This time of year tends to make me quite nostalgic. It is nearing the end of
party conference season. Just a few years ago I would be getting stuck in to
the Liberal Democrat Conference. Aside from the motion debates, that can get a
bit sterile, the fringe events offer an interesting distraction. Charities,
business groups and political organisations host the fringe groups. In the
evening you may be lucky enough to have food there. The Nuclear Industries
Association's event last time I went had vats of fish and chips and a plentiful
supply of wine, all inclusive with conference fees. Then there was Glee, the
strange old liberal sing-along. I don’t remember a huge amount of Glee, a part
from having an altercation with a very rude official with the Radical newspaper
at the bar. Such are the hazards and opportunities at the conference. The last
one I went to was in Liverpool in 2011 a great city to have a conference in. I
met up with nearly everyone I campaigned alongside in 2010 including the
candidate I still believe should have got in, despite my political differences
between then and now.
This time around money, or more accurately a lack of which, and political uncertainties
have lead me to sit Lib Dem Conferences out including this one. So now I am
reduced to observer status at least for the time being. But on the whole the
news coverage of all of the party conferences has given me an interesting
vantage point from which to view the different courses of the UK's main
political parties leading up to 2015. The Lib Dem conference wasn't
particularly revealing. Although I notice that Nick Clegg is starting to sound
a lot less apologetic and a lot more defiant. A part of me thinks 'good for
him'. But then another part of me does wonder how in touch he is with the rest
of his party and I am not talking about the MPs. I am talking about the rank
and file members which not long ago included myself. Being a Lib Dem is
constantly accused of as being synonymous with treachery or basically being a
'Yellow Tory'. Surely a bit of reassurance is due from the leader? More than
the Letter from the Leader emails I still receive and line my Trash Inbox with.
Some of the motions gone through in this conference tells me that the fight has
gone out of us. Take our motion on our Trident nuclear missiles for example. We
have decided we don’t want a like-for-like replacement of Trident, but we do
want a nuclear missile launching system of some description, just cheaper. We
missed an opportunity to have a serious debate about whether this country needs
nuclear weapons in the first place. I am conscious that this is a debate that
our Conservative partners are determined not to have, which makes me suspect
that we have selfish motives for not advancing such a controversial position.
But putting forward controversial and interesting debates is what attracted me
to our party in the first place. If this is gone I am not sure what else there
is for me.
The Labour and Tory Conferences have been the real eye openers this time around.
Mostly because the former has actually decided to grace the British public with
the presence of some of their policies. The tone of these policies look
decidedly left-leaning, socialist even by the look of the price freezing idea
for energy bills. Labour have now openly declared a return to socialism of some
kind, likely trying to become a magnet for leftist discontent with the
Coalition, of which there is much. More controversially their proposals included
one for the government to essentially seize unused land from any owners, to
free it up for housing development. To back up their left hook the Labour
Conference also made mention of taxing bankers’ bonuses to pay for certain
reforms.
The Tory's on the other hand are advocating a distinctly free market orientated
pitch for Britain with American sound-bites. "Land of Opportunity"
was mentioned more than once by David Cameron. Essentially the Tory line is
that state activism has its limits and ultimately only jobs produced by a
vibrant economy will be beneficial to the country. This rhetoric pretty closely
follows the Tory line of individualism, the conservative creed of self help.
Taking advantage of public support for welfare cuts more of these were
announced by George Osbourne to big applause by the party rank and file.
Notably less applause came from Ian Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State who
will have to actually implement the cuts within his own department.
Now lets get one thing straight, I have no intention of voting for either
Labour of the Tories. I dislike them both in equal measure, so I make the
following judgement from an equal footing of loathing. Both parties are propagating
false visions while promising false dawns and are presenting a false picture of
Britain and its' citizens.
Labour has breezily brought in a price freeze, neatly avoiding any inconvenient
questions about what consequences these could have for the energy companies.
The concern of the energy companies in Labour-speak is the less of their
concerns than the people of Britain, which is all very well and good until you
look at the detail. This freeze will likely effect smaller and often more
ethical energy companies negatively, perhaps to the point of closing some of
them down. The monstrosities of the energy market like Npower will power on
while the Ecotricity's of this world will struggle to survive, thus killing
what small private investment there is in renewable energy. Price controls of
any kind always come with side effects, hence why I avoid state-planned
economics. The Tory's are right in that there are limits in what the state can
do, and controlling the economy successfully is one thing it has failed to do
in the past.
