In 1983 Neil Kinnock warned people against embracing Margaret Thatcher as the next Prime Minister with his warning, 'Not to be ordinary. Not to be young,. Not to fall ill. Not to be old.
Thirty two years after the electorate ignored his warning and despite the intervening years of New Labour ascendancy with Blair and Brown, his words ring truer that ever and apply to an ever wider cross section of the electorate.
There is certainly little reward today in being a steelworker, in being low-paid, in being an immigrant or asylum seeker, in being young, in falling ill or becoming elderly.
The current furore over tax credits, a constitutional crisis according to Cameron and Osborne more accurately described by Jeremy Corbyn as a crisis for three million families.
Despite repeating his question six times Cameron avoided answering six times, repeating instead the current mantra of the Tory Party:
A high-pay, low-tax, low-welfare economy.
This meaningless phrase sits alongside the other meaningless phrase repeated again and again by this Tory Government of a country:
Living within its means.
Apart from the sight and sound of two millionaires lecturing people on the need to live within their means, (and George Osborne and David Cameron are not the only millionaires on millionaire row, the net worth of the Tory front bench is estimated at 70 Million with 18 of the 29 members of the Cabinet also qualifying as Millionaires) it is the hollowness of the phrases that emerge in the debates about hard working families when all the evidence points clearly to the fact that most of those three million who rely on tax credits are the very same people who work hard to earn their poverty.
Over the five years of the Tory led coalition wages in fact stagnated or fell back so that it is only now that wages are approaching levels last seen at the end of the New Labour era. So far from actually delivering a high wage economy the pursuit of austerity has resulted in lower investment, lower wages, and lower productivity.
The rhetoric employed by Cameron and Osborne is empty and hollow, we do not have a high-pay economy and are unlikely to see one emerge any time soon. The proposed national living wage is nothing more than a trick with mirrors, legerdemain, sleight of hand and as our manufacturing capacity collapses (first we sell it to Asian Businessmen who finally, because they cannot make a profit and there is no Government support withdraw because it is their only realistic option, why go down with a sinking ship?) so we become increasingly reliant on service industries or as Cameron suggested, self-employment, neither of which sectors offer the possibility of transforming a families budget overnight.
Alongside death, taxation is one of the few things of which we can be certain in this life. For Daniel Defoe, in his 1726 book, The Political History of the Devil, only: things as certain as death and taxes can be more firmly believed unless of course you are someone who is considered to be outside the circle of those subject to a shared responsibility for contributing to the, common good, so the better connected you are, the better your lawyers are, dependent on where you base your head office or where you claim to be trading from and which country, you may or may not pay tax, HMRC will doubtless cut you a deal and the cabinet will look out for its own.
As Leona Helmsley was quoted during her trial, We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.
Low taxes for some then.
But welfare also needs, according to Cameron and Osborne to be lowered, because as a country we need to, live within our means.
How is welfare to be lowered? What is welfare? How are our means determined?
Britain is in fact a rich country, determined by both our domestic product and spending power Britain is the second largest economy in Europe, and fifth and tenth respectively in the world.
Because our manufacturing base has eroded with jobs exported both to Europe and to Asia so our service economy has grown and in particular financial services. Alongside this re balancing of our economy, because money flows into the single largest financial services centre in the UK, London so London has become more prosperous and wealth has gravitated South. Alongside this process so inequality has grown, the rich have become richer (as have the poor) but the imbalance has grown larger and larger as the rich become richer still.
As a nation living within our means would be relatively easy if our means were distributed more fairly and concepts like the Common Good, were owned by those who through good fortune, inheritance, hard work or simple luck had achieved a more financially secure position.
Welfare is often taken to mean benefits, it certainly appears to be the mission of Ian Duncan Smith to define welfare as benefits, and with each new measure he introduces so benefits are reduced whether by singling out those with a spare room, or those who, through disability find work difficult or impossible he focuses our attention on benefits. But welfare is more, far more than benefits.
In 1945 the rhetoric of the Labour Government was rich and challenged the nations conscience. homes for heroes, education for all, treatment free at the point of need. It was a vision for which people of this country had fought two bitter wars, it was the Kingdom of Bevan.
It was the earnest socially rooted vision of a society that was just and fair, and I benefited from it.
The nightmare (it is certainly not a vision) of Cameron and Osborne is of a society increasingly divided between rich and poor, a society at odds with itself, a society where the young bear the weight of student debt into their adult lives, a society where home ownership becomes a remote financial possibility, a society of uncertainty and insecurity, a society of mac job's, serving lattes to machismo bankers.
The key to understanding welfare is to define the word:
Welfare, as defined in the OED means: the health, happiness and fortunes of a person or group.
The question facing Cameron and Osborne is not Jeremy Corbyn's question it is Neil Kinnock's.
