Easter Recess: Time to take stock and give thought to rising uncertainty

Uncertainty is the new reality. With it comes rising anxiety and the prioritising of gain over wellbeing.

It's the Parliamentary Easter Recess and that means a chance to take a breath, and take stock of the present political situation. In short, uncertainty is fast becoming the new definition of life in Britain.

The formal process of Brexit has begun with the triggering of Article 50, which means the scramble to define the new UK-EU trade relationship has begun. The bill repealing EU laws, and replacing them with UK equivalents, has been announced in a white paper. And, another round of welfare cuts are set to begin.

Each of these, in their own way, is contributing to the rising sense of precarity. Each is serving to shape everyday life, and the grander framework it functions within, around the idea of uncertainty - and it is a deliberate ideological project.

Take for example the most pressing of these, the welfare cuts. Up until now, welfare cuts have been focussed on those at the very bottom, who have little voice and who the right-wing press demands be afforded little sympathy.

However, these latest cuts are going to thrust deep into the soft belly of the middle class. Restrictions to child benefit, to bereavement benefits, and to working age benefits will have real impacts even on people who have so far managed to skirt the impact of austerity (Butler & Asthana, 2017).

From those with a disability to young people, there is something in these changes that is, directly or indirectly, going to affect everyone (Cowburn, 2017). The safety net is being disassembled and the Conservatives are justifying it as a way to 'encourage' people 'back to work'.

The white paper for the so called 'Great Repeal Bill' - a name of unlimited pomposity - has only added fuel to the fire. Human rights groups, like Liberty, have already expressed deep concern at tremendous gaps it found in the paper (Liberty, 2017).

A particular controversy lies with the bill granting the government 'secondary legislation' powers - in theory, the executive power to implement and administer what is required by the primary legislation - over matters being transferred from EU supervision (Owen, 2017).

Critics are warning that this provision risks handing the government the ability to sidestep Parliament in altering legislation (Fowles, 2017). At the least, it will allow the government to shape and direct aspects of the law without proper oversight - a power of huge potential.

Those concerns will be hard to assuage, because the final bill will be so long and dense - "one of the largest legislative projects ever undertaken in the UK" (BBC, 2017). It could take years of Parliamentary time to scrutinise and this government has shown itself to be neither that patient nor transparent.

Conservatism, whatever Theresa May wants to preach about the return of Unionism, has long since given itself over wholly to an aggressive form of laissez-faire capitalism - and the sharpest lesson of that ideology is the belief that growth is achieved by rewarding energy and dynamism and punishing the 'idle' (George & Wilding, 1994).

In other words, to promote limited precarious rewards, directly at the expense of assurance. Through coercive uncertainty, to build profit on the back of anxiety - mistaking gain and accumulation for progress.

And understanding that should make any observer take a pause, consider and ask: what kind of trade deals the Conservatives are willing to drop the EU and the single market in order to negotiate?

The Conservative long term plan is now nearly fully realised. Uncertainty is the new reality. For an increasing number of people that means the life precarious, filled with anxiety about tomorrow, so some few other can exploit them.

Housing White Paper: Government looks only to patch over the Housing Crisis

Last week the government released its "fixing our broken housing market" white paper, with which it promised reforms that would fight market failures with radical measures.

Radical measures are certainly needed. Britain is in the midst of a housing crisis, were the poor and young are excluded, from both ownership and rental, by housing shortages and by what effectively amounts to a self-enriching cartel.

In terms of the shortage, Shelter have said that the gap between housing need and supply is around 150,000 a year, with some estimates putting the shortfall over the past twenty years at 2.5m (Griffiths & Jefferys, 2013; Halligan, 2017).

In his statement, acknowledging that the house price to average income ratios have gone up from 3.5 to 7.5 in the past twenty years, including under the Coalition, Communities Minister Sajid Javid told the House that the government recognised that the drain on people's income that housing - even rental - had become was a huge barrier to social progress (Javid, 2017).

But the excuses crept in quickly: claims that Labour didn't build enough and councils have ducked decisions and don't plan properly. There were also promises, of transparency, of faster construction, of coordinated public investments, to encourage greater innovation by opening the building market beyond the ten companies that build 60% of homes.

Renters were also paid some attention. Javid promised to promote longer-term tenancies, to tackle unfair terms and to improve safeguards - on top of the previous promises to ban agent's fees.

Now, there are two levels of critique for holding a government white paper to account. The first is the thing it promises. Does it contain a good policy? The second is delivery. Does the government have a record of following through and will it do so this time?

As with the government's prized right-to-buy scheme, the government's white paper does not seem to be offering solutions sufficient to deal with the full scale of the problem, although the government at least seems to recognise that there is a serious problem (Easton, 2017). There are some positive steps - if there is follow through. But it all seems like wallpapering over the cracks.

Meanwhile, the government seems content to continue feeding the beast. As when it chose to drain social housing to make up its for sale housing numbers, now it seems intent to just keep things afloat a little longer - build a few more houses, a bit more quickly, with a bit more market competition - and leave the new ideas to someone else.

All of this just shovels more of the UK's precious resources into an extremely greedy fire - as demonstrated by the government pitching houses costing £250,000, even after discounts, for households with combined incomes under £90,000, as 'affordable homes' (BBC, 2017).

As for delivery? In the past six years in office, the house price to average income ratio has continued to grow and the overall increase in housing costs have been extreme (Full Fact, 2015). Waiting lists for social housing remain long and even rental costs, both private and social, are becoming unsustainable.

During the Labour dominated late 1990s and 2000s, house building was usually between 150,000-200,000, falling to between 100,000-150,000 in the later art of the decade before the Conservatives came to office.

The Conservatives made no promises on housebuilding in 2010 and didn't break that pattern. In 2014 there were 125,000 new homes. By 2016, a corner had perhaps been turned. Javid claimed 190,000 were built last year. However, homelessness has also risen sharply, under the impact of private rents and cut to welfare support (BBC, 2017{2}).

In 2015 the Conservatives promised around 475,000 new homes by 2020 - of which about 55,000 a year were to be affordable homes and 40,000 a year were to be starter homes (CPA, 2015). Yet the number of households, by the government's own statistics, is set to rise by more than double their promised housebuilding targets (Full Fact, 2015). And the promised ban on agent's fees has yet to materialise (Collinson & Elgot, 2017).

Neither David Cameron's ministry nor Theresa May's have acted decisively on housing. Both governments plans patched things over and kept just enough houses in circulation on property markets to keep key property owning voters happy.

The reality is that a Conservative government cannot deal with the essential problem: that a cartel of property owners, developers and investors can only justify obscene investments with ever increasing property values and rents - that are utterly unsustainable.

How can a Conservative say no to these people? Well-to-do home owners, profit-making businesses and financial investors? That is basically a list of the key Conservative supporters. So for now, all there will be is a white paper to patch things up.