Thatcher and Brexit: voters sometimes get it wrong

Here’s an article not to miss: Larry Elliott in The Guardian on a study into the hollowing-out of manufacturing in Britain. From a peak of 8.9m jobs, industrial employment has fallen to 2.9m jobs over fifty years. That trend and, in particular, its harshest period in the 1980s, has cost the nation dear. Indeed, the authors maintain they can quantify the cost as between £20bn and £30bn a year.

A lot of the cost is in benefits being paid in communities where there is no longer a hope of a job, together with the corresponding loss in income tax revenue.

Back in March 2009, I wrote about the town of Conisbrough in South Yorkshire, where I had lived and taught for seven months in 1971. It was a mining village and, when I was there, it had a population of 16,000. By the time I came to write about it, the mine had closed and the population had fallen to 10,000. Within that population, close to 30% were either unemployed or classified as disabled or ill, often a way of veiling unemployment. A thriving community had been broken.

Cadeby Main, Conisbrough. Drew its last coal in 1987

So Larry Elliott’s article struck a chord for me. What I hadn’t realised was the extent of the harm the destruction of Britain’s industrial base had caused. That figure of £20-30bn represents about half of the government’s deficit. We have been through six years of devastating austerity policies that have generated mover poverty, ostensibly to reduce the deficit, and yet we could have avoided half of it just by not wrecking our industrial bedrock back in the 1980s.

Who was in government at that time? When the worst damage was done? When mining was effectively ended? Why, the sainted Margaret Thatcher. The woman still revered today, and certainly supported by a sufficient numbers then to give her healthy majorities in parliament at election after election. That fixation among voters has left a legacy of deep economic damage and, as a result, far more acute suffering now as we struggle to recover from the crash of 2007–8.

It seems that the electorate doesn’t always get things right.

That’s why I smile wryly when people tell me that we who oppose Brexit have to go with the will of the people expressed in the referendum of 23 June. My view is that Brexit too is going to have devastating economic consequences.

Many are saying that the catastrophe forecast by the Remain campaign in the runup to the vote hasn’t materialised. But those forecasts were always nonsense. They were propaganda weapons used by ministers, in particular David Cameron and his Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, who lacked the energy or the intellectual horsepower to make a cogent case for remaining in the EU. Instead, they resorted to fear tactics, and failed.

Economic damage doesn’t manifest itself in a few weeks or months. It can take years. Inflation hasn’t taken off yet but we can already see the upward pressure caused by a falling pound. Unemployment has barely moved but we can see a big increase in businesses delaying investment decisions. We don’t yet have to contend with the loss of trade that our actual departure from the EU will entail (let’s remember that we are still members for now) but we’re already seeing Narendra Modi, Indian PM, pressurising Theresa May to relax visa restrictions in return for new deals – Brexiter claims that Britain will be negotiating from a position of strength are due to be sorely disappointed.

Incidentally, there is a delicious irony in May offering concessions on visa regulations for India – a move I favour, incidentally – since many Brexiters claim that leaving the EU would allow the UK to strengthen border controls.

But the biggest point of all is that the damage to the economy will be similar to what we experienced when Thatcher wrecked our manufacturing base. It wasn’t immediately obvious how deep the harm would be, though many warned about it. Now, thirty years on, we’re living with the consequences and the study Larry Elliott talks about quantifies them for us.

In thirty years’ time Britain will be living with the consequences of Brexit on top of the legacy of Thatcher. The pain will be all the greater.

And you’re telling me I’m being anti-democratic to oppose going down that route because 52% of the population against 48% think we ought to?

Voters have a democratic right to make a mistake and I raise no objection to that. However, the Thatcher experience shows us that they sometimes get it disastrously wrong. Then we all have to pay the price, even if we were in the minority. In the Thatcher case, and I expect the Brexit case, even if weren’t born at the time. 

So why shouldn’t those of us who don’t agree keep saying No?

The Devil's tunes. And his great singers in the Tory Party

The devil, they say, has the best tunes. In the Tory Party, he’s lined up some fine singers.

I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll be saying it again: there’s been a change of gear between David Cameron and Theresa May. Cameron wasn’t much good at what he did, but he was above all one of the laziest of politicians. He preferred to make up policy on the hoof, wandering unbriefed into meetings with other leaders, as he did when he decided to veto the use of EU premises for discussions about the Euro. It was only afterwards that he discovered that he didn't have the authority. But reacting's so much easier than thinking things through. 

Because it was far too difficult to deal with the divisions over Europe within his own party, he took the easy route of calling for a referendum on the issue.

And, because they found it too difficult to put together a good argument in favour of the EU, he and his pal and Chancellor George Osborne simply resorted to scare tactics – “vote Brexit and we’ll need a harsh emergency budget to save the economy from collapse” – which just got up everyone’s noses.

They lost. I’d claim that Britain itself lost. And Cameron and Osborne lost their jobs.

May: skilled singer of even the most devilish tunes

May’s not like that.

She knows what needs to be said. So in recent days she’s been stealing some of clothes, just enough to attract some wavering voters without actually committing to anything like compassionate behaviour. She has, for instance, softened the attack on the poor and sick that the previous regime had been running for six years, by not demanding that people with long-term illnesses and no hope of improvement submit to regular check-ups. Compared to what was happening before, it sounds like a humane measure, though it means not a penny more going into benefits.

She keeps piling it on. She talks about working in the interests of everyone. She even got her Chancellor of the Exchequer, successor to Osborne, to slacken austerity: the government will borrow money to stimulate some building work. Only £2bn, pretty insignificant when government is already borrowing £1.3bn a week, but it sounds good. Without costing much.

So much for what the Tories say. But May’s just as good at not saying things. For instance, she’s kept very quiet about her exact position on what kind of Brexit she favours. She has a legitimate argument for being so coy: she’s going into negotiations with the EU and sees no reason to reveal her hand in advance.

But doesn’t it feel tremendously convenient that her reticence means she can keep quiet on an issue which continues to torment her party? Let the dust settle, she seems to be thinking. “When tempers have cooled, and when I have something to say about the negotiations,” I suspect she tells herself, “I’ll get off the fence. When doing so does me, and the Tory Party, least damage.”

