Spirit of ‘45? Cameron finds unlikely consolation in Ken Loach in lamenting social decline

Ken Loach’s documentary message is all too familiar to Ed Miliband and David Cameron but all three make the same mistaken assumption, and fail to grapple with the issue of declining community.

Yesterday I watched Ken Loach’s latest documentary ‘The Spirit of ‘45’ which on one hand celebrates British resilience and spirit at home in the face of two crippling wars, and on the other hand regrets the forces which Roach argues, thwarted and eroded the values of the common good and social responsibility. What Loach offers is a combination of nostalgia for this past sense of fraternity and community, with a misplaced and romantic attribution of this departure to the influence and policies of Margaret Thatcher and neoliberalism.

Loach makes this argument by juxtaposing the climate and the social attitudes in the face of fascism and poverty, caused by the crippling cost of two wars, with the post-1979 peacetime values which focused on prosperity, individualism, and moral decline. In doing so Loach feeds the same socialist myth that community died under Thatcher when in fact this decline happened far before Thatcher came to prominence.

Although some of Thatcher’s rhetoric and policy did not help to reverse this trend , the assumption is a staggering misrepresentation of history. The truth is the spirit of ’45 which Loach alludes to, declined in the years immediately after the war.

One consideration ignored in the documentary is that war united the country in a way which was very unique. In the years of peace which followed, the external threat of fascism departed and the force which instilled this sense of solidarity naturally declined. A second consideration neglected by Loach and others on the Left is that in the years post-1945, the size of the government rapidly increased. Government began to take over the responsibility and provision of services and responsibilities taken up by individuals and communities in wartime society. Inevitably the wartime national spirit naturally declined in the wake of these two factors.

So how can the spirit of ’45 be revised? This is something both David Cameron and Ed Miliband have talked about and have each respectably have talked big in the past about restoring, albeit by framing the problem in a different way, yet both have failed to varying degree to match this talk with concrete ideas and policy.

There is no doubt that the ‘45 spirit had vast benefits. During the war individuals and communities stepped up to the plate and to the challenges Britain faced at home. They took vast responsibility for the provision of services. Mutual aid and social solidarity in this sense, bought out the very best in the national community. Circumstance pushed wide scale civic association.

In this respect the biggest enemy to the ’45 spirit wasn’t the end of the war and the peace which developed, rather it was big government. With the rise of government into the social provision, people inevitably took on a smaller, more passive and less of a responsible role in the welfare and maintenance of communities. This, along with the declining relevance of other institutions which instil moral and social fabric, such as the Church, inevitably oversaw the erosion of the wartime civic association and prior community spirit which modern Britain was built upon.

In this respect civic association has been left in a miserable and powerless state. History determines that social trends cannot usually be reversed, but rather they must be transformed. It isn’t through looking to the past that the problem of civic association’s declining prevalence and influence over public life can be answered. New institutions and new ideas are needed to restore social cohesion in a modern world of secularism, individualism and passive consumerism. The only way to combat this going forward, surely is David Cameron’s Big Society.

David Cameron’s Big Society is an attempt to revive civic association and people power. Whilst the idea is spot on, the application has struggled to materialise. One reason for this is the Big Society has not been backed up with sufficient and meaningful policies. The agenda has been put on hold whilst the emphasis is on restoring Britain’s finances and faltering economy.

Another problem with the Big Society is that it is operationally flawed. This is because whilst the Big Society seeks to restore strong community, it is being driven as a central government initiative. A truly Big Society arises organically from the bottom up, not from central government downwards. David Cameron is in the wrong sector if he wants to achieve such social transformation.

The notion of the Big Society has in application been confused with localism. The Coalition has a wide-ranging programme which is devolving powers from central government to local authorities. Whilst this is a positive move, it is not the same as enabling freer license for individuals to assume increased responsibility over social provision. Returning powers to local government from central government still keeps provisions under the remit of government, not communities.

Social institutions have to be empowered, or more importantly, social institutions must not be further undermined and eroded by forces of central government, aggressive secularism and unchecked individualism. In a world where government influence is unaccountable to community institutions which prosperity and wellbeing were once built upon, government, whether socialist or conservative, is not where the solution to social decline lies. Community thrives in spite of government, not because of it.

So whilst the spirit of ’45 can never be revised in peacetime and prosperous Britain, civic association can grow again when fostered under the right conditions. These conditions have been eroded by the Postwar big government and by Thatcher’s centralised government and emphasis on individualism. As well intended as the Big Society is, it just simply cannot be restored through government initiative, a reality that both David Cameron and Ken Loach lament and share difficulty finding a way to explain and resolve.

