George Osborne announced in his Autumn Statement that
there has been an increase in employment, a decrease in the deficit, and that
there will be improved growth. On the face of it this sounds great, but, if you
look a little deeper, all is certainly not rosy in the UK’s garden. Fortunately
for us, but rather unfortunately for the Chancellor, Robert Peston over at that
pesky BBC has looked a bit deeper into the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR)
findings. He’s found that behind the headline figures is some information the
Chancellor doesn't wish to share with us. We could give Osborne the benefit of
the doubt and assume that he just found it all a little confusing - he did of
course think that taking money out of the pockets of low and middle income
earners whilst cutting taxes for the rich would somehow lead to the demand
needed to rebuild the economy - but it is far more likely that he'd rather
people believed his false assertion that his austerity plan has worked, in
spite of the UK suffering from the slowest recovery on record; ‘if you repeat a
lie often enough, it becomes truth.’
What Robert Peston found when looking deeper into the OBR’s
findings was that the recovery is in large part due to a belated upturn in the
economic cycle, that spending has ‘largely come from lower saving, not higher income,’
and that the reduction in borrowing is largely due to public spending cuts
rather than increased revenue. All of this is more relevant to how people will
be experiencing our belated recovery than figures about government borrowing
and GDP, but it doesn't suit the Chancellor to talk about the experiences of
real people. With British wages falling faster than most of Europe and income inequality at its worst since the end of the Second World War, it is Labour’s
cost of living crisis that people can relate to, not the intangible notion of
GDP growth. Ed Miliband has done well to pin point an issue that chimes
with voters and make it his own. With Cameron and Osborne scrambling to keep up
with popular Labour policies, Labour have taken the political lead and are now
shaping the narrative on which the election will be fought.
It would probably suit the Tories better if people were unable to remember - or
unable to access as is the case for many of Cameron’s speeches - their claims on
coming into government that cuts were not ideological but a necessity forced
upon them. Having previously promised to match
Labour’s spending plans - we’re not supposed to remember that either - they had little choice but to come out with that line. Osborne’s
statement follows on nicely from Cameron’s permanent austerity speech, showing
their drive towards a state the size of the post-Second World War era is as
ideologically driven as their attacks on the poor and tax cuts for the rich.
This is something that shouldn't be allowed to slip under the radar. Following
the two World Wars, successive governments expanded the state to create a
fairer society that distributed wealth more equally and looked after its
citizens, particularly those in need. With this new Post-War Consensus the UK gradually became a more
equal place, with higher social mobility, less income inequality and state owned
infrastructure that was run for the benefit of the people of our
country. This state, which Cameron so gleefully discards, was earned by the
suffering of many people over many years and it is sickening to see it dismantled
for no other reason than ideology and greed, the very same ideology and greed that
caused the crash from which we are still recovering.
Following years of stagnation, falling wages, falling living standards, higher prices, ever increasing inequality and cuts to vital public services, later than expected growth, as the economy regains some of the output lost during recession and stagnation, does not justify further austerity and further dismantling of the state built to look after its citizens and build a fairer society. If anything, the economy's stagnation and the real impact of this on peoples lives shows just how much we need a fresh approach, an approach focused on secure jobs, rising standards of living, less inequality and a lower cost of living, not one based on an insecure job market, falling living standards, rising costs of living and more inequality that is taking us back to a country run by the elite for the elite.
