EVENT: "THE RED REPUBLICANS OF TEESSIDE AND EAST CLEVELAND "

 

• Tired of the doings of Prince Harry ?
• Think that Princess Ann is a tad stand-offish ?
• Baffled by Prince Charles ?
• Fed up with Fergie ?

This was nothing to our local mining forbears of the 1870's who wanted a "Red Republic" in Britain, the end of royalty, and who plotted revolution.

                        

Hear Labour branch party member David Walsh, who has done some some digging on our long-lost history, and has found some great nuggets.

The Bulls Head Pub, Vaughan Street, North Skelton, 7.30 pm (after swift branch business) Wednesday 4th June 2014

GRAYS ELEGY - MILIBAND'S SPEECH IN THURROCK GIVES HOPE

Just for once I intend to be an uber-loyalist and post up Ed Miliband's full Thurrock speech made on Tuesday last - 48 hours after the close of poll.    It was a brave speech made hurriedly  in a Labour heartland turned purple  -  so no huggy feely embraces and handshakes with still ecstatic poll winners.  It was brave too, in that it cut through the dominant media narrative, and both celebrated Labour's wins ( on the locals far more massive than anyone would credit just by way of the mass media)   and also affirmed that we are not going chasing the UKIP obsessions with immigration and Europe.

That last part alone, contradicting the anonymous "senior party figures" who have been suggesting just exactly that, is welcome - hugely welcome.   But that does not mean we should be analysing where and why the party seems to be getting disconnected with traditional working class supporters.  

 

Ed Miliband talks to Labour supporters in Essex

                                                              

Simply, for my part, I feel that the party has become too obsessed with being fiscally conservative and ensuring it was not seen as profligate, but not enough on speaking to people’s everyday concerns about insecurity from job loss or low pay.   The wealth of data on UKIP sympathisers says most are deeply insecure about their economic prospects, worried about the future and want some stability in a rapidly globalising world.

But not so quick. This kind of analysis  will face resistance from those who want focus on keeping and developing a return back to ‘fiscal competence’ – i.e. trying to out-Tory the Tories on the economy.  This is an odd argument since talking about ‘fiscal discipline’ for the last two years seems only to have moved the polls against such an approach.

People want competence - but they also want cash and comfort, - commodities in short supply in hard pressed areas like Teesside.

And what of Teesside?

The public mood seems as muddy, turgid and somnolent as the lower Tees.    Instead of an angry white water surge, we see passivity and negativity.  We see huge mixed messages too.    In the same short time period that saw UKIP - on Borough wide aggregates - top the polls across all the Teesside boroughs, two new polls argue that Labour was on course.   Lord Ashcroft's poll of marginals called for a cab to arrive next year for James Wharton, whilst a second poll from a  (now ex-Lib Dem) peer - Lord Oakeshott's doubtless well-intentioned homily for Nick Clegg's breakfast reading, says the same for Redcar's Ian Swales.     Good news for Louise Baldock and Anna Turley, but the truth must be that at least some of those polled said one thing to the pollster and than voted entirely differently.

To see the stark Tees Valley Borough EU election results see here   

http://www.sunderland.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=3433

At the end of the day, it is the local economy stupid.   Far too many of our people are living on a hand to mouth existence on short term jobs, on the minimum wage, or have simply sunk into the kind of long term benefit dependency that just does not show up on JSA counts - and are now seeing this as normal.    But they have TV's and read the press, so are in a position to hear the national politicians talking about - from the right 'the recovery' and from the left ''competence - but without cash'.    This is mirrored locally by the starry eyed output of a lot of our local councils who yak on of things forever being on the up - and this at a time when the damage done to local welfare and social care as a result of the austerity programme are apparent to all with eyes to see.

To me all this backs up Ed M's message - but he will have to be his own man here.   

Walshy

So, hey-ho, here is his speech.

"Today I have come to Thurrock to talk to you about Thurrock’s future and the country’s future.

I have come after the local and European elections.

In ordinary times, the point of me being here would be to come and tell you that these elections show Labour can win.   That’s the typical politician thing to do.

But these elections show something much more important; which goes beyond the fate of any one party or any one government.

For those who voted for UKIP, those who came to Labour, to the millions who didn’t vote at all, the resounding feeling was one of deep discontent with the way the country is run.

So I am not here simply to tell you Labour can win.

But to tell you why we must.

