily mean immigration will cease. May has already gestured towards a deal on EU nationals living in the UK, and for UK nationals living in the EU. The real issue is the economy’s need for more and more cheap labour as the population age and approach retirement.

One scenario is that the UK will continue to accept migrant labour and use the tax receipts to prop up its pension system. The government could still introduce new penalties to squeeze migration, turn away more refugees and continue to suppress wages. In another scenario, the UK restricts its border thereby reducing its own labour market and creating the pre-conditions to privatise the pensions system. In either scenario, the working class stands to lose out.

A Not-So-New Economy

One of the reasons why I doubted Brexit was possible was the loss of British manufacturing. If we’re going to weather the storm ahead we will need an industrial base as part of a viable economic strategy, yet this economic base was destroyed by four decades of Thatcherism. So, the industrial option no longer exists, the Conservatives are left in a tricky position.

There are few options on the table for any government right now. Before the Conservatives were simply trying to reflate the housing bubble – that flourished under New Labour, only to go pop in 2008 – as they tried to stripped the state down to the buff. The Cameron era is over, and the May government must chart a new course.

Unfortunately, the Tories have destroyed the other options, it looks like they are going to give supply-side economics another try. Thus, Chancellor Philip Hammond has suggested the UK should slash taxes for the rich and take a hatchet to what little regulation is left. Who will pay for this? Everyone who depends on benefits, state schools, the NHS and state pensions. It’s all up for grabs now. The profits must be extracted from somewhere.

More important than growth, the system needs to facilitate the accumulation of capital. It’s a mistake to think the capitalist buzzword is ‘growth’. The neoliberal period is marked by low growth rates in many cases. The average rate of growth in the 1970s was 2.2%, and under Thatcher it was 2.2%. All that changed was the distribution of growth. Profitability was restored by the defeat of organised labour, whose demands for high wages were eating into revenue.

At the same time, Trump says he wants to cut a deal with the UK once in office. Expect the free trade deal to mean a “bonfire of regulations” presided over by the Treasury. It could be worse than TTIP. You can imagine an unprecedented pig-out by the rich, in which the NHS, state pensions and education, are all eviscerated and served up on a silver platter. This isn’t to say the Tory government wasn’t going to do this anyway.

All of this as the country is hit by the consequences of a falling pound and little to export. The trade deficit is already massively bloated, whereas financial capital is the only thing going for the economy. This is likely just the beginning of a very bumpy ride.

This article was originally written for Spectre.

I am Daniel Blake

Watching I, Daniel Blake I am not ashamed to say I was moved to tears. I left the cinema still welling up inside. It does take a lot to make me cry, but an overwhelming sadness was not the only thing I felt. The other feeling can only be described as white-hot fury. I can still feel the heat of that burning anger now.

It’s not that the film shows us what we didn’t know, it’s that the film conveys the reality some of us know all too well. Dan embodies the suffering and humiliation of benefit claimants. Katie and her children stands for the single-mums and their plight in these dark times. I thought of my mother as I watched Katie go hungry to feed her children — as my mum so often did.

We know what it was like to live in damp houses without proper heating or appliances. We know what it was like to live from hand to mouth with the fear of not being able to make the rent and the bills. We know how to fill a bath with water boiled in a kettle because there is no hot water. We know how to get to sleep on bare floorboards.

Truly morally-stunted people will dismiss I, Daniel Blake as just a work of fiction from an old left-wing filmmaker. These people are irredeemable. You can’t expect people like Toby Young and Kwasi Kwarteng to see the truth that they are paid not to see. There is no point trying to persuade these people of the scale of misery in this country. It is no accident the degradation of poor people escapes their purview.

It’s not like it is common for a film to take the side of the benefit claimant, one of the most demonised figures in British society. We live with Benefits Street and Jeremy Kyle, where the unemployed are presented as a bunch of free-loading scumbags. People who need a dose of tough love. By contrast,I, Daniel Blake has been criticised for showing us an unemployed man, who is not dysfunctional and struggling with addiction.

Daniel Blake is out of work because of no fault of his own. His bad heart means he can’t work, yet he is found fit for work by the job centre. He comes across Katie and her kids, who have been sent to live in Newcastle having been evicted by a landlord in London. We follow Dan and Katie through hungry queues at food banks and the bureaucracy of the benefits system. Yes, people do live like this in real life.

