Pat neatly sums up the state of British manufacturing. He says: “If we want a basic scorecard on manufacturing it would be that we make less than we once did, but more than we think we do.” Why do we make less? Pat correctly highlights the biggest wave of globalisation in human history and is right to point out that, with the exception of Germany, almost all other developed countries have lost some manufacturing capacity to Asian tigers to the East and to China in particular. What he doesn’t say is that during this time (and, sadly, on his government’s watch) the rate of job losses in manufacturing was much sharper in the UK than in comparative European countries. France, Spain and Italy all lost fewer manufacturing jobs than we did. I recognise that Italy and Spain have problems at the moment, so I understand that my last sentence may be interpreted as saying that the UK should have taken decisions which could have caused us similar difficulties. But the problems of Italy and Spain are complex and I don’t think it could be argued  that if the UK had pursued a more balanced economic policy, with less emphasis on the City and more on industry, we’d have a weaker economy than we have now.

Pat correctly points out that as productivity grows, employment per product will fall. This explains the continuing success of the UK automotive industry, even though it employs far fewer people than it did in the 1960s and 1970s. But whilst that provides an explanation, it leaves us with a problem, which Pat doesn’t tackle. How do we create jobs for the group of people that sociologists used to call the “skilled working class”? I think a modern manufacturing policy must focus on specific industrial sectors and there are ways that we could identify those sectors. I’ll say more about that below but, in the meantime, I think we should specifically focus on those technologies and industries that could provide decent, well-paid jobs to those youngsters who leave school but do not, for whatever reason, go to university. Economic and industrial policy must be for a purpose, or a number of purposes: this is surely one of them.

Pat talks about the specific issues affecting energy intensive industries, which the TUC has also done a lot of work on. He discusses the role of SMEs and mid-caps. The TUC talked about small and medium sized companies in our recent report, ‘German Lessons’. We made the case for a British version of the German mittelstand, acting as suppliers to large, world-class, exporters. That’s an ambitious target, but we are struck that UK policy debate focuses on either small, often micro-companies, or on large companies such as Rolls Royce. Medium sized firms barely get a mention and the need to grow small firms into medium sized companies even less so. Some firms are naturally small, but where a company could grow into a medium sized player, it should be encouraged to do so. I think Britain has indulged a “small is beautiful” mentality in this debate, seeing small firms as a good in themselves, as if they are a testament to a healthy capitalism. We need to be more ambitious here.

Pat discusses Sheffield Forgemasters and (quite rightly) resists the temptation to take a cheap shot at the Lib Dems, instead making, for me, one of the most important points of his report: the relationship between government and risk. On the issue of specific financial support for certain companies, in this case in the form of a loan, Pat says: “the least risky response would be to say no every time”. He points out the inevitable, that not every decision taken to support a company will work out, before adding: “But it is better to be trying to do so, succeeding sometimes and perhaps not at other times, than not be trying at all and letting key opportunities pass Britain by.” A few years ago, I wrote a report for the TUC about industrial policy in France. I was told that the French expect their government to support industry and recognise that, whilst this will fail sometimes, leading to a waste of taxpayers money, it is better to try overall. This is surely correct. Of course, government should not be frittering taxpayers’ money around, but there is role for reasonable risk in the industrial policy debate.

 Pat makes common sense points about skills and the image of manufacturing. He goes on to say – and is absolutely right to do so – that government needs to be an active player. Taking on the tired argument about picking winners, he says: “Picking winners isn’t the problem. It’s backing lots of losers which is the potential problem.” As he says, there must be conditions which determine how and when government intervenes. The TUC has long argued that the UK needs to focus on those strategic sectors which are or could become world leaders, capable of competiting in the age of globalisation, for years to come. That begs the question: how do we identify such sectors? ‘German Lessons’ suggested that we look at the work of the engineering giant Siemens and its focus on global mega-trends. We can try to match the way the world is going with the UK’s capacity to build the products that will be needed in the process, whilst always recognising that there are wider issues affecting industrial policy, including the need for job creation. However, whilst we must be as scientific as possible about identifying our strategic sectors, this will be, in part, a political decision. Germany is successful in the automotive sector because its government has focused on that as a key sector. I know the free-marketeers don’t like this, but there is a role for politics in industrial policy too.

Pat is correct to defend the need for a Department of Business (although I would still prefer a Department of Industry: sometimes, the name matters!). I also agree with his call for a British Investment Bank; expect to see more from the TUC on this issue later in the year.

