Exclusive Interview: William Beveridge backs #spartacusreport
Politicians of all parties say that the welfare state needs to get ‘Back to Beveridge’.
As MPs debate and vote on the government’s controversial plans for welfare reform, Liberal Conspiracy is proud to present an exclusive interview with the man himself.
Here’s Sir William Beveridge, explaining what is wrong with the government’s plans and what should be done instead. continue reading… »
Ed Miliband doesn’t need advice from newspaper columnists at all
The Daily Telegraph columnist Dan Hodges argues that Ed Miliband should listen to what Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley advises, and then do the opposite.
I profoundly disagree with this advice. Even for the purposes of learning what not to do, Ed Miliband has far better ways to spend his time than listening to Jackie Ashley.
But I’m not sure that Dan Hodges’ strategic advice is any better than Jackie Ashley’s. Indeed, it suffers from many of the same flaws.
continue reading… »
The case for spending less on ‘troubled families’
Earlier this week, David Cameron announced plans to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on ‘Troubled Family Trouble Shooters’, to try to turn around the lives of 120,000 families.
Right-wingers have criticised this initiative, saying the term ‘troubled families’ symbolises the neglect of the law-abiding majority, and that we should instead talk about (and punish) ‘problem families’. Labour’s critique is that spending cuts have removed many of these Family Intervention projects, and that this money won’t be enough to make up for the cuts.
But let’s start instead with a simple question. How and why are we spending £9 billion so badly on existing initiatives for these families?
continue reading… »
Four problems with ‘In the Black Labour’
I enjoyed the ‘In the Black Labour’ report, by some of Labour’s brightest and best bloggers and thinkers, which argues that Labour should adopt ‘fiscal conservatism’.
Here are a few thoughts in response, explaining why I am not convinced by the case which they make.
continue reading… »
Cameron’s latest Big Society blunder
The Prime Minister went to give evidence to a Committee of MPs yesterday about the Big Society. In response to questions, he claimed that:
“we are not sitting back and just hoping that the Big Society springs up. We have established what was called the Big Society Bank, which is now called Big Society Capital. It will get £200 million from the banks under the Merlin agreement.
That will be making grants to small voluntary bodies, so that they can scale up; they can be bigger and they can do more things.”
Sounds good, right? It is just a shame that, back in May, the government agreed that:
“The BSB[Big Society Bank] will not be a grant-making organisation. Funds deployed will therefore seek both financial and social returns.”
No wonder the Big Society isn’t working. Cameron thinks that one of the flagship policies of his government is that they’ve got hundreds of millions of pounds from the banks to give in grants to small voluntary organisations, so that they can build up the Big Society.
Instead, these small voluntary organisations are being offered loans, which will ‘seek a financial return’.
Meanwhile, government cuts mean that voluntary organisations are losing hundreds of millions of pounds in grants.
‘Tangled Up in Blue’: the creation and hype of Blue Labour
Books about politics tend to focus either on the deeds and misdeeds of politicians, or on political ideas.
It is rare to find writers either willing or able to combine the two, as Rowenna Davis does so well in ‘Tangled up in Blue’.
The book describes the political ideas behind ‘Blue Labour’, and does so with far more eloquence and clarity than any Blue Labour advocates have managed to date.
continue reading… »
Why Labour shouldn’t leave behind “the modern left”
Anthony Painter, writing on LabourList about the Occupy movements, argues that:
It’s time to leave behind the 1% who want to spend their Saturday afternoons in protest after protest, direct action after action, while the right continue to do their worst to our economy and society…
More than anything else the problem with the modern left is that we’ve become very presumptive about what the 99% want. We are very good at nominating ourselves as their moral spokespeople. We know what people really want even if they don’t yet themselves.
Here’s why I don’t think it’s time to leave behind this 1%.
continue reading… »
Why poverty is rising, and how this can be prevented
The shocking findings of IFS research about rising levels of poverty is a prediction about how things will get worse in the future. But it is not inevitable that poverty has to rise over the next decade.
The IFS found that rising poverty is a direct result of policy changes which are planned by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. There is an alternative, which is fully costed and which draws only on policies supported by these parties, which would mean that government policies do not lead to any rise in levels of poverty.
Here it is.
continue reading… »
Scientists praised by Osborne slam his policies
The “brilliant scientists” praised by George Osborne in his speech yesterday warned publicly that government cuts and plans for a cap of immigration would damage scientific research.
Professors Andre Geim and Konstantin Noselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for physics for the discovery of a substance called Graphene.
In his speech, Osborne pledged to “fund a national research programme that will take this Nobel-prize winning discovery from the British laboratory to the British factory floor.”
Last year, Geim and Noselov were amongst signatories to an open letter which warned the plans to curtail the number of migrants coming to Britain from outside the European Union “would damage our ability to recruit the brightest young talent as well as distinguished scientists into our universities and industries”.
The letter added that: “International collaborations underlie 40% of the UK’s scientific output, but would become far more difficult if we were to constrict our borders. The UK produces nearly 10% of the world’s scientific output with only 1% of its population; we punch above our weight because we can engage with excellence wherever it occurs. The UK must not isolate itself from the increasingly globalised world of research – British science depends on it.”
“Without money we won’t be able to attract good people here,” Novoselov also told the Guardian. “The impact is going to be that good scientists will go abroad, especially the young people.”
It’s time to end ‘wingnut welfare’ as we know it
Nicola has already pointed out one of the howlers in Policy Exchange’s report on welfare reform.
There are plenty of other Chucklevision bits – my favourite being the call for a big new IT system for Jobcentre Plus which would analyse claimants’ information about jobsearching to sort the hardworking from the feckless.
But it would be a mistake to engage with the pretence that this report is intended as any kind of valuable contribution to the public policy debate about how to tackle unemployment. Instead, it needs to be recognised that it is a product of the wingnut welfare dependency culture.
continue reading… »
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