And to talk about the larger lessons in the results for our party and our country.

To understand these elections we shouldn’t look just at the last three weeks, not simply at the last three years but much further back: the last three decades.

Big changes have happened to Britain.   Economically, socially and to our politics.

And millions of people now feel that our country does not work for them, politics does not listen to them and cannot answer them.

They believe the people who work hard, try and support their families and build a better future have been left behind, and the major parties work for others and not for them.

Some of those voted for UKIP in these elections.  And far more people did not vote at all.  

These are challenges for all political parties.

It’s up to other leaders what they say, but I’m not going to shy away from these challenges or pretend they don’t exist.

If Labour’s going to change things, we have to be in communities all over Britain talking about the issues that matter.  And that’s why I am here.

I want to start by talking about some people I met here with Polly Billington, local Labour candidate, on Sunday.

Because they tell us so much about Britain today.

Jade’s here today.  She’s twenty.   She has got good college qualifications.  But she’s only able to find work for 12 hours a week.

She thinks she might be better off on benefits.  But she’s working because that’s the way she was brought up. That’s the value she believes in.

For her, the link between hard work and being able to do better feels like it has been broken.

On Sunday, I also met Carol, who had just turned 65, who is also here.  She’s got grown-up kids, with kids of their own.   Her kids have good jobs and decent homes.  But Carol worries about her grandkids.

She told me on Sunday: “The low paid jobs they can get mean they just won’t be able to afford their own home.”

And of course, lots of the people I talked to on Sunday were talking about immigration and the changes people had seen here in Thurrock.

Builders from Eastern Europe, care-workers from overseas who sometimes don’t speak fluent English.

Big changes happening to this community.

These are the realities of work, of family and of community.

Realities like those I have seen so often in my constituency in Doncaster.

Realities that are reflected across the country

Now it so happens that the people I spoke to on Sunday weren’t necessarily UKIP voters, but they knew people who were.

One person said to me: “The ordinary man in the street is not being heard enough anymore. They thought UKIP heard them.”

What she was saying was that some of the people who voted for UKIP came from that part of working Britain who work hard for a living, in tough jobs and seek to provide for their family.

People who love our country.But feel left behind by what has happened.

Some people who in years gone by would have been Labour till they die.

Their parents certainly were.  Their grandparents too.

So how have we got to this point?    And what do we do about it?

Let me tell you how I see it.

More than anything it is about the big economic change we have seen.

The industry of our country, the docks near here, the mines in Doncaster, my constituency, provided a decent wage, a decent life, a decent pension.

A job was not just a job.   It was the foundation of community.    

And about thirty years ago these secure jobs with good prospects started to disappear - And they weren’t replaced by similar jobs for the future.

At the same time, immigration has been changing communities fast, including here in Thurrock, with people seeking to build a better life here.

And the pace of change is quicker than it has ever been.

So over the last decades there were big changes happening in our country.

And fewer and fewer working people thought the country worked for them.

That was made worse when political scandals happened, like MPs’ expenses.

And as a result by 2010, too many came to think that no party was standing up for them, including Labour.

You in Thurrock know that the last Labour government did great things: rescuing our NHS, investing in schools and supporting working families with tax credits.

But they were not enough by themselves.

Because ordinary working people, people who weren’t rich, felt life was getting harder.

Our embrace of the future meant that some people thought we didn’t respect the loss they felt from the past.

Our embrace of openness made some people feel we didn’t understand the pressures immigration put on them.

Our embrace of economic change, on the one hand, and our determination to do right by the very poorest, on the other, led people to believe that we didn’t care enough about ordinary working people.

Looking to the future, openness, concern for the poorest and a belief in the modern economy were not wrong.

They were right.

But it was not enough.

That’s why as I have said since I became leader, there is no future for Labour saying we should simply pick up from where we left off in 2010.

Labour was founded on standing up for working people.   But for too many that link was lost.

That is what UKIP has sought to exploit.

We know what their appeal is.

They provide a simple explanation of the cause of our country’s problems: Europe and foreigners.

And they have an apparently simple solution: to get out of the European Union.

I have to say: this is not the answer for our country.

This will never be Labour’s mission or policy under my leadership.

Our future lies in looking outward to the world.

As the people of Purfleet, Tilbury, South Ockendon and Grays have always known.

And that’s the argument we’re going to have to have in the next year.