Oh, I wish we too could learn to behave with such supreme self-control. But then the angels don’t have the best tunes. Or the most skilful singers.

Brexit: trying to tame the monster

George Osborne, former Chancellor of the Exchequer – the quaint British term for Finance Minister – who campaigned for Britain to stay in the EU and was unceremoniously dropped by his boss David Cameron’s successor as soon as she took over – has said that “Brexit won a majority. Hard Brexit did not.”

One of the other figures who disappeared in the wake of the vote was Michael Gove. He’s a real hard case. He betrayed his old friend David Cameron by campaigning for Brexit alongside his new friend Boris Johnson. He then betrayed Johnson by announcing he would stand against him for the Conservative Party leadership, in effect forcing him out of the contest. He then went on to be soundly trounced. By then he had become too toxic even for the Tories, which is pretty remarkable in that company. So he found himself relegated from any kind of office, cast so far into the outer darkness that he can’t even hear the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Even so, he’s managed to make his voice heard, and even he, unworthy he, has a point worth making:

George Osborne is absolutely right that a hard Brexit has no mandate and would be no answer to the problems Britain faces.

In fact, it would put jobs and livelihoods at risk by erecting new barriers to trade with Europe. As he said, being close to Europe despite the Brexit vote is vital for Britain’s future.

Our economic future depends on membership of the single market, while cooperation with Europe on security is crucial in the fight against terrorism and organised crime.

So even Gove, keen Brexiter though he was, is panicking now that he sees just what benefits Britain would be giving up. His solution is to stay in the single market.

Mike (top) wanted us out, George wanted us in
Now they have to try to stop the runaway train

I’m afraid that might cause some ructions. Because a great many of those who voted for Brexit did vote for a hard Brexit. They want out, and completely out. In particular, a great many of them want to get out of the EU to put an end to what they see as the sheer horror of immigration – they belong to the growing camp of xenophobes who are rounding on people they feel they can scapegoat, but don’t realise that it isn’t they who will gain from attaining their aims.

As I argued before.

Interestingly, even Theresa May, Cameron’s successor, who started off constantly repeating “Brexit means Brexit” (whatever that means) has been softening her tone on the single market recently. It really is possible that we shall see her government come up with an arrangement whereby Britain would remain in the single market despite leaving the EU.

That would be gloriously ironic. Because staying in the single market means accepting continued freedom of movement of people. Norway, which never joined the EU but is in the single market, has long had to accept that EU citizens can freely move there, live there, work there. It also means continuing to pay contributions to the EU budget. As Norway does. Finally, it means accepting EU regulations. As Norway does.

Leaving the EU in these conditions only means giving up any say in making regulations or setting budget levels. Amusingly, the Norwegians used to rely on Britain to speak up for them in EU deliberations. But who now will speak for us?

The Brexit backers who were voting for a hard Brexit won’t be at all happy about that state of affairs. Their dissatisfaction is more than likely to lead to tensions within the Brexit camp.

The statements by Osborne and Gove rather suggest that they’re trying to head them off. Gove and his mates let the Frankenstein monster out. Now they want to prevent his doing the damage they have at last learned to fear.

I don’t think they’ll succeed. Instead we shall simply see another phase in the debate, in which the Brexit camp itself splits, into the hard and soft trends. That only strengthens my conviction that we need another referendum. Not a second referendum on the EU, but a completely new referendum on what the alternative to the EU actually means.

You see, we know what the majority in the first referendum were against: they wanted no further part of the EU. But it didn’t make clear what they were for. And I suspect they won’t be able to agree on being for any one option.

In which case, given no satisfactory alternative to the EU – hey, why not decide to stay in after all?

Brexit: some of the people apparently fooled all of the time. And happy with it

“No one in this world,” H L Mencken claimed, “so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”

Mencken wasn’t particularly charitable and the judgement is harsh, but the Brexit vote and its consequences do seem to confirm his point. Or at least Lincoln’s view that you can fool some of the people, all of the time.

The pro-EU campaign was unfortunately led by a number of the weakest politicians we’ve had in Britain for decades: David Cameron and George Osborne for the Tories, Jeremy Corbyn for Labour. The first two came up with dire predictions of what would happen after a Brexit vote, which have naturally not been fulfilled – we’re still in the EU, for Pete’s sake, how could a disaster have happened already? And even when things start to slip, nothing happens that fast in economics. Even the crash of 2007-2008 took pretty much a year to develop fully.

As for Corbyn, he said practically nothing throughout the entire campaign, which at least has the merit of making him immune from being disproved by events.

On the other side of the fence, there were Labour figures such as Gisela Stuart MP, campaigning with the anti-immigrant lobby though she’s German-born herself, renegade Labourites like David Owen who split Labour in the eighties, the hard right like Nigel Farage of UKIP or nearly-as-hard right of the Conservative Party, such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove (the latter so disloyal, to rebels and loyalists alike, that not even the Tories can stomach him in government any longer).

As the devil has the best songs, so the Brexiters had the best campaign. They travelled up and down the country in a battle bus emblazoned with slogans pledging that Brexit would save “£350 million a week” that could be used for the NHS.

Economical with the truth, effective for the campaign
The battle bus with the £350m claim

The figure was a lie and plenty of people pointed it out. But the lie took hold and many voters believed it and passed it on. Fool me once, they say, shame on you. The Leave campaigners certainly fooled enough people once to feel that shame, but clearly don’t: in fact, lying served them so well that they’re using the tactic again.

The campaign has morphed into “Change Britain” but the usual suspects are back: Gove, Johnson, Stuart and Owen are heading the organisation once more. What are they saying about that £350 million pledge?

It’s brilliant! They’re saying absolutely nothing at all. Dead silence. To admit it was a con trick would be out of the question and I didn’t expect it. But simply to pretend it never happened is pure George Orwell.

Instead they’re now offering to fund agriculture, poorer regions of the UK, scientific research and the universities out of savings generated by Brexit. In other words, to replace the funding that the EU currently provides and which we’d continue to receive if we didn’t leave.