I have saved the bit I didn’t like until the end. Discussing Jaguar Land Rover, Pat mentions the “appalling industrial relations” of the motor industry in the 1970s, before adding: “If there was an image that defined the industry then it would probably be a factory car park with thousands of workers putting their hands in the air to vote to go on strike”. That’s certainly one image, although there are others. But if 1970s industrial relations were the finest hour of none of us, then perhaps Pat could have balanced this with a mention of the very constructive work unions have been doing to underpin and strengthen so many manufacturing sectors since then, especially during the economic downturn. Pay freezes and shift closures caused real hardship to many of our members, yet they endured that hardship to protect their jobs and the jobs of their colleagues. Just last week, when Vauxhall committed to the future of car production at Ellesmere Port, the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, had the grace to say: “The unions and the Government … played a significant role in demonstrating to GM’s board that Vauxhall has a very flexible workforce…”

In ‘German Lessons’, the TUC makes the case for a Social Market Economy in the UK. We highlight the positive role that German unions play on works councils and supervisory boards, protecting their independence and defending their members, but working for the good of the company. We believe the UK could learn from this model, which is part of a more balanced, more equal, fairer and more prosperous economy. Sometimes in the UK, we talk as if the only stakeholders in industry are the management and the shareholders. The TUC rejects this approach. In our view, just as important are the workforce and the wider community, in areas such as Pat’s constituency of Wolverhampton. Unions have a positive role to play in the future of manufacturing. It would have been good if Pat’s report had said as much.

Let’s get out there and enjoy this holiday, which we richly deserve. Perhaps the weather may not be the best ever, but if we are going to get depressed by the odd shower then we are probably living in the wrong country. There are plenty of things that we could this weekend indoors and outdoors, including visiting a number of local trade union festivals  (this is not just being “worthy”, the one taking place in Dorchester on Sunday afternoon is basically a mini rock festival) – and more traditional May Day events.

Turning back to those 1970s negotiations for a moment , one part of the May Day deal that has largely become lost in the mists of history was that 1978 was the first year when compensatory days were given when the Christmas and boxing day bank holidays fell at the weekend. This was  an important gain for working people. I can recall being quite disappointed soon after I started work when we knocked off on Friday on Christmas Eve and clocked on again at 8 pm on Monday morning. For those who are not abstemious, imagine having to get up at 6.30 AM after boxing day!

Because we are human our efforts at work will always ebb and flow. The restorative effect of time off  helps to explain why the extra bank holidays of the 1970s had no measurable effect whatsoever on the UK economy.

He feeds over 54,000 families every day worldwide.

I don’t think the writer (someone who “had the pleasure to work with Rupert Murdoch during my career in Australia and London”) means that Rupe’s the Father Christmas of soup runs, zooming from one time zone to another to reach the needy. Plainly he’s referring to the News International workforce – and my first thought was that it would be more accurate to say that every day 54,000 families worldwide feed him.

But it did strike me as giving an insight into a conservative problem that people are finding hard to explain. Over at the New York Review of Books Blog there’s a really interesting article by Elizabeth Drew about the Presidential election. One of the puzzles she highlights is why the Republicans have chosen such an unattractive candidate, and “what it is that causes him to stumble and say oafish things.”

She lists some of the things he’s said that can’t be doing him any electoral good, such as his throw-away line that his wife has “a couple of Cadillacs” or that the way to cope with a tough jobs market is to borrow some money from your parents. And the things he’s done are even worse:

… going for the presidency he didn’t bother to pull out funds he’d stashed away in the Cayman Islands or Switzerland or hold off in expanding their home in La Jolla in a $12 million renovation, including an elevator for the four-car garage. The symbolism of such things goes well beyond the “tin ear,” and suggests a paralyzing inability to understand the circumstances of most others: What else can explain Romney’s look of disgust as he disdained the cookies the hostess had placed before him when he met with a middle class group around a picnic table in Bethel, Pennsylvania?

But the tin ear isn’t a good explanation. Ms Drew herself points out that FDR and JFK were wealthy too and didn’t suffer from this alienating distance from ordinary people. In the end, she offers an intelligent connection to modern politics: Romney had to win the nomination from a party that has moved so far to the right “that any suggestion that he cares for the plight of others could have endangered his prospects”.

That rings truer, but Ronald Reagan was able to advocate right-wing positions without suggesting that he came from a different planet.

There’s a hint about what has changed since the 198os in the quotation I began with. There is a notion – common in the USA and becoming more common in Britain – that rich people are the source of all progress and the rest of us are in their debt. In this narrative, less fortunate people - especially if they expect social benefits – are “parasites” (to use Ayn Rand‘s terminology.)

I might have found it more difficult to argue with a claim that 54,000 people’s jobs were partly created by Murdoch’s entrepreneurship. The notion that he feeds them and their families is ludicrous – but not if you move in circles where the Randian worship of Business Man is taken for granted.

Romney says these things because nothing in his life so far has made him stop to wonder if they might not be true. America is creating a nobility with no sense of nobless oblige; but how far behind are we?

In summary the gradual  shift in public opinion back towards the goverment has gone into reverse, and they appear to have lost the slight – though probably significant – gains they had made. The budget has had a big impact on voting intention figures – this appears to be reflected in the attitude questions  that I’ve been tracking.

