What Really Matters
Jeremy Corbyn’s difficulty in carrying his parliamentary colleagues with him in his opposition to bombing in Syria will be seen by his supporters as a decent man struggling to reconcile his deeply held principles with the exigencies of political leadership, in a society that is easily persuaded that action counts for more than reason. Others, no doubt, will see his willingness to alienate centrist opinion on this and other issues as further evidence of his unfitness to lead.
Even those who wish him well, however, will recognise that, after a lifetime of endorsing minority or unpopular causes, bombing in Syria is just one of a number of similar issues, each of which will run the risk of further eroding his precarious support in the parliamentary party, encouraging further outrageous attacks on him from the right-wing media, and discomforting even some of those who voted him into the party leadership.
A realistic assessment, in other words, would lead to the conclusion – welcome or otherwise, according to taste – that whatever views he may hold on Syria or on other issues of the day, there is a growing possibility that he might never have the chance to put them into practice. He could tire of the struggle and decide that the game is not worth the candle; or his many opponents in the parliamentary party could find a way to roll him; and, even if these possibilities do not eventuate, their mere existence will shorten the odds against his leading Labour into government at the next election.
If any one of these outcomes were to materialise, it would be celebrated in many quarters, not least by those who would leap at the opportunity to proclaim that a Corbyn demise meant that everything he stood for had been discredited. But in that event, those who found much to support in his leadership election campaign would need to ensure that what Corbyn has to say on the most important issues, and that stimulated such a positive response, is not thrown out with the bathwater.
It may be necessary, in other words, to distinguish between the man – Jeremy Corbyn, with his own political baggage and at times idiosyncratic positions – and the message, the message that he articulated and that resonated with tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of those who had given up on politics.
That message was clear. There is an alternative – a real and viable alternative to the current orthodoxy of austerity, of giving priority to cutting public spending, of widening inequality, of piling burdens on the most vulnerable. It was this brave assertion that propelled him into the leadership and that opened up a long overdue debate. It is a message that could and should have been delivered long ago by his rivals for the leadership and by his current opponents in his own party.
Their dereliction of duty meant that it fell to Jeremy Corbyn to deliver it. That he seems alone in doing so is an indictment of others rather than of him. Whatever may be the deficiencies of what he might say on other issues, what he had to say on the central question of politics – who runs the economy and in whose interests? – was right on the money.
There is a rapidly emerging consensus that – as we discovered 80 years ago but then forgot – austerity is the wrong response to recession. We are learning that lesson all over again. Even in terms of its own stated objectives, austerity has failed; the supposedly central priority of eliminating the government’s deficit remains a long way from being achieved, while the deficit that really matters – the country’s continuing failure to pay its way – remains unattended to and is getting worse.
In the meantime, poverty and inequality increase, housing is increasingly unaffordable, net investment is virtually zero, the prospect of a revival in manufacturing is non-existent, and an unsustainable consumer boom fuelled by asset inflation underpins our rake’s progress to decline.
Corbyn’s assertion that it need not be like this, that government’s responsibility is not to focus on cutting its own spending but to get the economy moving again in a productive direction, that growing poverty and inequality are barriers to economic efficiency, that we must invest in new productive capacity if we are again to pay our way in the world, that full employment is the hallmark of a properly functioning economy, is endorsed by a growing number of economists and others who are now prepared to stand up and be counted.
On this issue, in other words, Corbyn is far from isolated. On the contrary, his message is gathering force. He points the way to government accepting its true responsibilities and to policy and action that are increasingly recognised as essential for our economic future. If his opponents in his own party turn back to their long-standing and virtually inexplicable acceptance of a failed neo-classical orthodoxy, they will – unwittingly perhaps, but because they are obsessed by day-to-day political infighting – have closed their minds to their true responsibilities. What is at stake is more than the political fortunes of one man but the chances for both party and country of finding a way out of their long trough of decline.
Bryan Gould
30 November 2015
Playing the Tories’ Game
A major factor in Jeremy Corbyn’s appeal to voters in the recent leadership election – and potentially to the wider electorate as well – was his brave assertion that austerity was the wrong response to recession and was doing absolutely avoidable damage to both economic performance and social cohesion.
That assertion not only gave fresh hope to millions dispirited at being told that “there is no alternative” but also opened up a long-overdue debate that brings the Labour party within touching distance of a newly emerging economic policy consensus and that could be of great value both to the party and to the country’s economic fortunes.
All the more surprising then that both Corbyn and his Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, are still apparently in thrall to a key element in neo-classical orthodoxy. They have found it necessary to commit to reducing “the deficit” and to producing a budget surplus by 2019. It may be that such a commitment is deemed necessary in order to maintain “credibility” with the voters, but if the voters are not to be told that treating such a goal in isolation from any other part of the economy makes no economic sense, when will they ever be told and what meaning can we ascribe to “credibility”?
