A Short Review of 2014

For those with a progressive political leaning, the themes of 2014 have been pretty dark. Austerity, cuts, and reactionary opportunism from the mainstream parties to try and respond to the rise of the Far-Right. The main hope for The Left has been in ideas like the Citizen's Income entering into serious political discussion, widespread vocal championing of feminism, and some fresh young left-wing parties beginning to gather support.

The early part of 2014 was dominated by the return of Far-Right politics, with right-wing nationalist parties polling in increasing numbers across Europe on the back of immigration scaremongering. While the Far-Right managed to make some breakthroughs, for the most part it simply served to make it easier for those pushing austerity to make scapegoats of the poorest and most vulnerable to draw attention away from the real powerbrokers.

In an intensely pragmatic response to the small victories won by the Far-Right, parts of the Labour Party believed in making opportunistic appeals to those persuaded by anti-immigration propaganda. It gave the impression only of an effort to stave off the threat posed by right-wing parties to the party's supporter base, under threat already in Scotland by the continued rise in popularity of the SNP and its campaign for Scottish Independence.

The summer saw the Scottish Independence Referendum campaign draw unusual lines of division through Britain, with splits between Unionists and Separatists pulling up issues of nationality and nationalism. Yet the campaign was plagued by negative campaigning, particularly from the No group, which rejected Scottish nationalism with its own rather hypocritical British nationalism and played heavily on economic fears by calling on voters to stick with the Westminster status quo in the name of economic security.

Despite the negativity, the world was watching. Separatist voters in Catalonia waited to see if it was possible to construct a democratic path out of the nation-state settlement. In the end independence was rejected - though by much less of a margin than most were willing to admit. That left the matter, at least partially, unresolved. In particular the general discontent with central government, echoed across Europe, was not truly addressed.

Those feelings probably helped to fuel the newly fire lit that saw, in autumn, a rising popular response to conservative driven austerity. In response to the far right and to Conservative cuts, the UK has seen the Green Party finally making a breakthrough, by polling at the same kind of levels as the other mainstream parties. In Spain, the brand new Podemos party has caused a major shock by polling ahead of all of the established parties.

In many ways, conference season and the Autumn Statement in the UK have only stoked that fire further. Both high coverage events where used by the Conservatives to lay out their plans for further austerity measures and cuts. As autumn turned to winter, those moves have led to the Liberal Democrats, junior coalition partners, to distance themselves from the plans for further cuts - something that reopens the possibility of a positive dialogue amongst leftist groups.

Despite some dark moments, particularly in the Far-Right rearing its head, there are reasons to be hopeful. There are pieces moving into position for a progressive alliance in the UK following the election next spring, with the various groups on The Left opening up to working together in common cause.

We will be back in January with more subjective observation and analysis of politics, ideology and public life.

What are the liberal alternatives to the austerity cuts?

Vince Cable and Nick Clegg, two of the most senior Liberal Democrats, were quick to make their voices heard in response to the Autumn Statement and to the Conservative push for more cuts during the next parliament. The essence of their narrative was simple: the Lib Dems believe that austerity has been pushed as far as it can or should go.

Cable was quick off the mark with a letter to the Office of Budget Responsibility, which called for the OBR to make a clear a distinction between the future policies of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats  (Wintour, 2014). Clegg followed in his wake by stressing that the Tory determination to cut tax was not matched by available funds (Marr, 2014) - meaning more public services would have to go.

The economic analysts seem to agree with them. The analysis released in response to the Autumn Statement stressed that public spending would have to be reduced drastically if the Conservative path was to be followed (Johnson, 2014). And this week the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) announced that its research had shown that inequality is bad for economic growth, and that a redistributive economy is far more conducive to economic success - not to mention beneficial to social welfare (Elliott, 2014).

So what would the Lib Dems do differently?

Well, Clegg says that they are not ashamed of the role they have played in arresting public spending (Mason, 2014), but the party has expressed disagreements over the way forward. While the Conservatives want more and deeper cuts, the Lib Dems think that the realistic plateau has been reached. Instead of more cuts, they want a rise in tax that is controlled to protect the poorest (Lansdale, 2014).

While serving as a practical challenge to the Conservative narrative pushed by the Tories and UKIP, people are unlikely to be inspired by ideas aimed at just keeping a sinking ship afloat. People want an opportunity to make things better - and there are liberal ideas, more radically progressive, that the Lib Dems could push.