Whether that’s a permanent shift or a sustained blip, we cannot yet know. My guess would be somewhere between the two -opinion may flow back towards the government in some areas, but there has been a permanent shift for some people. The most recent poll in this series was on April 1st. The government has continued to have poor headlines since then.

The first chart tracks those saying the cuts will have an impact on their lives less those who say they are not. All the charts in this post are net measures (those on one side of the argument less those on the other). This provides one number that best captures movement in public opinion.

The next chart (which also dates back to the last election) tracks those saying the cuts are good for the economy. Here we can see a shift to the government towards the end of last year, but a significant shift away back to the ratings of last summer. While this chart provides comfort for those of us who disagree with the government, polls that probe whether cuts are good in the long term are more positive for ministers.

The next chart tracks net support for the argument that cuts are necessary. YouGov only started asking this question (and those that follow) in February 2011 (after the major shift away from the government during 2010 shown by the previous graph). This chart shows the government clearly winning on this question, but again with a significant shift in recent weeks.

But it is possible to believe that while some cuts are necessary, the government is doing them too quickly, too deeply and unfairly.

The final three charts suggest quite a lot of people are in that camp. The first shows a consistent majority saying the cuts are too deep, but with a move towards the government throughout last year, but which appears to have been reversed recently.

 a chart tracking ‘net too quick’ shows a similar pattern.

Finally the government has comprehensively lost the ‘all in it together’ fairness argument. This has always been their weakest argument. This chart goes right back to the general election and reveals doubts even immediatly after the election result.  A mild movement towards  the government’s position in the last few months of 2012 has now been reversed. This is perhaps not surprising given the unpopularity of the cut in the 50p tax rate. Presenting this as a net figure perhaps does not bring out just bad the government are doing on fairness.  The last YouGov poll on this was on April 1st and showed 64 per cent saying the cuts were “being done unfairly” to just 23 per cent saying “fairly”. 

The measures taken this week are fundamental to Labor’s drive to make Australia a fairer, more successful economy, and they are avowedly social democratic rather than neo-liberal. Former No 10 spin doctor John McTernan, who we met in his new job as Julia Gillard’s official spokesperson, describes Australia as “Scotland with sunshine, not Texas with better beaches.”

Safer Rates will make sure the truck drivers who are the life blood of Australia’s geographically vast economy, won’t have to pop pills to meet their schedules. Support for the iconic Holden auto manufacturer will protect skilled jobs for a generation. Reforms to the industrial relations system will reduce punitive restrictions from organising in construction and bring atypical workers in textiles like outworkers into the regular labour force. All this reform (massively supported by the relevant unions and the union movement generally) and we still got to meet the PM and five of her Ministers in a space of less than twelve hours!

The purpose of these reforms is to reclaim the political agenda from a right who have probably shot themselves hugely in the foot by opposing superannuation (pensions) reform and the carbon pricing and mining profits tax which will pay for the super reforms that will benefit lower paid workers especially and the better training and education that will provide skilled careers for their children. in John McTernan’s phrase, it will address the people who, when asked if they vote Labor, say “used to”.

But as Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan demonstrated in a ground-breaking recent article responding to the billionaire mining magnates who have become increasingly outrageous in their defence of their wealth (no, honestly, one called Clive Palmer recently accused the Greens of being paid by the CIA to destroy the Australian mining industry!), Labor’s approach is not just transactional. It’s about values, with the reforms and subsidies jus demonstrating what a modern ‘Fair Go’ looks like.

Follow Brendan Barber, Paul Kenny and Owen Tudor @TUCGlobal with #TUCdownunder

A TUC delegation to Australia visited Canberra today (21 March) for meetings with a range of Ministers, several of them former officials of the TUC’s equivalent, the ACTU. Despite the political turmoil of the recent challenge to Prime Minister Julia Gillard (who will be seeing the TUC later on today), and the Labor Party’s current poll ratings, there is confidence that Labor can turn the situation around by the time of the next General Election in around eighteen month’s time.

One issue that ex-ACTU Ministers like Greg Combet, Simon Crean and Richard Marles were at pains to stress was the vital relationship with the trade union movement. Not so much the ‘embarrassing elderly relative’ in Lord Monks’ trenchant expression, more a key way to ensure that Labor stays grounded in ordinary people’s lives, and can win back their support before the next election.

While we were in Canberra, Parliament passed a measure known as Safe Rates to ensure that long-distance truck drivers aren’t forced onto schedules that require them to pop pills to stay awake. It was warmly welcomed by the Transport Workers Union, who campaigned for the measure by developing an alliance of union members, independent hauliers being undercut by big companies and the families of road accident victims. And it was joined for a celebration of the new legislation by the Prime Minister, in an act of union solidarity that spoke volumes about the relationship. The Senate also voted the final death knell of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the last vestige of the previous National Liberal Government’s anti-union laws.