It is, after all, Labour’s long-standing support for, and failure to challenge, the central tenets of neo-classical orthodoxy that has disabled any challenge they have tried to make to any other aspect of the Tory progamme.
The confusion is compounded when, like the voters, Corbyn and his team seem on occasion to talk of “the deficit” without distinguishing between the government’s deficit and the country’s. If the deficit they identify were indeed the country’s deficit, they could be applauded – but, sadly, there is little evidence that this is what they mean or that they are even aware of the economic and social significance of the foreign trade deficit we have run perennially for over 30 years.
As for the voters, how many of those who support the Tory government’s often touted “prudent economic management” realise that we are now in our fourth decade of living beyond our means, financing our rake’s progress through overseas borrowing and selling off our assets? Shouldn’t Labour be bringing this into the light of day, rather than allowing it to be shrouded in obfuscation?
And do the voters, or John McDonnell, realise that – for as long as we have an overseas deficit – a government surplus is just another way of describing the fact that the government is taking more from us in tax than it needs, so that the private sector is left in deficit? And, since the total of the overseas deficit must, as a matter of accounting identity, equal the sum of the private sector and government deficits, how many understand that a sizeable and perennial overseas deficit makes a government deficit virtually inevitable – hence George Osborne’s difficulty in getting his deficit down.
None of this means of course that a Labour government would not demand value for money and efficiency in the public sector. But does John McDonnell see that the reductions in public spending that are said to be necessary to eliminate the government’s deficit are in fact a central element in the suite of austerity policies whose main purpose is the political aim of reducing the role of government? Is that the road he wants to travel?
He is on safer ground when he distinguishes, in considering the government’s finances, between the capital account and current spending. It makes perfectly good sense, as he suggests and as everyone with a mortgage will understand, to borrow for the purposes of creating capital assets. But, even here, his courage seems to have failed him.
In other countries – China and Japan, for example – investment in the future, and particularly in productive capacity, is often financed not by borrowing or selling assets but by government-sanctioned credit creation. The idea is not exactly unknown to us – we call it quantitative easing – but we see it as being used almost entirely for bailing out the banks.
The irony is that – when we are obliged to sell assets to make up our overseas deficit – those assets are often purchased by foreign investors using credit created for them by their banking system at their government’s behest. There is no reason why our own banking system should not perform that function – but they are too busy creating credit for lending profitably on mortgage to be bothered.
Corbyn and McDonnell talked in the leadership contest about a “people’s quantitative easing” but the idea seems now to have dropped out of sight. A successful alternative to austerity, however, demands the courage to break free from the intellectual shackles that have inhibited fresh thinking for so long. We should not forget that the best and surest way to eliminate the government’s deficit is to get the rest of the economy working properly. Cutting public spending as a means of focussing on the government’s deficit – in isolation from anything else – runs directly counter to that goal.
Bryan Gould
12 October 2015
The Way Forward for Labour
We have the benefit – courtesy of today’s Guardian – of the advice offered by one of the Labour Party’s grandees as to the response that should be made to the calamity that has apparently now befallen the Party.
That calamity is of course the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader. Lord Mandelson, we are told, has advised that the new leader, elected just three weeks ago, should not be immediately “forced out” but that the deposition should be delayed just a little while more people realise what a disastrous mistake has been made.
We are fortunate to have this advice, since it tells us so much about what has gone wrong with the Party. Here is the authentic voice of those who have been in charge of its fortunes for so long.
The decision as to whether, and – even more importantly, when – the new leader should be deposed apparently rests in the hands of those who have just been roundly rejected by the Party. Lord Mandelson seems confident that the natural order will soon be restored, not least one assumes, because the energies of the defeated Blairites will now turn to undermining the new leader.
Indeed, it could be argued that, in Lord Mandelson’s unusual view of the world, his willingness to wait a full three weeks before mapping the course that will, he believes, negate the Party’s democratic decision means that his is really the voice of moderation.
That confidence appears to rest on the sustained and focused assault delivered on the new leader by the Tory press – an assault echoed not so sotto voce by Lord Mandelson and his colleagues. We expect nothing different from the Daily Mail – and, sadly, not much better from Labour’s erstwhile leaders either.
The most damaging aspect of Lord Mandelson’s initiative, however, is not what is said, but what is not said. Where is there, in his message to Party members, any recognition of the support commanded by Jeremy Corbyn for what he did and said during his leadership campaign? Where is the understanding of why so many responded so positively to the prospect of renouncing the craven “me-tooism” that has dominated Labour for so long?
Most of all, where is the acknowledgment of the task that now lies before the Party? So quick are Corbyn’s defeated opponents to rubbish him that they simply do not recognise the opportunity that is now presented by Corbyn’s victory. That opportunity can be turned to advantage only if the Party unites to advance an analysis and a political platform that reflects those aspects of Corbyn’s campaign that resonated with so many.
