Employment isn't a simple matter - the numbers hide complex picture of poverty, precarity and the need for opportunity

The government's favourite fallback when criticised is to turn to the employment figures. Theresa May pulled the figures out at last week's PMQs, saying that she noticed the opposition leader hadn't raised the subject with her.

But the government's excitement about those figures is hard to square with the reality of life in this economy for ordinary workers.

The fact that the dominant corporate culture in Britain sees it as a viable strategy to lay off thousands of workers in 'restructuring', explains a lot about how most of the people in poverty in Britain can be in work - suffering in poverty despite having paying jobs.

Employment may be high, but big questions remain about the quality of employment. Retail may not be work that produces the greatest satisfaction, but it does provide opportunities for those who need them most - like a ladder to management experience and the stability that can provide.

The latest threat to that slender social mobility ladder is the restructuring happening at Tesco, where unions are afraid that as many of 15,000 jobs are going to be cut, some two dozen per store - more job losses at the firm, that follow on from some ten thousand others lost in the last four years.

Uncertainty and precarity are becoming the norm. Average wages remain below what they were in 2010. Income equality in Britain continues to decline. And amidst these pressures, the welfare safety net has been diminished. This is the pattern that lies hidden behind the employment figures.

Over time, of course employment won't stay the same. Some kinds of work will disappear and others will replace them. Perhaps, over time, work itself will change beyond recognition - to no longer be the 'work to live' system we are familiar with. But it will change.

It isn't good enough for Conservatives to preach innovation, to preach flexibility. That approach is leaving people with no stability and rising anxiety. Trapped in a precarious working life that isn't rewarding people. There has to be a better way.

Brexit looms, hovering menacingly over everything, threatening to diminish workers rights and job security, ordinary people need reassurances about the future. The old ladders to prosperity for working class people are being kicked down.

It's no good talking up the figures when thousands are facing layoffs. What people need is to be able to depend upon practical support when they lose work, and the same as they try to develop the skills to find a new path forward. To know that there are paths they can take, opportunities for a stable life.

That means more intervention and more guidance. More communication, to let people know where the paths are and what people will need on those roles. This is only the beginning of what is needed, but in a time of crisis you have to deal with the emergency first.

The disappearance of high street retail jobs hurts working class most, taking away crucial ladder to opportunities

In the year 2000, the European Union issued it's Lisbon Strategy.The plan, under then President of the European Commission Romano Prodi, was to prepare Europe for the 'knowledge economy', in which the continent was to be the skill and knowledge centre for the world.

The advance of technology on the high street is part of what that strategy was preparing for - to transition to a position where low skill work was done by machines, giving people more time, education and training needed  to prepare for more technical and high skilled work.

The problem across Europe, including here in Britain, is that the expansion of skills, education and the opportunities to exploit them - necessary to making this transition work for the working class - hasn't happened.

Low skill work is going away, but it's loss is only hindering the working class. In the past year alone in Britain, twenty two thousand high street retail jobs have been cut. Many more are planned. With them, crucially, goes job and income security for the working class.

And it's not just shop floor work. Management positions are being lost too. With them goes the ladder that working class people could, in the past, have climbed towards greater opportunities with more responsibility and higher pay - the entry level access point to a well paying career.

Now. The decline of any particular market sector is not, by itself, a disaster - so long as opportunities for people to make a living continue to appear to offset the losses of security of work & income, and that ladder to opportunity.

However, the stats do not look great. While unemployment is at a forty year low, working poverty is high. Child poverty is high. Precarious work is high. Security of income is under threat at a time when pay has not yet recovered from the long post-2008 slump.

Moving to a knowledge economy is the right direction. But only if it takes working class people with it. Abolishing entry level work to reduce corporate bottom lines at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable is despicable.

Without a framework of education and training, and a responsive social security network - built around a reliable means of making a living and a flexible income guarantee for a volatile, and frequently 'gig' oriented, economy - the transition becomes a step backward, techology in the hands of business again reducing people rather than elevating them.

And elevation is the point. Liberation is the point. If technology is not going to free us, increasing our capacities and opportunities, then what is the point of it?

