Some of the arguments we saw on Wednesday was textbook Toryism. Brendan Clarke-Smith argued supplying meals was like "nationalising children", of alleviating parents of their responsibilities and thrusting it onto the taxpayer. We know facts are inconveniences for Tories, but the truth is child poverty among working families is greater than non-working families, and as we're talking more than two million families here (over four million, up 500,000 since 2010). Knowing the likes of Clarke-Smith, they're either bad parents because they do not provide for their kids, or they're bad parents for having low paid jobs.
Usually, what happens in the Commons stays in the Commons. Not this time. In a deft bit of political footwork, Marcus Rashford orchestrated an online campaign that saw (mainly Labour) councils vow to step into the gap left by the government, with businesses large and small doing the same. Awkward, but the disaster for the Tories comes from their pugnacious response. They attempted to bury the damage by whipping up outrage against Angela Rayner for calling them scum, albeit under her breath, but when the blood is up and there's an opportunity to put the boot into working class people, the Tories couldn't help themselves. Jonathan Gullis, the non-entity representing Stoke North said he'd "been contacted by schools, supermarkets and parents who are concerned some have used the £15 a week voucher on alcohol, tobacco or on unhealthy food." Of course he had. Philip Davies, the self-described "men's rights activist" accused a 16 year old schoolgirl who wrote to him of "intolerance", because saying making kids go hungry is wrong is the same as bigotry. This afternoon, North Devon's Selaine Saxby appeared to threaten businesses by saying she hoped none helping out hungry children would be applying for assistance from the government. The piece de resistance was provided by our friend Ben Bradley. From picking a fight with Marcus Rashford to saying food vouchers were fuelling brothels and crack dens and then throwing a hissy fit at a Mansfield school for refusing to back his lies, the boy blunder has had a mare. And now it turns out our illustrious leader, Boris Johnson, did not even condescend to reply to an invitation from Rashford to enjoy a food poverty task force. Yup, it's been a tough old week.
If their actions condemn them, their words damn them. Politically speaking, it's a disaster. But why was this allowed to happen? The Tories, usually Borg-like on matters of message discipline, have turned the clock back to the late 1980s. Forget emollient John Major and the touchy feely affectations of Dave, this is Toryism red in tooth and claw. Not very one nation or in tune with the line of march, according to the Prime Minister. Why is this happening, why have the Tories taken leave of their political senses?
It must be remembered no one is omipotent, and this applies whether we're talking about individual politicians, political parties as a whole, and the ruling class and capital. Mistakes are made, balls ups happen. Here it appears an absence of direction from Downing Street is the fault. Having voted against the Labour initiative, it was necessary to set the Tories' face against any backlash and not be deterred or shamed by subsequent pressure and campaigning. After all, for neoliberal governments the authority invested in the executive is absolutely indispensible and must be jealously guarded. If it evaporates, election doom awaits unless the incumbent is replaced in short order. While true, giving loose lips and itchy Twitter fingers free reign was obviously not part of any grid. Why did all this bile come bubbling up? Simple: it's the size of the majority. With no elections around the corner, or none that matter as far as Tory MPs are concerned, they're not worried about the parliamentary arithmetic. And as for support, as politics is stuck polarised around age lines, as this balance favours the Tories, and how a bit of cruelty never did them any harm, there's no incentive for any right winger to wind their neck in.
Arrogance is the root of their awful behaviour, an inevitable by-product of their senses of entitlement and feeling untouchable. There will be many more moments like this, which provoke a popular outcry, but shouting is not enough. The opposition needs to cohere the anger and either make inroads into Tory support, or suppress parts of it. Can Labour rise to the task?
17 comments:
Pretty much sums it up i'd say
I have emailed several Tories in order to appraise them of the revised
version of Nye Beven's 1948 speech by including a phrase by teresa May - and avoiding any unparliamentary language so as not to offend the incredibly sensitive feelings of the self appointed ruling class:
".having condemned tens of thousands of children to avoidable hunger I hold that the Tory Party is an indissoluble crust wafted by an ideological effluent which has succeeded in elevating the status of vermin far above that of the Nasty Party"
What is depressing in this discussion is the cloying sentimentality masking hypocrisy from "leftoids", because:
* Obviously if the children go hungry, the parents too and probably before the children do. Is the hunger of the parents irrelevant?
* Therefore the "school meals just for children but not their parents" story is designed to appeal purely to sentimentality about children.
* But if there is an appeal to sentimentality, what about the poor children of Mozambique etc.? Shouldn't we feel sentimental too about them, or even more sentimental?
* What about the argument that is the usual right-wing one that if you cannot afford it you should not do it, as in poor parents having children? Is there any answer to that that is not pure sentimentality?