And what of plans to seize so called idle lands for housing developments?
The Daily Mail hailed this plan as Stalinist and in this one instance I am
inclined to agree with this vile paper. Should the government just be able to
order you to do something with your land? Surely we need some land idle for the
sake of the environment. In general I agree with the 'my land, my rules' ethos,
so long as you aren't building a private army or something else illegal. This
is simply sidestepping the issue of the housing shortage and blaming the public
for government inaction on this matter. I think a better plan would be to re-examine
and simplify planning laws and give tax breaks to house building companies that
renovate individual houses and neighbourhoods. I am not a fan of mass new
building because I think this will only drive up prices further and imperil the
environment.
When it comes to banker bonuses I really couldnt care less. I am not one of
those people who discriminate people by profession, so I dont feel the need to
single bankers out. We need bankers. Bankers provide credit to business which
create jobs. And I am acutely aware that not all bankers are criminals or
behave unethically. I dont see Labour advocating a tax on high paying Union
jobs, many of which come for with a paid for house.
The Tories on the other hand are painting a very rosy picture of how things
are now in contemporary Britain. The economy is apparently expanding, but there
seems to be scant evidence of it in many places. Things are especially hard for
many people my age. Unemployment for people in their 20s is disproportionately
high. University fees has gone up meaning that in many British universities
foreigners can often afford to go to university's more than the natives can.
Colleges are either closing or having their facilities cut. Cameron's latest
brainwave was to cut benefits for people below 25, imploring them to either
'work' or 'learn'.
This policy is disingenuous and completely separate from reality in
contemporary Britain. How are young people supposed to work when there aren't
enough jobs around? How are young people supposed to learn when the means of
them doing so are being cut? And more importantly why are people under 25 less
worthy to receive state help than their elders? I have been working consistently
since I was 18 and my fiancé has since she was 16. If I had no support early on
in my time in Bristol I have had to move back home where the job prospects
would have been a lot less bright. But the language around this idea presumes
that these under 25 year olds would not have their job prospects alter from
such a move, and presuming that they actually have a parent's home to go to.
But it is the sense of the lack of entitlement for the young an
over-entitlement for the elder that I have a big problem with. The latter in
many ways harbour responsibility for supporting policies that have put us in
the dire straights we are in now. I don’t think either young people or old
people should be put on the "scrapheap", a phrase persistently used
by Grant Shapps on Question Time last Thursday. If there are cuts we should all
feel the burden together.
I am inclined to agree that savings can be made with the welfare budget. But
I don’t necessarily see it as a bad thing that we spend more on welfare than
defence. This division of priorities merely reflects reality on the ground.
Strategically we have few immediate threats in the world, at least in terms of
ones that can be countered by armies. Furthermore our country is recovering
from a very large recession, which many people need a helping hand to recover
from. Many savings from the welfare budget can be gained very quickly by simply
bring the Department of Work and Pensions into the 21st century. For instance,
illogically DWP takes peoples email addresses but still insists on sending
communications by letter, which costs money and time. This is just the tip of
the iceberg for a terribly inefficient department. More than once during my
recent period of unemployment the advisors at the Jobcentre lost my notes. The
government needs to make sure the DWP provides a public service for its users, as
oppose to just providing cutting chum to an ignorant public.
This language has carefully avoided the issue of where welfare is being
spent. Interestingly enough the main beneficiaries of the welfare budget are
the elderly. Yet while this is the case old people are not being portrayed as
scroungers while unemployed young people increasingly are. Why is this? Well I
think a part of the answer is that elder voters tend to be more conservative
leaning. More importantly elders increasingly vote more than young people. That
is why when I do eventually run for Parliament I want to focus on making young
people enthusiastic about politics again. Surely some of them if not many of
them have cause to be angry. The worse thing they can do is to give in to
apathy.
Furthermore the Conservatives new mortgage initiative, while it may prove
handy for many Brits, ignores those of us who live in rented accommodation with
less than consistent good service from our landlords. Conservatives have
quietly left questions aside about how to address the unequal division of
wealth. Economic growth means very little to people who will receive very
little from it.
