Cheap and Nasty Government; But Would Labour Be Any Better?

The present government constantly provides ministers and 'spokespersons' who will defend any policy and any situation. Thus, in the past 24 hours, a survey has shown that the majority of NHS nurses go home from their shift, not only physically exhausted but emotionally drained as well. They report not being able to be present when people die, completely alone. They are anxious and embarrassed that medication is not given on time; and is sometimes missed altogether due to the pressure of work. Some clown in the Health Department did not deny that the report was true, but made the irrelevant comment that there were 7,000 more doctors in the hospitals that there had been seven years ago.

Soldiers reported that the vehicles that were designed to protect them from roadside bombs and similar hazards often break down in the hot weather conditions for which they were supposedly designed, at a huge cost. The Defence Department flatly denied this report, asserting that the vehicles were effective in keeping the troops safe: maybe so, if the failure of the vehicles keeps the soldiers in their bases. Old naval hands despair at the lack of resources to keep the massively reduced fleet operational and seaworthy and fit for action. The two new aircraft carriers have no aircraft. There are plans to reduce the number of Royal Marines beneath the present level where they cannot cover all the actions to which politicians commit them. Mrs May flies off to Estonia to declare that Britain will defend all its NATO allies: with words and sharp cuts?

More than seventy Tory MPs have signed a demand to the Prime Minister to implement her election promise to impose a cap on energy bills for millions of households: it would only affect a minority of families, but would cover many of the most vulnerable. A smaller number of Tory MPs are also agitating for delay in the implementation of the government's penny-pinching scheme to accelerate the roll-out of the single state benefit. This would save money; particularly in that as people are migrated from the complex of former benefits onto the new system there is a six-week delay before they get any money from it. This the government's outward cash-flow is deferred; while individuals and households are plunged into desperate want, forced to apply to food banks and doorstep lenders.

The sheer insensitivity of all of this calls into mind the cynicism of the worst Victorian workhouse masters and the cynical Stalinist Commissar. Both of those classes of individual - like the civil service in austerity Britain - have had drummed into them that no more resources will be made available; so they simply deny truths that are on open display.

It is the record of socialist governments, whether Marxist or not, to assert their own propaganda more often and more fervently when the truth does not accord with the official line. This is happening more intensively [and more absurdly] by the day in Venezuela at the present time. Jeremy Corbyn's  enthusiasm for the Maduro regime consequently becomes more indefensible by the day: but the Labour leader evades every opportunity to admit the lack of substance in the regime's claims and assertions; or to recognise the increasing level of oppression. Those who wore 'HANDS OFF VENEZUELA' T-shirts and baseball caps in and around the Labour Party Conference earlier this week seemed to me to be anticipating their future role as deniers on the domestic scene when the Labour Government that they expect to take office soon fails actually and humanely to implement their proposed policies. While Corbyn can still claim to be a 'seventies idealist, the people who have built his machine are ruthless advocates of extreme measures to rob the rich and to coerce the rest of the population. Nasser, Ghadfi, Ken Livingstone and a score of other 'strong men' shoved aside the much gentler figures who originally fronted their coups or electoral victories. It is well authenticated that while Mrs Attlee was driving her husband to Buckingham Palace to take the King's commission to form a government, Professor Laski, Herbert Morrison and others were plotting to hold a leadership election in the Labour Party that would choose a far different candidate than the election-winner Attlee.

There is a real and proximate danger that a Labour election victory, especially if the party won by a small majority, would quickly be followed by the overt capture of the government by a radical faction who would move quickly to consolidate their power undemocratically for a long period of authoritarian rule. As the saying in revolutionary circles goes: rely on one man one vote, once! Hence, although the Labour offering in the past week has been largely composed of highly desirable policies, and the austere Tories show that they cannot mind the shop while they flounder towards a Brexit disaster, the risks in having either party in power are immense.

How to Turn Things Round: By Jingo

The term 'jingoism' has fallen out of use in the British Isles. Its origin comes from a song that was popular in a different social, economic and political environment from that that under which the UK is now groaning [and today being downgraded by yet another credit-rating agency, Moody's]: the song goes:
We don't want to fight
  But by Jingo if we do,
  We've got the ships, we've got the men,
  And we've got the money, too!

Very quickly after his seizure of power in 1933, Hitler got the German economy on the move by re-armament and by building up the supporting infrastructure: re-equipping steelworks and arms factories, and building the Autobahns. This created employment, which in turn generated demand for radio sets, new clothes and better food. Britain's turnaround after the Depression of the early 'thirties was also helped by a massive increase in armaments including - as mentioned in the last couple of blogs - the construction of dozens of airfields, which dispersed the RAF's growing but limited resources and made it vastly harder for the German airforce to attempt to destroy our 'planes; and a massive house building effort.

The British economy could massively be boosted right now by re-running what we did in the 'thirties. We could order the twenty frigate-type ships the navy needs, and equip them both for missile weapons, and for rescue missions [such as the one in which we have so visibly been inadequate in the West Indies in the past few weeks]. The order for ships could only be fulfilled by sub-contracting the building of sections of the hulls to small shipyards around the country and boosting the capacity of Rolls Royce and other firms to produce the engines and equipment. That would involve thousands of sub-contractors, who would all be able to invest in improved machinery and better work practices, to apply both in their defence contracts and their increasingly-competitive civilian work. The future of Short-Brothers [aka Bombardier] in Ulster and of Westland would be boosted by having aviation capability on the new ships and on Britain's long-neglected island bases around the world. Instead of being reduced, the number or Royal Marines and soldiers should be expanded: all of this putting wages into peoples' pockets and 'real' business into the shops those people use.

At the same time, a state-funded scheme of construction of 'affordable' homes should begin: that too would create jobs in the sector; and break the near-oligopoly of the existing developers [who are deliberately concentrating on an inadequate supply of higher-cost housing]. It would add to demand for businesses all down the supply chain and thus increase demand in the whole system; and the houses would start to produce a flow of rental income within a year, which could then fund  the scheme in future years [preferably boosted by the income from selling some of the houses as the supply became less stretched].

And how would this all be paid for? As the austerity addicts would plaintively claim.

By borrowing. By offering National Recovery Bonds at a rate of interest [capped at 6%] that would be at least 1% higher then the Retail Prices Index - something close to 4% as things stand just now. There are millions of people who have been starved of sensible vehicles for their savings, all through the era of low interest rates that followed from the crisis of 2007-9. As the economic growth provided by those two stimuli [defence and housing] all other sectors would face higher demand: led by innovative young companies. Thus the cost to the government would be only the interest that had to be paid [plus administrative costs]: and that would easily be met by the growth in the national income that would have been stimulated.

It has been done before: it can be done again. The only things needed are credible leadership in both politics and economic life. The bus-pass holders have the money!