Saturday, 15 February 2014

UKIP are not an "Alternative"


Hardly a day goes by without some delusional person completely ignoring the subject of the item I've shared to enthuse that UKIP are an "alternative" to the corrupt political establishment.

In this article I'm going to explode the myth that UKIP are an "alternative" and conclude by providing a list of genuinely alternative political parties and organisations.

 UKIP policies

 A sensible place to start when conducting analysis of a political party would be the party manifesto, however, since UKIP leader Nigel Farage has now publicly disowned the 2010 UKIP manifesto as "drivel" it seems that they are intent on going into the 2014 European elections without an officially recognised public policy document. The Lib-Lab-Cons have an appalling track record of breaking their manifesto commitments (and introducing legislation that was not even mentioned before their election) however it seems that UKIP are going to bypass that problem by simply not bothering with the production of policy documents, so the public have absolutely nothing to hold them to account with.

 The clear danger with UKIP is that their one core policy of withdrawal from the EU is actually quite sensible. The EU is a grotesquely anti-democratic institution which has clearly been infltrated and usurped by a bunch of neoliberals with absolute contempt for the concepts of democracy and accountability. The big problem with supporting UKIP because the EU is riddled with anti-democratic neoliberals is that UKIP are even more fanatical neoliberals than the technocrats that run the EU.

The rest of UKIPs policies demonstrate that they occupy the extreme-right fringe of the neoliberal orthodoxy. They support massive tax cuts for corporations and the super-rich, the privatisation agenda, the destruction of what remains of the social safety net, the protection of the idle rentier class, the deregulation of firearms, the militarisation of the police, the construction of dozens of new privately operated jails as part of the prison-industrial complex, open discrimination against homosexuals, the scrapping of our human rights, the indoctrination of children with nationalist propaganda, anti-environmentalism, the expansion of Iain Duncan Smith's Stalinist forced labour schemes, an energy policy built on heavily subsidised nuclear power plants and fracking, the pushing of "free trade" onto the third world and all pervaded by the stench of barely concealed xenophobia.

UKIP are right about the EU being an anti-democratic shambles, but the rest of their policies are madder than a box of frogs. The fact that they are right about the EU but completely wrong about almost everything else can be explained with the old saying that "even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day".

What is absolutely clear is that they are loyal adherents of the vile neoliberal ideology that was introduced to British politics in 1979 by Margaret Thatcher and has remained the political orthodoxy ever since. The only difference between UKIP and the Lib-Lab-Con establishment parties, is that UKIP leadership are even more fanatical about the destructive ideology of neoliberalism that the three parties that have spent the last 35 years enforcing it.

 UKIP funding

 If you want to know about the real agenda of a political party it is vital that you understand how the party is funded. If UKIP we're some kind of alternative, then surely they would have an alternative funding model, rather than relying on huge donations from super-wealthy individuals, just like the Tory party?

We'll the evidence speaks for itself,: UKIP are funded in exactly the same way as the Tory party, and were they ever to obtain any real measure of power, you can be absolutely sure that their financial backers will be looking for payback (in the form of favourable legislation, seats in the House of Lords, knighthoods, political appointments, subsidies and outsourcing contracts or even the chance to actually write government legislation for them) in exactly the same way major donors to the Tory party have been handed countless favours by the Tory led government.

Aside from being funded in exactly the same way as the Tories, there is another absolutely compelling piece of evidence that they are nothing like the "alternative" people are looking for, which is the fact that the majority of their political donations come from people that used to finance the Tory party!

UKIP's biggest donor is Paul Sykes, an ex-Tory donor, who has made his level of control over the party absolutely clear with statements like "Me and Nigel work well together. He's articulate and he's learned a lot ... but remember I binned Nigel once before in 2004".

Another major Tory party donor turned UKIP backer is Eton educated Stuart Wheeler, who has risen rapidly through the UKIP party ranks to become their treasurer. Before he defected to to UKIP Wheeler handed out over £625,000 to the Tory party.

Other major Tory donors that have taken to bankrolling UKIP include James Hanson, £10,000; Robin Birley, £15,000; Michael Stone, £20,000; John Scott, £7,500; John Craven, £12,500; William MacDougall, £8,000; and David Caldow, £16,000.