Though the modern Lib Dems have been focussed on the idea of reducing the state - with a Gladstonian commitment to capitalism, in opposition to the state - when the old Liberal Party began to modernise in the early twentieth century, the new social liberalism it had embraced opened the party up to the idea that there was a role for the public sector to play, though still with the proviso that it should be reduced wherever possible.

Those deep rooted liberal tendencies have produced ideas, beyond simply reducing state influence, that are more conducive to creating a new era of reform. In the 1920s, Liberals under the guiding hand of John Maynard Keynes produced an in depth report of the British economy that included in its recommendations co-operatives, and democracy in the workplace (Yellow Book, 1928).

'The worker's grievance arises from a sense of the inadequacy of their reward, of their insecurity of livelihood and tenure, and of their lack of information as to the financial results of their work... The present ownership of industry is unduly concentrated and should be diffused as widely as possible among industrial wage-earners. Such diffusion, tending towards the popular ownership of industry, may be effected partly by progressive taxation and restrictions upon the inheritance of large fortunes, but more directly by the stimulation of employee-ownership under schemes of profit-sharing and investment by employees, by the encouragement of popular banking and investment, and by the creation and development of investment trusts. All these processes should be encouraged and, where necessary, regulated by the state.'

These ideas are still woven into Lib Dem policy proposals. Nick Clegg has previously called for a move towards a 'John Lewis Economy' (Clegg, 2012), with companies embracing workers holding shares, and party members have argued that co-operatives should be at the forefront of the Lib Dem economic policy (Donaldson, 2013) - as they are in the preamble to the party constitution.

Now could be the time to start bringing those ideas to the forefront. Co-ops represent a huge step forward, giving people more autonomy in their working lives and spreading the profits of their labour more equitably. If the Lib Dems are to see the aims of the authors of the 1928 Yellow Book report fulfilled, to ensure that individuals may enjoy life more abundantly, co-operation is going to play a key role in achieving them.

The Autumn Statement shows us the flaws in the Tory cuts agenda

The UK government's Autumn Statement, released last week, is a mid-year review of its economic policy (Treanor, 2014), and an opportunity to stop and assess the general health of the national economy.

On this occasion, that assessment has stirred up controversy. The main story behind the review was that the Conservatives have not reached their target reductions to the country's budget deficit, and will likely seek further and deeper cuts to public spending in the next parliament (Allen, 2014).

While senior Conservatives have criticised coverage of future spending cuts as hyperbole predicting that the world would fall in (BBC, 2014), they did not deny that further cuts would be coming. In fact, further cuts to welfare certainly appear to be planned.

The most baffling thing is that, despite the Autumn Statement having laid bare that the Conservative approach has failed to deliver the promised results, the government seems intent upon pushing on, further and deeper, with their strategy of cuts, and of placing trust in markets. They seem to be turning a blind eye to the fact that the economy is still weak, the recovery remains slow, and the public deficit has not been eliminated.

The possibility of more cuts is sure to inflame more than a few hearts that are already set against the Conservative austerity agenda. That will not be helped by independent assessments that say future cuts could take the UK's public spending down to an 80 year low, the lowest since the inter-war era (Reuben, 2014; Johnson, 2014).

It has been suggested that one key reason for the failure of the Conservative approach to achieve its goals, was hinged upon a rise in private sector employment. Conservatives thought that a rise in employment - which they believed would follow from economic incentives and encouragements for the private sector, along with cuts to the public sector - would boost the economy to pick up the slack as public sector spending was reduced. Their gamble, however, did not deliver (Arnett & Nardelli, 2014).

The new jobs, that the Conservatives have celebrated, have come with very low pay and short, unstable hours. In conjunction with the general failure of wages to rise, the decrease in unemployment has not led to an increase in the funds available to pay off public debts and deficits. Further, and even more disastrously, austerity and cuts are being directly linked with rising poverty (Wintour & Butler, 2014).

If, as predicted, the next stage of the Conservative approach returns Britain to its pre-war settlement, with a drastic reshaping of the state and its role in society - with further retraction of the state and a return to a market place with fewer safety nets - it is not unreasonable to ask if the continuation of the cuts agenda will drop public spending so low as to threaten even the most basic services like health and welfare that protect people who fall on hard times.