Measures like this, along with superannuation reform to improve lower paid workers’ pensions, and carbon pricing and mining profit taxes that will provide resources to fund life-changing education and training, are evidence of what a Labor Government influenced by a trade union movement can deliver. They are measures that unequivocally improve workers’ lives, and respond to workers’ concerns as raised in party platform debates, before being implemented by a Labor Party with many more former trade union officials than the UK Parliamentary Labour Party or Shadow Cabinet can muster.

One Minister admitted that Labor had lost its way after the Hawke Government years, and that “as soon as we drift from our values and our working class base, that’s when we hit trouble.” Another said that “the Labor Party is at our best when we own our union background.” Amen to all that!

Frederic Speidel, IG Metall’s full-time officer from Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, flew to London for the event. Frederic gave a strong defence of Germany’s Social Market Economy, but he emphasised that supporting this model is a political decision. It is opposed by some German conservatives and there has been a de-legitimisation of the model in recent years. However, the Social Market Economy, and the co-determination system, had paid dividends. Some of the main features of Germany’s response to the economic downturn – short-time working, the car scrappage scheme – had come from trade unions. There’s a lesson for us here: if we want a new economic model in the UK, we will need to fight for it and then fight to defend it.

Paul Everitt of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, giving an employers perspective, argued for a robust, internationally recognised industrial policy that delivers long-term certainty for UK businesses and international investors. Paul said that growing manufacturing and rebalancing the economy must be national priorities for all parts of government and all political parties. A long-term approach is required to provide the certainty and security that international investors need to commit funding to the UK.

Chuka Umunna, the Shadow Business Secretary, reflected on his own recent study visit to Germany. He spoke of the famous ‘mittelstand’, which is often described as family-run, but with a wide definition of what constitutes the family – in this case, it includes employees of the company as well. Chuka spoke of the parity of esteem between academic and vocational skills in Germany, where working in industry is respected and encouraged. Chuka also described the Sparkassen, who see it as their job to provide access to finance for local businesses. Furthermore, Germany’s KfW was able to double access to finance immediately when the economic downturn hit in 2008.

During the discussion, hard questions were asked: Is the UK’s financial sector just too big, crowding out manufacturing? Was the last Labour Government simply too timid on industrial policy, until the final years of its life? Had trade unions done enough to encourage works councils? What does a positive definition of workplace flexibility look like? What more can trade unions do to become seen as an essential balance to the power of capital, as they are elsewhere, by trade unionists and non-trade unionists alike?  

Needless to say, we agreed on a lot, disagreed on a fair bit and ended up with many questions unanswered. But these are the debates that the policy community must have and if the meeting was feisty at times, it was comradely throughout. We need more discussions like this. Thanks to everyone that joined in.

It again shows that Wales has leadership which is standing up for ordinary working people, while the UK Government continues to plough ahead with unfair public spending cuts and lets the banking sector off the hook. In contrast strong social partnership between the Wales TUC, the business sector, public sector employers and the Welsh Government is saving jobs and services in the face of UK Government cuts.

First Minister of Wales Carwyn Jones AM said:

“Some parts of the financial services industry bear a share of responsibility for our current economic difficulties. I am not anti-banking and I am not negative towards the responsible financial services industry. On the contrary, finance is an important sector of our economy and I want to work with the sector to bring more finance jobs to Wales. But I think a Robin Hood Tax – a tax on financial transactions – set at the right level, is perfectly reasonable and offers an important practical way for the finance industry to demonstrate its contribution to society.

Social responsibility is well understood in Wales and I am confident that people across the country, and across the political spectrum, will endorse this tax.”

The Wales TUC welcomes Carwyn’s support for the Robin Hood tax at a time when the UK Government continues to plough ahead with unfair public spending cuts and let the banking sector off the hook for the financial crisis. It again shows that Wales has leadership which is standing up for ordinary working people while the UK Government continues to plough ahead with unfair public spending cuts and lets the banking sector off the hook. Signing the UK up would boost the Robin Hood Tax and raise around £35bn a year to combat poverty, invest in green jobs and help pay off the deficit.

I’ve not published any graphs for some time as public opinion was pretty constant for most of last year. People obsess over short term changes in voting intention, but these are often due to the natural variability in any survey or represent a short-term response to whatever is in the news. The truth is that not much happened on the opinion front for most of last year.

But there are some signs of a slight move. Unfortunately it goes in the wrong direction. But it’s not huge, and the government are still losing important parts of their argument, while still ahead on the need for cuts.People are still directly affected by the cuts, but slightly less than a few months ago.

This charts “Thinking about the way the government is cutting spending to reduce the government’s deficit, do you think this is having an impact on your own life, or not having an impact on your own life?”

It shows the net result – that is those saying “having an impact” less those who say “not having an impact”. (All the following charts plot net measures unless I say otherwise.) It goes back to the general election and includes one 2012 result.