There can be only one judgement of that pledge: it’s worth exactly the same as the one they made before. There’s zero chance of its ever being honoured. That’s not a problem, though: these are promises not intended to be fulfilled. They’re only intended to suck in the gullible again. And just watch: the gullible will lap them up.

Fool me twice, they say, shame on me. Plenty should feel that shame but just like the con artists themselves, they’ll know no shame. Because they don’t even know they’re being fooled.

Some of the people, you see. All of the time.

We're all in this together: the shared pain and triumph of austerity economics

“We’re all in this together,” David Cameron assured us when he first came to office.

Labour, it seems, had caused a terrible worldwide financial crisis. Just how the Blair and Brown governments had managed to inflate the sub-prime mortgage market in the US and then bring it crashing down, was never made clear. But the British Conservatives are honourable men (and a few women), so who are we to question their pronouncements?

Cameron: who are we to question his judgement?

What was bountifully clear, in any case, was that we would all of us be paying the price. Austerity economics would be applied without fear and favour. That meant belts would be tightened in every part of society so that we could pay off the colossal debt Labour had accumulated and wipe out the government’s spending deficit. 

The pain would be hard to bear but such a prize was surely worth it.

Labour’s behaviour had indeed been intolerably bad. It had amassed a debt amounting to 76.6% of GDP by 2010. Fortunately, five years of enlightened Conservative rule delivered a figure of only 89.2%. Labour’s legacy was an unforgiveable debt to be passed on to our children and grandchildren. What the Tories have achieved is, I’m assured, a huge step in the right direction.

What about the deficit? Here, Tory success has been even more spectacular. At the height of the crisis, the deficit reached £103bn. That has been pretty much wiped out, as George Osborne, Cameron’s Chancellor of the Exchequer promised to do within five years – wiped out, that is, apart the final obstinate residue of £40bn or so. Still, look how that compares with the lamentable Labour government’s figure of £20bn in 2005, before the crash.

Which, don’t forget, it caused by manipulating the US sub-prime mortgage market.

These successes don’t come without a cost, of course. There has had to be a cut in the top rate of income tax, paid by those on the highest salaries, from 50% to 45%. Funnily enough, overall tax and benefit changes have reduced household incomes by about 3.3% on average.

Tough but fair, I’m sure you’ll agree. Especially as the elderly are much more assiduous in voting Tory.

Meanwhile, public sector workers have shouldered their share of the burden. They took two years of pay freeze from 2010, and since then have lived with a cap of 1% on pay increases.

Private sector employees have played their part too. For five years, their increases averaged 1.5%. But last year, there was a great loosening of the shackles as pay soared, on average by 1.8%.

There was at least one consolation for those coping with pay restraint. At least they know that everyone is shouldering their share of the burden. For instance, top executives of the biggest companies saw their salaries rise by a mere 10% last year. It seems that these fine gentlemen (there are no ladies among them) are now paid £5.5m a year on average which is 129 times as much as their employees, or just shy of 250 times as much as median income in the UK.

Achievements like taking the deficit down to twice what it was in 2005 and public debt from 78.4% of GDP to 90.6% don’t come free. Someone has to pay.

Isn’t it comforting that the pain has been so well-shared, confirming that we are indeed “all in this together”?

Brexit: the triumph of Project Fear

When backers of the campaign for Britain to remain in the EU pointed out the dire consequences of leaving the EU, they were accused by Brexiters of running Project Fear.

It’s true that statements of such as Britain’s soon to be ex-Prime Minister David Cameron, rather overstated the case. He sometimes seemed to suggest that leaving the EU would plunge Britain into immediate bankruptcy or trigger a third World War. Still, it will certainly have consequences that, if not quite so fearsome as those, will be pretty dire all the same.

For instance, the US and the EU are in the midst of negotiations for a trade deal, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or TTIP. It’s massively skewed towards serving US interests at the cost of Europe’s. In particular, it could damage Britain’s NHS by forcing it open to US private corporations.

A number of European voices – but not Britain’s – have been raised against TTIP provisions. Indeed, Germany’s Angela Merkel has said the whole Treaty might have to be abandoned. The US is going to have to shift if they want an agreement in place.

Brexiters argue that Britain will do better negotiating a deal directly with the US. However, Barack Obama has made it clear that a trade agreement with Britain alone would not be a high priority for the US. They would, no doubt, put one in place, but does anyone believe that it would be on more advantageous terms than the EU can obtain? Would Britain be in a position, deprived of its membership of the EU free trade area, to resist the terms the US dictates?

Another issue that constantly re-emerged during the campaign concerned fisheries policy. But European waters have been over-fished for decades, and stocks were drastically declining. A long process of negotiation led to agreements on preservation that everyone resented – compromises, by their nature, often please no-one – but at last stocks are beginning to grow again. Does anyone really believe that re-introducing a free-for-all will improve the situation?

Then there’s the break-up of the UK itself. The Scots voted massively to remain in the EU. Within hours of the announcement of a Brexit win, the Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, told us a new Scottish Independence Referendum was back on the table.

Does anyone believe that the Scots would not be likely, on this occasion, to vote in favour? Last time the EU said they wouldn’t look kindly on an application for membership from an independent Scotland. Does anyone believe that they might not, this time, be only too happy to have them join?

So there are things to fear from the decision for Brexit. Pointing it out doesn’t mean the Remain campaign ‘Project Fear.’

On the contrary, the party of the fearful was the Brexit side. The bold choice is to work with others, because you have to lower your defences as your partners lower theirs, to enable cooperation. These are exciting challenges to meet, but they expose us to risks just as they open opportunities for mutual benefits.

The fearful response is to turn our backs on the opportunities, in order to avoid the risks. Frightened people want more defences against the outside world. In the Brexit debate, the code for that fear was “immigration.” Immigrants were blamed for our ills, and the EU was blamed for immigration.

It was the fear campaign that voted against the EU. Sadly, they’ve only prepared new disappointments for themselves, because what they feared wasn’t caused by the EU. The British economy has institutionalised precariousness at work, so no one can feel their job is safe. It has put downward pressure on wages, as people lose jobs and can only find work at lower salaries. It has starved our great public institutions, the NHS, Education, the Police, so people find it increasingly difficult to count on the services they’ve felt in the past were theirs.

