A Bad State of Affairs

In today’s Daily Telegraph David Cameron set out his vision for “tearing down the big state”, a vision first revealed last year in the government’s Open Public Services White Paper.

The Prime Minister states that he wants “to end once and for all the closed state monopoly where central government decides what you get and how you get it”, ignoring the inherent contradictions this highlights in his own government’s polices and the cataclysmic problems this will cause in trying to fight poverty, create inequality and strengthen Britain’s vast democratic deficit.

Since the ConDem coalition came into being education in Britain has seen the most top down, central government changes in modern history in defiance of the Prime Minister’s statement. Local councils, unions and teachers have been usurped with power held solely in the hands of the education secretary who decides which schools can become academies and free schools, who can fund 10% or all of these respectively, who can teach in them and what they can teach. This is the bypassing of democracy.

The greatest choice of all, voting in a secret ballot, has been relegated by the choice of proprietor, fitting for a government that didn’t gain a majority and received only one-fifth of the possible public vote, fitting for a party that seek to challenge proportional representation and for a party that stands in the way of workers appearing on company rumination boards.

Power is ceded from the voter and the professional, in this case the teacher, to profit making bodies and charitable institutions that lie predominantly in the hands of the wealthiest in society. Follow the money and the freedom lies with them not with the majority of individuals. You are free to be a buyer but you must work for the seller. This may make “the user feel truly empowered” as Cameron argues but clearly they are not. For the public, and thus the individual, doesn’t have a say regarding services or industry.

No encouragement of unionization or collective power is asserted in a country with the strongest anti-union legislation in the EU. The desire it seems is for the false illusion of individual consumer power in a society where the vast majority have no say or hold in its foundations.

This eradication of democracy can be seen in the anti-state, “unashamedly pro-business” mandate pushed by the government since 2010 and strengthened in last week’s budget. These advocates of further privatization argue that as 45% of Britain’s GDP is generated by the private sector the state is still too large even after over 30 years of neo-liberal policy. This belies the fact that so much of the former publicly owned institutions are subsided by the state in league with the private sector who then cipher away the profits- the rail network being a particularly poignant example of this.

Factor in the example of the big six electric companies now operating in Britain and you find the appearance of choice masked in an oligargy that pushes prices up with society and the individual clearly being seen to suffer. Prisons, elderly care and unemployment are all recent examples of this failed ideology.

However, society still pays big business to run trains. It pays big business high prices as they run their electric supply and they have no say over either. Big business rather than the democratic state is therefore the predominant withdrawer of liberty, freedom and choice. You have no vote in it and all small business is suffocated by them.

Thus, as the public sector is opened up to multi-nationals under this bravado of choice the idea of strengthening the power of society and its individuals is weakened. With the availability of social media technology there has never been a greater chance to implement the nationalization, regionalization and co-operative community approach to public services absent in some of the top-down civil serviced structure that has existed in the past.

But it seems this is absent in the mind of the Prime Minister as he looks to force greater 'choice' and dismantle the public's hold on it' assets in the most unequal Britain since 1918. Where 20% of children are still brought up in poverty. Facts that lead effortlessly to the words of one of the creators of the public services structure the government is attacking, Nye Bevan: “If freedom is to be saved and enlarged, poverty must be ended. There is no other solution.”

It seems the Prime Minister’s main concern is to remove publicly-owned services “brick by brick, edifice by edifice” into the hands of those with the most rather than tackle the rampant inequality in Britain today. To create socialism for the rich and a laissez faire society for the poor.

But there is an alternative. To cite Bevan again we can create services run by society for society that exist ‘In Place of Fear’.

Your Freedom: Brought to you by Nick Clegg!

Today, Nick ‘fig leaf’ Clegg launched the inventively named new government programme Your Freedom via YouTube. The name and method of delivery were clearly an attempt to be ‘down with the youth’ (frankly I’m surprised they didn’t go with something even worse like Freedombook). In full ‘earnest face mode’ Clegg delivered the amazing news that people can now write to the government with any concerns they have regarding their ‘freedoms’ in Britain today. “For too long new laws have taken away your freedom,” Clegg announced (earnestly), “interfered in everyday life and made it difficult for businesses to get on. We want your ideas to change that.” Now, I don’t know about you, but I thought we already had the power to write to our government, not just about our freedoms, but about anything at all. But wait, if you continue to watch Clegg’s ground-breaking announcement, there’s more to this astounding new system than you initially realise: they’ve set up a website that you can add your ideas to and – you’re not going to believe this – “all suggestions will be read”! Any genuine attempts to undo some of Labour’s disgraceful ‘security’ policies which were introduced over the last 10 years or so – 28 days detention, et al – and to restore some of our lost civil liberties are to be welcomed, but this is far from genuine. If you read between the lines (or on the lines, in fact) the coalition government’s priorities are clearly identifiable. It’s tempting to think that references to “mind-numbing” rules and “unnecessary laws” are alluding to some of Labour’s ill-conceived policies such as ASBOs or Community Payback, but his emphasis on allowing businesses to “get on” is the real message here, and a very worrying one too. The government has no interest in reducing the power of the state, just its responsibilities towards its citizens. The short translation of the coalition’s Your Freedom initiative? Privatisation, privatisation and, that’s right, privatisation. The website even has an entire section entitled ‘Cutting Business and Third Sector Regulations’. If they wanted to be entirely honest they would’ve called it ‘Your Freedom to be fired without notice, paid a crappy wage and generally exploited by your employer’. Probably wasn’t catchy enough.

Despite the government’s clear lack of interest in issues of any real importance to everyday people, and in the interests of democracy, I’d like to take Mr Clegg up on his request for suggestions, and I’d encourage you to do the same. Okay, Nick, how about you start with ordering all the Liberal Democrat members of the coalition to oppose one of the most unfair and destructive budgets of the last 75 years? And while you’re at it, why not stand up for the people who voted you into government on what appeared to be a manifesto of ‘progressive’ policies only to have you side with the most regressive party in parliament? How about promoting the freedom of the poor to not lose their jobs, benefits and homes when the worst of the Con-Dem cuts start to hit – the freedom from persecution just for inhabiting the bottom rung in our society? But of course old ‘yellow shield’ Clegg doesn’t want to hear about this sort of thing. What he’s interested in is if you’ve “ever had to fill out three versions of the same form” or “felt snooped on by the state.” Well, I’m sure filling in three versions of the same form can be very irritating, though I don’t think I’ve ever been required to do that, ever. As for being snooped on by the state, I suppose that is a pretty worrying prospect, unfortunately for us the Con-Dem translation of this is “has the state ever been involved in your life at all, in any capacity whatsoever? Tell us about it so we can cut it immediately.” A final point of interest is when Clegg asks to know about “any time your rights have been infringed.” Well, I don’t know about you, but having Nick Clegg in government feels like a pretty big violation of my democratic rights at the moment.