Owen Jones, Newsnight, Thatcher and neoliberalism
Friday night's 'Newsnight' offered a discussion on the political apathy generated by the recent crises, in light of not only "Liebor", yet a broader, public sentiment of distrust of Westminister and the city. Paul Mason introduced the topic by highlighting a certain contempt held by the public for 'bankers' and politicians that appears to have fostered and developed since the onset of the financial crisis. Mason has since been labelled, among many things, a 'Trotskyite' - usually a sign these are going pretty well - on the ever-reliable Twitter. This was then followed by a debate involving author and journalist Owen Jones, former Conservative MP Neil Hamilton, financial-sector Grandmaster Richard Sharp and the novelist, Anne Atkins. Jones - a known socialist who authored a much-publicised book in defence of those scrambling upon society's periphary, "Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class" - was perhaps an unusual choice for Newsnight; a show that tends, more often than not, to centre economic debate around the tiresome axis of neoliberal-Keynesian, or, even less inspiring, Tory-New Labour in light of political issues, and usually tends not to call upon anyone from the far-left to join the playing field.
Jones began by tying the current malaise of Britain's democracy and political integrity, to the onset of the Thatcher era, and the state's embracing of the neoliberal consensus, a programme of state-slashing, welfare-castrating governance led by both Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Essentially, a pertinent correlation exists between the share of society held by the working classes, and their political participation - this notion requires further development.
A key neoliberal reform was that of privatisation. Thatcher's government paved the path for the private provision of less valuable pension schemes, fenced off the state's scope for social housing by almost 50% of the estate and severed the public sector's role in residential care - by 1995, the government offered a mere 50,000 social workers out of 230,000, down from 100,000 out of 130,000 - preferring instead, to offer the private enterprises the chance to cream profits from the elderly and disabled. Numerous national industries, including BP, British Gas and British Steel were then displaced from tangible public influence - through the proxy of government - to the hands of wealthy individuals in the private sector. In considering these reforms for a brief moment, a picture begins to emerge of an increasingly politically isolated, modest-income voter. No longer does he or she hold the guarantee of state housing in the event of redundancy, nor the security of a reliable pension for post-retirement age. At the same time, corporations are gradually unlocking the safety of free, state-provided care for one's latter days; profits threaten the quality of care and one's health seemingly, is now regarded as a commodity from which value may be churned by a third party, rather than a distinct, social value of an integral, moral quality. Reforms to the application of housing welfare and the pervasion of 'means tested' benefits worked to strangle an entire cohort of voters with an iron fist of poverty; up to 1.5 million individuals eventually, would fall victim to the dreaded 70%, effective marginal tax rate - as incomes, however slowly, increased beyond a certain point, benefits were swiftly withdrawn and direct taxation immediately imposed. Many voters were feeling the brute end of a system no longer designed to care and insure for them. This care and insurance of course, being withdrawn in the midst of increasing unemployment, propelled by a severe economic downturn at the fore of Thatcher's premiership. Industries that rested at the core of Britain's employment base were destroyed without replacement; instead, it was decided, financial liberalisation via deregulation, was to offer a fading tide of capital new streams of high profits. The lower echelons of the income spread were also further targeted by Thatcher's reliance upon regressive taxation - in the form of VAT and the infamous poll tax - and refusal to increase direct taxation for the wealthiest. In essence, the stake of social influence, in economic and political terms, held by the majority of voters, was attacked and reduced by the Thatcher administration, and people's collective capacity to mobilise against this was also diminished, in the government's trade-union offensive.
New Labour's failure to reverse this process and reinstate the common voter's social influence saw the beginning of an effective malaise of democracy in the UK. Paul Hunter of The Smith Institute describes how Labour, between the '97 and 2010 general elections lost an entire five million voters - the majority of which simply abstained rather than turn to an alternative party - and turnout still fails to reach the levels of the post-war era, during which 80% of the electorate would commonly line the queues of the polling stations. The last decade's worth of elections holds an embarrassing average of 62%, with turnout at one stage, creeping down to 59.4%. With elections that fail draw even two-fifths of an entire electorate, the legitimacy of a state's democracy is called into question. Whether or not representation as a vessel of the concept of democracy, is at all 'democratic' in the first instance, is for another article, yet the central democratic idea of 'rule by the people' is patently ignored by an electoral system in which: a) As Mason notes, political distrust is rife, and political interest is abysmal, and b) So relatively few people actually bother to exercise the little 'rule' they have, in the vote. And when one considers just how exactly, the political landscape differs now, from the decades in which turnouts of 80% were a regularity, the aforementioned, common voter's 'social influence' must be considered. The post-war governments crafted a development plan that was labour intensive in its industrial investment, and all-encompassing in its welfare strategy. Of course, the Conservatives in the 1980s aimed to discard the common voter 'out of plan', so to speak; no longer were the interests of middle, lower incomes bounded to the economic initiatives of the state. New Labour's governance offered little in the way of change, and 'out of the plan', unfortunately, many of these voters now stand in terms of electoral turnout.