Neither the EU nor immigration was responsible, however. These are consequences of a policy of austerity, which isn’t delivering growth, but is delivering pain. Brexit isn’t going to improve that. On the contrary, it’s going to make things worse.

As predicted, the Brexit vote has precipitated teh resignation of David Cameron. Those suffering the pain of austerity realised he was a pretty lousy Prime Minister. However, his likely successor, Boris Johnson, will be far worse. Even more frightening is the figure in the shadows behind him, the man who was most openly triumphing over the Brexit vote, UKIP leader Nigel Farage. His influence will be toxic: if the referendum campaign had a merit, it was above all in exposing him as the racist we always knew he was.

Is this the most frightening face of Brexit?
Hard right-winger Nigel Farage celebrating take-off

He’s on the up and up. The problem with the style of approach adopted by the likes of Cameron is that it only encourages the hard right represented by such as Farage. Throw them a concession, and they demand more. Cameron only called the referendum to satisfy the right wing of his own party, and look what happened. Now we’ve had a Brexit vote, and the hard right is cock-a-hoop.

That’s where fear got us. And if you think that what’s about to happen now is a lot worse than what the Brexiters feared before – well, I can only agree with you.

The sorows of poor Mr Osborne

You’ve got to feel sorry for that poor Mr George Osborne, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer. He’s been having rather a torrid time of it lately. As he explained in this touching personal confession.

I mean, I’m a longstanding friend of David Cameron. The one who’s Prime Minister. For now. I mean, friends from way, way back. We’ve both been members of the Bullingdon Club at Oxford, so we know what it is to have a few drinks, and trash a restaurant or a friend’s room. It builds character, that kind of behaviour, makes a leader of you. And forges a friendship.

Anyway, we had a deal, Big Dave and me. I’d do a few years in the number 2 slot and then he’d stand aside and let me have a go at the top job. And he’s doing his bit: agreeing to stand down before the next election and all that. But now it’s all going wrong.

Fetching, isn't he? Our George? In his trademark hard hat
It's his tribute to the nobility of hard work. Which he admires from afar

I mean, big Dave wants me to keep helping when I can, so I do. I’ve come out all keen as mustard for Britain staying in the EU and all that. Hasn’t done me any favours. Turns out that lots of people in the Tory Party – including in parliament – don’t like that idea at all. They’re feeling a bit riled, basically. And that creep Boris Johnson’s been slipping in with his bloody Eurosceptic position, taking advantage of the mood.

Everything ought to be going swimmingly, but it isn’t. I’ve just given my eighth budget. You’d think that’d be a bit of a high point. But we don’t seem to be able to get rid of the deficit completely, however much we cut the army, the police and support for the poor. So instead of coming down, debt’s a bit high, really. A bit of a record, actually, to be strictly honest. Which is embarrassing, seeing how I always used to have a go at the other side for having got debt so high on their watch.

That all makes even my best moves, well, a bit moot to be strictly truthful. I do try. Take this budget, for instance. I couldn’t give away as much as I’d like, of course, not in the trying situation we’re in, but I did what I could. Raised the income level at which people have to start paying tax. Raised the level at which they have to pay the next level up of tax. Got to help, hasn’t it?

OK, it helps the people who pay the most tax more than the ones who don’t pay much, but still, it’s helping people, isn’t it?

OK, maybe not the people who earn so little they don’t pay tax at all, but I don’t know any of that kind of people – they’re the ones who used to clean up behind us when we were in the Bullingdon Club, right?

OK, maybe 85% of the benefit goes to the top 50% of incomes, or so some pundit or other claims, but hey, help’s help, isn’t it? No matter who it goes to.

Some people are moaning that I’m taking £4 million out of benefit payments to the disabled at the same time as I’m reducing taxes. What’s their problem? Let’s be clear. A lot of the disabled don’t vote. And many of the ones who do, vote Labour. Get real, guys. I’ve got a career to nurture here.

The one good thing is that those sad fellows who lead Labour, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, are even less trusted to run the economy well than I am. A joke, right? A really funny one. Which made it a bit annoying when Corbyn came out with that line about the budget having unfairness at its core. How did he work that one out? No one on my side has.

Though, to be honest, it’s my side that’s the problem. What a bunch. All baying to get out of the European Union. God only knows why. It costs next to nothing compared to, say, a bombing campaign in the Middle East. And the Yanks like it. But those backwoodsmen have got a bee in their bonnet about it. And those bees are all swarming around smarmy Boris now.

Makes you want to weep, doesn’t it? I’ve done everything you’d think you’d need to do to follow my mate into the top job. Well, everything short of actually balancing the books, but just because I said we could do it doesn’t mean it was possible. And despite all that, bloody Boris is giving me a damn good run for my money.

What’s a fellow supposed to do? Do you think it’s all down to my having gone to St Paul’s School? Boris was at Eton with Big Dave. Is that what’s going on?

Austerity? Not good for your health

In 2008, the Healthcare Commission, the body then charged with monitoring and improving care quality in England, published a report into lamentable failures in Stafford hospital, run at the time by the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. Mid Staffs, as it’s familiarly if not affectionately known.

The scandal that ensued revealed shocking levels of poor care which certainly caused great suffering to many patients, and a certain number of deaths. Just how many deaths is difficult to determine. Headlines at the time of “400 to 1200” excess deaths were deeply misleading, as was the report that established that number, by Dr Foster Intelligence, a healthcare analysis company.

Insofar as the number means anything, it is that there were that many more deaths than would have been expected given the levels of illness recorded among the patients treated. That figure does, therefore, depend on the records kept by the hospital, which weren’t necessarily as comprehensive or accurate as they might have been. Besides, no one has ever established that the “excess” deaths were actually avoidable, which would have been a truly devastating finding.

Indeed, Robert Francis who wrote the report into failings at the Trust, would comment, “…it is in my view misleading and a potential misuse of the figures to extrapolate from them a conclusion that any particular number, or range of numbers of deaths were caused or contributed to by inadequate care.”

