If Cameron's liberal, I'd hate to see his conservative side...

jkitleft Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 12:40:35 PM GMT Print-friendly version Facebook

I would hate to see it. The idea that Cameron is a moderate is a sad joke. The Equality bill, EMA's, Social Chapter, Minimum wage, Tax credits, Marriage incentives etc.

He wants to see sub-prime mortgages on high streets. He wants to hug a hoodie, but not fund youth clubs to help him. He wants to hug a huskie, but build roads to choke him, and not have environmental audits or car emission standards. He wants to get rid of Inheritance Tax. Wisconsin welfare, which increases poverty in tough economic times. He wants to abolish the New Deal.

I could go on and on. But sure, he is liberal, but only in comparison to the 'There's a Muslim pedophile living under your child's bed. Vote Conservative' campaign he was head of last time. You remember, stopping Aung Sun Suu Kyi coming in to the country if she was seeking asylum, or testing foreigners for AIDS. No suprise since Lynton Crosby, the man who helped Bush in 2000 by claiming that McCain had an illegitemate black child, and advising John Howard to win the 2001 election by ensuring that 353 refugees drowned, was managing the campaign.

Even methadone prescription, which slashes crime and homelessness would have been thrown out of the window. This extends now to heorin prescription. Oh, and when people complain about 37 page police forms (really? 37 pages?), don't be fooled. It was the darker part of 2005, when Howard was confronted by Stephen Lawrence's mother, because police were now forced (quite rightly), to log the ethnicity of the people they were stopping and searching. Ironically, when Tories explain in private that one day the NHS will be privatised and broken up, they don't seem to mind 37 page insurance forms.

So, and although I didn't think I would ever say this sentance, hat tip to Luke Akehurst. He has found Cameron's true policies with regards to the poor. This is from Luke's blog:

"I haven't once listened to Radio 4's Today programme since 1990 - these days I'm already on a 243 bus to work when it starts.

Luckily DWP Secretary of State James Purnell does tune in, and is pointing any Labour folk he happens to run into towards this telling quote - evidence of an increasing harshness in the Tory line on social issues now they feel they have detoxified their brand - from an interview with David Cameron on Tuesday morning at about 07.59, where Mr Cameron clarifies the ideological difference between the two main parties on tackling poverty:

"The Labour Party for a long time said it, only it, could deal with deep poverty because it understood about transferring money from rich to poor, but I think we've reached the end of that road, ... we need quite conservative solutions to deal with those problems".

I think we can take it from the phrasing "I think we've reached the end of that road" that a Tory government won't be seeking to increase redistribution. They seem to have an interesting view that making the poor richer doesn't er... reduce poverty. Run that past me again will you Dave?

Anyway, the bottom line is that if you think there should be redistribution to make our unequal society more equal, David Cameron doesn't agree with you. I dread to imagine what his "quite conservative solutions" to poverty might be. Any guesses?"






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If Cameron's liberal, I'd hate to see his conservative side... | 22 comments (22 topical)

Re: If Cameron's liberal, (#1)

by Prbo on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 02:16:38 PM GMT

Anyway, the bottom line is that if you think there should be redistribution to make our unequal society more equal, David Cameron doesn't agree with you. I dread to imagine what his "quite conservative solutions" to poverty might be. Any guesses

There's a very good sound reason to oppose redistribution - as a whole it entrenches, rather than alleviates poverty.  Restribution of wealth has never worked, and never will.  Just as abolishing Grammar Schools and private schools won't abolish underachievement in education. 

Btw, could you possibly make your posts a little shorter?  They're almost Castro-esque at times, and most of us don't have very long attention spans...


Re: If Cameron's liberal, (#2)

by e10rifles on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 02:33:55 PM GMT

Why has social mobility ground to a halt since the beginning of Thatcher's era then?


[ Parent ]

Re: If Cameron's liberal, (#4)

by otware on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 03:55:49 PM GMT

Pffft just because you've got the attention span of a 5 year old. He can make his posts as long as he wants.

So redistributive measures entrench poverty? Interesting. Remind me, is this Labourhome or Conservativehome? 


[ Parent ]

Re: If Cameron's liberal, (#6)

by Floating voter on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 04:29:59 PM GMT

"So redistributive measures entrench poverty? Interesting."

It is a known problem in the charity sector and has been for years. In Africa they even have a name for it "Food aid dependency" where farmers see little point in helping themselves because if they sit back and starve the charities turn up with tonnes of food.

In this country, wlefare dependency is a known problem and has been for decades. 


[ Parent ]

Re: If Cameron's liberal, (#7)

by otware on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 04:45:53 PM GMT

OK yes I agree it is an issue, sorry I thought you were advocating axing the welfare state(!) Something does need to be done to provide incentives for people to get off benefits and work, but it has to be moderate and helpful rather than unhelpful to people (so not just chucking them off benefits, for example). It's a very difficult problem really.


