Osbornomics: A public meeting

By Jonathan Rutherford

In a speech three years ago this March, David Cameron claimed Margaret Thatcher’s economic revolution as his own. She had, he said, engineered an enterprise economy that was the envy of the world. Then, he said, “our country does not face economic breakdown. We’ve won the economic argument.” The Conservative Party must now have the grace to welcome the conversion of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to that argument.

As we approach an election in which the economy will be the defining issue, we need an assessment of the Conservative legacy. The three turbulent decades of Conservative economic hegemony has created little productive wealth. There has been no significant private sector investment in the de-industrialised economies of the Midlands, the North, Wales and Scotland.

In 1976, the bottom 50% of the population owned 8% of the nation’s wealth; by 2001 that proportion had fallen to 5%. The share of national wealth going to wages peaked at 65% in 1973; by 2008 it had dropped to 53%.

To sustain living standards, low and middle earning households borrowed at unprecedented levels fueling the financialisation of the economy and its inequalities. In three decades there has been a precipitous collapse in the value of the state pension and welfare benefits. Meanwhile the relationship between rising productivity and wage growth has been broken. By 2000, productivity increases ran at twice the rate of wage increases.

The Conservative legacy has been a massive shift in income, wealth and power from labour to capital, from the poor to the rich and from the country to the City. The defining issue of the election will be how we rebuild the economy. What are the Conservative answers? Come and find out at a public meeting:

‘OSBORNOMICS: What will the Conservatives do to the economy?’ 7pm – 9pm, Monday March 1st. Venue: House of Commons, Committee Room 10, St Stephen’s entrance Speakers: Howard Reed, Larry Elliott, Polly Toynbee, Andrew Gamble. Chair, Jon Cruddas MP. Organised by the New Political Economy Network and Compass in association with The Guardian, Renewal and Soundings.

Places are limited. Please register by emailing [email protected].