Nevertheless, in November 2015 Mid Staffs pleaded guilty to four charges of causing the death of patients, so it’s clear that there were deaths as a result of the poor performance of the Trust, whether or not we can set a reliable figure on the number.

Incidentally, by the time of the guilty plea, Mid Staffs Trust had been dissolved more than a year and the Stafford Hospital, now the County Hospital, was being administered by the University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust.

In his report, Francis identified a number of causes for the failings. Prominent among them was one that had been broadly acknowledged in the general debate: poor levels of staffing, especially among nurses. In its sometimes desperate quests to be granted the status of NHS Foundation Trust that gives hospitals greater autonomy in managing their affairs, Mid Staffs had gone too far in slashing staff numbers to meet financial targets. The Francis report recommended an action on the National Institute for Healthcare Excellence (NICE):

The procedures and metrics produced by NICE should include evidence-based tools for establishing the staffing needs of each service. These measures need to be readily understood and accepted by the public and healthcare professionals.

After the report was published, the government commissioned another, from US Healthcare analyst Don Berwick. It echoed Francis’s views on staffing:

NICE should interrogate the available evidence for establishing what all types of NHS services require in terms of staff numbers and skill mix to assure safe, high quality care for patients.

Admirable idea. What should determine staff numbers is quality and safety of care. Certainly not financial considerations. Nothing could matter more for us: if we’re seriously ill, and admitted to hospital, it would be nice to know that the level of service provided is based on what we need, not on what the hospital can afford.

Or, put another way, if the choice is between an increase in public spending, or the kind of dangerous care that gave Mid Staffs such a bad name, few would choose the dangerous care.

Except, sadly, that too many of us nonetheless vote for people who will make precisely the opposite choice. Those people won’t, themselves, suffer from that choice. The Camerons and Osbornes of this world don’t have to depend on the NHS for healthcare: they can pay for what most of us have to hope will be provided free. So they choose to prioritise money over care.

It was obvious from the beginning, from when Berwick make his recommendations in August 2013. Health Minister Jeremy Hunt rejected the notion that there should nationally backed standards for staffing:

If you start mandating things from the centre you create an artificial target and hospitals and trusts say: well if we meet that national minimum we’ve done our job as far as staffing’s concerned when actually they haven’t – because you’ll find there are places that need a lot more help and a lot more care.

This is a neat argument: it says we’re not accepting a recommendation because we don’t think it goes far enough – but then you don’t do anything at all.

Two and a half years on, few recall the Berwick report. Even the Francis report and Mid Staffs has become a bit of a vague memory: wasn’t that the hospital that did so badly when Labour was in power?”

NHS Nurses: much applauded at the Olympics 2012 opening
But have we now decided we have too many?

So now’s a great time to put the squeeze on, when people aren’t watching that closely any more. And that’s just what’s happening. Faced with a £2.2bn deficit, NHS hospitals are being told to cut staff to get their finances under control. The Guardian quoted Richard Murray, director of policy at the King’s Fund healthcare consultancy, saying:

If trusts do begin to reduce headcount the impact on patients would be swift, through either rising waiting times or reduced quality of care or both. Three years on from Robert Francis’s report into Mid Staffs which emphasises that safe staffing was the key to maintaining quality of care, the financial meltdown in the NHS now means that the policy is being abandoned for hospitals that have run out of money.

The government has long since decided that its overriding aim was reducing the deficit, and ultimately cutting public debt. It’s achieved some reduction in deficit but debt has grown like topsy, making George Osborne Britain’s first ever trillion-pound Chancellor. So austerity has failed.

I don’t know how anyone dependent on the NHS might feel about healthcare being sacrificed for the sake of a failed economic policy. I don’t know how anyone dependent on the NHS might feel about generalising the standards that fuelled the Mid Staffs scandal. I don’t know how anyone dependent on the NHS would want to risk giving that lot another chance in power.

Tory U-turns: a matter of relief, but with questions of responsibility and irresponsibility.

George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Britain’s Tory government, produced a spending review on 25 November that does a complete U-turn on two heavily trailed and highly unpopular measures.

On his way to making those announcements, he repeated the claim he’s advanced frequently in the past, that any difficulties the economy is facing are the fault of the previous Labour government. As his opposite number, the Labour spokesman on Finance, John McDonnell, pointed out, there comes a time when you have to stop blaming your predecessors and take responsibility yourself. Osborne has, after all, been in office for five and a half years. Back in 2010, he set targets by which to judge him, in particular eliminating the structural deficit in government spending by 2015, which he spectacularly failed to hit.

At the 2015 election, he persuaded a large number of voters to give him another chance to hit his targets by 2020, though it again looks as though he won’t make it. Indeed, I believe one prediction we can make about 2020 with some confidence, is that the Tories’ woes will not have been vanquished, and they’ll still be blaming them on Labour. Osborne, it seems, is never responsible.

Part of his irresponsibility will be continued austerity policies. And that’s despite the two U-turns he has just announced.

The first U-turn concerned cutting tax credits, vitally necessary to a great many people for whom the Tories claim to speak – the striving working poor. The Opposition parties and others had mounted a major campaign against the cuts. It’s a measure of the opponents’ success that they were able to convince a great many voters of their case, and a further measure of that success that Osborne, wily politician with well-tuned antennae, simply abandoned his proposal.

Osborne: a wily politician but not so hot on responsibility

Secondly, he has dropped plans for further cuts to the police, a position made deeply unpopular by the Paris terror attacks.

Smart moves by a clever operator. And most welcome: I supported the opposition to both cuts, and it’s with sincere relief that I greet their abandonment. But there’s no reason to reduce the pressure on Osborne, all the same. For two reasons.

Firstly, it would be deeply foolish to think that he isn’t going to sneak them back in. That’s already happening with tax credits. That particular support is being phased out to be replaced by the new system of Universal Credit – which Osborne has already cut. So as people are moved over to the new arrangements, many will face cuts of £2000 a year and more – around 10% of their earned income – that we were complaining about before.

So the opposition has to continue. Otherwise all we’ll have bought is a little time.