Overall the Conservatives are being nasty on this issue because that is *popular* and they sense that the arguments by the "leftoids" are based on hypocrisy and sentimentality: an attempt to make tory voters feel guilty about the poor hungry children, but only *ours*, screw those of third world parents, as surely the free school meals will not be extended to the latter.
Once can easily says "but making an appeal to give free school meals to the children of all the world not just *ours* will not work", but then that just confirms the hypocrisy of the sentimentality.
A more realistic and political approach is based on recognizing that sharp-elbowed tory voting mothers instinctively want all their funds to boost their own investments (their own children), rather than the investment of other mothers in other children, and actually may feel that in their dog-eat-dog world if the investments of other mothers do badly that is good for their own investments.
How do you argue with them about that? Hypocritical appeals to their sentimentality won't work, probably precisely the opposite.
Perhaps making an argument about self-interest, mutual self-insurance about a safety net for the value of their own investments might work better.
This could then develop into an argument about the parents too: that if *everybody* could rely on a sufficient safety net, like UBI/JG, then neither unlucky parents nor children would go hungry. But that is a political argument, and so many hand-wringing "leftoids" can't do politics.
«shouting is not enough. The opposition needs to cohere the anger»
But mere hand-wringing about sentimentality is pretty much what well-meaning "leftoids" are all about... :-)
«and either make inroads into Tory support, or suppress parts of it.»
Some tory/whig voters are sentimental, but most are pretty materialistic, so to get a slice of Conservative voters the only way is to adopt Conservative policies, primarily about boosting asset (business or property) rentierism, as there are some "one nation" tory voters, but really not that many, and event those prioritise their interests over their "one nation" feelings.
«Can Labour rise to the task?»
So far no, because the responses to the era of mass rentierism, begun 40 years ago, have been either "let's turn quasi-Conservative and champion affluent rentiers", or "let's pretend nothing changed and keep singing the Red Flag". The alternatives I can see as practical are:
* Appeal to in-between classes, those who are both proletarian and rentier, where their interests as proletarians are actually more significant than those as rentiers. Mainly working home owners in the "pushed behind" areas, as the Conservatives take care to pump up property only in the south-east and do nothing to improve job prospects and property returns in the "pushed behind" areas.
* Find ways to engage more with abstenstionists likely to vote Labour, the usual turnout approach, that had started to work with Corbyn. This has to be done delicately to prevent abstenstionists likely to vote Conservative to start voting in reaction.
My mum worked full time and went without food I remember her pretending she did not want any. Shame things have not moved on in the UK. Thanks for your article.
Child poverty is a feature of capitalism and not a feature of Toryism. After all even in Sweden child poverty is around 15%. It is just that when the Tories are in power the left shout about it a bit more, just like they shout when Trump does something diabolical but stay silent as Libya descends into Mad Max chaos under the watching eye of dear old Obama and Clinton.
And as Blissex says child poverty among the people who actually make the goods we consume is probably nearer 100% than 0%.
Voting in keir Starmer or for that matter Jeremy Corbyn will not solve this issue. Neither will Blissex’s appeals for more welfarism, especially on a global scale. The only way to solve these issues if for a complete and utter break from the capitalist system, and Blissex before you ask, I have no idea when that will happen, I am not mystic meg mate.
In a capitalist system the only way to really ameliorate these problems is a transfer of wealth from the middle classes to the working classes. This is why the more enlightened unions, for example the engineering unions during the 60’s and 70’s fought for more equal pay scales between so called skilled and unskilled labour, therefore reducing the gaps in disposable income.
Taking wealth from 100 billionaires will not solve this issue because for one, as soon as you take £1 billion and spread it across one billion people you have converted potential capital into £1 of revenue for 1 billion people! And this £1 does not go far. 100 billionaires might have 1000 houses between them requiring bricks, labour and other materials to construct but 5 million Middle Class people will have 5 million houses and a lot more labour and material. Therefore transferring wealth under capitalism can only work if it’s a transfer from a section of the Middle class/Upper working class to the lower working class/underclass.
The only real way out of this issue is what Marx advised, i.e. conscious planning of the economy where so called private goods would reduce relative to the production of so called public goods.
In other words a complete break from capitalism where in the initial phase only what is essential gets produced, this productive work is shared out and gradually non essential items are produced if it can be afforded (from a resource and climate point of view) and if society agrees to it.
This would not be a step back into the dark ages because for one, you can’t uninvent the technological developments of the past 5000 years and secondly the research will be more targeted to actually improving human life rather than any benefit to human life being a by product of military expenditure or other such bourgeois interests.
