What is the Labour Party, if not a moral crusade? What are we for, if not to stand up and fight for those who cannot stand for themselves? Without our key causes at heart – fairness, equality and community – there is no point to the Labour Party.
Why then, are we not fighting with all our strength to challenge and dispel the Tory narrative? Conservative ideals and values caused this crisis, yet it has been spun into an issue of public spending. By allowing this to happen, Labour has betrayed not only our beliefs, but our backbone too. Every low paid public sector worker, unemployed young person or single parent has had this crash slammed onto their shoulders, and Labour's defence of ordinary people, our core, this country's core, is no where to be seen. Let's ignore briefly the economic injustice of the cutting the debt away, and see the social strife it will foster. I ask you, is it fair, or even true, when low paid and low status people in our society are blamed for not trying, not working, not learning and now somehow being the cause of Britain's economic problems? Hypocrisy that makes you want to get out on the streets and shout at the injustice of it. How can self belief and a confidence to learn or work ever be built if every day another attack against trade unions, young people or job seekers is launched?
The debt has got to go, it's fatuous to deny it. Involving such huge sums, it's easy to just panic and start slashing and burning public expenditure. Is this the right way to do it? No. Talk about the risks to economic recovery all you like, the social ills heaped upon us will simply not be worth it. I cannot quite explain how utterly wrong it is for working people to lose their livelihoods, families to be pushed into poverty and young people to lose the education they deserve, purely because a tiny group of international speculators demand some sort of demonstration that the government cares more about credit ratings than community breakdown.
Look for one moment at what cutting away our services will do. For every incremental step taken with the last government, we're now waiting for the great stumble backwards. When the Tories came out with the big society, I was as shocked as anyone else that they'd thought up something sensible; community empowerment is more important than ever. But how is the big society supposed to flourish merely by withdrawing the state? A slow retreat is needed to encourage participation and gradually take power out of the hands of the state and put it into the hands of society. Sudden abandonment isn't going to foster engagement, is it? Here in B&NES, as one example, the youth service is being hacked away at, and who's left to foster in young people a desire to help out in their communities? No, really, that's a genuine question, because I have no idea who's supposed to step in.
The state is not necessarily a force for good. A vacuum of institutions and stability is necessarily a force for leaving people out in the cold. I almost wrote that my village, me even, will be fine in the face of the cuts – but that's not true. What about the pensioners who rely on government funded workers coming to help, what about my next two years in a sixth form that will be losing money, what about my sisters in the lower school, at a crucial stage of their education? Little cuts hurt a lot.
Complaining about the situation is a little therapeutic, but does nothing to change the reality. That's why it's so important for Labour to get campaigning and present an alternative to abandoning the most vulnerable. What should our plan be? In my opinion, a return to full employment. New jobs will have to be created to facilitate this, so government investment in green industries and science is crucial. Manufacturing needs to pick up again. The taxes and consumer spending from this will feed private sector demand, which must be restructured to centre around co-operative business models that are fairer and more productive. Higher tax receipts and lower welfare payments as employment flourishes are the route out of debt, not mindless cutting. We'll do it in our own time, not at the behest of some trader in London, New York or Tokyo. More importantly, we'll do it in a way that's fair for our people, our communities, our families and our lives.