Aside from the major Tory party donors turned UKIP backers, there are also the Tory wives. There's Yvonne Vinson, the wife of Tory bigwig Nigel Vinson, whose donation seems to be related to her husband's threat to defect to UKIP if David Cameron doesn't take a more Euroskeptic stance. Then there's a £100,000 donation from Clare Barbour, who is the wife of Tory donor Patrick Barbour.

Aside from the donations from people with clear and demonstrable links to the Tory party, there are also a number of donations from the classic Tory territory of the landed gentry. UKIP donors from the establishment upper-classes include James Charteris, Michael Cowdray, William Legge (more on him below) and David Stevens.

Aside from the fact that UKIP are clearly bankrolled by Tories, they were also caught up in a ludicrous financial scandal in 2007 when they broke the electoral rules by accepting £367,697 in donations from an individual not registered to vote in the UK and a company not registered in the UK under the Companies Act 1985.For a party that bangs on endlessly about British sovereignty, accepting donations from unregistered voters (ie foreigners) and foreign registered corporations is stunningly hypocritical.

UKIP politicians

It seems that a lot of UKIP voters are not familiar with the fact that the party is stuffed full of Tory politicians. Their leader Nigel Farage is the most high profile ex-Tory in UKIP having abandoned the Tory party in 1992. In 1993 he was a founding member of UKIP and has ruthlessly driven the party towards the typical right-wing authoritarian stance of the Tories ever since. Many of the other founding members have left fled UKIP due to the ever rightward shift of the party. Possibly the most notable departure was that of former leader Alan Sked, who stood as an anti-EU candidate in elections years before he founded UKIP. In 1997 Sked abandoned the party he had founded and led from its inception. He maintains that the party had been infected by the far-right and become a "magnet for bigots".

The most concerning thing about the current UKIP leader Nigel Farage is that he is a good orator and a much more talented spinner of implausible narratives than anyone on the Tory front bench. Perhaps the fact that he's always laughing, pulling silly faces and seeking photo ops with pints of beer in his hand disguises the the ludicrous, implausible and ill-concieved nonsense he tends to spout. Here's one example of Farage's ludicrous rhetoric.
"[The Lib-Lab-Cons] are virtually indistinguishable from each other on nearly all the main issues ... you can't put a cigarette paper between them and that is why there are nine million people who don't vote now in general elections that did back in 1992."
The thing that makes the three establishment parties virtually indistinguishable, and has dissuaded millions from political participation is the fact that they all adhere to the demonstrably bankrupt ideology of neoliberalism (which was commonly known as  "Thatcherism" / "Reagonomics" in the early years and is commonly recognised as "crony capitalism" now). Farage isn't an alternative to this, he's an even more fanatical adherent of Thatcherite neoliberalism than the leaders of the three establishment parties!

Farage isn't the only ex-Tory to have worked his way to the top of the UKIP hierarchy, others include William Legge (or the Earl of Dartmouth - to refer to him by his establishment title) who quit the Tory party in 2007 and got himself elected as an MEP for the South West region for UKIP in 2009, and Stuart Wheeler, who abandoned the Tories and soon became the UKIP party treasurer.

Another high profile defector from the Tories to UKIP is Roger Helmer, who was elected as a Tory MEP for the East Midlands region, but defected to UKIP in 2012. He has hit the headlines many times with his absurd views on the environment (climate change denial), the NHS (should be abolished and replaced with a US style system), homophobia (homophobia doesn't exist) and rape ("the victim surely shares a part of the responsibility, if only for establishing reasonable expectations").

Other than Nigel Farage, probably the most high profile former Tory to make UKIP his new home is the disgraced former Tory MP Neil "cash for questions" Hamilton, who was welcomed into UKIP with open arms. Hamilton is a morally and financially bankrupt specimen of everything that is rotten about British politics, and should never have been allowed back into political life, but UKIP threw him a lifeline because they thought they could cash in on his C list celebrity status.

Aside from the numerous high profile political defections, there have also been scores of local council defections from the Tories to UKIP, including David Silvester who defected in 2012 and hit the headlines in 2014 with his claims that the Somerset floods were God's revenge on the UK for introducing gay equality legislation!