Now if that seems like too much for some people, then poverty will be with us for many more years to come. So my advice to those people would be, please stop bleating about it.
«My mum worked full time and went without food I remember her pretending she did not want any.»
That's indeed what most parents would do, because "if the children go hungry, the parents too and probably before the children do".
«Shame things have not moved on in the UK.»
Oh they have moved: tory-voting south-east property owners and finance spivs have very much enjoyed the boom in their living standards since 1980, and... "Blow you! I am alright Jack".
They have achieved that thanks in large part to the elevation into the middle class of so many thanks to Labour and the trade unions, and the apparent inability of much of the left to cope with the new political situation.
«Child poverty is a feature of capitalism and not a feature of Toryism. After all even in Sweden child poverty is around 15%.»
Indeed, but the *degree* of child poverty, or in general of the poverty and deprivation that also includes child poverty, matters a great deal. 15% is a lot better than 30% which is a lot better than 60% etc.
«will not solve this issue. Neither will Blissex’s appeals for more welfarism»
Actually I am more for what has been called "predistribution", that is better wages and higher job security. Welfarist redistribution to compensate for low wages and low job security is impractical, too obvious, too easy to oppose.
«The only way to solve these issues if for a complete and utter break from the capitalist system, and Blissex before you ask, I have no idea when that will happen»
Then if we are not sure that this will happen within a decade, what do we do? We just write essays debating the non-capitalist future? Or do we do politics to reduce the degree of poverty and deprivation? Or we just champion the “aspirational voters who shop at John Lewis and Waitrose”?
I have no doubt that the capitalists themselves know that eventually capitalism will be superseded by a new social organization of production, as nothing lasts forever, but in the meantime they are trying to grab as much as they can, as that guy said in the long term we all die...
While capitalist for now may be inevitable, how much workers gets shafted does not seem to me a trivial detail.
"Then if we are not sure that this will happen within a decade, what do we do?"
Keep arguing for it until it does happen and don't have any illusions in bourgeois solutions. And also do not listen to reformists who bleat about poverty, because their reforms are simply paving the way for the next period of reactionary rule. Not much else we can is there?
Let us say Joe Biden wins the next election, big deal, the left will pretend child poverty has been abolished, a republican will be returned within the decade due to the unresolved contradictions Biden was unable to deal with and the whole argument starts again. Ditto for the UK. And this cycle goes on ad infinitum. Surprised you are not getting sick of it by now!
It is also churlish to say anything good that has happened in the last 200 years in down to the Labour party and Trade Unions, given during we have virtually had uninterrupted Tory rule and Britain has held a leading place in the world market during that whole time!
Am I the only person to find women who start off their plea for more money for their kids with "I'm a single mother" to be slightly disingenuous? I may be an old Tory but I'm pretty sure that men are normally involved in procreation, and I cannot remember ever having publicly declared that if fathers can't be bothered to pay for their kids don't worry I'll pick up the bill.
Is it Labour policy now that fathers should be exempt from supporting their children?
Dipper, isn't "women must become economically active in their own right, because fathers can't be trusted to provide for their wives and children" the entire basis of second-wave feminism?
There should be no need for free school meals, Housing Benefit and so on. Those in work should have a Minimum Wage sufficient to cover normal expenses of living, including bringing up the next generation, and saving for later life. And, Minimum Wage should not be a minimum hourly rate, but a Minimum Weekly wage, irrespective of hours worked.
Similarly, those out of work due to unemployment or ill-health, should receive benefits sufficient to enable them to live a civilised existence. The savings in government bureaucracy alone would pay for higher levels of benefits, not to mention the savings if employers had to pay decent wages rather than being subsidised by the state.
But, of course, this Tory government, despite its claims in relation to Universal Credit is not going to do that, and certainly has not come close to it. So, in the meantime it is absolutely necessary that they should have to pay up from free school meals and so on. That it costs them more because of their state bureaucracy and incompetence is their problem.
"There should be no need for free school meals"
This was certainly Thatcher's policy. In actual fact it is Labour who have been the champions of free school meals rather than the Tories.
In Sweden, I know a nation Boffy absolutely adores, school meals are free in all elementary schools.
The current labour party in New Zealand is planning on introducing free school meals there too.
In actual fact the relation between the minimum wage and free schools meals seems to be those nations with higher minimum wages appear to have more generous state subsidies.
So while Boffy presents his arguments as anti Tory, in actual fact he is just aping the arguments of the right and dressing them up in leftist clothing, as usual.
But Boffy is simply a pro capitalist, fanatical neo liberal, as his genocidal lockdown plans amply illustrate.