It does not show a huge movement, but is consistent with a trend that we will see more strongly in other charts – a shift away from the government at the end of 2010 with a slight recovery since.

However every result shows a substantial majority who say that the cuts are having an impact on them.

The next chart plots a net fairness measure – those who think the cuts are being done fairly less those who think they are being done unfairly.

This shows a much stronger shift in sentiment away from the government into 2011, and the same small recovery.

This charts whether the cuts are good or bad for the economy.

This chart needs some caution. Many people will agree that the cuts are damaging in the short-term but will still say they are needed for long term economic success. This chart is very similar to the previous one.

This is probably the most significant chart. It is a net measure of whether people think the cuts are necessary. YouGov only started to ask this question at the start of 2011, so we do not know whether this measure showed a shift after the election (as the charts above all do.)

The government have a consistent lead on this. Economic news got worse in the closing months of the year, but this does not seem to have led to people moving away from the government. Rather it looks as if people think that bad economic news makes nasty medicine more necessary.

Looking at the detailed figures, the percentage thinking cuts were necessary has risen from 55 per cent to 60 per cent between last February and today, while those who think they are unnecessary has fallen from 33 per cent to 21 per cent.

Of course thinking some cuts are necessary is not the same as thinking all the cuts are necessary now. The next two charts provide some insight into this.

This chart – which also only dates from the start of 2011 – shows the proportion of the electorate who think the cuts are too deep.

and this one shows those who think the cuts are too quick.

These two graphs are not net measures. As respondents were given three choices, “too quick”, “about right” or “too slow” for the latter one, I’ve only plotted those choosing “too quick” or “too deep”.

While the trend is the same in both graphs, there is slightly more opposition to the speed of the cuts than their depth. Again we see some movement helpful to the government in both graphs.

I have a mental map of attitudes to cuts that tries to make sense of this data. On one side of the argument are those think the cuts are unnecessary and are opposed to them. On the other side are those fully supportive of rapid cuts and probably don’t care very much whether they are fair or not.

In the middle are a range of views including a lot of people who agree that the cuts are necessary but don’t like them very much. They worry that they are unfair and may well think they are too fast and/or too deep, but do not see an alternative. People do not always have consistent attitudes, and – hard as this may be for some I know – often do not think much about such issues.

Polls are simply one bit of evidence that must be considered in thinking through campaign strategies, though an important one. They show you the your starting point and your challenge, but not what you need to do or what you should aim to do.

I’ve also been round long enough to know that most people read polls to look for the evidence that confirms what they already think. So those who think that you can’t fight the worst cuts without supporting others will take comfort from these charts. But so will those who say that what is needed is clear leadership and political campaigning for an alternative.

Actually these charts ‘prove’ neither approach. That is not how anyone should approach this kind of polling.

Argument between those advocating different approaches can be interesting, though also energy absorbing. In practice though the task is to shift opinion away from the government’s current approach. Different tactics, issues and techniques will work with different audiences.Getting more people to think the cuts are too deep and too fast is progress just as much as getting more people to say they are unnecessary.

But whatever strategy people endorse this polling (and others) suggest to me a number of starting points:

1. There is very wide acceptance that the deficit is a big problem. Unless you acknowledge this, people will not listen.
2. It is hard to get people to see the deficit as anything other than a function of how much government spends.
3. The important difference between the cyclical and structural deficits is not widely appreciated.
4. Those (like me) who said opinion would move once people saw the effect of the cuts in their own lives do not have evidence for this in the last twelve months.

And of course good campaigns never accept your opponents’ framing of the issues, and work at the emotional and psychological levels, not through rarefied rationalist argument (though people quickly spot if you can’t win those too).

work with other countries to establish new sources of development financing, including bringing forward urgent proposals for a financial transaction tax

Nick Clegg himself had gone on record in February, just two months earlier, saying of the Robin Hood Tax (six minutes in):

It’s a great idea in theory….We should push for it internationally. I’m glad to see it now finally being considered by IMF and other international bodies. But aiming for the best which would be a Tobin tax across the world shouldn’t prevent us doing something now here at home.

Now, instead, he is telling the EU to forget a Robin Hood Tax, echoing everything George Osborne has said. We would welcome him back in Sherwood Forest whenever he decides to abandon his new rich friends in the City and return to backing the poor.

Without naming names, Barack Obama does much the same thing in today’s FT. Obama writes:

“When we met in London two years ago … we forged a response that pulled the global economy back from the bring of catastrophe. That’s the leadership we’ve demonstrated before. That’s the leadership we need now…”

Remind me who was in the Chair at the London G20 summit?

Given the abuse that’s been hurled at him in recent years, I’d imagine that Gordon is past caring one way or the other, but Coalition arguments that Labour created this mighty mess, a mess which they must now clear up, must continue to be challenged. Memories are short and its easy to forget how close we came to a world economic collapse during the downturn.

