It's not bankers Labour is watching, it's you

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some news from the homefront

Quote

Britain has experienced six successive years in which real incomes have barely grown, and even these modest increases have been concentrated at the very top of the scale. Two-thirds of individuals live in households where the weekly income is lower than the national mean of £487 a week. The economy grew at a respectable rate during those six years, but most of the fruits of that growth went to capital rather than labour.

Britain is a country where millions of workers are employed in insecure jobs, where poverty pay is topped up by means-tested benefits. And where, clearly, the government no longer trusts us to behave properly. Hence the surveillance and the targets for doctors, teachers and the police that manage at one and the same time to be rigid and ineffective. The City, of course, had a special dispensation from all this. It was allowed the benefit of light-touch, even no-touch, regulation.

There is little evidence, despite all the bluster about a new age, that this is going to change. We are assured that lessons have been learned and that the 50% tax rate on those earning more than £150,000 is a sign of the government's get-tough approach with business. But this is window dressing. Real change would involve questioning some of the deep-seated trends of the past 30 years – the imbalance of power between capital and labour, the declining influence of the trade unions, the concentration of economic power in ever bigger financial and non-financial companies and the impact of globalisation and free trade on those on the lowest incomes.

The government's approach is that the changes in the economy over the past three decades were inexorable. But even if ministers thought otherwise, they would still do nothing, since they are true converts to the main tenets of neo-liberalism. And as a result Labour is on course for a crushing defeat.

The three years after 2005 saw the economy hum along at about 2.5% a year on average, with house prices surging and the City booming. But it didn't deliver for those in the bottom four-fifths of the income distribution.

Little wonder, then, that Labour's old working class support is being lost to the BNP or apathy, and that middle-income voters are swinging back to the Conservatives. Those of a liberal bent are appalled at the authoritarianism that is apparently required to keep the lid on a society where the gap between material desires and weak income growth has for years been bridged only by debt. Professionals loathe the target culture. Only the functionaries of the Big Brother state remain loyal, and even now there are not enough of them. The party's over.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/may/10/neo-liberalism-labour-policy-larry-elliott

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