In what way will a high pay, low tax, low welfare economy bring health, happiness and fortune to children, to young people entering adult life, to families in work or out, to the sick, to the elderly?
Thirty two years after the electorate ignored his warning and despite the intervening years of New Labour ascendancy with Blair and Brown, his words ring truer that ever and apply to an ever wider cross section of the electorate.
There is certainly little reward today in being a steelworker, in being low-paid, in being an immigrant or asylum seeker, in being young, in falling ill or becoming elderly.
The current furore over tax credits, a constitutional crisis according to Cameron and Osborne more accurately described by Jeremy Corbyn as a crisis for three million families.
Despite repeating his question six times Cameron avoided answering six times, repeating instead the current mantra of the Tory Party:
A high-pay, low-tax, low-welfare economy.
This meaningless phrase sits alongside the other meaningless phrase repeated again and again by this Tory Government of a country:
Living within its means.
Apart from the sight and sound of two millionaires lecturing people on the need to live within their means, (and George Osborne and David Cameron are not the only millionaires on millionaire row, the net worth of the Tory front bench is estimated at 70 Million with 18 of the 29 members of the Cabinet also qualifying as Millionaires) it is the hollowness of the phrases that emerge in the debates about hard working families when all the evidence points clearly to the fact that most of those three million who rely on tax credits are the very same people who work hard to earn their poverty.
Over the five years of the Tory led coalition wages in fact stagnated or fell back so that it is only now that wages are approaching levels last seen at the end of the New Labour era. So far from actually delivering a high wage economy the pursuit of austerity has resulted in lower investment, lower wages, and lower productivity.
The rhetoric employed by Cameron and Osborne is empty and hollow, we do not have a high-pay economy and are unlikely to see one emerge any time soon. The proposed national living wage is nothing more than a trick with mirrors, legerdemain, sleight of hand and as our manufacturing capacity collapses (first we sell it to Asian Businessmen who finally, because they cannot make a profit and there is no Government support withdraw because it is their only realistic option, why go down with a sinking ship?) so we become increasingly reliant on service industries or as Cameron suggested, self-employment, neither of which sectors offer the possibility of transforming a families budget overnight.
Alongside death, taxation is one of the few things of which we can be certain in this life. For Daniel Defoe, in his 1726 book, The Political History of the Devil, only: things as certain as death and taxes can be more firmly believed unless of course you are someone who is considered to be outside the circle of those subject to a shared responsibility for contributing to the, common good, so the better connected you are, the better your lawyers are, dependent on where you base your head office or where you claim to be trading from and which country, you may or may not pay tax, HMRC will doubtless cut you a deal and the cabinet will look out for its own.
As Leona Helmsley was quoted during her trial, We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.
Low taxes for some then.
But welfare also needs, according to Cameron and Osborne to be lowered, because as a country we need to, live within our means.
How is welfare to be lowered? What is welfare? How are our means determined?
Britain is in fact a rich country, determined by both our domestic product and spending power Britain is the second largest economy in Europe, and fifth and tenth respectively in the world.
Because our manufacturing base has eroded with jobs exported both to Europe and to Asia so our service economy has grown and in particular financial services. Alongside this re balancing of our economy, because money flows into the single largest financial services centre in the UK, London so London has become more prosperous and wealth has gravitated South. Alongside this process so inequality has grown, the rich have become richer (as have the poor) but the imbalance has grown larger and larger as the rich become richer still.
As a nation living within our means would be relatively easy if our means were distributed more fairly and concepts like the Common Good, were owned by those who through good fortune, inheritance, hard work or simple luck had achieved a more financially secure position.
Welfare is often taken to mean benefits, it certainly appears to be the mission of Ian Duncan Smith to define welfare as benefits, and with each new measure he introduces so benefits are reduced whether by singling out those with a spare room, or those who, through disability find work difficult or impossible he focuses our attention on benefits. But welfare is more, far more than benefits.
In 1945 the rhetoric of the Labour Government was rich and challenged the nations conscience. homes for heroes, education for all, treatment free at the point of need. It was a vision for which people of this country had fought two bitter wars, it was the Kingdom of Bevan.
It was the earnest socially rooted vision of a society that was just and fair, and I benefited from it.
The nightmare (it is certainly not a vision) of Cameron and Osborne is of a society increasingly divided between rich and poor, a society at odds with itself, a society where the young bear the weight of student debt into their adult lives, a society where home ownership becomes a remote financial possibility, a society of uncertainty and insecurity, a society of mac job's, serving lattes to machismo bankers.
The key to understanding welfare is to define the word:
Welfare, as defined in the OED means: the health, happiness and fortunes of a person or group.
The question facing Cameron and Osborne is not Jeremy Corbyn's question it is Neil Kinnock's.
In what way will a high pay, low tax, low welfare economy bring health, happiness and fortune to children, to young people entering adult life, to families in work or out, to the sick, to the elderly?
