This is co-authored with Bev Clack and appeared in the Huffington Post today.
From time to time disaffected Labour voters ask what the
Labour Party is for.
Even committed Labourites like ourselves feel it is an
important question to ask.
It takes on a powerful new form as we slip evermore deeply
into the age of austerity. The pressing issue of the day is the economy and how
to reduce the deficit. Labour has been forthright in exposing the failure of
Osborne’s deficit reduction plan and the absence of any meaningful strategy for
growth.
But the problem with a focus solely on financial matters is
that it can act as a distraction from Labour’s historic mission for social
justice and the kind of real and lasting social change that will make Britain a
country fit for all, not just the well off. Harold Wilson, not immediately
remembered for his flights of rhetorical fancy, described Labour’s mission
well. ‘Labour’, he said, ‘is a moral crusade or it is nothing’.
A moral crusade.
Yet much of our current political debate singularly fails to
engage at all with what we might call the ethical aspects of politics and
particularly with the ethics of deficit reduction.
Take the discussion on Newsnight that took place after the
Lords had pushed through an amendment to the Welfare Reform Bill that would
exempt child benefit from the cap the government want to place on benefits. http://is.gd/VsH9Qb (13.12min into the video).Jeremy
Paxman interviewed a Conservative MP, a Shadow Minister and a Bishop. The difference in language used by the three
was staggering.
The Bishop of Leicester expressed concerns for people in his
Diocese currently faced with the struggle to keep a roof over their heads as
their housing benefit is cut.
Tory MP Margot James spoke about choice. This surprised even
Jeremy Paxman – was there really a choice involved in keeping a home or losing
it if you no longer had the money to pay the rent?
And how did Labour’s Liam Byrne choose to respond? He did
not talk about the ethics of promoting a policy that will leave many facing
homelessness. He did mention homelessness, but he focused on the cost to the
taxpayer of having to pay for emergency accommodation for those made homeless
by the cap.
Now, he may well be right to raise this practical issue. But
this focus on financial costs rather than morality suggests a peculiar problem
for Labour. Obviously our plans have to be credible and costed. We are not Flat
Earthers. But at the same time to talk only in such terms is to lose the vision
of Labour’s history while running the risk of developing a strategy that fails
to acknowledge the stark inequalities that the government’s flawed plan is
exposing.
It was left to the Bishop to raise the issue of an
increasingly unequal society, and he did so in unequivocally ethical language.
He argued that the effect on the poorest in society seeing the richest gain at
their behest is extremely damaging for a cohesive society.
Perhaps it would take a clergyman to make this connection,
but it’s disappointing that a Shadow Minister didn’t.
There is something pathologically wrong with our society
when we fail to look after poor families at the same time as sales in luxury
diaries and letterheads are rocketing and http://is.gd/HgcsHd and http://is.gd/ts5Sm1 Reference is often made to
the ‘filthy rich’ but let’s make sure that we go after them with the same
vigour Iain Duncan Smith is using to go after his undeserving poor. Let’s chase
them for their taxes and close those loopholes!
To take on the rich is not a sign of being
anti-business. It’s obviously the case
that we need people to have ideas and to be entrepreneurs in order to provide
employment and raise revenue. But if the inequality between rich and poor isn’t
addressed in a better and more systematic way, we will not escape the evils
that money can bring.
Is it morally right to chase benefit claimants when the
promised growth and jobs are not materialising?
The UK desperately needs to see jobs created with the revenue that comes
from workers paying taxes. Yet we should never forget that there are tax
evaders who owe this country in excess of £40billion. If we need to focus on
deficit reduction, presumably the HMRC bill will be looking to increase late
payment for taxes too?
Labour should be wary of responding to the government’s
plans by offering new forms of micromanagement. ’We would be better at making
cuts’ is a dangerous narrative to pursue. Labour’s mission has to be more, and
it has to involve speaking out for the vulnerable, the poor and the
marginalised. Thank goodness that there are members of the Party who are doing
just that. For without a message for a more ethical, more equal society, the
Party fails in its mission to create a better and more hopeful Britain for all
its citizens.
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