And secondly, there’s the justification Osborne has used for his U-turns. The Office for Budget Responsibility has revised its forecasts of future government revenue. It is on the strength of those forecasts that the government felt it could afford to reverse its cuts. But the Guardian was absolutely right to quote the comment by the great American economist, J K Galbraith, on the subject:

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.

George Osborne has taken a gamble on the economy turning out as the forecasters have suggested it might. Not on money in the bank, but on money he hopes to see flow in later.

Now I’m very much in favour of seeing growth stimulating increased government revenue, so that the constant cuts associated with austerity can end. But it strikes me that a government that is constantly quoting little common place phrases of everyday life as though they constituted analysis of an economic policy for a nation – “the country has maxed out its credit card”, “we inherited an economy on the brink of bankruptcy”, “we’re fixing the roof while the weather’s good” – would at least admit that it’s taken to spending today, money it has at best an uncertain chance of earning tomorrow.

It’s particularly striking in this context that the Office for Budget Responsibility doesn’t have a good track record in economic forecasting. Of course, it doesn’t have to take responsibility for any budgetary decision taken by the government.

But then, it seems George Osborne doesn’t feel the need to either. And he’s taking those decisions. With cheerful irresponsibility.

George Osborne: being buried by his own poll tax?

Tory proposals to cut tax credits, benefits to help the poorly paid survive, are “a mistake on a par with the poll tax,” according to Gordon Brown.

Brown, Labour Prime Minister until he was defeated in the 2010 General Election, tends to limit his public interventions. So it’s a measure of how important he feels the attack on tax credits is, that he’s spoken up now. And it’s telling that he compares this Tory policy to the poll tax: it was the measure that Thatcher brought in towards the end of her tenure of office, and which ultimately broke her. Unpopular in the country, it wrought consternation among her own members of parliament who saw it could cost them their seats, so they brought her down.

Gordon Brown:
elder statesman denouncing Osborne's onslaught on the poor

There are times when, as Brown suggests, it seems the tax credit cuts may do the same for George Osborne. He’s Chancellor of the Exchequer now, but has aspirations to succeed David Cameron as Prime Minister. An adverse vote by the House of Lords, which usually refrains from reversing decisions of the Commons on financial matters, forced Osborne back to the drawing board on his cuts. But now even Conservatives are questioning whether they’re acceptable, even if introduced more gradually and reduced in scope.

The Parliamentary Select Committee on Work and Pensions, despite its Tory majority, has called on Osborne to consider postponing the cuts for at least a year to consider other options, if he can’t mitigate the effects of the cuts adequately.

And a Tory MP, Stephen McPartland, boycotted a visit by a Treasury Minister and fellow Tory to his constituency this week, because the Minister refused to discuss the cuts. McPartland had calculated that a family on £20,000 a year, well below the median income for the country but well above the lowest, is likely to lose £2000 a year under the proposals. The government maintains that it’s committed to supporting strivers rather than skivers, but this would be a striving family that would suffer a major blow from Osborne’s policies.

When opposition begins to build within the Conservative Party itself, it seems that as well as a rod for backs of the poor, the Chancellor may well be building one for his own. The next election is still years away, and the Tories may weather this storm and suffer no lasting damage from it. But at least they are, for now, being put to the rack for policies which are inflicting real suffering and which they clearly hadn’t thought through.

That’s another parallel with the poll tax. It was a flat rate tax to support local government. Because it was the same for all, it disproportionately hurt the poor, as the tax credit cuts will. And Thatcher didn’t fully think it through: she had reached the point of believing so firmly in her political instincts that she insisted on pressing ahead with the measure, against the advice of most of her entourage. Until she paid the price.

We’ll see whether Osborne is able to show a little more flexibility. Or will pay the same price.

That will depend on whether he presses on with the tax credit changes. Ironically, most of us, including no doubt Gordon Brown, would be delighted to see the payments falling away to zero. Since they are earnings-related, they would wither away as people earned more. Brown would not doubt be keen to see wages rise in that way. Meanwhile, the Tories claim they want to see us becoming a high-wage, low-benefit economy. Indeed, that’s become a slightly monotonous refrain of theirs these days.

Well, raise the wages and the benefits will, automatically and inevitably, fall.

What’s interesting is that Osborne wants to cut the benefits by direct government action. In other words, he doesn’t himself believe in the “high wage” part of his mantra – if wages were rising as he claims to wish, he wouldn’t need to reduce the benefits himself. They would fall of their own accord.

All of which rather suggests he doesn’t believe his own words. In turn, that suggests that no one else should either. And, what’s more, if his proposals turn into his version of the poll tax, and come back to bury him – well, it could hardly happen to a more deserving fellow.

The Tory Tax Credit cuts: observations and warnings and even a few ironies

It’s painful when the party you’d like to see in government is, in fact, in Opposition. But it’s even worse when it fails to oppose.

Not that opposition is useful for its own sake. We need to oppose government when it’s doing something unconscionable. Something like, say, the British Tory government’s decision to cut tax credits drastically.

These are not in fact related to tax. They’re simply payments to help those working poor who aren’t earning enough, and are more generous still to those who have children. One advantage of the system is that it makes sense to get into a job, even a low-paying one, rather than remaining in assisted unemployment.

Tax credits are generally credited with reducing child poverty in England from 35% of the child population to 19% over the fourteen years from 1998/99 to 2012/13 (twelve of them under Labour).

The Tories have decided that they simply cost too much. In their single-minded drive to cut the deficit on government spending, they have decided to reduce them massively. They never calculated the impact of their policies on the poorest, but the estimates there have been suggest a loss of between £1000 a year and £1300 a year, on average. For some, that could mean a loss of 10% of their income.

That’s for the poorest working families – and the stress is on working: these are the people for which David Cameron and George Osborne claim to speak, even to the extent of calling themselves the “new workers’ party.” We can’t afford to support these strivers, Osborne and Cameron seem to claim, so they must suffer. This at a time when there seems no end in sight to the growth of top salaries: between 2013 and 2014, the incomes (I refuse to call them “earnings”) of directors of Britain’s biggest companies climbed 21%.