The politicians don't just flow from the Tories to UKIP, there have been a number of high profile defections from UKIP to the Tories too. Some high profile examples include former UKIP leader Craig Mackinlay, who defected to the Tories in 2005; MEP David Campbell Bannerman, who defected to the Tories in 2011; and MEP Marta Andreasen who defected to the Tories in 2013,

Aside from the revolving door between the Tory party and UKIP there are also a number of UKIP politicians that are just mad, including Boston Councillor Elizabeth Ransome who famously said "I no [sic] this is probably a stupid question, but is tuna a real fish like ones that swim in the sea?", Julia Gaspar who claimed that gay people have sex with animals and children,  and Godfrey Bloom who was eventually expelled from the party after referring to the 3rd World as "Bongo Bongo Land" and his female UKIP colleagues as "sluts".

Links with the fascist fringe

UKIP is part of the extreme-right European Parliament group called Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD). In fact, the UKIP leader Nigel Farage is is the Co-President of this rag-tag bunch of right-wing extremists which includes the Danish People’s Party, the True Finns Party, the Dutch SGP and the Italian Lega Nord.

Farage's fellow EFD Co-President is Lega Nord’s Francesco Speroni, who described the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik as someone whose "ideas are in defence of western civilisation". Mario Borghezio, another member of the EFD group, declared that Breivik had some "excellent ideas".

In April 2013 the English Defence League openly endorsed UKIP with a statement that "All nationalist parties should stand aside in areas that Ukip have a good chance of winning ... Let’s not split their vote." Perhaps the EDL see their role in a future UKIP government as equivalent to the Sturmabteilung brownshirt Nazi party enforcers that eventually gave rise to the Waffen S.S.? Who knows?

Whatever the case, an endorsement from the EDL is hardly the kind of thing that helps a party that is trying to bury its reputation as a bunch of knuckle dragging extremists bankrolled by the Tory establishment.

UKIP supporters

The majority of UKIP supporters seem to be too stupid/ill informed to realise that UKIP is a party for  right-wing extremists that are too dodgy (Neil Hamilton) or too right-wing for the Tory party (most of their donors and MEPs).

Anyone that has deluded themselves into believing that UKIP is an alternative to the Lib-Lab-Con establishment order is probably way beyond reasoning with (I doubt many will have read this far without quitting because they can't tolerate reading stuff that clashes with own their confirmation bias).

The amazing thing about UKIP supporters is that so many of them are left-wing, yet they support a party that is significantly more right-wing than the Tories. A recent YouGov poll showed that the average UKIP supporter is significantly more left-wing than the average Lib-Dem or Tory voter and almost as left-wing as the average Labour supporter.

It's bad enough that so many people with left-wing views continue to support New Labour, despite the fact the party has been run by a bunch of neoliberals for the last 20 years, but the fact that three quarters of the people that support a party that is way to the right of the Tories have distinctly socialist views on public ownership is absolutely incredible.
 
The majority of UKIP supporters believe in the renationalisation of the rail network and the energy companies, so given the extremely right-wing stance of the party leadership , UKIP is clearly not the party you they be supporting.

More of the same, not an alternative

UKIP is a party run by Tories and bankrolled by Tories. UKIP adheres to the Tory ideology of neoliberalism (the ideology that the Lib-Lab-Cons all adhere to as well). The idea that UKIP represents any kind of "alternative" is dependent upon ignorance and political illiteracy.

UKIP are not an alternative to the neoliberal orthodoxy of the three establishment parties, in fact they offer nothing but an even more fanatical version of the same warped ideology. As a conclusion I'll list some of the political parties and organisations that do offer a genuine alternative to the neoliberal consensus of the Lib-Lab-Cons and UKIP.

 A list of genuine alternatives movements
Political parties

 The Green Party: If you're a libertarian and you want to support a party that explicitly oppose neoliberalism and state authoritarianism and have a commitment to holding a referendum on membership of the EU, then the Green Party are certainly worth a look. Their single MP Caroline Lucas has put in a legendary performance since her election to parliament in 2010, consistently fighting against neoliberalism and in favour of justice, freedom and democracy. [Website]
  
The National Health Action Party: If you oppose the ideological destruction of the NHS, the NHA party is possibly the party for you.The fact that the majority of them are health care professionals reluctantly entering politics to fight for something they believe in, rather than power hungry career politicians, is something that really counts in their favour. [Website]