Tories finally return to an Energy Price Cap with measure that is tentative first step on road to easing cost of living burden for many

Photograph: Twilight power lines from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

Finally, a piece of domestic legislation from the government emerges. After a year of prevaricating, the government's promised energy price cap seems to have at last begun it's journey through Parliament.

The energy price cap had been a feature of the Conservative manifesto at the last election, but was jettisoned along with most of their agenda in the aftermath - sacrificed on the Brexit altar.

The opposition has been pressing the government of late to return to the measure. There are many households burdened by the high cost of living and any help extended to them is to be welcomed - and hopefully that is what the Domestic Gas and Electricity Bill will do.

The government had chosen to pursue a less interventionist, less confrontational, approach in the form of promoting how customers could switch tariffs and companies to get a better deal. But customers just weren't playing the markets.

So, with prices continuing to rise more than wages, squeezing households month on month, the government has been forced to take action to tackle the cost of living. But it won't be an easy sell to either the energy industry or to all Conservatives.

When the Tories first announced their interest in a energy price cap, the government's approach was to follow the system for capping pre-payment - with a maximum figure, an absolute cap, based on the lowest regional price that is reviewed biannually.

Energy firms have already expressed discontent. When the layoff of two thousand workers in Britain was announced, Centrica blamed them on the impending prospect of a price cap. Others have been calling for any cap to have 'headroom' to allow competition.

Such arguments are accompanied by the opinion of right-wing think tanks like the IEA, who argue a price cap will give minimal help to those who don't switch, end the benefit that switchers get, and entrench the Big Six - who benefit from the support of government subsidies - at the expense of their smaller competitors.

The progressive view on energy costs anchors on the essential nature of energy - along with other utilities like water. People simply cannot live without their utility supply. That creates an easily exploitable monopoly that must be closely monitored - at the least.

However, there isn't always agreement on how to actually run these services among progressives. But there are plenty who are unconvinced by either extreme - nationalised or privatised. Making switching suppliers easier and capping prices is a sort of middle ground.

So too is the Corbyn-era Labour proposal, to reconstitute municipal and regional public run - whether by cooperatives, non-profits or local authorities - utility companies to establish a basic, baseline affordable supply for everyone to compete with the corporate Big Six.

With Theresa May's admiration for Joseph Chamberlain, she should have little consternation at the prospect of municipal services. As the mayor of Birmingham, he was among the pioneers of local government as an active participant in improving the services for local people.

And for all the arguing back and forth, there is a lot of common ground between Labour and the Conservatives here. In fact, the Tories have pretty much adopted the policy wholesale from Ed Miliband, who had campaigned hard for an energy price freeze.

For this reason, when it comes down to it, the Domestic Gas and Electricity Bill may have a quick passage through Parliament - with the govt able to rely on opposition support to fend off any backbench concerns about interfering with markets.

What is clear is that households are under a lot of pressure - not least those forced to pay upfront for utilities because of poor credit scores. This situation just reinforces the absurd debt-traps that surround those with insecure work and low pay.

Drastic reductions in the price of a basic supply of energy is one move. Making that permanently available through a municipal energy supplier would be a complimentary second. A third would be removing the credit score entry qualifications, to help people get away from expensive, exploitative, pay upfront deals.

Pay caps may very well not be a long term solution. But the more pressing concern is to, on every front possible, unpick the nets cast into the churning water surrounding the poorest and most vulnerable.

The reality of austerity Britain: work and life are now poor, precarious and uncertain

People gather in Manchester to march against austerity past the Conservative Party Conference 2017.

The reality of the Tories' austerity Britain was exposed in the figures released last week. Those figures revealed that wage growth remains poor at 2.2%, barely above pre-crash levels and falling behind consumer prices rises, with inflation now at 2.9%.

But what do these figures tell us about the big picture of austerity Britain?

Consider Theresa May's response when confronted on issues like poor wages - unemployment is falling. Whenever the PM is confronted, she turns to the unemployment/employment figures. The trouble is, you can't just say that employment is in itself a fix.

Especially when it evidentially isn't the case. Britain might have it's highest recorded employment and lowest unemployment, but what do we know about the quality of life that is providing? What we know, is that working poverty is now very high.