The above graphic displays the voting demographic of the 2010 and 2005 general elections according to class, via the - flawed yet useful - NRS grading system. The highest 'social classes', 'A' and 'B', boast the highest class turnout of just over 70% - meaning 70% of people in these classes 'turned out' to vote. The 'middle class', 'C1 yields 65%, and the 'low-middle' and 'lower' classes of 'C2' and 'D&E' offer only 58% and 57% respectively, and herein lies the the problem. The 'lower-middle, lower' classes, of C2, D, and E, account for 45% of the population, yet just over half - 57.5% - actually vote. Of the 'high-middle', and 'high' social grades however, that account for 55% of the population, 67.5% voted. On aggregate, in the two most recent UK elections, the wealthier members of society are overrepresented, in relation to the less wealthy. It is this misrepresentation of the lower-income voter, that the Thatcher regime and subsequently, Tony Blair's government, churned out over the course of thirty years in power. One could even consider Ralph Miliband's dictum of representative democracy as a process of 'containment' - neoliberalism, in its battles with trade unions and political alienation of the lower classes, appears to have reduced, blunted and in many ways, utterly removed the political pressures of low-income voters.
Notes:
Jones began by tying the current malaise of Britain's democracy and political integrity, to the onset of the Thatcher era, and the state's embracing of the neoliberal consensus, a programme of state-slashing, welfare-castrating governance led by both Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Essentially, a pertinent correlation exists between the share of society held by the working classes, and their political participation - this notion requires further development.
A key neoliberal reform was that of privatisation. Thatcher's government paved the path for the private provision of less valuable pension schemes, fenced off the state's scope for social housing by almost 50% of the estate and severed the public sector's role in residential care - by 1995, the government offered a mere 50,000 social workers out of 230,000, down from 100,000 out of 130,000 - preferring instead, to offer the private enterprises the chance to cream profits from the elderly and disabled. Numerous national industries, including BP, British Gas and British Steel were then displaced from tangible public influence - through the proxy of government - to the hands of wealthy individuals in the private sector. In considering these reforms for a brief moment, a picture begins to emerge of an increasingly politically isolated, modest-income voter. No longer does he or she hold the guarantee of state housing in the event of redundancy, nor the security of a reliable pension for post-retirement age. At the same time, corporations are gradually unlocking the safety of free, state-provided care for one's latter days; profits threaten the quality of care and one's health seemingly, is now regarded as a commodity from which value may be churned by a third party, rather than a distinct, social value of an integral, moral quality. Reforms to the application of housing welfare and the pervasion of 'means tested' benefits worked to strangle an entire cohort of voters with an iron fist of poverty; up to 1.5 million individuals eventually, would fall victim to the dreaded 70%, effective marginal tax rate - as incomes, however slowly, increased beyond a certain point, benefits were swiftly withdrawn and direct taxation immediately imposed. Many voters were feeling the brute end of a system no longer designed to care and insure for them. This care and insurance of course, being withdrawn in the midst of increasing unemployment, propelled by a severe economic downturn at the fore of Thatcher's premiership. Industries that rested at the core of Britain's employment base were destroyed without replacement; instead, it was decided, financial liberalisation via deregulation, was to offer a fading tide of capital new streams of high profits. The lower echelons of the income spread were also further targeted by Thatcher's reliance upon regressive taxation - in the form of VAT and the infamous poll tax - and refusal to increase direct taxation for the wealthiest. In essence, the stake of social influence, in economic and political terms, held by the majority of voters, was attacked and reduced by the Thatcher administration, and people's collective capacity to mobilise against this was also diminished, in the government's trade-union offensive.
