The two agendas

During my long adulthood there has been an under-appreciated change in British politics: whereas left and right used to at least agree upon what the issues were, this is now less true.

Historically, left and right disagreed upon economic issues: nationalization or privatization; capital or labour; fiscal or monetary activism; regulation or deregulation; austerity or not. But for all our differences, we at least agreed that these were the big questions.

This agreement, though, has faded. Whist many of us are still pre-occupied by economic questions - how to raise productivity, decarbonize, democratize the economy and so on - many others are not. Their concerns lie elsewhere: in combatting imagined attacks on freedom whilst ignoring real ones; in identity politics; in talk of "diversitycrats", wokeness or "gender identity ideology"; in what should be taught in schools; or in "stopping the boats."

This divide is not wholly a left-right one. There are some on the left who are obsessed with identity politics (albeit far fewer than in the right's fevered fantasies) and others in the Labour party who fret about second-order issues, whilst some centrists haven't abandoned interest in economics. Nevertheless there is, I sense, an overlap between the left-right split and the disagreement about what matters.

Which leaves many of us older economic-orientied leftists befuddled. As Duncan Weldon tweeted:

Worst NHS crisis of my lifetime, dire economic situation and the public policy discussion today is about a maths teaching plan for the mid to late 2020s which we don’t have the teachers to deliver.

To a degree I've not seen in my lifetime, left and right disagree not just about policy but about what the issues are.

Brexit was an example of this. Before 2016, the big division wasn't so much between Leavers and Remainers: such words had no meaning then. Instead, it was between a few rightists who thought EU membership was a big issue and the rest of us who didn't: one of the right's great rhetorical tricks was to call themselves "eurosceptics" rather than what they really were - which was eurofanatics.

Which poses the question: why has this division emerged?

Part of the story is the spread of poshcuntstalkshit programming. The lack of demand and supply of genuine experts means these are filled with "commentators" whose main talent is being able to turn up to a TV studio at short notice. As these are unable to talk intelligently about complex issues - the stalling of productivity growth, fiscal policy; falling real incomes; the NHS's problems - they resort to the drivel one could hear from thousands of golf club gammons.

But there's something else. It's that actually-existing British capitalism - whether you call it neoliberalism, financialization, rentierism or whatever - has failed most people; even before the jump in gas prices real wages were barely higher than they had been 15 years previously. If you are going to talk about economics, then, you must either talk of big change or defend a system that works only for a minority. It's no wonder therefore that many on the right would rather point to a dead cat: Prince Harry is the latest one, but there'll be another along soon enough. "Culture wars" are a product of capitalist stagnation.

With the economy flat-lining, tricky questions arise. Should we allow public services to deteriorate or raise taxes, if so on whom? Do we really want to cut private consumption to make room for more public consumption? Given that higher energy costs mean that the UK is poorer as a country, whose real income should take the hit: nurses and railworkers, or others, and if so whom? In short, who do we throw under the bus?

These are nasty trade-offs. Which many don't want to talk about. This is true more of the centre and right than left: whereas the latter are comfortable demanding higher taxes on the rich (maybe too comfortable) the former don't like to call explicitly for the impoverishment of nurses.

Instead, if they must talk of economics they wibble about electability or a lack of money - which is only slightly less moronic than asking about nationalizing sausages. Better for them that they retreat to the comfort zone of culture wars.

I would read Truss's ill-fated premiership in this context. Although she spoke of being pro-growth and breaking with Treasury orthodoxy, this was mere cargo-cult economics. It was language without substance, and assertion without evidence - for example that tax cuts would boost growth. Instead, it was identity politics - invoking a (partly fictitious) image of Thatcher and appealing to Tory prejudices rather than seriously engaging with genuine issues.

Whatever the reason for this divide about what we should talk about, it has an important implication. One facet of political power is control over the agenda: if we're talking about immigration or trans people or "wokesters" we are not talking about the failure of capitalism. One under-appreciated route through which the media exercise influence is in deciding what it is that we do talk about. Given this, it's not at all clear to me that it is even possible for the BBC to be truly impartial.

Comments

[ltr]

British capitalism - whether you call it neoliberalism, financialization, rentierism or whatever - has failed most people; even before the jump in gas prices real wages were barely higher than they had been 15 years previously. If you are going to talk about economics, then, you must either talk of big change or defend a system that works only for a minority...

[ An exceptional essay. I am so grateful. ]

[aragon]

It's simple, they don't have a solution to the Economic problems, so you throw a dead cat on the table to distract everyone. Wokeness, (Anti)Racisim and the biggest of them all Degrowth and Climate change.

What better way to deal with lack of growth than climate change and degrowth.

Capitalism is working as intended, transfering wealth from a majority to a 'elite' minority, so they can maintain thier portion of a delcining pie.

The Labour party is at the front of this from Starmers - What is a woman, Ed Millibands climate reperations, to the Labour energy policy, Health policy and Employment policy, all of which would shame an intellegent ten year old.

An Energy policy based on 'Green' solutions of which we have an excess, Health on non-existant private sector staff, and employment helping people into bullshit and none existant or casual/zero hour jobs at poor wages and Tory economic constraints.