It’s the inequity of this arrangement that is particularly shocking. The Tory view is that the economy has to be fixed. That’s not contentious. However, they feel that to fix it, the burden must be disproportionately borne by those least able to shoulder it. Meanwhile, at the top end of the scale, there is no sense of obligation to share in any of the pain but, on the contrary, an unfettered drive to take more and more – even though many of the organisations involved were responsible for the economic problems in the first place, through a crash caused by the irresponsibility of bankers.

Surely, if there were a time for an Opposition to oppose, this had to be it. And yet Harriet Harman, interim Labour leader until the September election of Jeremy Corbyn, let it be known in July that, with a heavy heart, she would back the Conservative plans. Sadly, expressions of sympathy, however well-meant, don’t actually feed children or prevent evictions.

So it was with some delight that I watched the Labour and Liberal Democrat peers, with a smattering of others, win a crucial vote in the House of Lords last night forcing the government back to the drawing board, to come up with plans to soften the impact of the tax credit changes. 

Ironically, it’s the House of Lords, home of a privileged elite
that had to take a stance against regressive policies

That leads to a number of observations, some not a little ironic, and a few warnings.

The first observations is that it’s good to see the Lib Dems doing some opposing. For the five years up to May this year, when the Tories won the election on their own, the two parties were in a Coalition government. Lib Dem Ministers tried to soften some Tory measures, but they naturally didn’t oppose them. They seem to have learned their lesson, after being slaughtered in the May election.

Secondly, following Harriet Harman’s weird stance in July, it’s good to see Labour too learning to oppose again.

Third observation: it’s a little sad that we had to rely on the House of Lords, an unelected chamber, to force the government to reflect a moment. The Tories have been swift to point out that the convention is that the Lords do not block financial measures adopted by the Commons. There is now talk from within the government about reforming the Lords, which is deliciously ironic: it’s the Tories who have most impeded Lords reforms down the years.

Fourth observation: such reform is badly needed, but not to shelter a Tory government from opposition. It’s nonsensical to have to rely on an unelected chamber of parliament to scrutinise and question government policy. We should move towards elections to a revising chamber in Parliament, and then increase its powers to challenge government, rather than reducing them. Will the Tories move in that direction? It’s probably best not to hold your breath. 

In passing, I ought to point out that supporters of the move in the Lords argue that they were within their rights. Frankly, the technicalities hardly seem to matter. The fundamental point is that the measure needed opposing, and they did.

Now for the warnings. 

The government will have to reconsider its approach. That doesn’t mean it’ll drop it. George Osborne has already announced he’ll press forward with the cuts anyway, even if he softens the blow a little.

Secondly, it has left George Osborne with a bloody nose and made the government look inept. That, however, won’t have a lasting impact on its grip on power. We’re still four and a half years from an election. In 2012, Osborne put forward such an incompetent budget that it came to be known as an “omnishambles”. Three years on, his party won a majority on its own.

Thirdly, Labour has to show that it’s learned the lesson and will keep on opposing. It shouldn’t sit back and wait for the Tories to slip up, as happened under the previous leadership, of Ed Miliband and Ed Balls. The blows need to keep landing, or the Tories will turn things round in their favour again (see the second point above).

Still, for all that, I can’t deny that it’s an unqualified joy to see an Opposition learning to oppose again. 

We’ve missed you for the last five years, Oppositionists. Good to see you’ve found your tongue again. This time – don’t forget you have one.

Born to lead, apt to fawn

Hasn’t it been demeaning, the spectacle of David Cameron and George Osborne down on their bellies before Xi Jinping, the Chinese President, begging him to buy up bits of Britain?

Please, sir, do help yourself. It's all for sale...
Cameron, born to lead, is in his element fawning on the powerful

The thing about Cameron and Osborne is that they come out of what people like them like to think of as “the top drawer” of British society. Cameron inherited money; he was educated at Eton, the very top of the British public school system, and Oxford University; George Osborne is in line to inherit a baronetcy and become the eighteenth holder of the title; he was educated at St Paul’s School, only marginally less prestigious than Eton, and of course Oxford.

Both young men distinguished themselves there as members of the Bullingdon Club. With the future Conservative Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, they left a trail of havoc through repeated evenings of drunkenness and vandalism. The damage, for instance to restaurants they trashed, was paid for by one Daddy or another. Johnson even put a flowerpot through the window of an Indian restaurant, an offence for which a poorer perpetrator would probably have served time, or at least probation, and would have found distantly career-limiting.

This background classifies such people as members of the old English ruling class. You understand that you don’t actually have to be good at anything, or particularly competent, or even particularly hardworking – you just have to be what you were born. There are enough voters prepared to give you their preference simply on that basis – “you’re in the ruling class, so you should rule over us.”

This, you might think, would make them imperious and arrogant. As indeed it does, but only to people below them in the social scale. George Osborne, for instance, is overseeing the introduction of massive cuts in the system of tax credits which allows the working poor to pay survive on low incomes. The policy was the subject of a high-profile attack on live television recently, in which a woman who'd voted Conservative wept as she accused the Party she’d supported of breaking its explicit word not to make these cuts – “Shame on you,” she called out.

But Osborne feels no such shame. He’s described himself as “comfortable” with the policy. Well, why wouldn’t he be? He’s been comfortable since birth. By birth, indeed.

Where all trace of arrogance disappears, and indeed all pride, to be replaced by the most obsequious subservience is when such people meet others wealthier or more powerful than they are. And that is the sight we’ve enjoyed with the Chinese leader.

No other country in Europe, and certainly not the United States, is prepared to open up its nuclear industry to the Chinese. Simple security considerations rules such a notion out – the Chinese are trading partners, but they are also formidable adversaries of the West.

One might imagine the British Conservatives would feel the same way. After all, they criticise the views of the opposition Labour Party as inimical to national security. You might therefore expect them to be highly touchy on the subject of Chinese control on matters so sensitive.

Indeed, it’s interesting that Germany, the most successful economy in Europe, has not only not allowed foreigners to control its nuclear industry, it is moving rapidly towards eliminating any nuclear power stations at all. Far from suffering by this policy, Germany has become more prosperous and more powerful still by taking a dominant position in renewable energy technology.