New Labour's failure to reverse this process and reinstate the common voter's social influence saw the beginning of an effective malaise of democracy in the UK. Paul Hunter of The Smith Institute describes how Labour, between the '97 and 2010 general elections lost an entire five million voters - the majority of which simply abstained rather than turn to an alternative party - and turnout still fails to reach the levels of the post-war era, during which 80% of the electorate would commonly line the queues of the polling stations. The last decade's worth of elections holds an embarrassing average of 62%, with turnout at one stage, creeping down to 59.4%. With elections that fail draw even two-fifths of an entire electorate, the legitimacy of a state's democracy is called into question. Whether or not representation as a vessel of the concept of democracy, is at all 'democratic' in the first instance, is for another article, yet the central democratic idea of 'rule by the people' is patently ignored by an electoral system in which: a) As Mason notes, political distrust is rife, and political interest is abysmal, and b) So relatively few people actually bother to exercise the little 'rule' they have, in the vote. And when one considers just how exactly, the political landscape differs now, from the decades in which turnouts of 80% were a regularity, the aforementioned, common voter's 'social influence' must be considered. The post-war governments crafted a development plan that was labour intensive in its industrial investment, and all-encompassing in its welfare strategy. Of course, the Conservatives in the 1980s aimed to discard the common voter 'out of plan', so to speak; no longer were the interests of middle, lower incomes bounded to the economic initiatives of the state. New Labour's governance offered little in the way of change, and 'out of the plan', unfortunately, many of these voters now stand in terms of electoral turnout.
The above graphic displays the voting demographic of the 2010 and 2005 general elections according to class, via the - flawed yet useful - NRS grading system. The highest 'social classes', 'A' and 'B', boast the highest class turnout of just over 70% - meaning 70% of people in these classes 'turned out' to vote. The 'middle class', 'C1 yields 65%, and the 'low-middle' and 'lower' classes of 'C2' and 'D&E' offer only 58% and 57% respectively, and herein lies the the problem. The 'lower-middle, lower' classes, of C2, D, and E, account for 45% of the population, yet just over half - 57.5% - actually vote. Of the 'high-middle', and 'high' social grades however, that account for 55% of the population, 67.5% voted. On aggregate, in the two most recent UK elections, the wealthier members of society are overrepresented, in relation to the less wealthy. It is this misrepresentation of the lower-income voter, that the Thatcher regime and subsequently, Tony Blair's government, churned out over the course of thirty years in power. One could even consider Ralph Miliband's dictum of representative democracy as a process of 'containment' - neoliberalism, in its battles with trade unions and political alienation of the lower classes, appears to have reduced, blunted and in many ways, utterly removed the political pressures of low-income voters.
The responses offered to Jones' comments were, perhaps predictably, laughable to the roll of an eye. Anne Atkins insisted that the current run of crises, and the manipulation of power by society's wealthiest, was simply down to the rise of atheism. Richard Sharp offered the textbook defence strategy of neoliberalism in response to cutting criticism: 'Thatcher made everything efficient', and then, when that failed, something along the lines of, 'you lefties have no alternative system'. Neil Hamilton simply ignored the issue of political apathy, and bought up the old chestnut of 'human nature', in explaining the corruption of power and wealth, insisting that 'flaws in human nature' meant that 'these kinds of things will always happen' - easy for some, of course.
Notes:
1) John Hills on Thatcher's neoliberal programme - "Thatcherism, New Labour and the Welfare State" - http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/5553/1/Thatcherism_New_Labour_and_the_Welfare_State.pdf
2) Richard Seymour on Thatcher's privatisation - "A short history of privatisation in the UK: 1979-2012" - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/29/short-history-of-privatisation
3) Paul Hunter on Labour's loss of votes - "winning back the 5 million - understanding the fragmentation of Labour's vote" - http://www.smith-institute.org.uk/file/Winning%20back%20the%205%20million.pdf
4) The Electoral Reform Society, on the 2010 election trends - "The UK General Election 2010: In-depth" - https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:fguT8D3TR0gJ:www.electoral-reform.org.uk/downloadfile.php?PublicationFile%3D144+&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESg-7LcKR29_WI7rLh4-CohOA8aDebmbVWjeR2fMwa3wmZkspFmsj3_X3P0bEku0ndUcjEoLRDtDskK_VdRRUUv8G-aI7lUlayWt41RfujDlr4cY5A9oBDUpZMcguihmgJnxiERd&sig=AHIEtbRdw4WxxeHZqh8uIqOm93yp718m_A&pli=1
5) Ipsos-Mori on NRS social grading - "Social Grade: A Classification Tool" - http://www.ipsos-mori.com/DownloadPublication/1285_MediaCT_thoughtpiece_Social_Grade_July09_V3_WEB.pdf
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