There is no essential truth that employment fixes people's problems or empowers them. Work can only bring liberty under certain conditions.

And austerity Britain is a land of precarity, where social security has been replaced with - or perhaps, outsourced to - uncertain and scarce low paid work. All of which is now threatened by automation, and pits ordinary people against each other in long applicant lists.

This is only heightened by the flaming wreckage of the welfare system. People in need are left without support, and in mounting arrears, for a month and a half when claim out of work support - a situation the government are struggling to even convince there own party to support.

Inevitably, Brexit comes into this. It is important that the ideological case behind leaving the European Union was never made clear. But it's argument for 'freer trade' and less regulation, is a pitch to go further down the road on which we currently travel - to a place of permanently less surety or stability.

But why would those who have campaigned so hard for Brexit want this?

Pete North, Editor of LeaveHQ, blogged how - what he himself described as - the long, painful years of austerity still to come, will in fact be a price worth paying (by ordinary people whose lives would be left in tatters) to accomplish a kind of vague social change, that displayed for more ignorance about young people than any comprehensive thought on the subject.

The governments of David Cameron and Theresa May have pledged a more compassionate conservatism, that takes care of those most in need, while being responsible with the public finances. They have been failures on both fronts.

None of their measures have delivered on even one of these aims. The debt continues to climb. Meeting deficit targets is still delayed. All the pain of austerity and ordinary lives dropped in uncertainty, and the government has nothing to show for it - neither in the public finances or in producing a compassionate society.

Seven years of Conservative government has been a diastrous experiment. It's time to get off this road and find a new way forward.

Pay Cap: Hammond focus on 'overpaid' public sector workers is just a distraction from Tories failing those in private sector

Photograph: NATO Summit Wales 2014 by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (License) (Cropped)

After a month of being pummelled over the issue, the Chancellor Philip Hammond tried to reframe the issue of public sector pay cap debate. The core of Hammond's approach was to draw a comparison.

That comparison says that workers in the public sector have it good compared to what those in the private sector were dealing with. Don't be fooled. The Tory angle on public sector pay is a distraction. One that covers for the party's failure to deliver for private sector workers.

In the private sector, low pay and precarity prevail. Working poverty is a reality in 2017.

And the Tories response is to using poor conditions in the private sector to justify undermining conditions in the public sector. And, in time, be sure that pitting workers against one another in envy will be turned back to the further diminishing of the conditions of those in the private sector.

The Conservatives do continue to speak of these restraints on pay, and low pay, as if they are temporary. A part of a restructuring process. But their intended solutions stink of permanence or a lack of vision that narrows their view to piecemeal policy solutions.

For instance, when Justine Greening, the Education Minister, addressed a social mobility conference. She told them that the government's plan was to tailor education towards giving people the high-level skills they needed to achieve their own advancement.

She promised a meritocracy. A system that rewarded hard work with advancement.

But that pledge is belied by the economy under the Tories. Yes, unemployment is down according to statistics (with some glaring flaws). But it isn't a coincidence that unemployment is down while self-employment, second jobs and precarity are all on the rise.

It is something that can be seen clearest in those places where Thatcher's dismantlement of the public sector industries hit hardest. Having skills and the will to work hard isn't enough. Social mobility begins with money. With huge, long term investment.

It isn't enough to pursue personal empowerment, expanding knowledge and skills, if they're are rendered impotent by their environment. Putting achievement down to personal work ethic is an evasion. An excuse not to reform. There can be no piecemeal solutions.

Only holistic, joined up approaches will make a difference. Only coordinating trade unions and worker's rights, a universal welfare settlement that counters precarity, and tackling the cost of living - and many other aspects - will address the deep problems in Britain.

And the Conservatives that have shown this is not, and will not, be their approach. To them, it appears, the struggle - held at bay by 'dependence creating' community support - carries a moral worth.

The world of work is changing. Perhaps even making towards its end. For progressives, an ideology that praises an anxious, desperate struggle for being a test of moral character is not a safe framework for ushering in that future.