National debt and public spending increasing: Is it time for the government to consider the case for a negative income tax?

Despite the mandate of this Government being derived from its commitment to whipping out the structural deficit by the end of a five year period, the Coalition is somehow on the path to failure. Whilst the targets are the right ones for the UK’s economic credibility, the means have been counterproductive and badly thought out.

With the forecast that the official national debt is due to rise by £605 billion over the course of this parliament alone (from 53% GDP to a staggering 76% GDP) it is clear that the Coalition’s commitment to a sustainable economy has been thrown off course. This increased borrowing has not been evoked as a desperate attempt to restart business and provide growth, rather it has actually gone mostly on meeting the demands of an increased welfare bill, fuelled by the sharp rise in public sector unemployment. This clearly isn’t sustainable.

The Government’s agenda was to make up the downsizing of the public sector with increases of jobs in the private sector. This has not happened for two primary reasons. One being that it is unrealistic to expect to make it up over a short period of time. Secondly, and most worryingly of all, it is because they haven’t provided the policies conducive to growing private enterprise. Putting this agenda on the back-burner for now, one way in which the government can bring down public spending, and therefore the structural deficit and national debt is to consider something very radical to bring down welfare costs. The negative income tax could be the lifeline this Government needs.

The reduction of the deficit has been made up mostly by tax increases and cuts to investment programmes. This simply won’t do as it is a short-term strategy, it is an ill-thought out way to meet the immediate goal of eradicating the deficit.  This, even if it were to work, may succeed in giving the government credibility in the eyes of the public, but long-term doesn’t sort out the structural problems with the UK economy. Growth aside, one of the biggest of which is welfare costs.

Before the Coalition took office, the cost of welfare under Labour exceeded tax receipts by almost £25 billion annually. This model was indicative of a government attempting to grow dependency and therefore its own power rather than growing a healthy economy. Osborne took the pragmatic approach in his first budget of raising taxes to meet this unbelievable short-coming. Whilst this was understandable, especially because of the Tories fixation on reassuring the public of the earnestness of their centrist agenda, it was a mistake.

The answer isn’t to raise taxes, as common sense perhaps would dictate. Taxes were too high under Labour already. The real problem was that the extortionate costs of welfare dwarf the issue of high taxation. Cameron and Osborne should not have been trying to meet the demands of increased welfare, rather they should have been looking to remedy the problem of this unsustainable public spending.

The conventional methods are limited. For instance simply cutting the provision doesn’t resolve the problem of dependency culture.  It simply scapegoats and points the blame at dependent individuals and punishes them, fuelled by populist demand, for their ‘moral’ failures. This doesn’t offer any kind of redemption for individuals in such circumstance. It only aids social disenfranchisement, rather than encourages them to engage in employment which in the process helps both the individual and the rest of society.

Another method practiced is increasing the provision. This method is perhaps even more damaging as it enables and validates a culture of dependency and inactivity. It takes away any remaining incentive to work, and therefore the need to develop skills which make them more employable. Rather, increased provision traps them in poverty and therefore makes them ever more reliant on state hand outs. This method takes away the human dignity and freedom of such individuals. This sentiment is the primary cause of an Underclass which is so prominent in modern social life. This of course is unacceptable. Although advocates often have forgivable intentions which aim to solve such social ills, it creates vast social problems and tensions.  The means to this end is wrong.

But, if the government takes away the reasons not to work, leaving only the incentives of work for dependent individuals to ponder, this can go a long way to ease this problem. However, the real issue of dependant individuals is not the amount of welfare administered to them, rather it is the very principle of welfare that it is a deterrent to finding employment, no matter how little or large. Therefore dependency alone does not explain away the increasing welfare costs. The biggest problem economically is its flabbergasting inefficiency. Perhaps it’s time the Government considers a negative income tax in the place of this highly flawed and detrimental system.

Critics, including myself (ideologically speaking) may argue that the negative income tax does take away many of the incentives to work. In addition, it also advocates ‘something for nothing’ benefits. It fails to eradicate the notion that if one wishes not to work as hard, they can still be subsidised by the State through taxation of hard-working tax payers. But in reality welfarism is something that will not be resolved any time soon. Accepting this, the negative income tax is far more efficient and cost-effective to the tax-payer as it requires an inevitably much lower welfare bill to individuals who do not make up the income required for a minimum standard of living. Taking this pragmatic approach will surely bring the cost of welfare down to realistic standards, whilst ensuring it always pays to work. This is because the negative income tax would be ideally introduced in conjunction with a flat rate income tax. Guaranteeing that the State never penalises hard-working successes, whilst on the other hand rewarding idle failures, will remove the problem of Government discrimination, inherent within a ‘progressive’ tax system. It would ensure that every individual is treated equally in the eyes of the State, the bedrock to a just democratic society.