[ Parent ]

Re: If Cameron's liberal, (#8)

by e10rifles on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 04:47:07 PM GMT

And is a result of the failure of the free market to provide the necessary jobs and infrastructure for all the people of this country without the help of the state.


[ Parent ]

Re: If Cameron's liberal, (#10)

by otware on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 05:53:26 PM GMT

Yes that's a good point. It's easy to criticise the benefits system, but where would we be without it? Even more backwards than America.


[ Parent ]

Re: "welfare dependency" (#11)

by donpaskini on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 06:22:52 PM GMT

Fun facts for people who are worried about "welfare dependency".

Since 1997, state benefits have increased significantly in real terms for lone parents whether or not they work, through child benefit and child tax credit.  Over this time, the percentage of lone parents who are in work has increased substantially, and is now the highest that it has ever been.

Since 1979, state benefits for single adults of working age have declined in real terms every year.  The percentage of single adults of working age in work is now lower than in 1979.

It doesn't fit with the prejudices on this subject, but evidence suggests that if you want more people to get jobs, then a mix of universal and targeted benefits can be part of the solution, not part of the problem.


[ Parent ]

Re: "welfare dependency" (#14)

by jkitleft on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 07:09:34 PM GMT

Absolutely. Look at Denmark. With an ALMP and flexible labour, they have a 1.8% unemployment rate.

There are far better ways to get people off benefit.


[ Parent ]

Re: If Cameron's liberal, (#13)

by jkitleft on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 07:07:30 PM GMT

Yeah.....or, it's because we are punishing African farmers, in an almost conspiratorial way. If you're going to have protectionism, don't have it for the rich. So rather than portraying African farmers as lying on couches and swigging beer, while watching football, understand that they are not living in ideal economic conditions to grow crops, and we are certainly not helping this.

And, our foreign aid has two vital flaws. Market fundamentalism, and Christian fundamentalism. The IMF/World Bank hold countries hostage: privatise your water supplies, or lose your aid. This is certainly not going to help access to clean water. And lies are spread about contraception.

Is welfare dependency such a problem? The system which is practised in other Scandanavian countries would be far more effective. If we had an ALMP, we could expose the fact that only a tiny minority don't want to work, and then it will be far easier to cut their funding.


[ Parent ]

Re: If Cameron's liberal, (#19)

by Free Radical on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 11:22:37 PM GMT

In Africa they even have a name for it "Food aid dependency" where farmers see little point in helping themselves because if they sit back and starve the charities turn up with tonnes of food.

Oh Yes Floating Voter - Now at last I understand! Africa is poor because it gets too much aid. Wow! There's great Tory logic for you.


[ Parent ]

Re: If Cameron's liberal, (#21)

by AngryVoter on Sat Jul 19, 2008 at 06:12:03 PM GMT

That's not what he's saying. He's saying it's a mental condition that happens because of it. If somebody is going to give you things when you sit back and do nothing, why do anything?

We should be aiding folks in Africa, but we shouldn't be just giving these men fish. We should be teaching them how to fish, and then give them a market to sell those fish. Something we're not doing right now. We're just hurling money and food at the problem and at either inefficient or corrupt regimes. We have to have a further rethink on policy in regard to aid.


[ Parent ]

Re: If Cameron's liberal, (#22)

by Free Radical on Sat Jul 19, 2008 at 07:54:40 PM GMT

I understand what they are saying. I thought it was a poor example to throw in with insufficient context.

One thing that Africa doesn't suffer from is too much aid. Though, apart from emergency relief, probably the best long term aid is to let countries control their own resources and remove the tarrif barriers that we put up against them.

In Senegal you see the pitiful sight of huge factory trawlers sailing up and down on the horizon taking all the fish that the ordinary fishermen in their small fishing boats (an environmentally sustainable operation in every respect) need to feed their families. The fish end up on European tables and the Africans go hungry, and increasingly the fishermen drown as they need to go into increasingly dangerous waters and African seas are depleted of fish, just like our own. So, if you like, here is the problem illustrated in a nutshell.

But, the idea, advanced in this thread, that redistribution does not redistribute or aid does not aid is daft, even if there are more subtle nuances to consider. Its the kind of Victorian argument that the poor would just waste any money that came their way on beer or gambling. I once heard that when Labour started up the NHS, it included distribution of free orange juice syrup containing vitamin C for children, and people argued that the poor would just misuse it by taking it out on picnics.

Of course we need redistributive taxation. And, especially we need to find ways of getting one particular group to pay tax - the super rich who have various ways of avoiding it.

