Politics — Page 2

Economics
The Political Economy of Ed Miliband’s Speech

2nd October 2012 — Filed under: Economics, Politics

Duncan Weldon

I’ve argued before that Ed Miliband’s ‘responsible capitalism’/predistribution agenda is a very interesting one. But I also argued last week that more detail was required if it was to succeed.

Today’s speech started to flesh out that detail. We’ve known the broad direction of travel for a while and now we are starting to see some of the specific policies that can help Britain build the kind of new capitalism we need – one where growth is better balanced and more sustainable, rewards are more equally shared and the economy is more resilient and less dependent on a few key sectors or regions.

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Politics
Loneliness and the limits of progressive politics

1st October 2012 — Filed under: Politics

Richard Exell

Today’s Daily Telegraph has a good report on a study by the WRVS on loneliness among older people. Thirty six per cent of men over 75 and thirty one per cent of women over 75 are lonely or very lonely, “many of them going for days on end without speaking to anyone.” There’s a number of organisations looking at loneliness as a social issue, with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation funding research and the Mental Health Foundation pointing out that it isn’t just a problem for older people.

If you want an expert discussion of how we could make a difference, they’re the experts. What I want to discuss is a second-order issue: the challenge that loneliness presents for politics, or at least for politics as most politically active people I know see it.

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Economics
Pre-distribution and the role of collective bargaining

7th September 2012 — Filed under: Economics, Politics

Tim Page

In his speech to yesterday’s Policy Network conference, ‘The Quest for Growth’, Ed Miliband introduced the concept of ‘pre-distribution’. Recognising that a Labour Government in 2015 would seek to pursue social democratic outcomes without recourse to tax and spend, he argued that instead of redistributing resources, Labour should ensure that they are distributed properly in the first place.

To quote Ed directly:

“The redistribution of the last Labour government relied on revenue which the next Labour government will not enjoy. The option of simply increasing tax credits in the way we did before will not be open to us.

“Of course, redistribution will always remain necessary. But we’ve learned that it is not sufficient…. We need to care about pre-distribution as well as redistribution.

“Pre-distribution is about saying: We cannot allow ourselves to be stuck with permanently being a low-wage economy. It is neither just, nor does it enable us to pay our way in the world. Our aim must be to transform our economy so it is a much higher skill, higher wage economy. Think about somebody working in a call centre, a supermarket, or in an old peoples’ home. Redistribution offers a top-up to their wages. Pre-distribution seeks to offer them more: Higher skills. With higher wages. An economy that works for working people.”

When pressed for an example of how this works, Ed gave the example of Labour councils that have used procurement policy to pay the Living Wage.

This is important stuff and it deserves a trade union response.

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Economics
New growth models: green must be part of the answer

27th July 2012 — Filed under: Economics, Politics

Tim Page

Raghuran Rajan, Professor at Chicago University and author of ‘Fault Lines’, has said this afternoon that the world is looking for new growth paradigms. After the 2008 global economic downturn, there were a number of fiscal stimulus programmes that have now run their course. To add to this, in industrial countries, monetary policy has reached its limits, creating a climate of unease. That unease will continue until we find new ways to promote economic growth.

Speaking on ‘Economic Edge’ on Bloomberg, Professor Rajan said that a lot of what needs to be done is political, but as soon as politicians indicate the will to act, market pressure subsides and political ambition subsequently fades away.

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Economics
Chuka is right: it’s time for government to step up

29th June 2012 — Filed under: Economics, Politics

Tim Page

As an industrial policy specialist, I’ve been spoiled this week. On Tuesday, at the TUC’s After Austerity conference, Ha-Joon Chang and Mariana Mazzucato, from Cambridge and Sussex Universities respectively, were every bit as creative and provocative as we’ve come to expect them to be. And this morning, I’ve had time to read a new Fabian essay by Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary, Chuka Umunna, on the role of government in industry, ‘Stepping Up, Not Stepping Back’.

Chuka’s key concern is how to recast the relationship between governments and markets. He moves beyond the orthodox thinking that the role of government is simply to correct market failure, speaking of “steering markets towards additional goals that we value as a society”. He is right, of course. I would expect a progressive government to have a number of objectives for its economy, including ensuring that new (and existing) industries are increasingly sustainable, that they create good jobs that pay decent wages and, in particular, that they provide jobs for those young people who do not go to university. Expecting markets to deliver these objectives without government direction or intervention would be so much pie in the sky.

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International
Tory bluff on overseas aid called

16th June 2012 — Filed under: International, Politics

Owen Tudor

I’ve expressed scepticism several times about whether the Coalition Government genuinely plans to fulfill its pledge to legislate to bind future governments to spend at least 0.7% of Gross National Income on overseas aid, most recently after the Queen’s Speech last month yet again omitted any mention of such legislation.

Last week, aid agencies found out by accident that the Government had ‘moved the goalposts’ (H/T VSO’s Martin McCluskey) and pushed back the deadline for fulfilling the pledge from April 2012 to the end of this Parliament in 2015. Omitting to tell anyone about this directly, by posting it in a DFID management performance document on the No 10 website hours before the Jubilee bank holiday weekend, makes it look like they were trying to keep it hidden. DFID eventually issued a response to concerns that said, as they have before, that Parliamentary time has not yet been found, but that a Bill has been drafted.

So, the offer by Labour MP Mark Hendrick to use his private members’ bill slot to present the Government Bill will call the Government’s bluff. It will also worry Conservative Party managers who made the pledge in the first place to detoxify the Tory brand and remove some ‘clear red water’ with Labour over the overseas aid which is electorally popular with middle class swing voters. A private members’ bill could be torpedoed by a Tory backbench rebellion, even if the majority of MPs want the Bill enacted.

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Economics
Pat McFadden is right: we need to be making things

23rd May 2012 — Filed under: Economics, Politics

Tim Page

On Monday, Pat McFadden, MP for Wolverhampton South East, former Minister at the Department for Business and one-time member of Tony Blair’s Policy Unit, published a paper entitled ‘Making things: a reassessment of British manufacturing’. This is the first chance I’ve had to blog about it. It contains a lot of evidence from Pat’s own constituency, which was formerly a part of the UK’s manufacturing heartland. And, in the main, I think it is a a good report.

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Economics
May Day 2012

4th May 2012 — Filed under: Economics, Politics, Society & Welfare

Paul Sellers

The coming May Day bank holiday will be the 34th since it was introduced way back in in 1978. In those far-off days of Government incomes policies, the TUC had a series of meetings with the Government in 1977 to discuss introducing the new bank holiday as part of the quid pro quo (I have the minutes). This followed on our previous success in getting New Years Day established as a bank holiday (1974).

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.

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Politics
The madness of the elite

3rd May 2012 — Filed under: Politics

Richard Exell

There’s a wonderful letter in today’s Independent in support of Rupert Murdoch. Amongst other things, it says

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.

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Politics
Polling on cuts

23rd April 2012 — Filed under: Politics

Nigel Stanley

Every so often I look at the state of public opinion on the cuts using YouGov data as they regularly poll with the same questions and publish the results.

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.

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