Neither do I mention this simply for posterity. Barack Obama is right to say in the FT that when the G20 meets in Cannes next week, we need “the same sense of common purpose that allowed us to rescue the global economy two years ago”. In other words, the situation remains critical.

With the eurozone in crisis, and a Coalition Government still refusing to acknowledge the damage of its spending cuts, in spite or rising unemployment and non-existent economic growth, we need political leadership as badly as ever. Let’s hope we get some.

The numbers involved have not of course been huge (although 950 separate events on a single weekend does suggest some zeitgeist-style expression of shared concerns) and the almost studied reluctance to adopt a manifesto leaves a vacuum that many seek to fill, usually claiming that the demonstrators share the commentator’s concerns. But here are some first thoughts.

The global nature of the protest is undoubtedly an issue of itself, as Paul Mason has suggested on the BBC website: and as he says, it at least suggests the common understanding that if you set up tents in an urban area and express discontent, you will get media attention. There is at least a commonality of some of the concerns expressed – and more clearly than at almost any time since Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, the big banks are in the frame as the main culprit or target for anger.  Of course, as anyone who has organised a mass protests knows, the broader the annoyance people feel, the easier it is to get them to protest, so it is almost as unlikely that people will protest this widely on one issue as it would be unlikely that they could coalesce around a single demand.

The avoidance of a manifesto is, I think, more than merely clever ambiguity or vagueness. This is not a revolutionary movement aiming either to overthrow a specific elite (despite the clarity about the target for the anger), nor to achieve anything more specific than a society where equality is accorded higher priority, and where the future is remade as something to be looked forward to. It may, of course, develop into either, or fizzle out as winter hits the predominantly northern hemisphere.

But what the Occupy movement does by its very avoidance of concrete demands is that it poses a very direct question to politicians. And trade unionists. It asks what we are going to do to sort out the problems that the protesters are raising. And in the case of those who have set up tent cities, it gives concrete form to the otherwise unavoidable point that the protesters are ‘not going away’ until those answers are provided.

Since the banks are a key focus of the protests, solutions such as a Robin Hood Tax are a useful example of what might be offered up. It would not only release funding for the sort of issues that protesters are concerned about – public sector cuts (whatever William Hague pretends he thinks they’re after), global poverty and climate change. It would, increasingly saliently, redress the balance in the finance sector between the legalised gambling of high frequency, algorithm-driven speculation and the more popular function of providing finance for investment and housing. The EU draft directive on a financial transaction tax and the Gates report to the G20 summit on innovative financing for development mean this offer is already (almost) on the table.

But politicians and trade unions will need to go much further before the ‘Occupiers’ and their close cousins, the ‘Indignados’, ‘go away’. Wages need to increase rather than profits, so that ordinary people catch up with the rich elite (the 1%/99% divide that Occupy Wall Street drew attention to). Decent work needs to be on offer for future school-leavers and university graduates, as it so often isn’t in the wageless internships of the developed economies and the empty shops and full cafes of the MENA region. And people need the confidence that they can abandon public squares and return to the ballot box as the most effective venue for making decisions about the future of society and the economy.

I can’t think of a time that a major political leader has ever stood up and essentially argued – ‘we face a renewed risk of recession – therefore you should probably spent less’,  if an opposition figure made the same case they would undoubtedly be accused of talking the economy down’.

But what makes this call doubly odd is that the Office of Budget Responsibility’s forecasts are premised on a large rise in personal debt. They forecast household borrowings to rise from £1,560bn in 2010 to £2,126bn by 2015, an increase of 36.3%.

Whilst the government is keen to talk of ‘rebalancing’ and ‘export and investment’ being the drivers of growth, there is no getting away from the fact that household consumption is still the largest part of the UK economy and a vital component of growth.

Indeed over this Parliament the OBR expects consumption to be a major driver of growth.  The table below shows they forecast that consumption will contribute around one quarter of growth this year, one third next year and half of all growth by 2015.

The problem of course is that real wages are falling and household income is going through its largest squeeze since the 1920s. It is a simple fact that if incomes are falling then the only way household spending can grow is by increased borrowing.

The OBR is very open about this, as they wrote in their last economic forecast:

“This subdued consumption outlook requires households to dip into their savings again in 2011, so the saving ratio continues to fall back from its post recession peak. Thereafter, the saving ratio stabilises at around 3½ per cent in our forecast (much the same as forecast in November), which is around half its average over the last 50 years.”

In other words they expect the savings ratio (the amount of their income that households save) to fall this year and then stay low.

Yesterday the OBR released details of its forecasting methodology. It includes the following, rather illuminating, note on how they go about forecasting consumption:

“large but temporary shocks to the economy (such as a fiscal consolidation) may be consistent with households reducing their saving for an extended period, until incomes recover.”

Basically they believe that if household income is squeezed by a combination of government spending cuts and tax rises (as now) then households will increase their borrowings to maintain their spending.