The Socialist Party:The corporate press has done a spectacular job of turning "socialism" into a dirty word, so it is extraordinarily unlikely that The Socialist Party will ever have any kind of electoral success, however they are undeniably an alternative to the neoliberal orthodoxy of the Lib-Lab-Cons and UKIP. [Website]
          
The Pirate Party: The Pirate Party's core policies are to bring about reform to Copyright and Patent laws, support privacy and reduce surveillance from government and businesses, and guarantee genuine freedom of speech for everyone. [Website]
      
The Libertarian Party:These guys are far too right-wing for my liking, but if you're a right-wing libertarian, these guys are far more closely aligned with your views than the Tory style right-wing authoritarianism of UKIP. [Website]
       
Left Unity: Left Unity is an attempt to build a broad left wing party, it is comparatively small and they are not immune from making mistakes, however they are intent on trying to offer an alternative to the neoliberal orthodoxy. [Website]  
   
Plaid Cymru: If you live in Wales you probably know more about Plaid than I do. If you don't, you can't vote for them. They occupy the centre-left of the politicl spectrum and their politicians have consistently voted against the most egregious and draconian coalition policies (secret courts, retroactive law, the gagging law, the NHS privatisation by stealth bill).
[Website]   
Scottish National Party: The SNP occupy the social democratic political centre ground and they have a reasonably good track record of keeping to their electoral commitments (the independence referendum, free prescriptions, free university education ...). [Website]
Campaigning organisations

Positive Money: Positive Money are doing a great service in educating the public about the gaping flaws in the financial system. [Website]

Robin Hood Tax: A campaign for a tax on financial transactions to raise funds to protect public services, tackle poverty and climate change. [Website]

The People's Assembly: A broad coalition against ideological austerity. [Website]
 
38 Degrees: 38 Degrees is an independent UK based protest and petition website designed to help people bring about political change. [Website]
  

Another Angry Voice is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only source of revenue for Another Angry Voice is the  PayPal  donations box (which can be found in the right hand column, fairly near the top of the page). If you could afford to make a donation to help keep this site going, it would be massively appreciated.




Posted by Thomas G. Clark at 16:55 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, 12 February 2014

The Tory ideological mission



Nobody should be surprised that the Tory party serve the interests of the wealthy minority.

The fact that the Tory led government is packed full of millionaires who buy into the "greed is a virtue" philosophy of neoliberalism is one strong indicator that the serving of wealthy establishment interests should be expected. Another, even stronger indicator is the fact that the Tory party is funded by a rogues gallery of tax-dodgers, banksters, private health interests and landed gentry.

The Tory party is absolutely crammed with people suffering a smug sense of superiority over the masses. These people believe that they are special and a cut above the rest, because they're rich, because they've been Eton & Oxbridge educated, because they were born into establishment families, or perhaps (like Iain Duncan Smith) because they suffer a misanthropic hatred for most of humanity. This sense of superiority and entitlement that pervades the Tory party allows them to believe that the "lower orders" are just a gigantic hoard of pig-ignorant cretins that can be abused, lied to and easily fobbed off with the most implausible nonsense.One example of this assumption of absolute stupidity is the way that the Tories have been constantly talking up their so-called "economic recovery" as if us "lower orders" are far too stupid to realise that we are far worse off than we were when the Tories snuck into power in 2010.

The Tories seem to believe that if they point to some cherry-picked and grotesquely manipulated statistics (GDP figures, headline unemployment rate, house price inflation figures) us plebs are so damn stupid that we'll forget all about their unprecidented campaign of wage repression, their massive cuts to in-work social security, their defunding of our essential services, their attacks on our labour rights and our rights to express dissent, their ideological destruction of the justice system, their disgraceful sell-offs and give-aways of state infrastructure for far less than it's actually worth and their campaign of psychological torture against the disabled.

They really do think that they are so smart and superior, and us ordinary people are so stupid and gullible that they can tell us that we're all benefiting from this so-called "recovery" and we'll all simply believe it and flock to the polling stations to vote for them.