Conservative policy is steering towards an economy built on the backs of workers labouring through unstable and fluctuating hours, for low pay, and with no safety net when something goes wrong in their incredibly temporary situations. That assault upon the security of workers lives, in pursuit of making labour markets more 'dynamic', is undermining the living standards of workers while simultaneously failing to produce a useful growth in the common wealth.

And that is not good enough. It's not enough to just peddle cheap impermanent work, and assume that work itself will be some sort of miracle cure for societies ills. To live the better and fuller lives that they deserve, people need more security and better pay, with real safety nets.

'We believe with a passionate faith that the end of all political and economic action is not the perfecting or the perpetuation of this or that piece of mechanism or organisation, but that individual men and women may have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.'
(Yellow Book, 1928)

The Autumn Statement is just the latest demonstration that Conservative austerity and cuts are failing, both economically and socially, to address the problems of the day. The question now becomes: what alternatives do we have?

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References:
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+ Jill Treanor's 'Autumn statement 2014 at a glance: eight key points'; in The Guardian; 3 December 2014.

+ Katie Allen's 'George Osborne thrown off course by pay squeeze and falling income tax take'; in The Guardian; 3 December 2014.

+ BBC's 'Osborne: Autumn Statement cuts warnings 'hyperbolic''; 4 December 2014.

+ Anthony Reuben's 'Headline Numbers: Public spending heads to 80-year low'; on the BBC; 3 December 2014.

+ Paul Johnson's 'Institute for Fiscal Studies: Autumn statement briefing, 2014 - Introductory remarks'; for the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS); 4 December 2014.

+ George Arnett and Alberto Nardelli's 'Why has George Osborne missed the deficit target?'; in The Guardian; 3 December 2014.

+ Patrick Wintour and Patrick Butler's 'Tories seek to avert rift with Church of England over food bank report'; in The Guardian; 8 December 2014.

+ 'Yellow Book' or 'Britain's Industrial Future: being the Report of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry'; Ernest Benn Ltd, 1928. [Buy Now]

Constantine's flawed humanity makes for good television

NBC's new TV show Constantine, with a second series yet to be commissioned, has joined a long list of shows that have seen fans start campaigns aimed at keeping them alive (Wickline, 2014). It was always going to be a brave decision to try and translate the character of John Constantine to the small screen. The Hellblazer comics are often dark and intensely grim, and Constantine himself is a hero often shown to be flawed and manipulative, and even prepared to sacrifice his own friends should the need arise.

Yet, so far, NBC's new show has held true to that course. We have seen Constantine smoking, itself a fairly big challenge to modern television standards; he has exploited the abilities of his allies, like Zed and Liv; and he manipulated his friend Gary Lester into sacrificing his life to trap the hunger demon Mnemoth.

But we have also seen him struggle with a troubled and violent childhood. He struggles with his guilt over, in his arrogance, failing to save a little girl named Astra. We have seen him show nobility in trying to save people from many dangers that they might not even believe to actually exist.

These struggles, and the weight of burden that his failures have cast upon him, are what makes him a character that is easy to identify with - and were all key parts of the complicated character that was so beloved on the pages of the Hellblazer comics.

The Constantine of Hellblazer is a punk, a bisexual and a smoker. A working-class mage. He is burdened by enormous guilt over the past, and cares about the people around him, though often reluctantly. He gets by on wit and guile, rather than brute force and physical strength.

Even with the faults in his methods, like the dangerous manipulation of his friends and allies, he is still a charming and likeable anti-establishment figure - and that makes him easy to sympathise with. He is a controversial hero, and a complicated and imperfect person who earns our sympathy through his flawed humanity.

These things, translated to the small screen, make for a fascinating character. His belief in himself is not unshakeable - he has doubts. He has regrets. He is caustic and short-tempered. He is manipulative, using, and exploiting his friends. He is self-righteous when he gets the chance, and angry when he gets called out on his hypocrisy.

These characteristics make him flawed and vulnerable, and so reveal to us his humanity. They are the kind of traits that make for a great television character.

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References:
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+ Dan Wickline's 'There Is Now A Save Constantine Petition'; on bleedingcool.com; 27 November 2014.

+ Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette & John Ridgway's 'Hellblazer'; DC/Vertigo; 1988. [Buy Now]

+ Daniel Cerone & David S. Goyer's 'Constantine'; on NBC; 2014. [Buy Now]