This is not a saccharine depiction of working-class life. It is not ‘sentimental’ to portray an unemployed man with a moral compass. Middle-class people are often shown on film as upstanding, moral citizens with few problems (except maybe a break-up or the odd murder). Meanwhile the only problem facing the super-rich is what to do with all their ill-gotten gains, as we see in movies like Wolf Of Wall Street.

In this regard, Ken Loach has succeeded in capturing the travails of working-class people without concessions to the gutter press and its view of poor people. It would be inappropriate to show Dan smoking dozens fags and drinking his way through six packs of cheap lager every night. Not to mention the fact that the man suffered a major heart attack.

So we’re meant to expect an irresponsible feckless stereotype as a representative of the out-of-work poor. Shell suits, Burberry caps and roll-ups are in order. Cans of watered down lager, obligatory. Anything short of this tabloid image is ‘unrealistic’. This is what we’re led to believe by the chattering classes. It’s almost as if working-class pride has been erased from public life.

Working-class people are regularly stripped of their dignity. You can see this whenever you turn on daytime television or open a red-top newspaper.I, Daniel Blake covers the form this humiliation takes at the job centre. Ken Loach and Paul Laverty are not obliged to play to the middle-classes and how they view less privileged people.

The critics who deny the film’s accuracy confirm its truth in doing so. The media response shows you why I, Daniel Blake is accurate and why it had to be made. It is a fictional account of what happens to ordinary people, both good and bad. The point is that if you are a respectable member of the ‘deserving’ poor, the system will not spare you. There are no exceptions and the odds are stacked against a happy ending.

If there weren’t thousands of Daniel Blakes across Britain, this film would have never been made and it would not be dismissed if it weren’t true. Too many people don’t like the truth. It’s inconvenient and often painful to accept. Like many great film makers Ken Loach raises a mirror and demands that we look at ourselves. So he should. And we are obliged to do so.

This article was originally written for Notes from the Underclass.

How to get your Universal Credit raised

In case you don’t know, Universal Credit is the greatest achievement of Iain Duncan Smith. It is the only thing IDS achieved in government. It is his crucible. His life’s work, and his life’s worth. And it is utterly shit. But this should surprise no one.

In theory, Universal Credit encompasses all the benefits you’re eligible to claim. It’s relatively simple when it comes to Jobseekers and housing benefit, but it becomes more complex when it comes to other claims. The idea is to reduce bureaucracy by combining claims into one simple process. In practice, it just means the claimant has to go through an arduous process of filing out forms, providing evidence and chasing up the payments (and back-payments).

A friend of mine living with their parents in deepest, darkest Kent was set just over £251 a month under Universal Credit. This is the standard allowance for someone under 25. It would take into account housing benefit on top of this sum. It may not sound bad, if you’re living at home. But the system is highly punitive. You can have your benefits cut or suspended for several months for just missing an appointment.

If you live in London, where your rent is likely exorbitant you may still be expected to get by on a pitiful amount. Even if you’re lucky to have very cheap rent, say £400 a month, the system might give you this or it could dole out the bare minimum — just £117 a month. This is on top of any living allowance. That’s just £368 a month. If you’re 25 or over, it will be £434 a month. Could you get by on £8.50 a week? Would that cover your bills?

What’s the impact? You’re gradually forced backwards, sinking deeper into debt. You’re either drowning in your overdraft, or lending money from friends and family. You could end up homeless, or coach-surfing. However, the answer is simple, it’s just not widely known. If you call up the Scottish office (that’s 0345 600 0723, by the way) and question the payments, you can get your benefits fixed. Be politely annoying, it’s usually the way forward.

I’ve done this myself (I was expected to live off of £21 a week, incidentally) after getting advice from a friend, who works as a support worker. If you’re set a pitiful amount of money to live on, the worst thing to do is nothing. Universal Credit was devised, not to provide a safety-net for people who fall through the cracks, but to force people to accept low-pay for long hours of shitty work. Perhaps this is why wages have fallen by 10% in recent years.

This article was originally written for Notes from the Underclass.

It's very expensive being poor!

I was meant to get my first payment of Universal Credit today. I checked my account online with some anticipation (though not much) only to find nothing there. I’ll be calling Scotland soon, listen to canned Vivaldi once again. Eventually I’ll get a dour voice telling me something. But even if I got the money, it wouldn’t be the answer.

Some have no idea what it’s like. Try paying your rent without a job. Try covering your travel costs. Try paying your Council Tax too. Try eating healthily. Try saving up for anything without disposable income. Try paying your bills. Try all of this on just £57 a week. That plus housing benefit, if you get it in time. Try it. Go on.