Some people will tell you that closing ourselves off from the world will deliver for working people.

It won’t.    It will harm working people.Think of all the jobs here that still rely on trade.

That’s why our future lies in the European Union.

What does it mean for immigration?

I am the son of immigrants.     I am proud of the contribution my parents made to this country. I believe immigration benefits our country as a whole.

But it needs to be properly managed.

I have changed Labour’s position on immigration since 2010 because it is not prejudiced to worry about immigration, it is understandable.

Labour would have controls when people arrive and leave here, we will tackle the undercutting of wages, we will ensure people in public services speak English and people need to earn their entitlements.

But a Labour government won’t make false promises, or cut ourselves off from the rest of the world because it would be bad for Britain.

These are the right principles for our immigration policy.

And in the end, if we are to meet the concerns people have, we need to do far more than have the right immigration policy.

We need more change in the way this country’s economy works for the people I am talking about.

People who work hard, do the right thing, but feel the country doesn’t work for them.

The normal politician thing to do is to come along and just announce a simple answer.    But sometimes there is no simple answer.

The changes I am talking about in our economy have taken generations to unfold.   It will take more than one year or even five years to make the transformation we need.

But I believe we can give hope to all the people who feel that politics doesn’t answer their concerns.   There is a different journey this country can take to get to a better future.

This is the journey Labour is on.    But we need to go further and faster

Towards:a  big change in our economy, so we make sure there are good jobs in successful businesses, which are properly paid, and not the insecurity that comes with zero-hours or short-hours that leaves people short-changed.

Building homes again in our country, so that Carol doesn’t feel that a home is out of reach for her grandchildren.

Rebuilding solidarity and a sense of community where people live, because people need to recognise the rules, whether they are on benefits, have just come to Britain, or are at the very top of our society.

And what brings all this together, one thing more important than anything, linking the wealth of our country back again with ordinary family finances, so that we can fight the cost-of-living crisis, and ensure that hard work means that people can build a better future for their family.

This is the right mission for Labour.

I believe this is the biggest single question facing our country.

.

And it is at the root of so much of what we are talking about.

Changing our economy to ensure we have the good jobs of the future for people here in Thurrock.

You know some people have said at times when I have announced our energy price freeze, policies on rents, policies on banks that Labour has been too radical.

I believe this is dead wrong.

To meet the challenges we face we need more change, not less.

To meet the generational challenge I am talking about, Labour needs a radical and bold offer at the next election.

And that is what we shall do.

That is the party I want to lead. We know we have work to do to reach out to millions.  Here in Thurrock and across the country.

And that is what I am absolutely determined to do.

80 YEARS ON THE BATTLE'S STILL TO DEFEND DEMOCRACY AGAINST CAPITALIST OLIGARCHY

As a follow up to Joe's latest piece, I am simply pasting a copy of a piece put up on the Socialist Unity website this week  -  the FULL text of FDR's inauguration speech of March 1934.  I have to admit I have never read it in full, and knew only the line about "The only thing to fear, is fear itself', but reading the full version, it is tough stuff, and echoes as strongly in 2014 as in 1934.

The legendary presidential inauguration address heralding the radical reforms that saved US capitalism, Franklin D Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ speech, which he gave during his inauguration as the nation’s 32nd president in 1934 in the midst of the Great Depression, outlined his objective of creating capitalism with a human face. The New Deal moved the priority of the US economy away from the creation of untrammelled wealth for the few to dignity and decency for the many, inspired by the work of Britain’s John Maynard Keynes.

The underlying principal of the New Deal was government as lender and investor of last resort, using the resources of the state to reduce unemployment, introduce welfare for the poor, and reintroduce aggregate demand into an economy that had collapsed as a consequence of reckless lending and speculation by an unregulated and out of control banking and financial sector.

Wall Street experienced the impact of the New Deal in the form of a regulatory framework designed to constrain its ability to act irresponsibly and recklessly. It came into law under the provisions of the 1833 Banking Act  commonly known as the Glass-Steagall Act, named after its Congressional sponsors – Senator Carter Glass and Representative Henry B Steagall – both Democrats.

Today’s US champions of Keynesianism – Paul Krugman and Joseph Stieglitz – have drawn parallels with today’s economic recession and the crisis of the 1930s. Interestingly, they point out that the weakness of the New Deal was that the federal government was too timid and did not spend enough, hampered by the absorption of much of the government funds made available to meet state budget deficits at the time.