It is even less so in the hands of a party that excuses how it has failed private sector workers by stirring up discontent with public sector workers - and who wish to further deconstruct safety nets even as working poverty spreads still in 2017.

Hammond's distraction just papers over the cracks. Punitive action against public sector workers does nothing to improve the conditions in the private sector. The problems of the day call for progressive solutions, with long term investment backing efforts to fight anxiety and build far more life security into working life.

Working Poverty is appallingly high and social care is in a funding crisis - the 'Big Society' was a cloak stolen by a wolf

David Cameron deftly altered the image of the Conservatives and his success has left us with a society in crisis. Photograph: Prime Minister David Cameron - official photograph by Number 10 (License) (Cropped)

Under David Cameron and George Osborne, the Conservative Party worked hard to change its image. With Labour in power, and getting very comfortable within the establishment, they sought to present themselves as warm and compassionate with just a light fondness for tradition.

Part of that 'compassion' was to roll back the 'nanny state' - to stop big government looking over people's shoulders. The counterpoint was to instead get society, out of charitable and philanthropic instincts, to pull together and support each other in their own communities.

But the 'Big Society' disappeared quickly. But then it had already served its purpose, as the sheep's clothing for the wolf - just the latest in fashionable lines, taken from progressives, that the Right had shrouded itself in to slip unnoticed amongst the livestock.

And if anyone still believed in the Conservative vision, after years of austerity had stripped their community of libraries and investment in roads, schools and healthcare, and left social care in a near terminal crisis (Triggle, 2016), recent reports should dispel the illusion.

The most recent damning report is that of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which reported that seven million people in Britain suffer from working poverty (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2016). That means that, despite earning an income in work, these people are still unable to make ends meet.

More than any of the other reports, working poverty is the most damning betrayal of the promises of Conservatives, and of neoliberalism. The basic promise, that hard work will bring reward, that will people will gain on merit, has been broken.

Conservatives, neoliberals, the purveyors of 'free' markets and small government - they sell privatisation with a promise: with no government restraining or filtering, there will be innovation, and the entrepreneurial will be allowed to get ahead, to take what they are merited.

But the 'Big Society' brand, the promises of liberty, conceal a darker reality. They neatly package selfish individualism for sale by disguising what it brings with it: disconnect, loneliness and isolation. Consider that, even as work is delivering poor rewards, the job centres are facing closures (BBC, 2016).

As a demonstration of how much it is being put upon any one person to carry the weight of their own obstacles, the closure of job centres is illuminating. People are being cut off from one another, with little power or means to change their situation. Merit, it seems, requires an inheritance to get started.

Conservatives and neoliberals want to package this as 'liberty' and 'individualism', but that's only half of the story. Their liberty is negative liberty, believing only in removing barriers. What that won't address is the crushing inequality that goes untouched, except by charitable disposition - something that itself comes under attack by the deeply conservative notion of neoliberal individualism. How can charity flourish amidst an a conception of the individual that is hierarchical and dependent upon competition, selfishness and greed?

The impact of the neoliberal and conservative ideologies is destructive. They're reducing society to a mad scramble that turns communities first against each other, and then inwards upon themselves, as individuals must put aside their social bonds to pursue their own interests.

But in fighting that destructive impact, in undoing the pain caused by the neoliberal ideology, that glorifies selfishness, we mustn't give up or suppress individuality. In fact, it would be a sore loss to give over individuality to an ideology that reduces it to little more than greedy consumption and extraction.

Individuality can be so much more. Instead, a social fabric needs to be woven in which individuals live ever with the support and cooperation of others. Where people realise the fullness of themselves in collaboration with others, rather than competition with them. A positive liberty, that raises people up as well as removes the obstacles from their path.

Conservatism, as it represents the establishment, has ever kept itself relevant by gobbling up the language of progressives, turning the words of hope into tools for their own designs. Individuality becomes selfishness, community becomes sectarianism, the balance and moderation of civic republicanism becomes a 'centre' captured and dragged ever to the Right.

We have to stop handing sheep's clothing to the wolves. We have to stop letting conservatism take our words and twist them. Ideals, art and culture are created by and belong to the 99% - the 1% just exploits them for profit. We must fight for every word.