Universal Credit: Labour say no to universal credit, leaving the future of welfare uncertain

Photograph: Job Centre Plus by Andrew Writer (License) (Cropped)

Labour's Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has let it be known that Universal Credit, the government's controversial revamp of welfare, faces being scrapped. McDonnell called the system unsustainable, as he finally appeared to move the party off the fence on welfare.

Universal Credit was the flagship Conservative policy and was intended to merge a range of benefits into one, simpler, payment - with better tapering and stricter limits - in theory to 'make work pay'. However, the rollout of the policy has been a disaster.

The policy rollout has gone over budget; it has created delays in processing applications and making payments, leading to individuals running up debts and turning to foodbanks; and with the full rollout, even single parents could be over £2000 worse off.

For the government, welfare reform has been a constant hazard. It's approach, dubbed 'workfare', has been picked apart at every step. Scandals like welfare claimants finding themselves farmed out for unpaid labour - a practice that was challenged and criticised through the courts, though continues - has undermined reforms.

So has the Tories' handling of disability welfare claims. Causes ranging from maladministration to deeply flawed fitness to work assessments have left many claimants with disabilities thousands of pounds out of pocket and denied crucial support.

The government has done itself no favours with revelations that officials were given targets to reject 4 out of 5 applications, and through spending tens of millions in legal action to avoid having to meet denied disability welfare payments.

Funding issues have undermined the policy too. The policy's architect, and former Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith eventually quit as the Minister responsible with a flurry of criticism - at the core, furious that funding was not were he wanted it to be for the reforms to work.

It is unsurprising that Labour doesn't want to handle this shambles.

However, for Labour this marks a significant change in their stance. In their 2017 manifesto, the Labour Party barely touched the subject of welfare. The limits of their interest had seemed to be in getting the Conservative system working - not even committing to more funding.

Labour have not proposed a replacement system. For that, it may be necessary to wait for a new manifesto. But it seems unlikely that either the old system nor Universal Credit will now remain in place under a Labour government.

Without tacit opposition support, the policy's days are numbered. The questions now is what comes next? Where does Britain go next in search of a fair and sustainable social security safety net?

Social Security: Winter is coming and the Government appears content to leave the ramparts unguarded

A homeless encampment in Manchester last year, one of the signs of the growing strain on Britain's social security safety net. People are falling through the system into poverty.

The first signs are appearing of the hard times ahead, forecast by the Autumn Statement. It has been less than a week since the Government announced its budget priorities and already it is under pressure over the gaps in social security created by the lower funding brought by six years of austerity.

People are falling through the cracks because, from social care to free school meals, the safety net is becoming porous. In some areas, people don't know they have a right to support and in others there simply aren't places for them in programmes.

At the root of these issues is funding. In their quixotic crusade to tackle public spending, that they sees as an unnecessary waste, the Conservatives have chipped, slashed and removed whole sections of Britain's social security safety net.

As Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn has pointed out, the Conservatives have slashed spending even where spending would ultimately save far more money in the long run than cuts will. The onward rumbling housing crisis has proven particularly expensive for the Government.

As a result of a failure to build new social housing, and the determined sell-off of present stock, far more is spent on Housing Benefit to keep people in more expensive, and often less satisfactory, private rented accommodation.

Investing funds in social housing could, in fact, drastically reduce the housing benefit bill, by perhaps billions, all while tackling one of Britain's a major infrastructural problem. The key that the Conservative seem to be missing is the vital role to be played by smart spending.

The Conservatives have certainly tried to portray themselves as embracing the idea of smart spending. When it comes to funds, the Government has been keen to say that it has extended certain tax raising powers to local government to cover the increased cost of social care. And the Prime Minister continues to repeat the '£10bn for the NHS' figure.

Yet their claims are belied by reality. The £10bn figure has been debunked and its continued use criticised. The extra funding for social care, the Social Care Precept - that lets local government keep a 2% greater share council tax receipts - has been dismissed as wholly inadequate. The Chancellor pledge in invest in infrastructure resulted in just 40,000 new homes being promised.

There is even talk today of the pension age being pushed back again. Even as the living standards of all workers, especially the most vulnerable, continue to fall, the Government still whittles away at the public sector and turns to the market.

Winter is coming and the Government appears content to leave the ramparts unguarded - believing perhaps that people should secure their own fences in a market for social security. That is a plan that progressives should comprehensively reject.

Prioritising opportunities for the affluent and thrusting over security for the vulnerable isn't just unethical and economically unsound, its also a social disaster waiting to happen.

It is the very thing that feeds the desperation, that in turn feeds the far right. The neoliberalism of the Centre-Right is laying the shaky foundations of its own collapse.

So what does that leave for progressives to do? Yanis Varoufakis has put it the simplest: first, stabilise and save what we can of value in the present system, and second, develop a real, working and unifying alternative. The costs of letting the house of cards fall - personally, socially, economically - are just far too high to do otherwise.