It was the New Deal that at the onset of the Second World War was the instrument already in place which really pulled the US economy out of stagnation and under employment, involving as it did a massive injection of government spending, planning, and full employment. 

Reading FDR’s speech today, the parallels are striking between then and now.

The speech in full:    Over to you Ed and Ed for 2015

‘President Hoover, Mr. Chief Justice, my friends:

This is a day of national consecration. And I am certain that on this day my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself–nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; and the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.

More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

Yes, the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and the moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days, my friends, will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, and on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation is asking for action, and action now.

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our great natural resources.

Hand in hand with that we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. Yes, the task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, the State, and the local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities that have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped by merely talking about it. We must act. We must act quickly.

And finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people’s money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.

These, my friends, are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new Congress in special session detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the 48 States.

Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment.

The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in all parts of the United States of America–a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that recovery will endure.

In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor–the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others–the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress can be made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and our property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at the larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us, bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in times of armed strife.

With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.

Action in this image, action to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple, so practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has ever seen. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.

And it is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis–broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

For the trust reposed in me, I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.

We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded, a permanent national life.

We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.

In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He

protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come.’

David Walsh 

Borrowed from a friend or otherwise, Conservatives need to hold their horses...

Judging by numerous sources (the offerings of the televisual political commentariat, newspaper columnists and comments page keyboard warriors), people would be forgiven for assuming that next year’s general election will soon be a foregone conclusion.

Such is the gloating from right-wing hacks and sympathisers it seems the Conservatives are on course for a substantial Parliamentary majority after May 2015.

The BBC in particular must be preparing for a raft of lawsuits from disgruntled employees in its news department, all complaining of repetitive strain injuries incurred through continuous copy and pasting of Tory press releases.

The public is being relentlessly bombarded with statistics (not context), informing us that GDP is growing, public borrowing is reducing, unemployment falling and inflation being brought under control. The Government has been proven right on its core economic policies, and the natural order of things will soon be restored.

It is a matter of time, we are told, before David Cameron will soon command a convincing poll lead, the odds ever shortening on him returning to Downing Street as Prime Minister.

Ed Miliband, meanwhile, is apparently doomed to defeat. Disgruntled outriders from Labour’s right wing already appear to be circling his walking corpse, ready to pounce as soon as the inevitable occurs.

Apart from anything else, such nonsense is revealing of the born-to-rule attitude still prevalent among the UK’s political Right. It is ludicrous to found electoral predictions on the notion that unless Ed Miliband can engender an overwhelming landslide victory for the Labour Party the keys to No. 10 will, by reason of default, remain in Cameron’s doubtlessly well-manicured fingers.

In fact, one year out from the general election Miliband looks comfortably on course to be the next Prime Minister. He is the most likely candidate, on the evidence, for the sole reason that it is currently difficult to see who else could possibly form a government in twelve months’ time.

As much as I personally loathe seeing the course of political debate in this country increasingly swayed by opinion polling, it is worth noting that the sampling methods developed by modern pollsters over the last two decades have moulded them into a very reliable indicator of election outcomes. So let us briefly look at the evidence and examine whether the braying of gloating Tories is justified.

Since Ed Miliband was elected Labour leader in late 2010 the party has attracted poll ratings of between 35-40% consistently. It has never dropped below that bracket. Significantly, this has coincided with a considerable drop in support for the Liberal Democrats that has also proven consistent.

According to Ipsos Mori earlier this year, 77% of likely Labour voters would never consider voting Conservative. This is easily the most loyal base of support enjoyed by any of the main parties.

The Tory poll rating has been the most varied over the course of the Parliament, but it is telling that present rising support has not, and is not likely to, come at the expense of Labour. This is explained, and compounded, by the fact that only 5% of Labour’s current support comes from those who voted Conservative in 2010.

Let’s remember that in 2010 the Labour Party’s vote collapsed to 29% of the popular vote and numerically barely above that achieved during the Thatcher landslide of 1983. The pattern of the opinion polls shows two things from the Labour perspective: first, that the Party is set to capture a significantly higher vote share than five years’ previously, and secondly that its standing in the polls bears little relation to the fortunes of the Tory Party.