All of these things are hard enough when you’re working a minimum wage job. You will be lucky if you’re getting by with £100 leftover in your bank account. If you’re a recent graduate, you might be lucky enough to still have an overdraft without the charges. Feel free to dip in and go for a swim. You can sink in for days, before resurfacing at the end of the month.

That’s if you have a pay day, a monthly wage, an annual salary, with the taxes taken out by your employer. An existence as an intern or free-lancer can be highly stressful. In any case, life on what used to be called ‘the dole’ is much less simple. You can find yourself trapped financially. It’s supposed to make you “get off your arse, get on a bike and get a job”. It is true, after all the system is so shit it does give you an incentive to work.

Nevertheless, if you live on benefits — you can barely travel and eat properly. The propensity to depression is natural. You’ll soon find yourself waist-deep in despair, and sinking fast. Once you’re there, you’ll find it hard to motivate yourself to apply for jobs. Fortunately, the job centre may sanctionyou for this, so you have fear to motivate you and, I’m sure, you will apply to the best of your abilities under such intolerable conditions.

Wages have been stagnant since the 1970s. That’s why we’ve had a huge explosion of private debt — the only way to raise demand without high wages — as people relied more and more on credit cards, mortgages and loans, to stay afloat. The credit crunch and the subsequent financial crisis did not end this trend, but rather entrenched it further. We can thank ourpolitical leaders for a low-wage, low-growth economy with huge amounts of debt and unaffordable, lousy housing.

Since the credit crunch in 2007 the UK has seen wages continue to fall, in real times, putting us next to Greece. Real earnings have fallen by over 10% between 2007 and 2015 in Britain. According to the OECD, the average wage rate has risen by 6.7% in Europe — but not in Great Britain — as we find in France (11%), Germany (14%) and Poland (23%). This is what the Conservatives mean when they say they are “making work pay”.

Meanwhile the UK’s top bosses have taken home a 10% raise — on an average salary of £5.5 million a year. Wages for the average worker rose by just 2% in 2015. That’s after years of falling wages. The highest paid CEO isSir Martin Sorrell at WPP, taking home over £70 million quid last year. It may sound good for aspirational types, who stupidly imagine they could earn that much one day. The brutal truth is the poor works so these people don’t have to.

Profits are what you make when you don’t work. Except, if you’re in a dole queue — that’s scrounging! If you can digest this thought, ask yourself: How did that taste? Was it disgusting? It should be.

This article was originally written for Notes from the Underclass.

Thatcher 2.0

So, the heir to Blair is gone, Theresa May has come to power, George Osborne has been replaced with Philip Hammond and Boris Johnson is now in charge of MI6. It's plausible that the Tory Party may be returning to its wilderness period in opposition to New Labour. Cameron's Blair-style of leadership is now over. All that's left is the mess of party politics before Cameron took over in 2005: fools, creeps, lightweights and nobodies.

Yet inevitably, the new British prime minister will be compared to Margaret Thatcher. Not that May has a substantive political agenda. If Andrea was going to play Thatcher 2.0, she would have faired no better than Theresa. Love her or loathe her, Thatcher was a seizmic figure in UK politics. She redefined the conversation and changed society in a little over a decade. We have remained on the same track ever since, while the political class has changed in style and tactics.

The truth is the Conservatives never got over Thatcher. The Iron Lady's fall from power left behind a vacuum, which has never really been closed. John Major and David Cameron are passing, managerial figures. Unusually for a Conservative, Thatcher was a formidable ideologue. But let's pull back for a moment. It's worth reflecting on the events of recent weeks. Despite appearances the Conservative establishment was hit hard by the Brexit shockwave. The dust has yet to settle.

Electorus interruptus

Once Brexit hit, David Cameron was forced to resign – a decision which clearly stung. By contrast, George Osborne disappeared into the shadows for the weekend. He finally resurfaced to provide reassurances to the business community, after three days in hiding. The look of complete devastation on Osborne's face must have been very reassuring. Both men – a duo of the major league – were physically shaken by defeat. The Cameron legacy died on June 23, and Osborne's hopes of taking over died with it.

The Tory government has been rudderless since the leadership contest ensued. At first, everyone thought that the favourite candidate, Boris Johnson, would easily swoop in and become prime minister. Then Johnson committed electorus interruptus with no warning. The Boris campaign was dead before the man could even announce his candidacy. Michael Gove delivered the fatal blow and quickly usurped the candidacy.