Another possible problem a negative income tax could encounter is the validity and fairness of the figure estimated to be the ‘minimum standard of living’ wage. The Left, if ever to enter government, would of course be inclined to increase this rate of entitlement. This would allow for increased allowances. What this would do is hugely damaging. It would ensure that tax payers are lumbered with a system that disproportionately rewards failures and inadequacies.  It would lead inevitably to abuses of a system which was introduced purely for good intentions. Furthermore, socialists may even increase the level of negative income tax, over Friedman’s recommended 50%. This again disproportionately takes away the incentive to work, making the system pointless. Certain legislative powers must therefore be enacted, such as ring-fencing of the rates, to ensure the system always remains effective in rectifying the problems it sets out to cure, rather than adding to them or causing new levels of deep-rooted State dependency.

Those critical of the negative income tax feel it would lead inevitably to the withdrawal of welfare altogether. The temptation to libertarians may be to withdraw spending in welfare areas such as health and education, with an expectation that individuals are fully responsible for paying for their own services. This of course may be true and whilst this argument cannot be dismissed, the truth is no sensible or right-minded Government would believe that having no role to play in the provision of welfare would have no negative impact on the workforce which wealth generators employ. The risk is that it may lead to generations of infirm and uneducated individuals. This causes a vast range of social problems which of course aren’t amenable with market forces. Furthermore, an unhealthy and unskilled work force holds back the economy. A Government surely realises its greater vested interest of ensuring a strong, healthy, educated society as it enables a strong, efficient and skilled workforce, essential for maintaining a strong economy. The negative income tax must not be used as part of such an ideological agenda. The implementation of a negative income tax must be viewed simply as the means to the ends of a) making welfare vastly more efficient and b) Making the tax system simpler and fairer.

Why Conservative MPs are right to rebel on House of Lords reform

The telegraph today reported that 70 Tory MPs are leading a rebellion to defeat the Bill. Clearly Cameron is putting his leadership on the line over this issue, at best, in order to appease the junior partners across the cabinet table. Or at worst, because he actually believes an elected House of Lords serves the best interests of the country. Either way it is foolish for any government to attempt constitutional reform without the consent of the public. It is more foolish to do so without first ensuring they are carrying the  party with them.

Cameron conceding House of Lords reform  in the coalition agreement is unforgivable. Constitutional change is something which should kept out of back-door negotiations between the two parties. Democratic institutions must be protected from politicians playing party politics. The legacy of such reforms is permanent and impossible to reverse. Whilst electoral reform was borderline inexcusable, at least it was put to the public, in the form of a referendum, to decide whether or not AV was something the country wanted. The conduct of the Coalition over Lords Reform however, has nothing to spare any integrity.

Clegg was able to justify an expensive referendum for changing the electoral system in 2011, yet doesn’t see fit to put the biggest constitutional change the country has seen in modern times to the vote. This is ludicrous hypocrisy and demonstrates pure political opportunism in order to force through changes to the Upper Chamber which nobody really wants, other than liberal dogmatists, taking advantage of their rare opportunity in government, who hold only a simplistic understanding of democracy.

It is astonishing that Cameron has failed to intervene and stop this proposal going any further. Lords reform is something that nobody is calling for, least of all now. The pursuit of an elected House of Lords is something which is alienating Conservative voters and members. Cameron has failed to gage the mood amongst his own backbenchers who have been put in the undue predicament of putting the Governments unity in jeopardy, and his own premiership on the line.

Government rebellions are never taken lightly in the Conservative Party. This is more the case than ever with the reluctant rebellion of Nicholas Soames, a Tory MP who has only once in his long parliamentary career, voted against his own party. This is indicative of the mood of Tory backbenchers whose patience again is being stretched to the full by Cameron’s leadership. Cameron is playing with fire with his own backbenchers. This is something a leader can only get away with so many times before it comes back to haunt them. Not even Tony Blair was immune. Cameron is clearly not in touch with his own party over this issue if he believes he can come out of this unscathed.

Never before has a government attempted such drastic constitutional reform. Therefore Cameron is on unchartered territory. Whether or not it gets passed remains narrow, but either way, Cameron is surely putting his standing within the party in danger.