One of the most obvious problems with this "recovery" narrative is that there has been absolutely no "recession" or "austerity" for the rich, whilst the cuts and austerity measures have been borne by the poor and ordinary.
  • Since the financial sector collapse in 2008 the banks have paid out more than double the amount in bonuses than they've paid in corporation tax. [source]
  • The rate of corporation tax on large corporations has been slashed by 40% from 28% in 2010 to 20% in 2015. [source]
  • Since the Tories came to power the directors of the FTSE 100 companies have enjoyed an unprecedented period of wage inflation, which peaked in 2011 with an average annual wage rise of 49%! [source]
  • The average worker has suffered the longest sustained period of wage repression since records began. [source]
  • Private health companies that donate to the Tory party have received £1.5 billion worth of contracts since the Tories carved the NHS wide open for privatisation (like they promised that they wouldn't). [source]
  • In the very same week that the Tories introduced "Bedroom Tax" to financially penalise some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society, they handed the 13,000 UK based income millionaires an average tax break of £100,000 per year! [source]
These facts blast the Tory narrative that "we're all in this together" out of the water. They rely on the hope that the "lower orders" are too stupid and too ill-informed (thanks to the complicity of the mainstream media) to understand what is really going on. The super-rich establishment class haven't suffered austerity and wage repression, and in fact, they've been making themselves richer than ever before.

In the words of Mark McGowan "This isn't a recession, it's a robbery".

There is an absolute mountain of evidence out there that the Tories (assisted by their odious Lib-Dem sidekicks) have been up to their usual trick of making the rich minority richer and everyone else poorer, yet some delusional people still continue to vote Tory. It seems that the Tories can do whatever they like, and some 30% of regular voters will still vote for them and their agenda of deliberately widening the poverty gap in order to serve the interests of the tiny establishment minority.

 I'll conclude with a prediction: After four years of helping the tiny super-rich establishment minority enrich themselves at a faster rate than ever against a backdrop of brutal Tory austerity for the poor and ordinary, the Tories will take their foot off the necks of the "lower orders" (in the form of a rise in the minimum wage, a cut in VAT ...) in the months before the 2015 election in the hope that they can create an artificial "feel-good factor" to win them the next general election. The idea being that the "lower orders" will be so relieved to be able to breathe properly for a while, that they'll forget who has been standing on their neck for four years, then flock to the polling stations to vote for their oppressors.

I hope you won't be one of them ...
 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.




More articles from
 ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE 
               
The Great Neoliberal Lie
                  
What is ... Wage Repression?
           
Posted by Thomas G. Clark at 19:29 3 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, 11 February 2014

The Somerset floods and the ideological austerity agenda


I've revisited the subject of austerity driven cuts to flood prevention schemes on several occasions before the Somerset levels flooded in the winter of 2013-14.

The main point I have raised each time is that cutting flood defence spending is about the most blatant false economy possible. For every £1 spent on flood prevention schemes, the economy saves £8 in avoided economic damage. It seems paradoxical, but if the Tory led government was actually interested in saving money, they would have increased the amount of money they spent on flood prevention rather than slashing it, as they did from 2011-12 onwards. Spending on flood prevention is one of the strongest fiscal multipliers going, yet in their ideological zeal to cut spending, the Tories simply assumed that it was "waste" and slashed away at it.

The Environment Agency estimated that the 2012 floods cost the UK economy somewhere in the region of £600 million, now the insurance industry estimates that they will have to pay out some £500 million for the Somerset floods. These costs will be passed onto the public via increased insurance premiums, damage to uninsured property and through lost trade in the flooded areas.

The fact that the Tories have now pledged to spend an additional £130 million on flood defences is just rubbing salt into the wounds of those who have been affected by the numerous floods since the Tory cuts to flood prevention spending took hold. That £130 million represents just part of the money the Tories cut from the flood prevention budget, and it's now being pledged as a purely political gesture.

Another indicator that the Tories are intent on playing politics over the floods is the steady flow of misleading claims that they have supposedly increased spending on flood defences. These claims rely on the tricks of not adjusting the figures for inflation, and including the 2010-11 flood prevention spending they inherited from the Labour government in their own figures. If the figures are adjusted for inflation, or the spending they inherited from Labour is excluded, there is no argument that they severely cut the flood prevention budget. That they insist on tinkering around with the figures in order to create the fiction that they didn't cut flood prevention spending, rather than actually focusing on the disaster at hand illustrates exactly where their priorities lie.

Aside from their statistical chicanery, the other unedifying element to the Tory reaction is their desperation to blame everyone apart from themselves, they've trotted out the ever predictable "Blame Labour" narratives, as well as blaming the Environment Agency (whose funding they cut), the EU and environmentalists.

