Simplification in politics is often necessary. This means breaking
down fifty page policy papers in to sound bites or adverts or spewing a
biblically sized party manifesto in three minutes on the doorstep of a
disillusioned voter that is preparing to take great pleasure in slamming their
front door in your face. It prevents the distortion of a clear message and
allows for the digestion of often complicated debates. This form of
simplification, although it may not always be underpinned by a positive
message, is to all intents and purposes necessary for the mass consumption of
politics. No one truly believes, within the political classes at least, that
the British economy can be compared to a household in debt. However, it serves
the purpose of explaining and personalising complicated deficit economics.
There is one simplification however, that rather than be the tool for
explanation, has become the policy itself.
New Labour tended to define social mobility as an ever
expanding middle class. It was a metaphorical synonym for their real aim, which
was to improve the living standards of those in the bottom quartile. They made
accessing debt facilities cheaper and in turn, combined with favourable
exporting conditions and a strong financial centre Britain found itself in an
economic environment where it became natural for people to live beyond their
means because there would be “no bust” this time around. John Lanchester in Whoops, estimates that the debt to
earnings percentage stands at 140% in Britain compared to the continent which
hovers at around 50%. As a result, one could realistically define these
improvements as cosmetic. This is especially so when we consider the strong
evidence which shows that the wealth created during the economic boom
stratified at a faster rate than during the Conservative era that preceded it.
The issue is not just that it didn’t happen; “it” being
everyone waking up as Middle Class. Rather the issue here is that the
simplification that was presented as politically plausible was in reality a
fallacy when combined with the policies and culture of the New Labour
government. Social Mobility is the measure of a society’s ability to have
people both rise and fall. The corollary of this of
course is that increased social equality makes social mobility easier. This is
because the more equal a society is the smaller the divide between the top and
bottom and as a result the easier it is to move between wealth brackets. New
Labour however, spent their time in office determined to avoid the topic of
social equality lest they resurrect that old dichotomy of “electability vs.
principles.”
Blair and New Labour shied away from debates on social
equality and attempted to buy off the working classes and lower middle class
with an unsustainable increase in spending on the welfare state. They expanded
university access without improving the education system, meaning that many of
the very people they were trying to help ended up in substandard higher
education institutions. The elites however, carried on as ever attending the
very institutions they had always attended fearing that only positive
discrimination, as opposed to real improvements in education, could unseat them
from their Russell Group place. Trying to tackle this, New Labour created
Academy Colleges so as to increase funding to state schools. What they didn’t
tell anyone was that it wasn’t the private or charitable sectors pumping most
of the money in to academies. Under Labour, state spending per head on the
children who attended academies was more than at their comprehensive
equivalents. All we learnt from that experiment was that more money and nicer
buildings make students happy and they may or may not get better grades (the
academic success of academies is chequered). On the topic of improved social
mobility the Labour Party were more trigger happy cowboys than coherent
reformers.
As much of New Labour’s legacy (/ad hoc policies) is washed
away by the realities of recession economics, we must accept that Blair and
those who supported him, made little head way in to creating sustainable
structures that improved social mobility in Britain (OECD statistics prove
this). What filled this vacuum was a cultural shift towards the disinclination
of shared economic responsibility that took three forms.
The first form was that being rich alone was service enough
to society. Mandelson shone an unsubtle light on Labour’s absolution of their
responsibilities by stating that New Labour was “comfortable with people
becoming filthy rich”. Thatcher allowed people to get “filthy rich,” Labour
made it cool, trendy and acceptable. Ha-Joon Chang is right however. The CEO’s
of multinationals now being paid more than their lowest paid professional by
100 times in contrast to the 60’s and 70’s where that gap was closer to 10
times are not worth their pay packets. He provides evidence to show that not
only are they not 10 times more profitable than their predecessors they are on
average less so. Furthermore, in real (and comparative) terms many corporations
pay their staff, who have a higher propensity to spend and therefore stimulate
the economy via consumption, less. This may have been forgivable during the
good times (it wasn’t), but the financial crisis has shone light on a win-win
culture where the rich are rewarded for failure as well as success.
The second aspect of the cultural shift was that
corporations were absolved of all duties beyond job creation. It has become a
fall back when a company’s moral compass is in question to state that “they
create several thousand jobs for the British economy.” This justification has
gone on to support unpaid taxes, weapons sales to authoritarian states, the treatment
of foreigners as slave labour and the failings that led to a recession in 2008.
You then have the major gas providers who have by and large increased their
rates. The only exception to this rule has been, unsurprisingly, The
Co-Operative who have cut rates by 2%; they however only provide for 60,000
homes. According to Ofgen, although costs to energy suppliers are falling below
2008 levels, the charges to the consumer is rising leading to nigh on record
profits in an industry that has the ability to directly affect the spending
power of even middle income earners. Corporations have never been known for
their inherent benevolence (regardless of what Michael Moore says), however in
recent years we have come to expect almost nothing from them but jobs and they
have come to deliver on that contract.
The final aspect that underpinned the decline of shared
economic responsibility has been the marginalisation of the working class.
Mired in their snobbery, it took New Labour too long to realise that not everyone
wanted to attend university to study History but rather some people enjoyed
manual professions. Better late than never, they responded accordingly with
apprenticeship schemes. However, the damage was deeper than that. They created
a society where the wealthy were glamorised and accepted into the political
elite as inherently good and proper. Peddling a dream that any and every one
could be middle class, they intentionally marginalised those who did or could
not buy in to that aurora-borealis as lazy and undeserving. It was only at the
end during the recession that Labour moved against the wealthy, but for years
previously Blair had created and encouraged a Daily Mail society that attacked
those on the margins of his political experiment. It was unsurprising then that
when the financial crisis hit and people saw the extent to which bankers had
lived it large that graduate applications to banking increased astronomically,
money had become the new moral currency. So why are we then surprised that in
many communities in Briton people would rather live on the dole than earn the
minimum wage in a job that years of marketing and political indoctrination have
served to dehumanise? Why should we be surprised that the corollary of Blair’s
Britain is one where people riot not for food or against political subjugation
but for Nike trainers and plasma t.v.’s? New Labour made consumerism the
standard; it became a standard that could only be achieved via heavy borrowing
for most.
Ultimately, the starting premise was a dangerous one, this
being the idea that everyone could be middle class. The premise was dangerous
because it was based on those at the bottom moving up without an acceptance
that those at the top should move closer to the bottom. On the contrary it encouraged
the rich to become even more distant and devolved of social responsibility.
Ignoring those at the top was the first mistake, but this led to others. New
Labour, unable to create a culture of shared economic responsibility found
itself buying off the working and lower middle classes via astronomical
increases in welfare spending which depended on the constant consumption of
those with a high propensity to spend, the poorest in society. At the end of it
all we are no closer to social mobility, in fact Britain according to the OECD
is edging closer and closer to America (and in some cases Portugal) on the
topic of social immobility a trend that has continued with the coalition, not
begun by it.
So as our society continues to obsess about social mobility,
we should always remember New Labour’s example of what that can lead to when we
are ignorant of social equality.
Babs Williams is the President of the Queen Mary Student Union and former Chairman of New Turn.