That does not mean that the Party must endorse everything that Corbyn has done and said over his long career on the backbenches. Like most 32 year-long veterans, there will be aspects of his past – comments and links, attitudes and causes – that were defensible at the time, but that may not seem so appropriate for a potential Prime Minister in 2015.
That will be particularly true of those personal preferences and beliefs – his republicanism and his support for a united Ireland, for example – that were no doubt his own business as a backbencher, but that may place him at odds with a large number of actual and potential Labour voters.
These will be matters that he has not had to consider before. He will have to reach his own way of resolving them, now that it is the Party’s interest and not merely his own that must be considered. But what matters is that neither he nor the party should lose sight of those issues where he expressed, and committed to, ideas that were fresh and uplifting, that gave new hope to millions of people. These were not matters of personal interest or preference, but statements of universal significance and appeal – the re-assertion of enduring values, the need for fairnesss and sharing, the rejection of inequality and the denunciation of growing poverty.
More importantly, they were not merely repetitions of familiar mantras, but were backed up by hard, specific and credible policy ideas – anathema no doubt to so many who bought the lie that there is no alternative to austerity and the supposedly infallible market – but backed up by growing numbers, including many informed experts and specialists who understand that the time has come for a new start.
Jeremy Corbyn himself, in other words, has a major task ahead of him. He has to work out which of his wide range of commitments, accumulated over 32 years, he is now ready to forego, for the sake of focusing on the vitally important and central ideas that will enthuse millions of potential voters and offer a better future to all. He needs all the help he can get to help him make those judgments.
That is where Lord Mandelson should be looking for challenge and inspiration. The Party’s prime responsibility surely now is to unite in engaging those millions who want change and hope, not trying to focus on throttling that prospect at birth.
Bryan Gould
25 September 2015
The New Mainstream
One of the main obstacles to making sense of today’s politics is the insistence of commentators that any shift in political position can only be described as either rightwards or leftwards. This over-simplified and one-dimensional view of the political landscape means that many of the possible directions of political travel – directions that cannot or should not be characterised in such limited terms – are simply not recognised or are overlooked.
When a party elects a new leader, as the British Labour Party has just done, this lazy shorthand automatically describes the change as a shift to the right or – more usually and, as in this case – a “lurch” to the left. But such language significantly misrepresents what has happened.
The use of this language is not entirely accidental. For one thing, it has the advantage for those using it of immediately locating the current orthodoxy in a centrist position, with any departure from it being easily represented as quite literally eccentric. Many Labour politicians, even candidates in the leadership campaign, seem to accept this concept; when they agreeded that Labour needed to change, the only change they could imagine was a move towards “the centre” or, in other words, towards right-wing orthodoxy.
And it provides defenders of that orthodoxy with a handy label to apply to anyone, irrespective of the direction they wish to travel, who challenges the existing norm. “Leftwards” is often used to mean not only “extreme” and “unrealistic” but “backward-looking” as well.
Much of the commentary on the new Corbyn leadership, even from apparently neutral sources, has used the language in this way. In both the abbreviated form of the news bulletins, and in the longer “think pieces”, the Labour Party is seen as having taken a significant step to the left.
To be fair, Jeremy Corbyn – for at least much of his political career – might well have claimed and relished such a label. It is certainly the case that much of what he has said and done in the past, and during the leadership campaign itself, might properly be described as left-wing. But to treat his accession to the leadership as signifying simply a “lurch” leftwards is to give seriously inadequate attention to many of the ideas and policies he has now introduced to the public discourse.
Much of what he has said in the leadership campaign – and much of what has clearly resonated with large numbers of voters – may be at odds with current orthodoxy but is not intrinsically left-wing. It is increasingly seen as a proper response to the obvious failures of that orthodoxy.
His campaign has appealed to those who are disturbed by increased poverty and widening inequality, who understand that we are a weaker and less successful society when we treat so many of our fellow-citizens as worthless, who agree with the OECD that inequality is not the price we must pay for economic success but is a major obstacle to it – and they will see these insights as both rational and ethical starting-points for an overdue attempt to resolve our manifest problems.
They will be surprised to be told that what is to them a common sense response to what they see around them is a “lurch” anywhere, let alone leftwards. Are they moving “left” when they conclude, with the IMF, that austerity is a destructive and ineffective response to recession, that if qualitative easing is needed to rebuild the banks’ balance sheets it might also be helpful if used to promote productive investment and employment, that economic policy should be made by elected and accountable governments and not by banks pursuing their own commercial interests?