One of the big ironies is that of the nine MPs that represent constituencies in the County of Somerset, all of them (5 Lib Dems and 4 Tories) are part of the Coalition government that slashed flood defence spending as part of their ideological austerity experiment. Given the tribalistic nature of politics in the UK it seems extraordinarily unlikely that the voters of Somerset will attempt to punish their MPs at the ballot box. It will be extremely surprising if even one of these nine constituencies returns an MP from Labour/Green/UKIP/other alternative/independent at the next election. The voters of Somerset will undoubtedly flock to the ballot boxes in order to vote for the people that ruthlessly cut flood prevention spending and then sat on their hands for weeks as the disaster unfolded.

The Somerset floods are one of the most visible demonstrations that the Tory Lib-Dem austerity experiment is a purely ideological thing. They knew that things like this would happen if they slashed flood defence spending, but they went ahead and slashed it anyway because they had to make savings on paper. New that the true costs of these "savings" are beginning to become apparent, they believe they can get away with it by blaming everyone else but themselves. The really sad thing is, that there are plenty of political tribalists that will believe their extraordinarily dodgy statistics and their "not our fault guv" narratives and wade through the floodwater to vote for them.


Another Angry Voice is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only source of revenue for Another Angry Voice is the  PayPal  donations box (which can be found in the right hand column, fairly near the top of the page). If you could afford to make a donation to help keep this site going, it would be massively appreciated.



Posted by Thomas G. Clark at 13:48 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Monday, 10 February 2014

Why do right-wing people support workfare?


One of the big mysteries in politics is why so many right-wing people support Iain Duncan Smith's Stalinist Workfare schemes, which are designed to force people (under threat of absolute destitution) to give away their labour for free, often to highly profitable foreign corporations.

There are many glaringly obvious complaints that the right-wing thinker should have against these economically illiterate schemes, yet the typical Tory voter tends to enthusiastically support Workfare. First I'll look at the big reasons that right-wing people should be highly suspicious of Iain Duncan Smith's Workfare schemes, then I'll try to consider the reasons that they might over-look these problematic factors in order to convince themselves that Workfare is a good idea, or even to actively propagandise in favour of mandatory unpaid labour schemes.

Right-wing arguments against "Workfare"

State interference 
            
One of the most constant themes in the right-wing press is the argument against government interference in the lives of the public. The right-wing love to whine on about the encroachment of the state, which they refer to derisively as "the nanny state" (especially when Labour are in power).

The problem is that, unless the individual is hopelessly immune to cognitive dissonance, there is absolutely no way that it is possible to oppose the encroachment of the state into the lives of the public, and simultaneously support mandatory unpaid workfare schemes for the unemployed, in which the citizen is stripped of their labour rights, made to abandon their right to earn the National Minimum Wage and compelled (under threat of absolute destitution) to give away their labour for free for up to six months at a go (which is double the maximum community service sentence that can be imposed on criminals) to whichever business the government sends them to.

The classic example of this kind of state dictatorship over the individual is the case of Cait Reilly, who had used her own initiative to find an unpaid work placement which related to her qualifications, but Iain Duncan Smith and the DWP forced her to give up this skilled voluntary work in order to sweep floors and stack shelves at Poundland (which is not even a British company - it's owned by the US hedge fund Warburg Pincus).

The argument isn't that people should be free to do nothing, it is that the individual should be free to pursue their own path back into paid employment, without the government interfering and forcing them to boost the profits of some foreign corporation instead.

Another classic example of this vile mentality is the case of the 60 year old army veteran Stephen Taylor, who had his social security payments stopped for the "crime" of selling poppies for a couple of hours a day in the weeks before Remembrance Sunday. even though he had been actively looking work during that time too. Iain Duncan Smith's DWP clearly believe that the government has the right to dictate and micromanage precisely what people can do with their time.

If you support Workfare and believe that the state has a right to dictate exactly what people like Cait Reilly and Stephen Taylor do with their time, you're clearly a fan of "the nanny state" after all. 

Confiscation
                
An essential part of right-wing politics is the protection of property. Right-wing people really dislike the idea of the state coming along and taking people's property, in fact, some go as far as justifying their tax avoidance/evasion activities with the argument that "taxation is theft".

