Following up on the Euro-Nationalist Zombie post, here’s a thought. What if Peter Oborne had a point? Yeah, I know, but suspend the vomiting reflex for a moment. I’ve pointed out before that he is usually wrong, but often wrong in an interesting way. He’s long been convinced that the political elite is cool on the United Kingdom as a state, but I always assumed that he just wanted to bash Labour.
The UK as we know it is united, to a very large extent, by what’s left of its social-democratic ambitions and socialist institutions, as well as its claims to maintain a great power role. So far I think Tom Nairn, Dan Hannan, and pretty much anyone else would be able to agree. I am now going to stand upon this and step forward.
The rotten centre of British politics – roughly from David Miliband rightwards past Nick Clegg and onwards through the prime minister to about halfway across the Tories – is convinced that the institutions are all terribly out of date and kind of naff. I don’t actually think they theorise it any more deeply than this – it’s a generalised aesthetic-emotional response, not an intellectual or a practical one. Hence we get endless policy ideas that sum up to putting some public service or other in a Tesco.
They also have views about economic and strategic issues. In short, they usually think Brussels or rather Frankfurt is right about the economy, more or less. Although they fight about how far this goes, they like free trade, are supportive of neoliberal economic institutions generally, and they are fiscally rightwing. In parallel with this, they think Washington is right about diplomacy and war. There is no place for a distinctive British view here. As regards the third axis of politics, identity or culture, they adopt a sort of tourist London identity, taking on all its tolerance with none of its solidarity. All the Notting Hill, none of the Bob Crow. This is what this blogger calls Fucking London as opposed to the city, London.
So the institutions are icky and must go. The UK, in fact, must go with its quirky health service and its economic union that’s both a transfer union and a social insurance union and its professional civil service and its navy and all. I suspect that given his druthers, Cameron might not be so unhappy to see it go. Historical and tribal factors mean that he can’t admit this, hence the entertaining squirming.
Also, there’s got to be a reason the two politicians most committed to keeping the Union are Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling…
This is the mirror image of an argument of the Yes campaign: the UK institutions either are dismantled or are in the process of dismantling; the only way currently on the cards to protect and reassemble those institutions is on a smaller scale in Scotland. http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2014/09/13/british-for-yes/
After all, in a privatised state, the only loyalty left is brand loyalty. If the UK state is going to be delivered through Tesco, powered by EDF and nursed by Serco, with benefit denial run by Atos, the idea of going to your local independent artisinal brand-state seems attractive. It’s a little like the franchise states in the Neal Stephenson novels.
Which is a hideously awful idea that only a fucking libertarian could love!
You know what? The killer app of the state isn’t war, it’s risk-bearing. Max Sawicky makes a great case against a basic income here:
http://maxspeak.net/in-defense-of-social-insurance/
which is even better as a case for the UK, a social-insurance union, something that the EU explicitly is not and neither is the putative post-UK.
.. but again, the UK as functioning social-insurance union has been holed below the waterline leaving people drowning in bilge. Disability sanctioning and JSA sanctioning have seen to that, along with the bedroom tax. The rotten centre intends to dismantle the social insurance institutions and replace them with (globalised, individual) private insurance. The libertarian nightmare world is the one of Goveist free schools, foodbanks, etc. Then there’s the mysterious threat of TTIP.
I’m not convinced by Max’s article here; he’s saying that UBI is politically infeasible in the US, not that it would be a bad idea to implement So there’s a defence of the contributory principle. But the contributory principle also excludes immigrants and those disabled or otherwise who have never worked. It also discriminates against women unless you’re careful about accounting for the work of bringing up children.
YES would not be doing *nearly* as well if people had faith in the UK as social-insurance union, rather than a US-style coverage denial small print laundry.
The contributory principle only does that if you insist on treating it as a transfer kitty, not insurance. Nobody expects you to drive for 5 years before your car insurance will pay out. Max’s point is that it is precisely the insurance element that is so valuable.
Max is right, UBI could very likely see the undermining of social insurance style things like the NHS.
But Pete is also right that these social insurance schemes are likely to be dismantled by the Tories anyway…
Perhaps a UBI would be a way of dealing with a world in which most work is done by machines and computers and yet the means of production are owned by the small oligarchical owning class. Because if things are in that state, then a mere social safety net simply won’t be enough to deal with the millions of people who just can’t get jobs (hey look, uk unemployment is still over 2 million, for the 4th or 5th year in a row) because there aren’t any to get.
The tricky bit is getting to that situation. Social insurance things are being dismantled by the owning class, who refuse to pay their share because of their increased power versus everyone else. So we could in the meantime fight back against them and force them to disgorge more money; but I don’t see a guaranteed basic income working really until we have reached a certain tipping point in terms of who works and for what.
Or to summarise- by the time a UBI becomes the best solution, we’ll already be most of the way to either revolution or feudal oligarchy, and at the moment a social insurance setup is surely more equitable, workable etc etc. The tricky bit is the time inbetween.
I think this post dragged on a bit, time for bed before I start spouting complete nonsense.
“The rotten centre intends to dismantle the social insurance institutions and replace them with (globalised, individual) private insurance. The libertarian nightmare world is the one of Goveist free schools, foodbanks, etc. Then there’s the mysterious threat of TTIP.”
No, it intends to keep the social insurance institutions, but redefine ‘social’ as ‘bail out and subsidize the rich and well-connected; the rest of you please go drown yourself – after we take the rest of your money’.
I don’t think you can take the ‘local artisanal state’ idea and just extend it into infinity, and then argue against independence based on some crazy domino-like theory.
Just because there is a component of the yes vote that wants to get shot of the rUK doesn’t necessarily mean they are automatically traitors to social solidarity cause.
Fast forward 15-20 years, and the presence of a fairly equitable state just next door may well put paid to the idea that there is no alternative to the current set of neoliberalisms.
I heard some rich bastard on radio 4 at around 7:25am today, talking about how freeing up the spending of the welfare budget would encourage entrepreneurship and innovations. Unfortunately the irritations of being stuck behind a crane then seeing a dangeorus lunatic overtake the traffic behind the crane kind of wiped most of it from my head. Any idea who he was and how much influence he has?
The idea is perfect market worshipper new labour nonsense – fragment public services, let entrepreneurs, that is, well connected people who often donate to the right political party, raise capital from the usual suspects and then take over guaranteed business from the taxpayer. End result, as we’ve seen the last 20 years, is usually no better than it would otherwise have been, but with transfer of money and power into unelected hands.
Meanwhile Milliband et al hardly seem interested in stopping such travesties of democracy.