This was great drama for political junkies. Boris has been lurking on the sidelines for years – clearly in preparation of a bid for the premiership. He wanted his birthright. Far from a conviction politician, or even a responsible human being, Johnson bet everything on the Leave vote. In actuality, the former London mayor was hoping for a slight Remain vote, which would create the pre-conditions for a hard-right Tory revolt against Cameron. Such a situation would be favourable for a prominent (and opportunistic) figure to seize power.

The chancer got exactly what he didn't want. Johnson was quick to cleave to the centre-ground in the hope of salvaging a position as a 'unifying figure'. But this strategy was doomed to fail. The parliamentarians would want a Remain candidate, whereas the members might prefer a Leave campaigner. Boris was seen as a gamble. He had himself stabbed Cameron in the back over the EU debate, giving him just 10 minutes to adjust before he announced his support for Leave.

It was obvious, for some of us from the start. The favourite candidate has lost every Conservative leadership election in the last 60 years. In other words, the commentators get it wrong regularly. The real battle for the ruling party is to reproduce itself as the establishment. If the next leader tries to backtrack from EU withdrawal, the party could well split. It's even possible that the negotiations could lead to a bloody schism.

The death of the centre

Theresa May was clearly the strongest contender from the outset. Soon she was the last candidate standing, and then the last woman standing. May has a tough reputation on immigration, which plays to her advantage right now. However, it is also clear May is a pragmatist and a centre-right politician more than anything else. She is, no doubt, favoured by establishment figures because she is seen as a "safe pair of hands". Quietly pro-Remain, May is inoffensive to the party loyalists, but she's also capable of difficult policies – e.g. the reform of the police.

The problem for Prime Minister May will be walking the thin line necessary to keep both wings of the Conservative Party contented. The eurosceptics will be looking for any sign of compromise, any whiff of retreat or hesitation in the negotiating room. At the same time, there are still strong europhiles in the Tory hierarchy. The former will want red meat on immigration, the latter will recognise the practicalities of free movement.

The UK has had freedom of movement with Ireland on and off since the 1920s. If the new administration wants to control EU migration, the Irish border will have to be patrolled and the symbolism of British troops on the Irish border should not be taken lightly. Likewise, there are over 2 million British emigrants in EU countries. Meanwhile the UK economy has a structural need for migrant labour, and this goes to the heart of the matter.

If it is to reproduce itself, British capitalism has to be reinvigorated. Right-wing eurosceptics want to revitalise the system by tipping further towards the American empire, while turning to the former colonies for trade, as an alternative to the continental European bloc. The centre basically want to extend the current system as it is – propped up by finance and hocked up with debt. But the Left could also push for a new social democratic turn.

Coming out with 'One Nation' rhetoric, May hopes she can differentiate herself from the Cameron era. She acknowledged disparities of race, class and gender in her first speech. But the 'One Nation' has a nasty side – namely cultural nationalism. This is somewhat different to so-called 'compassionate' conservatism popularised by George W Bush. May will look to forge unity by exclusion. It's just a question of who gets excluded.

This article was originally published at Souciant.

On benefits.

There are few people I rank lower than the middle-class, overpaid, expensively educated, journalists who spend their working lives demonising people living on benefits. These people work to turn the poor against each other and to support benefit cuts. So the working-class is expected to turn a blind-eye to bald parasites like Iain Duncan Smith, a man who lied about his qualifications, who claims expenses for a £39 breakfast, and then cuts benefits to disabled people.

I was lucky to only spend a few months on benefits. What can you expect from benefits? If you're my age you're entitled to £56 a week (the most you can get is £70) plus housing benefit. You're not entitled to anything if you're on an unpaid internship and you'll have to apply for 14 jobs a week to prove you're "serious" about getting a job. Meanwhile the job centres have been given quotas to 'sanction' three people a week - cutting them off from any subsistence for weeks and sometimes months.

Once you do get a job you'll be cut off and just scrape by on whatever you've managed to save (out of the £56 a week?). Don't worry, the job centre will give you travel money, but nothing else, because you've got a wage packet coming at the end of the month. It's clear that this is not a system of free handouts to pamper hordes of 'scroungers'. As a socialist, I invite the working-class to face the people fucking them and reach for the nearest blunt object.

Reaction to Scotland's No vote.

So the votes are in. Scotland has voted 44.7% for independence and 55.3% to remain within the United Kingdom. Voter turnout was close to 87% in a display of participation greater than we have seen in any recent election. The EU elections in May drew 33.8% of the British electorate out of their homes to the local voting booth. It’s standard in UK general elections for turnout to be almost twice as high as in EU elections. Consequently, the protest vote looms large in one and not the other (at least usually this is the case).