It seems a bit strange then for the same people to then support Workfare schemes in which the state confiscates people's labour. It's pretty contradictory to support the idea that income taxes on the product of the individual's labour should be cut, or even abolished, yet support schemes which confiscate the entire value of the individual's labour.

If you support Workfare, you support the idea that the state has a right to go around confiscating things that belong to the individual.

Theft  
                  
One particularly popular argument against Workfare is that we have all paid for our social security benefits through our National Insurance contributions. If the government then says that we must work 30 hours a week at Poundland in order to receive the unemployment benefits we've already paid for, this is clearly making us pay twice for something. Essentially the government is stealing our National Insurance contributions.

If you support Workfare, then you support the state when it steals the National Insurance contributions of those it forces onto mandatory unpaid Workfare schemes.

A waste of taxpayer's money

 Right-wing people are often heard complaining about how taxpayers' money is being wasted on things like "non-jobs". This is actually a fair point, I'm pretty left-wing but I don't like to see taxpayers' money wasted on pointless unproductive job creation schemes either.

The problem for the right-wing supporter of Workfare is that Iain Duncan Smith's "welfare reforms" have resulted in the creation of some of the most ludicrously pointless and inefficient taxpayer funded "non-jobs" in history. Just because these Work Programme jobs exist in the private sector, doesn't mean that they're not taxpayer funded "non-jobs". These jobs are totally reliant upon taxpayer handouts and they are ludicrously unproductive (in the first year of the Work Programme every single one of the 18 Work Programme contractors failed to meet their minimum target of getting just 5% of their clients into work!).

The Work Programme ties in with Iain Duncan Smith's Stalinist Workfare schemes because Work Programme contractors get lucrative fees from the taxpayer every time they force one of their clients onto a mandatory unpaid Workfare scheme. The Work Programme provider still gets this handout from the taxpayer even if they take on the unpaid worker to work in their own office, doing the admin involved in forcing more and more people into unpaid labour schemes for up to six months at a time in return for piles of taxpayers' cash!

If you support Workfare then you support the creation of thousands of taxpayer funded "non-jobs".

Market subsidies
           
Right-wing people often complain about state subsidisation. The argument against subsidisation is an essential part of the justification narratives for the sell-off of state infrastructure that has been happening since 1979. "Why" the right wing-people asked "should the taxpayer subsidise the coal mines / the steel industry / the automotive industry / the shipbuilding industry?"

Well now that all of these industries have been deliberately annihilated, the government subsidies keep on flowing. The privatised rail industry hoovers up three times as much in subsidies as the entire network cost to run in the last year of British Rail, the banks received the largest subsidies in economic history to save them from the consequences of their own reckless gambling and Workfare is yet another form of government subsidisation, because the government is using taxpayers' money to provide a source of free labour to favoured businesses.

The Workfare receiving businesses benefit from a supply of free labour, whilst the taxpayer picks up the entire cost of paying the subsistence benefits paid to the Workfare victims (and paying the placement fees paid out to the Work Programme providers that forced them onto these schemes - see above). The Workfare using companies (many of them foreign owned) get a supply of completely free labour and the taxpayer pays for it.

If you support Workfare then you support the distribution of state subsidies to favoured corporations.

Market rigging

Right-wing people often go on about the "free market" but Workfare is clearly nothing like a free market policy because it creates obvious unfair market advantages for companies that are the beneficiaries of these free labour schemes. Right-wing people often like to think that they are on the side of small businesses too.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate how Workfare goes against these views is through the use of an example.

Let's say that you own a small business that employs a number of low-skilled workers (let's say a garden centre or a furniture shop). You like the people who you employ and are disinclined to sack them and replace them with free labour paid for at the taxpayers' expense because over the years you've come to know their wives and children and you'd have to feel pretty guilty for thrusting them into destitution to make yourself a few extra quid. However a rival local business has no such qualms about sacking their staff and taking advantage of Workfare. This would put your business at a large cost disadvantage since you pay your workers wages and the associated employment taxes whilst your rival doesn't.

Workfare rigs the market in favour of those businesses that take advantage of it, and against those that believe in actually paying their staff. The problem is especially bad if the rival business is a large corporation that also has other market advantages such as economies of scale, or tax-dodging activities.

