Little Victories: Tackling energy costs would be a small win with big consequences

Photograph: Power Lines from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

We're living in times of big conflicts. Fascism has reared it's ugly head (in various guises), there are big changes under way in international politics and for the first time in three decades, a nuclear war is again talked about as something that might actually happen. It can all get overwhelming.

If you're feeling overwrought, remember that the big problems are rarely overcome with grandstanding solutions. More often, they're broken down into more manageable problems with little victories adding up to a much more profound and lasting change. As Bobby Kennedy put it:

"Each time a man [sic] stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest wall of oppression and resistance."

That is the task ahead of progressives in Britain: to send out the little ripples that build into a wave. But where to start? One opportunity on the horizon is opening on the cost of living.

Over the summer recess, pressure has been building within the Conservative Party over the May Government's decision to drop promises of tough measures to tackle the energy sector. That pressure is mounting towards a rupture.

On Sunday, 53 Conservative MPs signed a letter to Theresa May that demanded a reinstatement of the energy price pledge - that promised to protect ordinary households from the 'Big Six' energy companies - which was dropped from the Queen's Speech.

This backbench rebellion won't be completely selfless concern. At the last election, Tory MPs caught wind of public unhappiness at the unfair burdens that are being piled onto them. These MPs have to act to save their seats.

But there-in lies an opportunity. 53 rebel MPs is a huge problem for Theresa May, who holds only a slim majority. If the opposition is united, the government will have little choice but to take action or face a possible defeat in the Commons.

In the short term, that might lead to a small material improvement for the most vulnerable households. That in itself would be a welcome and tangible help to people just trying to get by. A small win for a good cause.

Little victories, however, build into much larger ones. Changing the government's direction would also have a much wider and lasting impact. Acting to regulate the energy market strikes a blow against deregulation - the market fundamentalist belief that outcomes are better when oversight and rules are limited.

Acting to regulate the energy market admits market failures. Admits that, left to their own devices, companies in deregulated markets can fall into unfairness and exploitation that produce worse outcomes for the many to the profit of the few.

For those feeling overwhelmed in tumultuous times, this is a grounded cause. A small win for people trying to keep their living costs down, would strike blow against exploitative capitalism. One foot in front of the other, one step at a time.

Efforts to extinguish the light of human progress sometimes cause the candlelight to flicker, but it always burns the brighter after

Peace for Paris. Photograph: From Subjectif Art, design by Jean Jullien (License)

The world is moving inexorably forwards. More freedoms, more rights, more equality. That progress has been tempered time and again by horrifying bouts of violence and war, psychotic acts of terror and ruthless acts of sectarian cleansing. Yet humanity has continued to stumble its way out of the darkness.

Acts of violence, counter-revolutionary reaction and suppression by those would keep the world trapped in the darkness, rear up with each step forward. They attempt use fear to control and dissuade, to put out the light. Yet each act of violence has changed humanity. It forges an ever growing, ever spreading, solidarity against violence, ignorance and selfishness. It simply makes the case, and support, for peace, liberty and tolerance stronger.

Vaclav Havel was a writer and playwright who became a political dissident against totalitarian communist rule and went on to became the first President of the Czech Republic. At the height of the constant, suppressive, threat of arrest and imprisonment, Havel wrote The Power of the Powerless. In it, Havel described how under the rule of even the most desperate and tyrannical of police states, the light of dissent and liberty can flicker into life through simple acts of disobedience and the refusal to comply with the wielders of power and fear. That in these simple acts, an individual:

"...rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth."

For many, the events in Paris, or in Beirut, have extinguished their ability to see that light - or so dimmed their sensitivity to it beneath a howling storm of pain and loss that they may never see it again. For those people, there is perhaps little comfort in knowing that despite, and maybe in spite of, atrocities, the statistics say that there are only positive trends when it comes to human health and prosperity.

To those people, it may well be cold comfort that the light continues to flicker, let alone that it will grow stronger. Even so, we cannot give up on, or ignore, that flame. By its light, people have changed the world for the better with even the smallest acts of freedom.

Whether it's the struggle for human rights, civil rights and liberties, and democracy around the world, or their particular manifestations in the rising visibility of struggles for Women's rights, LGBT rights or for recognition that Black Lives Matter, the movement towards equality and respect is irresistible.

Cameron & Osborne's long term plan for austerity is now deep into territory even Conservatives are finding hard to accept

David Cameron's long term austerity plan is starting to worry Conservatives, but he and ministers seem to be blissfully unaware of the human impact of cuts upon even working families. Photograph: Prime Minister David Cameron - official photograph by Number 10 (License) (Cropped)

With their defeat in the Lords on Tax Credit cuts, the Conservatives seem to be in a bit of a crisis (Morris & Grice, 2015). While Chancellor George Osborne has assured anyone who will listen that he has found his next round of cuts (BBC, 2015), a massive 30% from departmental budgets to be announced at the spending review, he has faced opposition from his own party.

Former Conservative Prime Minister John Major called for a rethink of the government's approach in light of rising inequality and the impact of policies upon the poorest (Quinn, 2015). There has even been opposition from the Conservative controlled work and pensions select committee.

The members of the select committee argued that cuts are at their limit and urged the Chancellor to take a pause and rethink his priorities (Wintour, 2015). Combined with the Conservative MPs who spoke out against Tax Credit cuts and those that would not back a slackening of Sunday trading laws (Dathan, 2015; Lansdale, 2015) - which led to that proposal being withdrawn (BBC, 2015{2}) - the government is under growing pressure to back down and change direction.

Yet it seems unlikely that, in the long run, David Cameron's Ministry will deviate from its general course. The broadest evidence for that is the Prime Minister's own bafflingly ill-informed letter to Ian Hudspeth, the leader of his native Oxfordshire county council, criticising cuts to services (Monbiot, 2015; Oliver, 2015).

Cameron's apparent ignorance of the depth of impact from his own economic policy is yet another example of the Conservative failure, or refusal, to address the human cost of their policies (Morse, 2015; Stewart & Elliott, 2015). According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the burden of cuts has been falling almost squarely upon those least able to bear it (Hastings et al, 2015).

Essential services like social care are being stretched thin and, as Cameron himself notes, staples of British civil society like libraries and museums have already had their funding cut (The Independent, 2015). And yet, the most well off have been sheltered.

Opposing and mitigating the deeply negative impact of the cuts on citizens requires two things. First, the progressives on the opposition benches have to unite behind broad, common positions. And so, second, moderate Conservatives willing to rebel against government policy can move decisively to check negative plans. It has been seen before over the seven months of this government: only a broad Parliamentary effort can successfully defeat the government's, albeit thin, majority.

As John Major admitted, inequality isn't about skivers or scroungers. It's about those with opportunities and those without them - and that second category is at risk of being flooded with the 'working families' Conservatives have tried to make a staple of their support.

The key for progressives is to make sure concerned Conservatives see how much hurt austerity can and will bring down upon the very people they depend upon for votes in their constituencies - to show them just how toxic it can be to have a lack of compassion and consideration.