Industry | 2010.02.12
We will defend the state | Douglas Alexander and Ed Miliband
While Osborne nudges, our manifesto is being built on equality and an empowering government
The TV series Faking It made compelling viewing because people were trained for high-flying jobs and either got away with it or got rumbled. Anyone watching the shadow chancellor over the last week would recognise that sense of a contestant being found out.
His spending strategy is unravelling against the backdrop of a global consensus that we must sustain recovery, not undermine it. This came hot on the heels of his effort last week in these pages in which he answered the question "What have we learned from the financial crisis" with a risible intellectual case about "nudge", which ended with a policy on outcome-based payments for government advertising.
The real question facing Britain is not how to nudge people but how to give them power over their own lives. The need for collective action is clear: from climate change to reforming social care, from improving education standards to tackling unemployment. And it goes to the heart of why Conservatism is wrong for the next decade: the right kind of state action is not a drain on individual empowerment; it can enhance it. Osborne and the Conservatives are caught between the ideology that defines them and the real lessons from the financial crisis. In the face of massive market failure, they continue to assert that society\'s problems will be solved if we simply have a small state. The role and shape of the state will be central to the coming election campaign.
In its manifesto, Labour will offer itself as both the reformer and defender of progressive government. We understand that the real task for government in the coming decade is to protect people from risk and enhance opportunity. We don\'t accept that self interest and shared interest are mutually exclusive. The jobs of the new decade can only be created if we recognise the role of government, complementing the private sector in making it happen, nurturing industries from digital to low carbon.
And society can only be strengthened if we recognise the role for government in supporting families rather than leaving people to sink or swim. The anxiety of care for elderly relatives faces people from all walks of life. The risks of rejecting such an approach are stark. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett \'s The Spirit Level demonstrates graphically how living in a society where some prosper and most flounder is self-defeating for all.
Of course the report of the National Equality Panel has made sobering reading for all of us concerned with securing a society where your talents matter more to life chances than the circumstances of your birth. But the report also demonstrated that the poorest tenth of the population are 25% better-off today than they would have been if Labour had continued Conservative policies. Moreover, the chances of a young person from a low income family going to university have more than doubled under Labour. The report also confirmed the view that government is indispensable to reducing inequality – through tax, benefits and public services.
We know, too, that we need to be reformers of the state. As constituency MPs, we see people facing daily frustrations in their interactions with government: disempowered not empowered.
That is why our manifesto will strengthen the power of people in their interaction with the state. Central to this are the guarantees we will make in our public services: to maximum waiting times for hospital treatment, the right to a good school for your child, one-to-one tuition if your child falls behind to responsive, neighbourhood policing. We also plan to extend direct payments in social care so that it becomes the norm for older people and their carers to decide for themselves what they need and how it should be provided.
Just as we don\'t believe in a sink or swim society, so we don\'t believe in a "take it or leave it" state: accept what you are given or go private. So part of our task is to continue to strengthen the rights and role of the citizen.
Tough fiscal times make progressive politics harder not easier, but make our values more not less important. We have made decisions on taxes, including at the top, to protect key public services at the same time as we make cuts elsewhere.
By contrast, the Conservatives are instead focused on undermining the gains of the last decade. Take Labour\'s three innovations in income, services and assets for children: tax credits, Sure Start, the child trust fund. The Tories have said that all would be subject to cutbacks, part of their belief in the residual welfare state. Meanwhile, they would cut inheritance tax for millionaires.
Don\'t let anyone tell you there aren\'t big choices at this election. We will fight for our vision of society: enabling government, empowering people, a society where we grow together, not apart.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]d-state-osborne-nudge-equality