If you support Workfare you do not believe in free markets and fair competition and you are not on the side of small local businesses.
     
Shirkers
      
Right wing people often tend to go on about "shirkers" a lot. What they don't seem to realise is that the "shirkers" are not the unemployed people when it comes to Workfare, it is the profitable corporations that take advantage of these schemes to get a free supply of labour and shirk their responsibility to pay the National Minimum Wage and the National Insurance contributions of their workers, leaving the taxpayer to pick up the tab for them.

You may think that this has little effect on you (other than the giveaway of taxpayers' money to fund these schemes of course), but you'd be wrong. Allowing corporations to shirk their responsibilities to pay their workers a wage means that their workers have significantly less money in their pockets, and therefore have less money to spend in the local economy.

Recent labour market statistics have shown that there are some 148,000 people on mandatory unpaid Workfare schemes. Imagine how much more money would be spent in the economy if these 148,000 people had jobs that paid them a wage, rather than the pitiful subsistence income they receive for doing Workfare. That difference has essentially been stolen from the "real economy" by the "shirkers" who refuse to pay wages to their workers.

If you support Workfare you support "shirkers" that dodge paying wages to their staff in order to boost their own profits, robbing the local economy and relying on taxpayer handouts in the process.

Reasons the right-wing still support "Workfare"
  • Tory tribalism: Some people are political tribalists who will support their favoured political party no matter what kind of lunatic policies they come up with.
  • Gullibility:  Some people support Iain Duncan Smith's Stalinist schemes because they are gullible enough to believe his rhetoric that these schemes have been designed to "help" unemployed people back into work, even though the evidence (and common sense) tells us that working some 30 hours a week (for no pay) seriously hinders people's ability to search for proper paid employment. 
  • Mindless vindictiveness: Some right wing people support these schemes because they are mindlessly vindictive. They believe the hopelessly misleading Tory propaganda narratives that there are plenty of jobs, therefore unemployed people are lazy shirkers who need to be punished. 
  • Economic illiteracy: A lot of people on either side of the political spectrum are economically illiterate. This means that they are unable to see the negative economic consequences of these schemes, and instead buy into the simplistic narrative that people without jobs should be made to "do something".
  • Illusions of superiority:  A lot of pro-Workfare people seem to be suffering the delusion that they are somehow immune from these schemes. The "I've always had a job" so "I'm alright Jack" brigade seem to imagine that they are so great that they could never face the prospect of unemployment. Nobody is indispensable, and many people who have always worked find themselves coping with unemployment for the first time when they are in their late 50s or 60s. If these Workfare schemes continue to spread as rapidly as they have been, then perhaps these "I'm alright Jack" Workfare supporters might live to seriously regret it a couple of decades down the line. 
  • Possible self-interest: It is always possible that the pro-Workfare propagandist has vested interests in Workfare. Perhaps their company takes advantage of taxpayer funded free labour schemes? Perhaps they realise that pumping a huge supply of free labour into the labour market drives down the cost of labour, meaning there is less pressure on them to raise the wages of their employees? Perhaps they own shares in companies that take advantage of Workfare free labour schemes in order to boost their profits?
  • DoubleThink: Probably the single most important reason that so many right-wing people openly support these Stalinist Workfare schemes is that they are immune to cognitive dissonance. To many of us the holding of two mutually contradictory ideas causes bouts of cognitive dissonance, yet people who consider themselves right-wing and support Workfare are quite clearly capable of believing in mutually contradictory things (such as "the nanny state is bad" and "the state should strip people of their autonomy and force them to work wherever the state thinks best").
 Conclusion

I am not a right-wing person, so it has been quite a challenge to try to see things from a right-wing perspective. I believe that I have shown that Iain Duncan Smith's Stalinist Workfare schemes are totally incompatible with a lot of right-wing political and economic dogma. I've also outlined some of the reasons I believe that right-wing people allow themselves to be fooled into believing Workfare to be a good thing, when it clashes so badly with so much right-wing ideology.

Whatever your political persuasion, I hope you recognise these schemes for the authoritarian, ineffective and economically illiterate nonsense that they so clearly are.
 

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.



More articles from
 ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE 
The economic case against tax-dodging 
   
Neoliberalism and communism
                          
   The "unpatriotic left" fallacy 
         
Posted by Thomas G. Clark at 16:37 1 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)