Cameron apparently doesn’t want this happen, in fact he seems to be going further and calling for households to not only to not increase their borrowings but to actually pay them off.

According to the Bank of England credit card debt in the UK currently stands at £66bn (the total of all types of unsecured lending is much higher). Even if households were to repay just half of this that would a £33bn fall in demand in the UK economy, easily enough to push the UK back into recession.

Nobody wants to see households get into too much debt or a resumption of reckless pre-crisis lending but calling for households to focus on paying down debt whilst their incomes are being squeezed and the economy suffers from a lack of demand just isn’t serious policy making, it’s a sound bite and a dangerous one at that.

Maybe after today’s awful GDP figures the prime Minister will think again before making such a dangerous call?

Last month, as our cities burned amidst the worst rioting in decades, social divisions in modern Britain were laid bare. The violence and the criminality that we saw shocked us all, and none of us would seek to justify or condone it in any way.

And the victims were overwhelmingly frightened ordinary people in working class communities – with the police and emergency service workers called on to put their safety on the line to restore order.

The Prime Minister chose to describe these events as ‘criminality pure and simple’. But it isn’t so simple and what happened in August actually revealed deep fractures within our society.

A society that ranks among the most unequal anywhere in the developed world; where a super rich elite have been allowed to float free from the rest of us; where a generation of young people are growing up without work, without prospects, without hope. None harder hit than the black youngsters held back by an unemployment rate approaching 50 per cent.

The government’s response to the riots has been profoundly wrong. Rather than addressing the complex long-term factors that lie behind the alienation – the poverty, the lack of social mobility, young lives stunted by hope denied – they have instead reached for simplistic clichés about moral decay.

And yet as they have retreated to Victorian language about the undeserving poor, they have said nothing about moral disintegration among the rich: the financiers with huge assets sneakily channelled through the tax havens; the out-of-control traders and speculators who razed our economy to the ground; and the super rich tax cheats whose greed impoverishes our schools and hospitals.

Let’s be clear about this: high moral standards, yes of course, but not just for the poor and the ordinary, they must be for the rich and the privileged too.

And let’s also resist blatant double standards, so that someone who steals a bottle of water goes to jail while there are second chances aplenty in the corridors of power.

What happened in our cities last month has not just raised alarming questions about the country we have become, it has not just exposed the pernicious inequality bequeathed by neoliberalism, but it has also underlined the folly of coalition policy.

Withdrawing EMA help from disadvantaged teenagers. Cutting youth services by two thirds and more. Abolishing the Future Jobs Fund and the Youth Guarantee that gave new chances to young people previously in utter despair.

Of course I accept the riots were not caused by the cuts – but as any fair-minded person must see the cuts will undoubtedly make the underlying problems much worse.

Yet this simple narrative has worked for the government. A majority still believe cuts are necessary (even if they want them to be temporary and reject the small state ideology that drives a good part of the cuts/public service “reform” agenda).

We can summarise ministers’ arguments as:

Labour spent too much and left us with a huge bill called the deficit. The overwhelming priority must be to close that deficit and we will do that in four years. That is why we have to make painful decisions to cut spending and raise VAT and other taxes. If we don’t the economy will collapse as markets lose confidence.

The trick here is ignoring that tax income depends more on the level of economic activity than tax rates. This might be rather obvious as soon as you point it out but the success of the government narrative depends on most people thinking the deficit is defined by public spending and tax rates alone.

Yet policies that depress the economy will make the deficit worse as the tax take falls. Spending money can pay for itself if it results in greater economic activity that raises more in tax – what economists call the multiplier effect.

But the conditions for this sleight of hand to work are disappearing.

• The IMF and NIESR are warning that the government is unlikely to meet its deficit reduction target as the economy is too depressed.
• Increasing numbers of people – including many Conservatives – are calling for tax reductions to stimulate the economy.

But calling for a tax cut goes against the central simple plank that we have to cut spending or raise taxes as we have ‘maxed out the nation’s credit card bill’.

Conservatives make it even more difficult for the government’s narrative by concentrating on the 50p rate for those earning more than £150,000 thus breaching the already very tattered claim that ‘we are all in this together’. Employing an advocate of ending maternity rights as a key adviser hardly helps here either.

Narrative collapse is perhaps the most serious problem for any modern politician.

Superficially that might sound just a bit democratic, but the reality is that it is simply about erecting a hurdle that will make official strike action extremely hard to achieve.

Let us take a hypothetical workforce of 1,000. They ballot for strike action. 499 vote yes and nobody votes no. This fails to go over the Boris hurdle as the turn-out is 49.9%, and so the strike is not valid.

Down the road there is another workforce. Amazingly this consists of exactly 1,000 employees too.

They also ballot for strike action ( we must be in the midst of a season of discontent). This time 251 vote for strike action, and 250 vote against. This is a valid vote for strike action as the turn out exceeds 50%.