It was said in the run-up to the referendum that Alex Salmond couldn’t lose either way: if it’s a ‘yes’ then Scotland becomes an independent state, if it’s a ‘no’ then Scotland will win more powers. Originally the proposed referendum was to include three options, not just yes or no, but the option of maximal devolution would have been on the table too. This led many to suggest Salmond was really pushing for greater powers. If Salmond was aiming for independence then this might not be the end of the story, as we have seen in Quebec where there have been two referendums on independence. The major issue for Whitehall is how they can prevent such an occurrence in the British Isles.

No wonder then David Cameron has raised the West Lothian question. He speaks of a ‘devolution revolution’ for the English and not just Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Endless bifurcation has its appeal to international capitalism as each entity can be picked off, its economy chiselled and its workforce disciplined. The appeal is to English parochialism, the same mobilising force behind UKIP, Powellism, and the EDL, can be seen as a move to strengthen the rightward trend of British politics through coalescence and triangulation. Boundary changes would have to be made in any large-scale constitutional shake-up in a country where such questions have been held-off for far too long. So devolution may not necessarily result in an automatic Conservative stranglehold in Westminster.

Decentralisation in a neoliberal world would suit Cameron and his party just right. The Conservatives are facing inexorable decline, having only increased their share of the vote by 3% in 5 years against the Brown government. It’s highly unlikely for any governing party to increase its share of the vote, even if you have the Liberal Democrats as human shields. Meanwhile, the Labour Party lacks any vision or impetus to stand up for its traditional social base. The bet may not be for a rejuvenated Tory Party, that fight may have already been lost. It’s not just that the social democratic model is rotting before our eyes; the old Toryism is going the way of the dodo too. In that regard, what is left but to fall back on the trilateral consensus and devolve the Union into a morass entrenching austerity.

As for the Scottish National Party, it was once the case that the left-right coalition (which composes the SNP) was set to break apart once they had achieved independence. It looks unlikely that will be the case as long as Scotland remains within the UK. Salmond will try to maintain the public services and welfare provisions in Scotland for as long as he can. Additional powers may help this, or hinder this, it’s difficult to foresee. It still is the case that the SNP is not a socialist party, it isn’t even a republican party, and it was willing to accept NATO, as well as international free-trade agreements, and the vanity projects of Donald Trump. I can see the ultra-left in Scotland pinning the blame on the SNP for not being pure enough and Salmond will rebuke this with the language of pragmatism.

This post was written as an immediate reaction to the outcome of the referendum on Scottish independence. It will be reproduced at Souciant later.

Another Comrade Lost.

It's not often that there are two such prominent exits at the same time. First Bob Crow, now Tony Benn. Let's hope these passings don't come in threes as it is so often said. Tony Benn was a veteran of the Second World War, a stalwart campaigner, a democratic socialist, a diarist, and historian. He was one of the few 'moderates' to see that it wasn't good enough to try and run the system slightly better. Benn had seen the Labour government of the 1960s try to offset a redistribution of wealth by trying to boost growth. In the 1970s Benn saw the Labour Party swallow monetarism and a package of austerity measures for the IMF. In one of the best cases of a person becoming more left-wing as they get older Benn concluded that there had to be a radical opposition for there to be an opposition at all. Benn took a stand against the neoliberal agenda of privatisation and deregulation. And that is why he is referred to as 'divisive'.

Nothing marks out the predominance of liberal Oxbridge graduates in the commentariat than the use of 'divisive' as a pejorative. There is nothing inherently wrong with sparking a division. If anything we have too little division in the trilateral consensus in Whitehall and we could do with much more dissensus. In fact, that would be to understate the dire stasis we're enduring right now. The liberals at the BBC (let alone the conservatives there) want to believe that Benn cost Labour the election with the potency of his 'dangerous ideas'. It's impossible for them to imagine that the combination of the Falklands war, Callaghan's record in the 70s, the SDP insurgency, and the ineffectuality of the Labour leadership, set Michael Foot for defeat in 1983. Foot was then succeeded by Neil Kinnock, who led the Labour Party with much greater concessions to Thatcherism. It's no coincidence that the SDP evolved into the Liberal Democrats who now share a bed comfortably with David Cameron. Only such mush-heads could find the word 'consensus' beautiful.