Should Labour and the Conservatives emerge from the next general election having achieved a vote share that one way or the other leaves them a few percentage points apart, this would represent a reasonable swing to Labour. Given that Cameron would need a uniform swing of 2% in his own favour to obtain a House of Commons majority, all the opinion poll results to date suggest he has very little chance of doing so.

It is also fair to question whether the Tories actually came close to maximising their potential vote in the 2010 general election. It is well documented that every Conservative election victory since 1955 has been on a lower share of the vote than previously. The loss to the Labour vote between 1997 and 2010 came to some 5 million people. David Cameron, however, could only increase the Tory vote in that time by 1 million.

There are now also significant geographical regions of the country where anti-Tory politics is entrenched. As Owen Jones reminded us in the Independent in June 2012:

“Over half of Scots voted Tory in 1955: at the last election, they were confirmed as a fringe Scottish party with less than 17 per cent. Merseyside used to be a heartland of working-class Toryism, but the idea that Liverpool once had Tory MPs seems ludicrous today. Conservatives once had a real base in places such as Sheffield and Manchester: they no longer have a single councillor in either city. Thatcherism created a culture of passionate anti-Toryism in large swathes of the country, with the mass unemployment of the early 1980s and early 1990s making the cruelty of Conservatism almost folklore. As Tory policies batter these communities for the third time in as many decades, this contempt is being cemented for a whole new generation.”

This youngest generation of voters – Generation Y – consistently tell pollsters that they are considerably more likely to vote Labour than to vote Tory. According to Ipsos Mori in December 2013, as many as four in ten of all adults say they would never even consider voting for them. The British Conservative Party, for all the triumphalism of today, is quite literally a dying political force.

If the Labour vote is unlikely to waver and the Tory vote is limited we can conclude that short of a major political upheaval over the next twelve months it is unlikely the Conservatives will establish a poll lead over Labour sufficient for a Parliamentary majority.

The balance of power, therefore, will be decided in a handful of marginal seats. The most recent polling on this question from September 2013 shows the Labour Party outstripping its national poll position, with an average lead of 14% in the ‘key’ 32 Con-Lab swing seats. If that swing is replicated elsewhere Miliband could garner a further 66 seats and would be on course to cruise into Downing Street.

We will have to await Lord Ashcroft’s latest marginals poll, due to be published later this month, to see if this lead is holding out. Were it to do so, what it would show is not only that the Conservative vote is limited overall, it is also limited by demographic and by geography.

Put another way the Tories may be able to rely on a core constituency of parliamentary seats over which they command insurmountable majorities, but taking these seats out of the equation Labour’s lead is considerably more than the national polls suggest.

To bring us back to my initial point, then, the trenchant unpopularity of the Tories would seem peculiar given their deafening spin and bluster regarding their economic record. Surely with the economic recovery now allegedly in full swing and living standards allegedly rising we ought to have seen the popularity of the Cameron government soaring towards hitherto unknown heights.

The reason this is not happening is because the spin and bluster of the government’s economic record is precisely that.

The sadistic mantra now in vogue is to refer to the slash and burn policies of swingeing cuts to public services, public sector pay freezes, and attacks on social security benefits as forming part of a retrospectively titled ‘long term economic plan’.

The argument that austerity has led to business confidence, which in turn has led to productive investment, creating jobs, economic growth and trickle-down prosperity, is not difficult to dismiss.

Firstly, the quarterly growth rate is still below where we were in 2010 when the government came into office. Secondly, save for the positive effect of the London Olympics and Diamond Jubilee, we saw no GDP growth whatsoever throughout 2012. Thirdly, annual GDP growth remains below its pre-recession peak.

This is before we even consider the substance of the ‘growth’ engineered by Osborne’s policies. As set out last month by former treasury economics advisor James Medway, far from rebalancing the economy away from the financial services sector and towards manufacturing, service output is now back above its 2008 level whilst manufacturing is not expecting to return to 2008 levels until 2019. According to the Office for National Statistics, services in fact accounted for 0.7% of the 0.8% growth in the last quarter.

Not only this but the rise in GDP is being fuelled by a rise in household debt. Between 2012 and 2013 household spending rose 2.4%, despite the fact that average real earnings are falling.

As Mr Medway warns:

“We are setting up, in other words, exactly the conditions that helped produce the crash of 2008: debt-led growth, in which stagnant or falling real earnings are masked by increasing levels of household debt that sustain continued consumer spending.