There are issues around creation of a benefit culture, but we need to think imaginatively about it and ensure that people have a useful role to fulfil in life rather than simply putting the poor under even greater pressure.

Government policy (plus world economic trends) over about 30 years has run down manufacturing, which provided useful often well-paid employment for millions, and together with the outsourcing and privatisation of a number of services these factors have driven down wages for the poorest in relative terms at least. Unfortunately we have let inequality increase and social mobility decrease.

Our education system is skewed towards academia and no longer caters well for less academic young people. Those leaving school with no GCSEs have great difficulty securing any kind of career at all.

The apprentice system, all but destroyed under Mrs Thatcher, no longer provides that other root out of poverty for the less academic.

The other factor is that the criminalisation of drugs means that an enormous shadow economy is created around their supply, completely outside the tax and benefit system.


[ Parent ]

Re: If Cameron's liberal, (#12)

by jkitleft on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 07:01:31 PM GMT

If you don't have a long attention span, then debating people online isn't perhaps the best field.

When we have redistributed, child poverty has decreased.  What is your evidence to the contrary, that redistribution doesn't work?

It does work. Look at Scandanavia. The only justification Thatcherites have for their philosophy, once the human costs are explained, is that it increases social mobility, and a meritocracy is created. Why is it then, that Scandanavia combines economic stability, high taxation, low poverty, low inequality, and high social mobility? If your thesis was right, Scandanavia would be completely falling apart.

Abolishing grammer schools doesn't increase social mobility, but increasing the catchment areas, similarly to the Brighton model does.

Please can you tell me your non-visceral evidence as to why redistribution doesn't work?


[ Parent ]

Re: If Cameron's liberal... (#3)

by NB on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 03:18:04 PM GMT

This is a rant. Of course Cameron's a Conservative (hint, he's Leader of which Party?) but the idea that the best way to help the poor is state handouts is empirically completely false: if it were true Glasgow East would be a paradise.


Re: If Cameron's liberal... (#5)

by otware on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 04:00:11 PM GMT

So what is the better way? Getting rid of progressive taxation, slashing benefits and privatising everything ('Don't forget to tell Sid' what a great deal shares in National Health Service Systems UK PLC are for working class people to climb there way up the greasy pole). Help me out here, what are you proposing?


[ Parent ]

Re: If Cameron's liberal... (#18)

by NB on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 10:14:02 PM GMT

Progressive taxation is irrelevant. The real problems are means tested benefits and the dependency culture. Frank Field had the right ideas, and the latest ideas from Purnell (which are similar to Tory suggestions) are an improvement. Almost anything is better than the present system, which kills people by the tens of thousands.


[ Parent ]

Re: If Cameron's liberal... (#20)

by jkitleft on Sat Jul 19, 2008 at 10:17:50 AM GMT

Noone celebrates worklessness. I think the current system has peverse incentives, created in the wake of the Thatcherite dismissal of full employment.

For instance, when people get to work, we should phase out benefits. Otherwise they find they have no immediete gain from working.

There are far better reforms that can be made. A living wage for example. Universal childcare would drive mothers into work.


[ Parent ]

Re: If Cameron's liberal.... (#9)

by AngryVoter on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 05:03:49 PM GMT

I thought this was a good article before you started quoting that eye-swivelling lunatic Luke “Stand victims of terror against Davis” Akehurst.

"The Labour Party for a long time said it, only it, could deal with deep poverty because it understood about transferring money from rich to poor, but I think we've reached the end of that road, ... we need quite conservative solutions to deal with those problems".

I think we can take it from the phrasing "I think we've reached the end of that road" that a Tory government won't be seeking to increase redistribution. They seem to have an interesting view that making the poor richer doesn't er... reduce poverty. Run that past me again will you Dave?”

The problem is we take money from the rich, give to the poor, shove them just above the poverty line and then call it a major success. Not realising that all we’ve done is redefine what poverty means. Throwing neither money at the people, or the problem works. A “conservative solution” is more along the lines of ‘tough love’ we have to alter the state benefit system from a fishing net to a safety net. What the Tories have been driving at is the old conservative mantra as quoted by Boris Johnson in his book ‘Have I got views for you’ “Try to be successful, but we’ll have the safety net ready for you.”