Cameron and Osborne, on the other hand, have been pleading with the Chinese to make serious investments in British nuclear technology. The main business of the visit by Xi Jinping has been to tie up that deal. So not only do we remain dependent on dangerous technology, we’ve made it still more risky by giving a measure of control over it to a nation with little in common with Western values. And all this has been done in response to the supplication of our leaders-by-birth.

There were also other deals, of course. One involved an agreement not to carry out cyber attacks. Since many of the cyber attacks around the world originate in China, this sounds terribly like the kind of deal that’s struck with someone in a long overcoat and a fedora hat: “give us a piece of your nuclear industry, and nothing nasty will happen to your computer systems. Just remember: we know where you live, and some of my associates are far less scrupulous than I am.”

Meanwhile, there are other issues that need dealing with. Cameron has spent so much time wining and dining Xi Jinping that he has found it difficult to turn his attention to them.

For instance, the NHS is under pressure to generate savings of £20 billion. It spends some £5.1 billion annually on treating the effects of obesity. In an intelligent move, Public Health England was asked to investigate the problem and come up with suggestions. It has produced a report one of whose principal recommendations is a tax on high-sugar food and drinks. The researchers found that consumption of such products is sensitive to tax levels.

Cameron’s response? To rule out such an option. And, as he admits himself, without even reading the report.

He has, no doubt, been too busy doing what he does best – hanging around with the rich and powerful, flattering them and enjoying sumptuous banquets. Actual work has had to be rather sidelined.

You see? You don’t have to be particularly able. You don’t have to be particularly assiduous. All you need to rise to the top in Tory Britain is to have been born and brought up in the right circles.

And know how to fawn on wealthy autocrats.

John McDonnell: what matters is that the decision was right, not how you got there

The commentariat has been going wild in Britain this week. It’s been fascinated by the question of whether John McDonnell, newly appointed Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer under newly elected Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, had made a right hash of things.

The background is that the actual (as opposed to Shadow) Chancellor, George Osborne, has proposed new legislation binding future governments – including his own – to running budget surpluses in “normal times.”

At best, this is a gimmick (I’ll come on to what it is at worst in a bit). It’s ill-thought out: it doesn’t, for instance, distinguish between investment and current expenditure. Investment may well generate a big return in the future (perhaps a new railway line, or a government-financed scientific breakthrough), so it makes no sense to treat it as merely a cost today and not count any of the future benefit against it.

More crucial still, it’s a law that can’t be enforced. Parliament makes all laws, and therefore unmakes any law it wishes; it can’t bind itself by law, because all it would take if it became disenchanted with a law in the future, would be a quick act repealing it. By extension, since under what passes for a constitution in Britain, a government has to have a parliamentary majority it’s hard to see how parliament can pass a law to bind the government: it can simply use its majority to repeal anything it finds irksome.

At worst, what the proposal really intends is to justify further massive cuts in public expenditure, by passing them off as prudent financial management. Many suspect that there’s an unspoken agenda on the part of the Conservative Party to shrink the State. That’s a legitimate aim, naturally, but it ought to be expressed openly, not slipped in disguised as something else. On the other hand, one can understand why the government would want to disguise such an aim: we’ve learned just recently that the NHS, for instance, is on the brink of bankruptcy, with a deficit approaching a billion pounds in a single quarter, making it a little difficult to argue for further cuts.

Finally, it may be just a trick to try to embarrass Labour, by challenging them either to support the government or to paint themselves as opposed to financial prudence.

Which takes us neatly to John McDonnell.

Just a couple of weeks ago, at the Labour Party Conference, he announced that he would be supporting the government initiative.

Now, however, he’s switched round 180 degrees and decided to oppose it.

Imagine the uproar! “U-turn!” cry opponents or the media. “A mess and a muddle!” “Labour in chaos!” At their least ungenerous, hostile commentators point out that McDonnell’s new in post and his wobbles and inconsistencies are all part of the learning pains anyone might expect to go through.

In any case, they make it clear that the whole episode reflects badly on Labour. But then, they would, wouldn’t they?

To me, the whole thing’s another gimmick, just like the government proposal itself. It’s an attempt to paint Labour as incompetent – whereas, to me and a great many others, what matters isn’t that McDonnell changed his mind, but that he ended up taking the right decision.

John McDonnell
Why care that he changed his mind, if he got it right in the end?

This puts me mind of a story about Abraham Lincoln, the man I regard as the best politician in history, bar none.

In 1861, during the American Civil War, a US Navy ship intercepted a British mail vessel, RMS Trent, put men on board and seized two Confederate envoys who were heading for Europe to stoke up support for the rebellious States. Britain was furious, the United States delighted; Britain threatened war, and the US responded with the diplomatic equivalent of “bring it on.” Britain at that time had the world’s most powerful navy; Lincoln knew that he was in no position to fight a second war alongside the great struggle in which he was already engaged. But he didn’t want to back down to Britain, with all the loss of pride that would entail, to say nothing of the opprobrium it would excite around the country.

His Secretary of State, William Seward, on the other hand pointed out that such a sacrifice would be a lot smaller than the cost of a war. He recommended handing over the envoys to Britain.

Lincoln told him he couldn’t do that, and would prepare a paper arguing against Seward’s position that very evening. However, the next morning he turned up at the Cabinet meeting without a paper, and agreed with Seward’s proposal. Surprised by his agreement, the latter caught up with Lincoln after the meeting, and asked why he hadn’t submitted the promised paper.

“I found,” Lincoln replied, “I could not make an argument that would satisfy my own mind, and that proved to me your ground was the right one.”

Yes. If your second thoughts are better than your first, go with them.

Getting it right first time is great, and it’s a pity McDonnell didn’t. But getting it right at all is what matters. Nothing’s worse than sticking to a bad position come what may. That’s what Maggie Thatcher used to do, refusing to back down from any of her ideas, however misguided; that gave us the poll tax and the Section 28 homophobic legislation, and ultimately led to her downfall.

So well done, John McDonnell, for recognising that you had it wrong. And for having the courage to admit it and change your view. 

Because what matters is the quality of your final decision, not the route by which you got there – even if it was a little convoluted.