Progressives need to find an answer to precarious work, because conservatives back its rise and it in turn fuels the Far Right

The headline figures say unemployment is down, but they cover the fact that welfare is being replaced only with precarity. Photograph: Job Centre Plus by Andrew Writer (License) (Cropped)

In the breakdown of the Leave Campaign's victory in the Brexit referendum, and also that of Trump, the impact of globalisation has been afforded a central role. The shifting of work overseas, and only precarious opportunities at home, has fed fear and hostility.

Even a brief look at the political situation, as it stands in Europe and America, reveals that the main benefactors of the crisis have been anti-establishment populists and the Far Right nationalists and sectarians - from Grillo to Le Pen, from Spain to Eastern Europe.

With that in mind, the employment figures released by the government make interesting reading. The topline is, in a time of meagre of opportunities, likely to be praised: unemployment has fallen to a new low, as more people find a way into work.

But the headline covers up three important facts. First, that 15% of those in employment are self-employed (BBC, 2016). Second that, including the self-employed along with those on zero hours and in temporary jobs, some 20% depend upon precarious work (Booth, 2016). And third, social mobility has stalled in an increasingly tiered society, with the gap between the well-to-do and everyone else growing (Sellgren, 2016).

The impact of this shift has been to reduce the possibility of finding a secure and stable housing situation, career paths and job progression stall in the face of no opportunities, and in all, people can no longer expect to live a better life than their parent's generation.

Even with that damning assessment, the Tories have still found it possible to celebrate the shift towards ever more precarity (Stone, 2016). Damian Green, the Department of Work and Pensions secretary, called the shift away from stable hours, holiday pay, sick pay and pensions an exciting moment, praising the "gig economy" staffed by the "everyday entrepreneur".

The only possibility of finding excitement in these figures comes from an ideological viewpoint that reduces human life to little more than wage labour, and sees innovation only through the prism of strife, competition and exploitation - with social life, enjoyment, fulfilment or self-improvement as petty distractions.

But, as the rise of the Far Right is showing, people do not share that view. If work offers no rewards and doesn't lead anywhere, but to a never ending grind, then work is not a path to liberation but a prison. And that creates an opportunity for others to offer a way out - and to offer scapegoats.

People want more autonomy and elevating them, educating them and giving them more responsibility is idealism at its finest - but not at the cost of their basic life security. But nor should people have to cash in their autonomy, their liberty, in exchange for the promise of succour.

It is the job of progressives to offer a road on which stability and autonomy are wedded and sustainable. To build, not just an alternative view of the economy, but one that includes a path forward, with ongoing improvement of conditions and lessening of burdens built into it.

As the British Liberals of the 1920s put it:

"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."

The aim for progressives must be to have an economy that serves people, not the other way around, and works towards their liberation.

Jeremy Hunt is playing dangerously with escalation in dispute with Doctors over future of NHS as he imposes contracts

Junior doctors and supporters gathered outside the Manchester Royal Infirmary on 10th February, during the latest 24 hour junior doctors strike.

After months of wrangling, Jeremy Hunt has decided to impose contracts on junior doctors (Tran & Campbell, 2016). Hunt's decision came just an hour after the second major strike by Junior doctors, where strikers walked out for 24 hours in protest against extension of hours across the weekend (Triggle, 2016).

Negotiations have been ongoing for months, but had broken down on Tuesday after what Hunt, the Conservative Health Secretary, called his 'final offer' had been rejected (Campbell, 2016). Accusations were also flying that all parties had agreed an alternative deal in principle, only for Hunt to veto it (Stone, 2016).

Imposing the contract could easily further inflame an already controversial situation. Public opinion has been firmly on the side of the junior doctors strikes (Stone, 2016{2}), with Hunt being seen as personally culpable for the ongoing action called by the BMA - the British Medical Association, the doctor's trade union.

What Hunt may be counting on is that, in the initial phase, doctor's will have little choice but to put up and begrudgingly acquiesce. Then, to simply let the matter to blow over with time - gambling on the public having a short memory.

Yet the move could instead lead to escalation. So far the strikes have been 24 hours in duration and left emergency care intact. This move by the Health Secretary could push the opposition to longer strikes, with Healthcare provision reduced to a minimum, other medical professions walking in solidarity and larger public protests.

There have also been reports that the numbers of medical trainees have been dropping and that trained medical professionals have been moving abroad (El Sheika, 2016; Johnson, 2016). The BMA has been using these facts during the negotiations as leverage - and warning of a further exodus if unsafe conditions are extended.

However Hunt's move has called out doctors, expecting them to grumble but ultimately comply. Or may be for them to move into the private sector. There have been doubts about Hunt's commitment to a public, tax-funded NHS - the Health Secretary was a contributor to a book calling for a privatised health market in the UK (Stone, 2016{3}; El Gingihy, 2015).

The general feeling amongst Conservatives seems to be favourable towards a long term future of private sector solutions to social security. Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith won some agreement from Prime Minister David Cameron for the idea of, in essence, privatising sick pay and unemployment benefits by forcing people to pay into savings accounts or to buy social insurance as cover (Mason, 2015).

