A Tory victory would usher in an era of ugly politics

By Mike Ion / @MikeIon

It is more or less a foregone conclusion that unemployment in the UK will continue to rise and is likely to remain around the 3 million plus mark for some time. It is also true, as Rob Reich the former US Labour Secretary has pointed out, that unemployment on this scale produces a packet full of trouble – socially, financially and emotionally. Periods of high unemployment result in some fairly ‘ugly’ times politically and can often be fertile periods for far-right parties who seek to exploit people’s fears and anxieties over immigration and social segregation.

So what can and should the government be doing to ensure Britain does not enter a period of ‘ugly’ politics?

There is a clear and simple answer to this question – it should do almost the exact opposite to what the Tories would do if they get into power. The Tories want us all to obsess about the level of government debt whilst the sensible action is to continue doing what Gordon Brown has led the world in doing and that is to spend in large amounts at a time when consumers and businesses and exports cannot or will not.

The Tories (almost alone amongst mainstream political parties in the developed world) reject the view that government has to spend more to help its citizens get back to work and to recharge the economy. It is then – when unemployment is falling and the economy growing – that we will be able pay off the necessary debt incurred as a result of taking action to stabilise the global economy in order to prevent a world-wide depression.

Osborne and Cameron are making a huge mistake in thinking that the answer to our present economic difficulties is to reduce the number of jobs in the public sector, cut the wages of the majority of public sector workers and introduce savage cuts in public spending. The main result of such policies would be a huge rise in unemployment (particularly among the young).

Where and how would the economy recover if such policies were to be pursued? What would happen to crime rates? How would social cohesion be maintained and how could we possibly prevent the far-right from benefiting from the undoubted political and social fall-out?

The Tories have no credible plan for leading Britain out of the present recession and into a sustainable period of recovery. On the big financial challenges of the past twelve to eighteen months they have been found wanting and are apparently more comfortable in talking about the price of tea and coffee in Parliament’s tea bars than they are about the need for quantitative easing.

A Tory victory would very likely usher in a period of ‘ugly’ politics similar to, but possibly worse than, the 1980s when the Tories were in power and committed to the implementation of Friedman economics regardless of the impact on society as a whole.

The Tories have been desperate to rid themselves of the ‘nasty party‘ image in order to achieve power once more – should they do so next year we may all find that little has changed.