Tony Benn has been forgiven in his old age as he was no longer a threat to the system. His passing has been greeted with qualified statements of '... even if you didn't agree with him' and the like. Unlike Bob Crow, who was very much a figure of the 21st Century, the late Anthony Wedgewood was one of the most significant British socialists of the latter half of the 20th Century. This connects him with the post-war settlement and its breakdown in the 1970s and 80s. It's precisely because this man stood up to the Thatcherites and the rightward shift in the Labour Party that he can't simply be mourned without hesitation. The past is scary and historical reflection is even more terrifying. It's inconvenient. One might ask uncomfortable questions. Some would like to know why the IMF bailout was received and the package of austerity measures, implemented under Callaghan, if it were unnecessary as Mr Benn claimed and Denis Healey confirmed. Not only does it raise troubling questions about the way our society was transformed in the 1980s, it raises troubling questions about what is going on in government right now.

A Comrade Lost.

I'm sad to hear of Bob Crow's death. He was one of the last strong leaders of the labour movement left in this country. Crow fought valiantly for his members and the service we all rely on in London. We need more people like him and not less. He was never held back by the right-wing media smear campaign because he understood what it means to stand up for the interests of working-class people. Solidarity is not about altruism, it is about the rational pursuit of class interests. Sacrifices may be made collectively, and individually, in order to further a common end. In that sense Crow was an old-fashioned leftist in his affection and understanding of the common people and what is at stake in the age of austerity.

Unfortunately, many will welcome his death as good news, only to moan when tube fares rise and the standard of service declines. Even when the Oyster card is abolished so many will still not understand that if we have no organisations then we have no means to resist at all. Crow was hated precisely because people like him threaten the neoliberal agenda of stripping all public services to the bone to enrich a tiny elite.The Jubilee line was only extended to raise property values and procure enormous profits for speculators in the City. The tax-payer shelled out for that and the banks gobbled up the profits. It is capitalism which asks the poor to work for the benefit of the rich. Rational self-interest doesn't even come into the picture. 

Permanent Austerity.

Bound in white tie, but not gagged, merely primed for performance as always, the Prime Minister finally admitted what some of us had suspected from before the beginning. In his speech David Cameron came out with the rhetoric of small government, that we have to do more with less and shrink the state to a more effective role. So the point of the austerity measures is not to reduce the deficit necessarily, it is to slim down the size of the state. Of course, it is worth saying that the ideological mission of a shrunken state is one and the same with the claims to 'necessity'. It is no coincidence that the claim that the spending cuts are 'necessary' comes with added promises of greater 'productivity', 'innovation' and 'efficiency'. In fact, a government euphemism for cuts is 'efficiency savings'. This is the lexicon of neoliberal managerialism.

If we are to take David Cameron on his word then we might say that the austerity is meant to be perpetual and never ending. The key part being when he said "We are sticking to the task. But that doesn't just mean making difficult decisions on public spending. It also means something more profound, it means building a leaner, more efficient state.  We need to do more with less. Not just now, but permanently." The sight of the Prime Minister in his white little frock at the throne dripping gold and these words coming out of his mouth was something to be seen. Unfortunately the irony of the Head of Her Majesty's Government proselytising on the virtues of 'small government' is lost on conservative opinion. Meanwhile the handful of liberal and leftish rags immediately seized on the words of the Prime Minister. But no one should be so surprised really.
 

Just observe the fact that the original proposals by George Osborne were meant to reduce the deficit to naught by 2015 and now the plans to wipe the deficit have been extended to 2020. To this picture we may add the claims that the NHS is facing a shortfall of £10 billion, that was back in 2010, it was Andrew Lansley, who used the figure to justify the cuts he was making at the time. Now there is talk of a coming shortfall by the end of the decade of £30 billion. One wonders if Cameron's lot will ever feel they have lowered the rate of spending far enough. Every problem of the public services and welfare state are seized on by these vultures as proof of the need for deep cuts. The various scandals to be endured by the NHS of late fit the example perfectly. Hunt will make a statement on the problem at hand (which is no doubt real) to buttress his position as a competent Health Secretary coming up with the prescription for a better health service. Cuts and more cuts.

The examples the Prime Minister reaches for are quite interesting for this reason. He singled out for praise the accomplishments of Michael Gove, the 40% cuts to administrative staff at the Education Department to be specific. Then there are the 3,000 'free schools' and academies set up under the watch of Gove. He lumps in the shrinkage of the department with the use of public assets and money to ensure education for the children of sharp-elbowed middle-class parents. 'Free schools' are established at the expense of the tax-payer and even at a cost to comprehensive and other state schools in terms of resources. This is the same ministry to rearrange the pensions system for teachers with the hopes of devaluing their retirement funds by 15% and raising their payments by 50%. Over the same timeline you'll find tuition fees introduced and raised almost at every university to £9,000, apparently to reduce the deficit when HE funding accounts for 0.7% of GDP.


