It’s the stupid economy

It’s high time I expanded on my hints about Britain living in the worst of both worlds politically, socially and economically.  I previously mentioned it when discussing drugs (everything is theoretically illegal, but the negligible risk of punishment for dealers is greatly outweighed by the financial opportunities, so organised crime flourishes) and the railways (nationalised risk, privatised reward).  But it occurred to me that the idea is much more widely applicable: consider almost any major area of policy, and I dare you not to conclude that we would be better off with a truly conservative, socialist, libertarian, or liberal system – rather than the unpopular populism of the Third Way.

We have an enormous, wasteful public sector, mazes of bureaucracy, high income taxes that are exclusively used to fund a huge welfare state – and huge, growing inequality and declining social mobility.  Why not take the bottom fifth or so out of tax altogether, and scrap the Byzantine tax credits system?  Bankers take reckless risks safe in the knowledge the state will bail them out if it comes to that, which it has: the meltdown wouldn’t have happened under either a properly regulated or a properly laissez faire system, but was the logical consequence, again, of private reward and public risk.  We send more people to prison than any other European country, but generally let them out after a stretch just long enough to teach our legions of petty neds the rudiments of real crime: better to reverse this situation and keep the prisons free for serious and violent offenders to spend the rest of their lives in; this government has been tough neither on crime – beyond headline-grabbing gimmicks – nor its causes.  We’re happy to start wars, but fight them on the cheap: as Cicero said, “There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me properly.”  We invite the huddled masses to flock to our shores and prop up our economy while five million adults in Britain sit at home, then offer immigrants every incentive not to work and integrate.  The rich can still buy a good education for their children, but the war on academic selection – in the name of social justice – leaves the bright poor at the bottom forever.  And we have a state-funded broadcaster, which insists on competing with commercial outlets in a ratings race to the bottom.

On each of these issues, Britain exists in a sorry state of compromise between left and right, where either alternative would be preferable: the legacy of Thatcher choosing to fight on economic grounds and abandon social matters to the liberal left.  The political, media and business elite thrives in this corrupt space.  The middle classes – and that vanishing breed, the respectable, aspirational working class – pay for the fecklessness of the overclass and the underclass, both of which behave with utter selfishness, both safe in their status quo under New Labour.  Surely no-one who is either progressive or conservative can be happy with our current mess.  Does anyone else out there wish we could just settle on one coherent philosophy or the other – or at least elect politicians with the ability and decency to pluck the best aspects from both?

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Wrong side of the tracks

On the 10th anniversary of devolution, I find myself in agreement with a new poll on the Scottish Parliament, which suggests most Scots want Holyrood to have complete control over tax and spending but want Westminster to retain foreign and defence policy.  Like others who were suspicious at first, and initially felt vindicated by the fiasco of the building and the quality of its politicians, I’ve gradually shifted my position from seeing the Parliament as a threat to an opportunity.  To have power over income and expenditure – to spend only as much as we can collectively raise – would force Scotland into the fiscal maturity that’s eluded us so far.  At a time of general austerity, the private sector is squeezed to fund a public sector more extensive than the Iron Curtain’s.  Across the UK, state spending accounts for approximately 40% of the economy; in Argyll and Clyde, it is 76%.  No doubt Salmond understands this, but what’s become of his bonfire of the quangos?  And how can anyone who calls himself a socialist (as most people round here still do) accept a situation whereby, as in Glasgow, a third of the working age population don’t work, many of whom never have and never will?  The Soviets certainly wouldn’t have put up with that.  Only with fiscal independence – in this case, literally non-dependence – can we begin to tackle this tragic disgrace.

On the question of foreign and defence policy: I can see the argument for Scotland having a seat at the top table in Brussels, but joining the Euro would mean a net loss of independence and sovereignty.  As Rothschild said: “Give me control of a nation’s money supply, and I care not who makes its laws.”  If the SNP leadership changes its policy on this, I’d have a lot of thinking to do if and when the question of independence is ever put to a referendum.

As a Scotsman who travels to London for work every month, my ears pricked up when I heard that the government are removing National Express’ franchise and taking the East Coast Main Line back into public ownership, at least temporarily.  The service and punctuality on the line are pretty good, though it has become a lot more expensive since National Express took over from GNER.  This is because of the ridiculous system whereby companies outbid each other to win the right to run profitable lines, squeezing passengers to fund these bids to the government, whilst being subsidised by the government to run other lines at a loss, and to pay infrastructure fees to Network Rail, which is publicly owned anyway.  This is privatisation for its own sake, and the whole mess shows the folly of treating the railways like any other market.  The government has no business running telecoms companies or airlines, say, because private operators can offer consumers alternatives, but public services like train lines should remain public because, in most cases, they are the only way to get from one town to another without driving.  The expansion of car travel has been as much of a disaster for this country as the decline of rail travel: in the cost to our natural and built environment, the cost to our economy of utterly misallocated resources, and in the decline in social capital and cohesion.  Time for a radical government to reverse the situation: stop building new roads, start pricing road use, renationalise all the railway lines, and start reopening ones the butcher Beeching closed.

Before anyone points it out, I’m aware of the irony of calling for a smaller public sector to intervene and renationalise a large industry.  But as I’ve said before, we live in the worst of both worlds: the public sector is overmanned generally, and there are plenty of things the government are doing which they should stay out of, but plenty of things (like a truly integrated transport and environmental strategy) that they’re completely neglecting.

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