So the message, as we’ve stressed before, is that this isn’t so much a recovery as a relapse. With debt-led growth concentrated in overheated London, spurred onwards by an extraordinary bubble in house prices, it’s as if all the worst elements of the early 2000s had come back to haunt us: property bubbles, rising debt, stagnant wages, increasing inequality, growing insecurity at work.”

The Keynesian economist Paul Krugman is similarly unimpressed by the Government’s record on economic growth. Finding it unsurprising that growth returned to the UK economy once George Osborne took his thumb off the economic windpipe, at the end of last year he wrote in the New York Times:

“Britain’s recent growth doesn’t change the reality that almost six years have passed since the nation entered recession, and real G.D.P. is still below its previous peak. Taking the long view, that’s still a story of dismal failure — as I said, a track record worse than Britain’s performance in the Great Depression.

Second, it’s important to understand the history of austerity in Mr. Osborne’s Britain. His government spent its first two years doing big things: sharply reducing public investment, increasing the national sales tax, and more. After that it slowed the pace; it didn’t reverse austerity, but it didn’t make it much more severe than it already was.

And here’s the thing: Economies do tend to grow unless they keep being hit by adverse shocks. It’s not surprising, then, that the British economy eventually picked up once Mr. Osborne let up on the punishment.

But is this a vindication of his austerity policies? Only if you accept Three Stooges logic, in which it makes sense to keep banging your head against a wall because it feels good when you stop.”

But what about unemployment? We have all been inundated by the seemingly positive headlines that national unemployment now stands at 2.32 million, with the first quarter of this year seeing more people find work within a single economic quarter (283,000) than at any time since records began in 1971. Wouldn’t it be churlish not to rejoice at this news?

Not if we place the figures in context, it wouldn’t. Unemployment now stands only slightly below where it was in 2009. The numbers of people actually in work (72.7%) still remains significantly lower than ten years ago (73.1%).

When this government came into office it oversaw an increase in unemployment up to a peak of 2.7 million by the end of 2011: at the time the highest level for 17 years.

Again, though, if we waft away the smoke and invert the mirrors we begin to see the truth behind the figures. Research by the Resolution Foundation found that the total number of employed jobs actually fell in 9 out of 12 regions between 2008 and 2013, remained static in the south east and east, but rose only in London, where 285,000 posts were created.

In the North East, meanwhile, unemployment stands at over 10% and actually rose in the last quarter of 2013. Across Teesside, too, long-term unemployment, particularly amongst young people, continues to deteriorate. Since April 2010 the number of people claiming JobSeeker’s Allowance for more than 12 months in the Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland constituency has risen 18.8%. For under-24s this figure has risen by 22.2%.

Outside of the capital, the fall in unemployment appears to be driven only by rising rates of self-employment. Esther McVey might laud this as a renewal of entrepreneurial spirit, but the fact that the average self-employed person now earns 40% less than the average employee suggests that many of the new entrepreneurs are simply people who have given up on finding work and registered as self-employed purely to get themselves off the dole.

Meanwhile the rise in the number of people working on zero-hours contracts, with no guaranteed hours or pay, has far outstripped the fall in the unemployed. According to the Guardian there are now 1.4 million people working under these conditions.

With any sign of economic recovery limited to London, driven by a house price boom in the South East and an increase in household borrowing, and with the fall in unemployment driven only by the service sector hollowing out the labour market, flexible and insecure working conditions and low-paid self-employment, it is not surprising therefore that the effects of alleged recovery are not being widely felt.

Again the Government’s rhetoric on living standards is transparently dishonest. We are told that average earnings are now rising by 1.7% per annum, and that this outstrips inflation which rose at only 1.6%.

Firstly, if we exclude bonuses average earnings rose only by 1.4%, so in fact a fall in real terms.

Secondly inflation is only measured at 1.6% according to the Consumer Price Index, to which the Government switched in July 2010 in place of the Retail Price Index. The chief differences between CPI and RPI are that CPI takes into account the spending of the top 4% of earners, but excludes housing costs. RPI does not take into account spending by the uber-wealthy, and does include housing costs. Given that 40% of average household income now goes towards housing costs, tracking inflation by the CPI does not therefore give any indication of realistic trends in living standards from the perspective of the average earner.

Measured using RPI, which does take housing costs into account, inflation is rising at a far faster rate (2.5%) than earnings. Had the Government not switched to the Consumer Price Index, the official rate of inflation would be predicted to continue to outstrip wage rises until 2018.