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has risked escalation with his latest move. The BMA says it will consider all options to continue the fight, against changes it believes to be dangerous to public health (Triggle, 2016{2}). Who blinks first matters. Most outcomes could likely be considered a win of some sort for the Conservatives - which shows the cleverness of the game they're playing.

But the game they're playing gambles with social security, the safety net that ensures the common good. In this big moment in the future of the NHS, the Conservatives are showing a ruthless side by pitting the NHS's future against the interests of medical professionals. Its a reckless game in pursuit of prices and profits, but which ignores value - and the fundamental social justice of universal public healthcare.

Crisis in the neoliberal economic system may not be a guaranteed springboard for a radical new economy, but it does signal the need to prepare a coherent alternative

With the world economy in seemingly constant crisis, progressives need to have a credible alternative ready. Photograph: Euro Bank Notes from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

Yesterday brought some gloomy economic news. The global economy is struggling, markets everywhere are slumping, and to all intents and purposes the great recession appears to be heading on into its eighth year (BBC, 2016). Not even a new low for unemployment in the UK could bring much cheer, as wages continue to stagnate (BBC, 2016{2}).

With 20% of Europe's young people unemployed (European Parliament, 2016) - as many as 50% in some cases and trapped by nearly a decade of slim to no opportunities - and with austerity cutting away at social security (Gaffney, 2013; Nielsen, 2014), it wouldn't be surprising for some on the Left to at least take in hope in the idea that the lack of return for all of the precariousness and the sacrifices might be a crisis in the making for the neoliberal order.

And yet, as Yanis Varoufakis has warned, a crisis is not so easily exploited by progressives (Varoufakis, 2015). In fact, they often play out at the expense of the Left. With the aims of the Left so often dependent upon the building of a social institutions - something taking time and public support - progressives can find themselves in the unenviable position of defending the establishment in the face more extreme populist positions.

So, building an alternative economy is not going to be accomplished overnight. Neoliberalism certainly wasn't (Ridley, 2016). It took decades, around a half century, of work and preparation for the neoliberal theorists to promote their cause to the mainstream.

That doesn't mean, however, that some of the work has not already been done. For the Left, the construction a new path has been bubbling away since at least the beginning of the great recession - almost a decade ago - and breakthroughs have been made.

In the past year, Syriza won two elections and a referendum as an opponent of the prevailing system (Mason & Skarlatos, 2015) - and even as they have been strangled and forced to concede endless ground their leader Alexis Tsipras continues to argue for the room to build something more inclusive and sustainable (Tsipras, 2016). Yanis Varoufakis, now the former Finance Minister of Greece, has become a figurehead for the European Left for the way in which he stood against the austerian establishment.

In Spain, the 15M Indignados movement has taken just two years to launch the Podemos party and become a real presence of the national scene (Jones, 2015). In the last year it has won control of some major cities with its municipalist ideas, becoming an inspiration for movements across Europe (Gutierrez Gonzalez, 2016).

Also of note is that in Utrecht (Perry, 2015), in the Netherlands, and in Finland (Unkuri, 2015), trials are being rolled out to test the merits of the Basic Income. An idea that could erase poverty and bring some salve to those suffering caused by the precariousness of the times, the Basic Income is an important idea whose time has come.

There has also, of course, been the rise of Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum within the Labour Party (Mason, 2015). Corbyn is faced with plenty of struggles with his own parliamentarians and with the mainstream media. Yet his ideas have led to a huge upsurge of engagement with the Labour Party that represents - regardless of whether it is enough to win a national majority - the emergence of a significant voter base for radical democrats in the UK.

As elsewhere in the world, much like how Spain's Podemos was born from the Indignados, this base of voters has been brewing and coalescing in the UK since the Occupy movement launched its protests around the world in 2011. Occupy saw individuals and groups coming together, organising themselves, in a massive show of civil disobedience.

All of these elements carry with them ideas and theories about how the world might alternatively be constructed. Yet so far they have been, not to sound disparaging, just protests or singular parties, isolated in the mainstream.

The next step is overdue. A part of it is coming from Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, in a move that seems like something New Labour's masters of spin should have come up with a decade ago. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell is taking his rockstar economists, assembled in October as an anti-austerity economics advisory body, on the road to debate and promote the building of a new economy.

Another part will come from in the not too far future with the launch of Varoufakis' movement for rebuilding democracy in Europe in February (Wingard, 2016). As he has been keen to stress, the next step has to include the building of a broad movement, bringing together many ideas, across the whole of Europe (Varoufakis, 2016; Varoufakis & Sakalis, 2015) - on the same scale as globalised neoliberalism also functions.

To topple a broken and unequal system in a time of crisis may not be more than a romantic Left-wing notion. But the stumbling of neoliberalism, from crisis to crisis, makes it essential to put together the various threads of thought into a coherent proposal that is ready to step up when neoliberal thinking finally runs of credibility.

From the basic income to the reduction of full time hours, a living wage to a living rent, municipalism to community energy, there are many elements that could fit together and complement each other. The job ahead is to construct that bigger picture and start showing it to the world.