Economists are apparently puzzled by Britain's latest and fundimental decline, well we could go back to the seventies oil shocks and/or Neoliberalism/Financialisaton/Renterism.

But their is another factor, that muddies the GDP waters.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2012/mar/29/north-sea-oil-revenue-squandered

So, counting back four decades from 2012, gives use 1972, the first oil shock was 1973 and then a second in 1979

Governments from 1979 onwards have enjoyed income from North Sea Oil (on a declining basis). So Mrs Thatcher could use the resource curse to devistate Britain with the exception of the City.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_oil#1964%E2%80%93present

"UK oil production has seen two peaks, in the mid-1980s and the late 1990s"

By 2007 North Sea oil was half it's peak production.

Back to the Guardian
"Boasts that the black gold would retool British industry proved utterly hollow. If anything, oil added to the woes of manufacturing, since sterling's status as a petro-currency drove up the exchange rate and made exports uncompetitive."

So Thatcher destroys the social fabric of the UK, and the politians buffered by North Sea oil, see the North/South divide (exasabated by the closure of the mines) move from a line between the Seven to the Humber to the residual Golden Triange, that is the British economy. The withdrawl of the oil tide just shows the elite/politians have been swimming naked.

Guardian
"Even more worryingly, acute energy dependency looms."
The UK on Norway and Netherlands, Europe on Russia, not to mention the UK selling real estate, off to Kuwait etc.

It's not a case of 'Don't look up' but 'Don't look down', like Wile E. Coyote, the elite have already run off the edge of the cliff, and the supportng ground has disappeared.

Guardian again.
"An entire era can be summed up in three words: discovered, extracted, squandered."

An Epitaph for UK energy/economic/social policy. But the City Laundrette continues it's spin for now. Defend it is then, or Distract!.

[rsm]

What if truly democratizing the economy means giving up on productivity?

What does higher productivity do for me, if the authoritarian left will happily hand me over to Chinese prosecutors for claiming the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident happened?

[Blissex]

«With the economy flat-lining, tricky questions arise. [...] In short, who do we throw under the bus? These are nasty trade-offs. Which many don't want to talk about. [...] Better for them that they retreat to the comfort zone of culture wars.»

But all parties are thatcherite, so all issues that matter have been settled long ago; also there are no trade-offs between booming living standards for rentiers and bigger capital gains and rents.

«One facet of political power is control over the agenda: [...] we are not talking about the failure of capitalism»

Which failure? Capitalism is working very well: fewer real resources are being wasted on "losers" and are being transferred to "winners", and there are enough of the latter to win elections, and in any case all major parties are on the side of "winners", so the "losers" cannot get representation.

Capitalism would be failing if capitalists were doing badly, but that's not yet happening, and when it looks as if it may be happening, the government has a "money no object" attitude to fixing things.

The questions are when doubling-up stops working and when imports become unaffordable.

[Blissex]

«"An entire era can be summed up in three words: discovered, extracted, squandered."
An Epitaph for UK energy/economic/social policy.»

One of my usual quotes is relevant here:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/29/how-right-to-buy-ruined-british-housing
A 79-year-old retired carpenter in Cornwall: «who bought his council house in Devon in the early 80s for £17,000. When it was valued at £80,000 in 1989, he sold up and used the equity to put towards a £135,000 fisherman’s cottage in St Mawes. Now it’s valued at £1.1m. “I was very grateful to Margaret Thatcher,” he said.»

For millions of people like there has been no squandering: literally trillions of pounds have been redistributed from the lower classes to them by Thatcher, Blair and their successors (except Major and Brown). Not wonder they are so grateful.

Also unlike industry the best thing about redistribution is that it is highly ecological: every pound more gained and consumed by property owners is one pound less earned and consumed by renters and buyers, so it has zero extra carbon and pollution impact, unlike production, which is very hard to do without some unpleasant side effects.

«But the City Laundrette continues it's spin for now. Defend it is then, or Distract!»

The people who are very grateful to Thatcher, Blair and their successors (except Major and Brown) have also written them blank cheques on nearly everything, as long as they get their huge price and rent increases every year.

[Blissex]

«whereas left and right used to at least agree upon what the issues were, this is now less true. Historically, left and right disagreed upon economic issues:»

At least in the UK... Here is a report from the 1950s by the humorist George Mikes, "How to scrape skies":

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.524303
«In England you know for instance that the Labour Party is for the nationalisation of various industries and the Conservatives are against it.
In America such ideological clashes hardly ever occur. [...] The difference between the two main American parties is very sharp and well defined; it is more marked than the difference between Communists and right wing Democrats in any European coalition government:
(a) one party is in, the other is out;
(b) one party wants to stay in and the other tries to get it out.»

and another one from Eugene Gore-Vidal:

«There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party [...] and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently [...] and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.»

The situation in the UK has changed to be similar to that long-standing in the USA. So our blogger is writing about the search by the marketing experts of the major parties for secondary differentiators (as in "Indian Bicycle Marketing") that might get "traction" with some groups of voters.