“Anyway, the bottom line is that if you think there should be redistribution to make our unequal society more equal, David Cameron doesn't agree with you. I dread to imagine what his "quite conservative solutions" to poverty might be. Any guesses?"“

Yes, if Luke bothered to go about reading up on his enemy instead of listening blithely to whatever James Purnell says he might be quite surprised to discover the various social mobility plans and policies being put into place by the Tories via the centre of social justice [Who‘s founder, IDS has said he doesn‘t care who adopts the policies proposed, so long as somebody does] Which are. To sum up…

Work-to-Welfare: This will aid in giving unemployed people a stronger work-ethic and the encouragement to get themselves up in the morning and used to doing things for money, it’s a very basic idea and aims at altering people’s will so they have purpose and a need to get up in the morning, rather than not getting up until midday to head to the dole office. [Before anybody dares argue this, my mother works for the DWP and deals with the benefits, most of her ‘clients’ are yawning and informing her they didn’t want to get up to collect their money at around 11-2pm]

Skills-for-work: Utilizing charities and localized organisations to sort of localized problems the aim is to help give some people, who may or may not have been out of work for a while a further “leg up” aiding in skills and retargeting them so they can get into work. Stuff like IT is probably going to be higher up on the agenda.

Free Schools: This biggest mover of the lot, should the full system be in place then the headmasters and the parents will be the ones in control. The parents will have the state funding apply to their child, not to the school and it’s up to them where to literally invest that money. The option of setting up a school for themselves is also on the cards and will help encourage carefully controlled competition. While it may cause a slight “two tier” system for a while, any ‘deadwood’ schools which don’t meet the standards of the parents will simply die off.

I also note that as much as jkitleft has said several times that SureStart would be killed off, that is not at all the case.

Tax credits I have always questioned the value of, same as when the government “invests money into the economy.”
Why the hell should the money have gone from the economy, or from the individual in the first place when it just gets given back after you fill in all the forms?

Why take it in the first place? What’s the ruddy point? You might as well cut the taxes slightly for those who apply for the things and just don’t take the money to start with.

Another thing that always gets me [and both me and my mother work for the state] is why do Public Sector Employees pay taxes and N.I? They’re paid by the state. From tax money, so why tax them? Just cut the pay to start with by the amount of tax they would have paid and have done with it. Beyond that it’s just absolutely pointless job generation and more money being spent on bean counters who simply place the money they taxed off of the public sector straight into the wage slip of the same people next month, where they take it away again and put it back….


Re: If Cameron's liberal.... (#15)

by jkitleft on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 07:28:40 PM GMT

I don't think the benefit system is a fishing net.

It is the human cost of Wisconsin welfare, during times of economic woe, which underlines better alternatives.

Mothers in Wisconsin end up having to travel across towns for 2 hours, and often don't see their children before they go to sleep. Indeed, the legislation that enforces workfare in the US, begins by praising marriage. It then starts listing the problems of single parenthood.

This seems to creept into Cameron's other proposals for marriage incentives. It will just end up being a subsidy to the middle class. Of course people will be better off if they are married. That's why I think the money could be put to better use. If you are single, you will be worse off then if you are married anyway.

But there are better solutions. Lets look at incapacity benefit. It is a tragedy that if you have spent a year on IB, you will probably never get back into work. Richard Layard wrote a book a few years ago about the improtance of happiness. Most people on IB are on it due to depression. Layard suggested giving these people CBT. CBT works for the vast majority of people. And, we should introduce Carol Black's proposals for IB, as well as extending Pathways.

The problem with voluntary organisations, is that Cameron likes to pretend that utilising them will come at no expense. They do a good job, but there are expenses.


Oh, and free schools have aided segregation in Sweden. Far more effective would be lottery systems for state schools, and getting rid of faith and grammer schools, imho.


Tax credits are good. But, you can either raise the minimum wage, or keep the tax credits. Phase them out, and raise the minimum wage to a living wage standard. It saves the taxpayers money, and yet doesn't come at the expense of poor people.


I think that NI is an anomaly in a progressive taxation system, and should be wrapped up into the system.


[ Parent ]

Re: If Cameron's liberal.... (#16)

by jkitleft on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 07:38:24 PM GMT

Oh, incidentally, low tax Thatcherism (Really? With all the VAT rises?), does not increase social mobility. Social mobility is highest in highly-taxed Scandanavia, and lowest in individualist countries like America (in developed countries anyway).


When you're David Davis, of course you can say to those living on a council estate that they can escape their condition. The mistake is to believe low-taxation can do this. Davis escaped his condition in highly taxed, high spending '60's Britain. Inequality was low, so was poverty, by the start of Thatcher's reign of terror/(whatever you call the other option).

More Thatcherism is not the option. Because that is what allowed social mobility to grind to a juddering halt.



[ Parent ]

I'd hate to see his conservative side (#17)

by Anonymous X on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 10:00:17 PM GMT

"Ironically, when Tories explain in private that one day the NHS will be privatised and broken up, they don't seem to mind 37 page insurance forms." Is there any evidence for this point? Much as it disturbs me as a possibility (I have "pre-existing conditions" y'see) I'd think that would be political suicide for whomever enacted it.


If Cameron's liberal, I'd hate to see his conservative side... | 22 comments (22 topical)