The common factor underlying all of these attitudes and sentiments is not their “leftwards” direction, with all its connotations. Some are “left” in some sense, others merely common sense. They are linked principally by a common belief that – if the market is allowed always to prevail – there is no role for democracy, since the whole point of electing a government is to ensure that the harsh doctrines of the “free” market are moderated in the wider interest. The message is that, while the market serves the powerful, government serves everyone.
Corbyn’s appeal to the voters is the best evidence so far that the “free-market” hegemony that has held us all – and not least Labour politicians – in thrall for so long is now on the wane. Corbyn’s task now is to show that he will not head back into an old left laager and will not require the wagons to be drawn up in a circle. Instead, he must combine old and enduring values with a new conviction – supported by credible and workable policy – that the power of government can and must be used in the common interest.
He has already made a good start. He has taken good advice and earned support from leading economists who are part of the new mainstream. Those Labour politicians who have been so outraged by his success that they have refused to serve on his front bench would do well to help him in that task, rather than endorse a language and an analysis – a triumph of label over substance – that so clearly serves the interests of the privileged.
Bryan Gould
16 September 201
What Labour Can Learn from the Corbyn Leadership Campaign
No one, surely, could begrudge Jeremy Corbyn the odd chuckle or two when he contemplates, in his private moments, the consternation he has caused by his unlikely candidature for the Labour party leadership. It is not just the discomfort of his opponents, though that is sufficient cause no doubt for a little schadenfreude, but the fact that so many expectations have been confounded by someone who has been for so long dismissed as a nonentity, a fringe figure and a relic of the past.
It may be that the sweetness of his achievements so far will be as good as it gets and that the “sanity” narrowly defined by his opponents will in due course be restored. It may even be that, in his heart of hearts, he would be secretly relieved if that turns out to be the case. It would be true to his self-image and temperament that he should see himself as the catalyst for change, rather than as bearing the responsibility for putting it into practice.
But, as the possibility of a Corbyn leadership looms ever larger, it is the reaction of his opponents that is truly instructive. That reaction has developed from incredulity, then on to alarm and indignation, and finally to resentment and anger. How could someone as ill-fitted for the task, as unworthy of consideration, as out of touch with political reality, possibly be on the threshold of walking off with the party’s leadership and challenging for the role of Prime Minister?
These reactions are typical of those who feel that an impostor and an interloper has cheated them of an inheritance that is rightfully theirs. Those in the party who have steadfastly trodden the middle way, who have shown their superiority, by recognising “political realities”, over those who do not have to bear parliamentary responsibilities, have long grown accustomed to deciding the party’s fortunes.
For them, Ed Miliband was bad enough, but could, in the end, be restrained. With his defeat, they now want what they have lost returned to them. When the attempt is made to deny them that birthright, they want to vent their anger at the perpetrator by unmasking him and showing just how misled his supporters have been.
So, the “mainstream” stance on Corbyn is to focus on his lack of experience, on the skeletons in his cupboard, on his supposed inability to win a general election. And when those who have the votes and the power to decide seem unmoved by these considerations, there is nothing left but to impugn the bona fides of the voters themselves.
The Corbyn phenomenon is to be explained, it seems, because those tens of thousands of newly enthused actual and potential Labour voters who have joined the party – an unfamiliar sight, after all – are, in reality, “entryists” whose real purpose is to destroy the party and make further Tory victories inevitable.
There must surely be a more rational and constructive approach than this negativity, whatever the outcome of the leadership election. With or without a Corbyn leadership, is it not worthwhile to ask why so many people were ready to support him – not, in other words, what is it that disqualifies him as a leader but rather, what did he do and say that attracted so many to his cause?
We don’t need to look far for the answer. Jeremy Corbyn dared to suggest, along with the IMF, that austerity is an inappropriate and destructive response to recession, that government has the responsibility to use its power and resources to strengthen the economy and share its fruits more equitably, that the OECD is right to say that inequality is not the price we must pay for economic success but a major obstacle to it, that – as the Global Financial Crisis demonstrated – the market is not infallible and self-correcting, that the drive for private profit is not a guarantor of efficiency, that we must cherish our most important resources by raising the health and education levels of ordinary people, that we are all better off if burdens and opportunities are fairly shared and if every shoulder is put to the wheel.
These may be unwelcome or unacceptable ideas in some quarters, but surely not in the Labour party? As far as we can tell, they are ideas that, however frightening they may seem to Labour’s power-brokers, have appealed to a significant part of the electorate who have not hitherto found much about Labour to enthuse them.
They are ideas that deny the mantra that “there is no alternative”, that challenge the voters to think about better ways of doing things, that look forward to new hope that a healthier, more inclusive, society and economy are within our reach.
If we were not so keen to condemn him, if we would look at what his candidature has achieved, could the Labour party as a whole – with or without a Corbyn leadership – not learn and benefit?
Bryan Gould
6 September 2015