This is the manifest reality of what Cameron means when he speaks of a "leaner, more efficient state". The idealised slim-line state of libertarian imaginations is not to be taken seriously as a realistic prospect. Really we're looking at the possibility of living in a society where the social safety-nets is non-existent while the state intervenes to create markets, boost supply and ensure vast profits. There will be plenty of bailouts to come. In some respects the neoliberal period seems much more like a state of flux than a rigidly set social order. It is partly identifiable by its oscillations, the sudden shift in gears from taking a chainsaw to financial regulations to diving into the public purse to save the lemmings before they go over the cliff. Though it is a very narrow and restricted spectrum with serious limitations. There is only so many regulations to burn and so far the taxes can be cut.

Jumping each hurdle might become much more difficult as we go long. Crises will offer opportunities to reconstitute the economic formations as they were prior to them. Schumpeter called it 'creative destruction': the field of competitors is wiped clear for old forces to go from strength to strength. A better diagnosis from Naomi Klein would be economic 'shock therapy' whereby the crisis provides a cover for a series of assaults to be launched on the living standards of working-class people. It's worth bearing in mind that the current order took shape in the way that the Thatcherites circumvented the crisis of social democracy: 1) cutting public expenditure, 2) privatising state industries, 3) smashing the unions and 4) deregulation of finance. Incidentally the average rate of growth in the 70s was 2.5% and it remained the same in the Thatcher decade. So those who think the austerity is about high rates of growth are sadly mistaken, at best.

Not surprisingly then 0.8% of growth is enough for George Osborne to declare a great victory, a strange position given that there has been no opposition in Parliament to his agenda. Only a brat as expensively educated as the Chancellor could perceive competition in a game rigged in his favour. The Cameron lot want to patch up this sorry set-up, not to fundamentally alter its trajectory. The failures of the past are accentuated, and framed in a certain way, by the abstract principles of today. A high-rate of public expenditure is measured by a criterion not of the social democratic era. The 1970s was a terrible time in British history not because it necessarily was so awful, but because the conditions differ so greatly to today. To be specific, the scope of the state - particularly in the ways that helped poor people - in those days is what outrages conservative-minded people.

The standard of a high level of government debt was changed by the Thatcher-Major era. Suddenly it was set at a benchmark of 40% when this country has seen rates as high as 250% in the wake of World War Two. And that was a well managed economic situation. The Labour government of 1945 established a social democracy complete with the trimmings of a welfare state and universal health-care. The story of how the social democratic post-war consensus developed systemic problems and crises is a long one and a subject for a different article. What may be said is that the failures of that epoch have been accentuated in the years since. The abstract principles of today are applied to those yesteryears with the self-serving results one would expect. The rightward trend of discourse leaves the state-led settlement of the 50s and 60s looking almost Soviet to too many people today. This is the death of social democracy.

The Great Rip-Off.

 

There was hardly any outrage in the air when the Health and Social Care act of 2012 was passed. The act stipulates that NHS doctors take control of their budgets as well as permit them to buy services from private companies. Another stipulation is to allow hospitals to use up to 49% of hospital beds and theatre time to generate private income. The section 75 regulations stipulate that the sectors of the NHS which can’t be ‘provably’ run exclusively by public provision will have to face competition from the private sector. Lord Phillip Hunt said that the regulations will “promote and permit privatisation and extend competition into every quarter of the NHS regardless of patients interests.”[1] He added that the reform will make privatisation the default position as the burden of proof is placed on the shoulders of any commissioner opposed to private health provision.[2]

The Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners has stated that these reforms “remove the legal framework for a universal, publically provided, publically managed, publically planned, democratically accountable health service.”[3] Concurrent to these reforms the Coalition has been underfunding health services. In the first budget of the Coalition government, George Osborne announced a 1% increase in funding for the NHS. Yet that amount falls short of the pace at which health costs rise, which is sometimes 2% or 3% above inflation. There is a correlation to this policy. Waiting lists increased by 43% from 2010 to 2012.[4] Fortunately for David Cameron the media has yet to raise more than a whimper of questions about these reforms. It was Lansley who claimed that the NHS has to face cuts for a shortfall of £10 billion to be avoided.[5] Then this year came talk of a £30 billion shortfall at the end of the decade.[6] The government’s prescription: cuts, cuts, cuts.