"I'm pretty sure that men are normally involved in procreation, and I cannot remember ever having publicly declared that if fathers can't be bothered to pay for their kids don't worry I'll pick up the bill."
I have never publicly declared that I Britain to bomb a country but they go ahead and do it anyway. In fact everything they have ever done has never been publicly declared by me.
@ George Carty.
That may well be the case. Living off benefits as a life style is not becoming economically active.
There was a radio programme about the 2001 census many years ago when they found they had lost a few tens of thousands of young men. The reporter found some of them in Manchester. In short, on council estates the houses went with the mothers, and the men came and went, fathering children here and here. the state paid for everything. The men had no role, and in this case avoided anything to do with the state.
This is the end state of benefits as a right not a privilege. It is exactly the same with immigration and 'refugees'. It is easy to take an incremental case and say ;the state should pay for this', or 'this person should be allowed in', but in politics incremental cases become rights, and rights get exercised by everyone who can access them. And that leads to a very different end state than the incremental 'just one' approach.
«isn't "women must become economically active in their own right, because fathers can't be trusted to provide for their wives and children" the entire basis of second-wave feminism?»
Oops, another victim of "identitarian" propaganda and anti-historicism: for the past several hundred thousand years the vast majority of women have had to be "economically active in their own right", because you know single earner peasant or other working class incomes were not even remotely sufficient to keep a family afloat. Only the very privileged and small minority of women sponging off a an upper-middle and upper class women were not "economically active". And there is an interesting story that I think matters as there has however been a huge change:
* The vast majority of men and women for most of human history were both peasants, largely outside the money economy, and their economic activity was roughly of the same type and value, that is pretty much subsistence labour. This means that for example lower-class women were never beholden to their men, they could and did switch them whenever unsatisfied. As a detail, historically one of the most important labours of women was washing up, something that had pretty much the same value as men weaving or producing small artisanal objects.
* With the "industrial revolution" the work of lower class men has become more valuable than the traditional work of women, because they got wages, that is they got paid liquid wages. In addition this made most men but not most women benefit in part from the much higher productivity of the coal and then oil based economy.
So what really has changed is that while women and men have been both more or less equal as being economically active for hundreds of thousands of years, in the past hundred years many more men have become active in the *money economy* via wage work, and so women have tried to balance that by getting themselves into the money economy by way of wage work. An experiment that is having enormous consequences, notably a huge collapse in the natality rate as women accumulate persion assets as money instead of sons.
«for the past several hundred thousand years the vast majority of women have had to be "economically active in their own right", because you know single earner peasant or other working class incomes were not even remotely sufficient to keep a family afloat.»
As to this I am often amazed and disappointed that so many people I know consider the current system and situation "the norm", where instead for hundreds of thousands of years the vast majority of the population, whether men or women, were peasants or servants living in rural villages or small towns, in the "in kind" economy, and our human culture and habits (and language idioms) have been largely shaped by those hundreds of thousands of years.
«As a detail, historically one of the most important labours of women was washing up»
This is a detail that seems to have been completely lost to most contemporaries: one of the major reasons for many men to get married was to have someone to do the washing up (and were terrified of losing their wives for the same reason), because it took just so much time and effort, and they could not afford to find the time and stamina to do it themselves after a day's work in the fields. Villages even used to have shared "washing up halls" (usually near streams) with large basins where women spend a significant part of their working time.
So many people just don't understand how things were and how they evolved and judge the past, which is a foreign country, by making absurd assumptions based on the extraordinary circumstances of the past 1 or 2 centuries.
Great points Blissex.
In the modern era it is more often than not the women of the rich who are economically inactive and tend to prance about in designer gear posing for photographers, while nanny is working hard back at the ranch.
There idea of being economically active is to put their name to some perfume brand.
One great thing a socialist revolution will undoubtedly bring about is returning these layabouts to being productive members of the community. But they are the least of our problems!
Another great thing a socialist revolution will undoubtedly bring about is the reevaluation of all known values and a complete reassessment of what economically active even means.
If you are flipping burgers at Mcdonald's you are actively contributing to worsening a society's metabolic health, if you are Martin Lewis you are actively turning people into a kind of hunger games let me grab what I can while I can and sod the consequences extreme individualist, if you work for Boeing you are probably helping kill people on a massive scale, if you work in a factory you are probably producing useless shit no one needs and actively dehmanising and debasing humanity, if you are working in an hotel you are probably facilitating the climate change calamity, if you work in construction you are probably responsible for mass extinction, if you are a journalist you are probably feeding junk into peoples brains, if you are teacher you are probably actively adding insult to injury (see France).
Workers of the world unite and stop the fuck what you are doing! And then think, what the fuck should we be doing!
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