Attempting constitutional reform, without being put to the electorate, represents a clear betrayal of the public. Never should a government attempt to change the goalposts over the countries democratic system without the mandate of the British people. Therefore out of principle, all MPs must realise their abuse of power and oppose the Bill.  This is unlikely to be the case, but what upholders of democracy can hope for is a sufficient tory rebellion.

Local Council Elections: Why only conservative policies will win back Conservative voters

Local election results are a harrowing punishment for the Coalition’s last couple of turbulent months in Government. An ineffective Labour Party under weak leadership have claimed council 713 seats, whilst the Tories have made a dramatic loss of 378 seats and surrendered the control of 12 Councils. These results are completely unacceptable for the Conservatives and such a substantial loss could have been avoided.

Those on the Left will exploit this defeat and explain it, incorrectly and misleadingly, as being allusive to the countries anger at austerity measures. This is simply not true. Every indication and poll reveals that the public do accept the need for cuts.

Rewind to this time last year in the Local council elections, despite high unemployment, hard-felt cuts and protests, The Conservatives actually made significant gains of 86 seats and 4 councils, an outstanding achievement for a party of government wielding painful cuts. This is reflective of how competent the Conservatives appeared at the time. Fast forward to this year and it’s a completely different story.

Of course the underlying reason behind this embarrassing defeat is the perceived sheer incompetence and corruption from the leadership in the national party. This all started with the poorly handled Budget in March. Alone this would probably not have proved so costly come elections, but the event was not one in isolation. This has been followed up but bleak economic forecasts and political scandal which has highlighted poor leadership. In short, the elections couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Coalition.

The Conservatives have lost touch and appeal to their traditional voters. The Tories attack on the elderly through the ‘Granny tax’, a product of a poorly presented Budget, is a betrayal of our loyal supporters.  No real Conservative government fails to look after our elderly. The truth is that many, and far too many to be politically forgiving, are disillusioned by a government that tries desperately to appease everyone and succeeds in looking after nobody whilst taking the concerns of our core voters for granted,  because this isn’t a government of principle, it has become a Government of apologists.

The support of House of Lord’s reform is a classic area over which Cameron has led the Tories into the pockets of liberals. Too conscious to appear ‘modern’, Cameron is supporting reform that will see our Upper Chamber taken control over by a bunch of career politicians, under the thumb of their leaders in the Lower Chamber. What’s more is that he and Nick Clegg want to do this without putting it to the public in a referendum. If Cameron wants to claim back our supporters then he must climb down over this policy, which conservative voters feel threatens our parliamentary democracy. This is not a Conservative policy.

Cameron and Osborne must too ease the tax burden of our supporters. The Coalition has failed to do anything to this extent. Those who earn in excess of £25,000 are substantially burdened by high tax demands. Those that earn an income of £50,000 pay a massive £15,000 of hard earned money in tax.  Under no interpretation is this a Conservative tax system. Especially during times of austerity, these policies are an unforgiving attack on our aspirational and hard-working Middle England. To ensure we don’t lose these votes to Labour again, we must not exploit them through unreasonable taxation.  

But the issue that directly affects everyone is the economy. It’s only through Ed Miliband’s weakness and Labour’s serious lack of any credibility over the economy that has seen Cameron and Osborne get off so lightly. When compared to Labour, The Coalition appears business friendly, but in reality they are not pro-business and inadequately Conservative. Osborne’s failure to see through an even lower corporation tax, as well as the top rate of income tax is sheer weakness. This is a party that got elected on a mandate that it will make the tough decisions necessary to recover the economy, yet caved in over the budget out of fear of being branded a ‘Party of millionaires’, which those who they feared would say this, did anyway.

The only threatening opposition to this Government is coming from their own Conservative back benchers and voters. Labour are up to nothing, yet are being rewarded for the Coalition’s own failure. This must be addressed before going into General election in 2015. The only small chance of Labour winning will come from Cameron throwing it away through turning away the genuine conservative vote.

Cameron has to give up the idea that he can appease the left with anything short of socialism. Third-Way social democratic policies only succeed in putting off Conservative voters and the aspirational. Desperate stunts to appear ‘modern’ are work of a party in opposition. Cameron is not in opposition anymore, he is leader of a Conservative Party in government. These Local Council results one would hope can only remind him of this. The only bit of good news is the imminent re-election of Boris as London Mayor. Whilst Boris has retained his supporters, Cameron is leading the national party away from his. This could prove very significant if Cameron’s leadership comes under threat. And it is only by listening to his voters that he will avoid a leadership challenge.