This is the apogee of decades of health-care policy in this country. The Thatcherites first introduced private companies in the area of cleaning services and even went further to provide contracts to private companies willing to invest in the construction and operation of services. Public-private partnerships were established, effectively subsidising private companies with tax-payer money. The cleaning contracts commissioned from the private sector have led to rising costs for hospitals and a decline in hygiene standards. Out of this came the rise in MRSA.[7] New Labour continued and furthered these developments. The performance targets based on market standards were expanded and health-care professionals were left jumping through even more hoops. The rhetoric of New Labour was decentralisation they offered to ‘free’ hospitals from central control and allow local people to ‘own’ their own hospital.[8]

As of 2005 the UK government was looking to shift 10% of the work of existing NHS organisations to the private sector.[9] The NHS signed contracts with eight different health-care providers to set up fast-track treatments centres to treat 250,000 patients over five years. The programme forced some NHS hospitals to close down wards. In 2011 Andrew Lansley was forced to admit that 60 hospitals were on the “brink of financial collapse” as a result of public-private partnerships first started by John Major and expanded under Blair. The hospitals could not meet the high payments being demanded by private companies. The cost of these gluttonous companies feeding off of the public health service has been bared all along by the British tax-payer. Care homes for the elderly have been privatised just as prisons and now the post office have been. The pig-out goes on.

Yet these developments are not unprecedented around the world. In Canada it was the Conservative Mike Harris who introduced the public-private partnerships in Ontario to open up public assets to corporations in the financing of new facilities and the operation of support services.[10] Diagnostic clinics for MRIs and CT scans were opened up to private companies.[11] Many have introduced all kinds of hidden costs, with one place even charging $100 for an orange juice.[12] These measures were expanded and deepened by Liberal and Conservative administrations. Almost 30% of Canadian health expenditure came from private payments in 2010.[13] More and more there are user fees for those without private insurance and physicians can block treatment if you don’t pay up. Private health-care payments account for 3.1% of Canadian GDP. The spread and scope of private clinics is being expanded still.[14]

Meanwhile in Australia the government of Tony Abbott has confirmed that they will be pursuing the privatisation of Medibank and has not ruled out any further privatisation schemes.[15] Just as the British health system has been underfunded the Australian equivalent has endured cuts in the number of public hospital beds from 74,000 to 54,000 from 1983 to 2009.[16] Effectively this means a 60% cut when the growth in population is taken into account.[17] The Rudd government excluded from the commission’s review, the current 30% rebate for private insurance, which currently costs $3.7 billion annually, so as not to antagonise the insurance companies.[18] The successive Gillard government initiated an austerity programme leading to cuts being set to health budgets in New South Wales of $3 billion, $1.6 billion in Queensland and $616 million in Victoria.[19] So the incremental process of privatisation is not contained to this tired little island.

The forces behind these shifts are not just national but international. The yet to be finalised free-trade deal between the US and the EU may well have troubling implications for the future of universal health-care throughout the EU and not just in the British Isles. It looks like the agreement will open up public services – including health – to private investment and ownership.[20] It would appear as though the Bolkestein directive has only been reconstituted in its mission to see the European Union become a mere managerial edifice for a liberal market economy. At the same time we can see Obama has initiated a series of conservative health reforms in one of the few civilised countries without universal coverage. In the sectors that have profited from the chaos of the American situation there are keen eyes for the potential gains in plundering the NHS. We have been denied a debate on the privatisation of health-care, but as we aren't going to be given one. We should decide for ourselves what kind of society we want to live in and take action.

This article was originally written for the Heythrop Lion.

 

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[1] http://falseeconomy.org.uk/blog/experts-speak-why-section-75-nhs-privatisation-regulations-are-such-a-threa

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/03/heal-m19.html

[5] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/dec/26/nhs-cuts-shortfall-report

[6] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23266318

[7] http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/02/nahs-f08.html

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] http://www.globalresearch.ca/medicare-the-privatization-of-healthcare-in-Canada

[11] Ibid.

[12] http://www.torontosun.com/2011/08/31/ontario-committed-to-universal-health-care-matthews

[13] http://www.globalresearch.ca/medicare-the-privatization-of-healthcare-in-Canada

[14] Ibid.

[15] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/23/abbott-confirms-plan-privatise-medibank

[16] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/08/medi-a06.html

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

[19] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/24/heal-j24.html

[20] http://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/gus-fagan/eu-us-free-trade-and-risks-to-nhs