New data revealed this week shows that the share of post-tax income enjoyed by the top 1% of earners (some 300,000 people) has risen in the space of one year from 8.2% to 9.8%. Meanwhile, the share enjoyed by the bottom 90% of earners has fallen.

Suppression of wages has combined with cuts to tax credits, housing, child and council tax benefits to deliver the longest sustained fall in living standards since the 1870s.

What, then, of the final claim made by the Government - the argument that they are reducing public debt, without which we would see no business investment and no economic growth whatsoever?

This is the easiest claim to dismiss of all. It simply isn’t true. The fact that the Government spent three years stifling economic growth by imposing massive public spending cuts in the name of deficit reduction led merely to a reduction in tax revenues. The fact that Osborne has sharply reduced the top rate of income tax and has been visibly relaxed on tax avoidance has also contributed to the fact that the Government has missed all of its self-imposed targets on deficit reduction.

The consequence of which has seen the public debt increase by £417bn in the four years between 2010 and 2013. A staggering increase considering the previous government increased the public debt by only £407bn over the whole of its thirteen years, most of which as a consequence of the decision to bail out the insolvent financial sector in 2008.

There is clearly a constituency in the country that has benefited from Tory rule, but out where it matters the Government’s gloating rings very hollow.

If it is difficult to see the circumstances in which Cameron wins a Parliamentary majority, it is also difficult to see a continuation of the present coalition. Should the Lib Dems suffer a collapse in their numerical support during the election the appetite to get back into bed with the Conservatives will be weak and the appetite for a leadership election – perhaps a coronation for Tim Farron – will be strong.

Even if Ed Miliband fails to oust Cameron at the first time of asking, there would be an enormous danger to the Labour Party if his internal enemies used the opportunity to precipitate a change of leadership and a change of policies.

Given that the long-term strategy for Labour following the 2010 election was to first de-toxify the ‘brand’, second to re-build its base (for example, by winning back Redcar from the Lib Dems), the final stage would be to then reach out to the millions of younger and poorer members of the public who are voting in ever decreasing numbers.

A weak minority Tory government with barely more seats than Labour, rife with infighting over Europe and under increasing pressure to take the politically toxic measure of increasing interest rates would not last long. Its public approval ratings would quickly plummet and a Labour Party that sticks to its guns in those circumstances could look to build from a stronger starting point and could destroy the Conservative Party for a generation in a similar fashion to 1997.

The other reason for Labour to resist a move back to the right, even in the event it fails to form a government after May 2015, is that Cameron and Osborne have revealed the bankruptcy of austerity politics. Their vision is of a low-wage, low-skill, low-tax economy, where even with rising employment living standards continue to fall for the majority. Even with economic growth public services and the welfare state cannot be afforded.  Austerity has led to higher public debt, which must be paid for with a further bout of austerity.

Whilst Ed Miliband would not look towards some form of full-blown socialist program, the Labour Party has challenged neo-liberal orthodoxy under his leadership. A Miliband government would reverse the privatisation of the NHS and in fact expand its remit through the creation of a National Care Service.

He has given an indication that there is a strong probability his government would look to bring the railways back into some form of public ownership. His business department would set up a state-led investment bank to help divert investment towards regional economies such as the North East, and he would impose stronger regulation on rents and tenancy agreements, and legislate to prevent private energy companies from gorging themselves on profits generated by rises in household bills. His Treasury would reverse planned giveaways to the very wealthy such as tax relief on annual pension contributions up to sums several times average wages, and would use the savings to instigate a revolutionary reduction in business rates paid by small and medium sized businesses.

Furthermore, he would tackle zero-hours contracts and would challenge the Conservative view that lax workers’ rights and low taxes on the wealthy are the key to economic growth. Instead, there would be a genuine desire to promote a high-skill, high-wage economy, even if within the context of globalisation.

Politics is led by incumbent politicians whose focus is inevitably on election outcomes. The fact is, whatever the outcome of the next election, the Thatcherite policies relied upon by the Conservatives are unsustainable and they remain electorally doomed in the long term.

Whilst an Ed Miliband government is the most likely outcome, should the Labour Party fail to win at the first attempt next year it needs to avoid the carnage of a knee-jerk reaction and to retain the long-term perspective of where our political future lies.

 Joe Culley