We need leadership willing to challenge austerity agenda

For this is not the first time we have heard such a message from a British prime minister. In fact, we are sold the same line, on what feels like some kind of doom loop: pain now, then things might get better. Except, the pain doesn’t seem to end, and things don’t seem to get any better.

I remember giving out leaflets for an anti-austerity demonstration back in 2011. One man stopped and said he disagreed. He was willing to endure the cuts, if it meant finances could be stabilised, and his son could have a better future. Not an outlandish thing to say, at one level. But I wonder what he thinks today, as his son is being told the same thing he was all those years ago. Hopeless.

It is even too much for Professor Danny Blanchflower, a relatively mild-mannered economist of centrist disposition. “Pretty sad that Keir Starmer seems unable to give any hope for Britain’s future,” he says. “What is the point? Why not just focus on fixing the NHS, child poverty and cleaning up the water and getting enough mental health folks to deal with the swelling mental health crisis of the young? Now.”

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Starmer’s approach is disconnected with the reality millions of people face in their daily lives. As are his ministers who appear hapless in media interviews. Take Lucy Powell, who argued that cutting the Winter Fuel Payment simply had to be done, otherwise the whole economy might have come tumbling down: “If we didn’t, we would have seen the markets losing confidence, potentially a run on the pound, the economy crashing, and the people who pay the heaviest price when the economy crashes are the poorest in society.”

So let’s get this straight. A government minister, after months on end offering the promise of “change”, makes the case for cutting a vital lifeline for some of the country’s most vulnerable citizens, by saying that what she is really doing (yes, really, readers!) is protecting those most in need. If there is a logic there, it certainly involves Olympian levels of mental gymnastics.

And that’s before we get to the economic illiteracy of the argument. “No, there would not have been a run on the pound if the government had decided against freezing a few more pensioners to death this winter,” writes economist James Meadway. “It’s £1.4 billion from a budget of £1200bn.” But let’s play along with this hypothesis for a second and just ask the question: what kind of a society are we building, if keeping pensioners warm is so vexing to “the market” that the result can only be to produce a wholesale crash in the economy, with capital fleeing the country?

This is the sort of question that might be asked in a truly functioning democracy. But we don’t have interventionist political leaders, able to counterbalance the interests of the money markets and big business with those of the citizens they supposedly represent. These are simply managers, or administrators, for implementing a failed economic dogma. Such is the retreat of the working-class movement, the orthodoxies of the market are largely unchallenged and unchecked.

As Clara Mattei, author of The Capital Order, writes, austerity is, “one-sided class warfare, led by the state and its economic experts and aimed at refurbishing the capital order in moments when it is crumbling. As a political project, austerity is in fact the most rational way to safeguard capitalism: it structurally disempowers workers by increasing precariousness and market dependence.”

The semi-religious approach to economics and the primacy of market forces extends across the political spectrum. Nigel Farage might like to pose as an “anti-establishment” friend of the working class, yet he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and not just because of his racially charged brand of right-wing populism. But also because he is a Thatcherite to the core of his being, supporting every conceivable form of privatisation including of the NHS, and a Trussite approach to government spending and tax.

And while the SNP oppose unpopular policies which involve austerity, they seem quite content to pass through swingeing cuts without much in the way of resistance, barring a few standard and well-worn press lines about it all being Westminster’s fault.

(Image: Getty)

Of course, this is some truth to that. But it is not good enough simply to say this, then fold your arms and unleash further ruination on Scotland’s people. Especially if independence is a distant dream. After all, the SNP agreed the new Fiscal Framework with Westminster which set the economic framework for the disastrous situation we now find ourselves in, with services being stripped back to the bone.

And where is the creativity and radical approach to overcoming austerity utilising what powers are available? In the words of Alex Neil: “Instead of making cuts, the Scottish Government should impose an emergency land tax on all the big estates in Scotland.” You can make a very safe bet that the SNP will not pursue this kind of thinking. Why? Because as much as the party claims to oppose austerity, it is as beholden to the credo of the market as Keir Starmer is. Even to the extent that their own prospectus for independence would leave the Bank of England in complete control of monetary policy for an indefinite period of time.

So, independence or not, do not expect the SNP to do anything concrete to oppose austerity. Yes, there will be soundbites and rhetoric. But we need action, and real leadership able to take risks – and yes, willing to be unpopular with the corporate and financial establishment. This is simply not in ideological John Swinney’s toolkit, as indeed it was absent from Nicola Sturgeon’s at the height of her powers, where she could have implemented sweeping social democratic reforms. In the end, working-class Scots will have to develop their own organisations to repel the continuous attacks on their communities, services and living conditions.

After a long period of brutal cuts, and as the fabric of society stretches at the seams, no more can be accepted. And no politician, of any hue, should be allowed to implement them without opposition. Hope must be built.