But the first ballot has an overwhelming majority. Any union would see that as a strong mandate for action. The second is so finely balanced that unions would think hard before calling their members out, even though this would be legal.

This is clearly not about democracy, but simply about making it difficult for unions to call strike action. The result will be an angry workforce and a much greater likelihood of messy unofficial action (with no notice to the employer).

In any case most strike ballots do not result in strikes. What almost always happens is that a further round of negotiations takes place.  The union has demonstrated that it has support from its members, and the employer makes enough of a concession to get agreement. Calling for negotiations to take place  without anyone ever striking – as many government supporters do – fails to understand that unless both sides have some power and some incentive to settle, negotiations are unlikely to produce agreement.

No-one can know what those members who do not vote would do so if they had returned their ballot. Assuming that they would all be on one side of the question seems to me extremely dubious. My guess is that they would not divide that differently from those that vote, but how differently must remain a mystery.

But increasing turn-out is always a good thing to do. No union wants a yes vote with a tiny turn-out.

The law could be changed to boost turnout while maintaining a secret ballot if that’s what Ministers want. Letting people vote online – or even by text – has been trialled for council elections. It can be made secure. Giving people different ways to vote would be likely to get more people voting.

But don’t hold your breath.

Susanna Camusso, General Secretary of CGIL which endorsed the campaign for the referendum, said:

“there is no doubt that the government faces a political defeat. Italians have a different understanding about priorities and the policies Italy needs.”

The last time the 50% quorum for an Italian referendum was reached was in 1995, voter participation rate this time was 57% which makes its results binding. The ruling majority campaigned for abstention, but Italians voted in crowds and sent a very clear message.

The right-wing coalition was against the referendum because it directly questioned their laws and long-term political choices. They did their best to avoid the quorum being reached. They refused to hold the referendum on the same day as local elections in May (wasting hundreds of millions of euros); they approved a last-minute decree trying to nullify the nuclear energy referendum; and the national television channels owned or controlled by Berlusconi didn’t ensure proper coverage of the referendum. The news even gave the wrong date for the referendum twice!

The victory in this referendum is the result of the commitment of citizens. First they organised themselves in spontaneous committees to collect the necessary signatures to hold a referendum. Then they ran a mass awareness campaign and a big effort of information to make people familiar with what was a stake.

The outcome of the referendum is important not only for party politics, but even more in terms of policies. Italians refused the neoliberal dogma that everything has to be privatized; they rejected nuclear energy as an option (as they already had in a 1986 referendum) preferring alternative energies; and they firmly refused to allow the Prime Minister and others to avoid justice.

This referendum follows the defeat of the ruling majority in the recent local elections where Berlusconi’s party (the People of Freedom – PdL) lost control of important cities such as Milan (Berlusconi’s home city), Naples, Cagliari, etc. The coalition with the far-right xenophobic Northern League is weakening because, as the leaders of the latter said expressly, they don’t want to sink with the PdL. Tensions between the two parties are increasing day by day.

It is also wrong for judges to usurp the function of our elected representatives by effectively writing a privacy law of their own.

I agree, its a worrying sign when the judges invent new laws out of thin air. I’m looking forward to the Mail’s editorial condemning Torquay Hotel Co Ltd v Cousins (1969) and the Taff Vale Case (1901).

There’s sometimes a terrible fatalism about inequality – most people agree that Britain is unequal and that this is a problem, but many believe that  this  is inevitable. This sense that nothing can be done about inequality is encouraged by Ministers who like to emphasise the large sums spent by the last government, and then add “but it didn’t do any good.”

A good example was Iain Duncan Smith’s statement response last week to the annual Households Below Average Income report, when he made a point of the ”astonishing £150 billion injected into tax credits alone.”

But benefits and tax credits and the taxes that pay for them do make a difference to inequality – a massive difference. Today the Office for National Statistics published their annual report on The Effect of Taxes and Benefits on Household Income. This looks at the distribution of income before and after taxes and spending, looking at patterns of original, gross, disposable, post-tax and final income. Their summary of the figures includes a very useful diagram to show what these terms mean:

At each stage of this process this system reduces the level of inequality. If we look at original income – roughly, what you’d have if we didn’t have any taxes, benefits or services –  the poorest fifth of people had an average income in 2009/10 of £4,847 while the richest fifth had £77,896.

If you look at disposable income – how much money you’ve got to spend – the poorest had £10,535, the richest had £60,388.

And if you look at final income – roughly speaking, taking into account how much you’d have spend on the public services you use – the poorest have £15,125, the richest £58,070.

In other words, this country would be about four times as unequal without taxes and benefits:

There’s two really important lessons we ought to take from these figures. One is that fatalism about inequality is really an expression of ignorance: we already do a great deal to equalise incomes. The other is that if we want to do more, there are instruments to hand and we already know they work.