The Alternative Election 2019: The Labour Party, 'Real Change'

There are headline grabbing, radical changes in the Labour manifesto. And yet in some policy areas, like welfare, they're less progressive than the Lib Dems - that is the paradox long at the heart of the Labour Party, that will stay hard to challenge so long as they remain simply the best shot at ousting the Tories from government.

For Labour, their priority is how they are pitching to people that they can take back control of their lives. The starting point for that in the Labour manifesto is for the wealthiest, those earning more than £80,000, to pay more in tax and for the government to borrow a sum of around £500bn, at the historically low interest rates available, to fund some hugely transformative policies - including the ambition to "make Britain’s public services the best and most extensive in the world". 

How does Labour plan to do that?

Well, public ownership is a big feature of their manifesto. On that front, in all parts, this manifesto goes further than in 2017. From bus networks returning to public ownership, to rail as the franchises expire, to water and energy, and putting workers on company boards, this is a manifesto that wants to undo the privatisations overseen by the Tories in the 1970s and 1980s.

Together with a boost in priority for environmentalism, the twin themes of Public Ownership and Green Industry run through this manifesto, bleeding into most of the policy ideas and frequently being tied one to the other - expressing the idea that the profit motive is destructive to our community and environmental wellbeing.

You can see this in their response to the first of the key progressive priorities: addressing the climate crisis.

On the climate emergency, Labour are promising a Green Industrial Revolution. Of the £400bn that Labour is going to borrow to form it's National Transformation Fund, £250bn is to be directed to Green Transformation - with additional funding coming in the form of lending from the proposed National Investment Bank.

This plan, that appears to be founded entirely on borrowing and lending - with an unspecified amount coming from a windfall tax on oil companies - is how Labour intend to provoke a shift to renewable and low-carbon energy and transport, that delivers net-zero carbon emissions by the 2030s.

Part of the Labour plan to deliver this Green Revolution is to nationalise the energy companies. This goes a step further than what they offered in 2017 (a low-cost rival state-owned supplier), though how this will be funded is left to the reader's assumptions. Readers will likely infer that the money will come from the tax rises on the rich and the intended borrowing - though it is worth keeping in mind that with any nationalisation, the government gains an asset that may ultimately be able to pay for itself.

On health, cutting out private provision is the headline that fits the broader narrative of public control before private profits. Labour promise a 4.3% a year rise in the budget for the health sector - and clearly expect ending outsourcing to private providers to save a significant, if hard to verify, sum of cash to help fund ambitious promises.

There will also be a National Care Service for social care, although the specifics are lacking in the party manifesto - beyond the intention to impose a lifetime cap on personal care costs.

On education, the Labour contribution to the progressive spur of lifelong learning is the National Education Service. At it's core, it represents a massive recruitment drive, with huge numbers of new educators needed to deliver the expansive promises on everything from preschool to adult retraining. These plans come with a lifelong, entitlement to free training up to certain standards and the return of maintenance allowances.

However, the manifesto focuses more on criticising the state of education under the Tories, instead of actually clarifying the detail of changes or how any of this will be paid for - beyond, it is assumed again, that this falls under what Labour hope to pay for with it's tax rise on the richest.

The theme of public ownership is present here too, as Labour promise to abolish tuition fees and engage in a clampdown on private schools - even going so far as to look into integrating them into the comprehensive education system.

Public ownership runs into housing too, as Labour are saying they will build 150,000 social rent homes a years - 100,000 council homes and 50,000 housing association - by the end of a five-year Parliament. And the party commitment to reducing energy consumption, and thus energy bills, by making homes to a greener standard keeps the key Labour themes entwined.

Conclusions

The theme of public ownership and green revolution run through these plans. They are the foundation for an, at times, deeply radical offering.

But there are flaws. The focus on simply undoing the Tories destructive welfare plans, results in Labour offering what is ultimately a less progressive than pitch for welfare reform that what the Lib Dems have offered.

On welfare, however, Labour are promising to run a basic income trial - which is a welfare policy with revolutionary potential should it be implemented, and implemented well.

And then there is the wider context. Labour and Jeremy Corbyn in particular have been besieged by the right-wing press and have found themselves unable to wade out of the antisemitism scandal in which they have sunk.

And Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn wants to stand neutral on the matter, taking no side in a second referendum between whatever he can negotiate in Brussels and the choice to cancel Brexit and remain in the EU.

The reality, however, is that for voters the controversies and flaws will simply play a part in a sadly two-dimensional election fight.

Rather than choosing between nationalisation and privatisation, or between radical funding boosts and more austerity, it's likely people will choose between whether they can tolerate more Tory government or can take a chance on what may seem like drastic change.

The fight between Labour and the Tories, Corbyn vs Boris, will dominate the election - and which of them you don't want to win will probably dominate your voting strategy, in a very tactical battle.

Disability: Whether physical, mental or learning, it's usually our society that makes individual circumstances disabling

Photograph: Wheelchair Parking from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

It isn't radical to acknowledge that our society, our infrastructure and the way we work, is built around the lives of non-disabled men. The experiences of women are testament to that: basic biology is often treated as an impediment to society's orderly functioning.

The same kind of exclusion is experienced by people with disabilities. This is even reflected in the language of disability, which has clear markers of being written from the point of view of 'able-bodied' men, complete with assumptions made based on the uncritical acceptance of how society is shaped. There are, of course, cultural and historical reasons for the way these things have developed.

However, change has been slow and inclusion still feels far away. And it's that failure to build otherness into our society that defines disability. The report this week into the government's failure to adequately fund school places for those children with special educational needs just exposes how much of an afterthought disability still is in societal decision-making. That's a sorry state of affairs.

This government has made big promises on inclusion but obstacles remain. It is easy to see the barriers to people with physical disabilities just by looking around you. Some of them are very literal. Steps are a big factor. Ramps and lifts still look like add-ons - with issues like the need for manual assistance, space for manoeuvring and limited access all the result of physical disability access being an afterthought.

For people with mental illness and learning difficulties, the impediments are often harder to see - less obvious than the conflict between wheels and stairs which is, nonetheless, still far too often overlooked. The needs of people with mental health problems are various, but often include things like quiet, routine and structure. In a working world growing increasingly loud and irregular, making accommodation for these needs is treated like a drag on efficiency.

A 'flexible' working environment is the buzzword of the moment, but all of the flexibility must come from the employee. Compassionate support is hard to find in a system of precarious work, that keeps people on edge, scrambling for uncertain shifts.

The public sector is not free from criticism. Funding for disability has taken a hit under austerity, with a harsh welfare regime, and even funding for school places for students with special educational needs has been critically inadequate.

All people, disabled or not, want independence. To get around without assistance. To be confident and seen as capable. To that end, successive governments have promised an 'independence revolution', to radically improve social inclusion. That project has not been completed. There is so much more work to do.

We must think carefully about our society: how we frame work and making a contribution; how we approach inclusion. People can live full lives with a full spectrum of conditions and circumstances. But only if the society they live in does not disable them, by failing to built support and inclusion into their framework.