So, am I sorry for endorsing them? And do I regret voting for them?

It’s true that things have not exactly turned out how I had (perhaps optimistically) foreseen. Actually the original essay spent considerably more time attacking the Conservatives than endorsing Liberal Democrat policies, and I was disappointed by the decision to form a partnership with them when I perceived any prospective coalition as much more likely to be formed with Labour. It’s also true that the resultant coalition’s policy positions have broadly not fallen into line with my opinions.

There have in fact been several areas in which I have felt let down by the Lib Dems. The biggest disappointment is that after all the promises of “new politics” and new openness and accountability, they have enthusiastically joined their Tory partners in the very old-fashioned practices of spin and partisan mudslinging. The already-tired cliché that any cuts are justified by an inherited debt problem, owing to Labour’s profligate spending on public services, is simply an outright lie³, and Liberal Democrat ministers are as guilty of expounding this falsehood as any Tory⁴. Watching people I helped into government on a promise to end this kind of thing acting in this way infuriates me, but it may have been naïve of me to expect any different.

However, if you have a realistic view that they are the junior partner in the coalition and the best they could really hope to do is mitigate the worst of the Tory policies, they do deserve a limited amount of credit.

Although diluted, commitments to increase the rate of capital gains tax (to 28%, they had wanted 40%) and the threshold for paying income tax (to £10,000, to be phased in over 5 years) are being implemented, and closing loopholes used to avoid paying tax is high on the agenda. The Conservatives, on the other hand, have had to drop their plans to cut inheritance tax and scrap the Human Rights Act, and the Lib Dem insistence that money for any renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system must be found in the already hamstrung Ministry of Defence budget means that it is very unlikely to be implemented in the foreseeable future.

I think these concessions remove some of the most dangerous and regressive Tory policies, so overall I would have to say that no, in spite of their best efforts to publicly shame me, on balance I do not (yet) regret endorsing them. Only time will reveal the full extent of their ability to hold back the blue tide, however, and there are already some signs of the levee beginning to break.

One area where I really think they have taken the wrong approach, for example, is on university funding, tuition fees, and the oft-overlooked cutting of the Educational Maintenance Allowance (surely one of the most effective ways of getting poorer kids into higher education⁵).

Was it “an error”, as they are now keen to point out, to make a pledge to vote against a rise in tuition fees under any circumstances? I have to say I don’t think it was. I believe that the abolition of tuition fees is absolutely feasible (and desirable⁶) even in our supposedly weakened economic state⁷. Clearly, the real error is breaking that promise, and 36 Liberal Democrat MPs are guilty of that.⁸

It is true, as ministers have bemoaned, that there has been considerable misinformation spread about the impact of the fees on a prospective student’s ability to afford university education. As there are no more up-front fees to pay, and the repayments are only made based on your ability to repay, in practice more people will be able to afford a university education than under the previous system. But this misinformation goes both ways. Universities will be financially penalised, and therefore discouraged, from accepting poorer students (who, without the EMA, might not even get to this stage), and the graduate debt is far from as benign as is being presented.

The repayment threshold of £21,000 due to begin in 2016 will, assuming a conservative rate of inflation⁹, be equivalent to around £18,000 today. This doesn’t sound that high to me, and it includes many more people than is immediately apparent¹⁰.

In spite of all the debate about whether or not multi-millionaires should have to pay 50% tax on their earnings above £150,000, under these proposals graduates will be effectively paying 49% tax on anything over £37,400¹¹. While people claim that a 50% income tax rate runs the risk of very rich people emigrating rather than paying any tax at all, can the argument seriously be made that an effective 49% rate will not put anyone off a university education?¹²

What else is there? Oh yes, the argument that this is needed to cut the deficit? Well, despite an 80% cut to university funding, it turns out that this will actually cost more money than the current system. Even according to the government’s own Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, most graduates will never be able to fully repay their loans¹³.

If any of that was news to you, I wouldn’t be surprised. These issues, and most of the other salient points of the actual policy are being shrouded by a fog of media coverage focussing only on the “violent” protests by opponents of the plans. I use quotation marks because I think it’s actually quite hard to justify calling a predominantly very peaceful demonstration violent.

It’s an undesirable but perhaps inevitable consequence of the urgent immediacy of news reporting that coverage tends to focus on the most interesting thing happening right now, whether or not it is representative of the wider situation. Tens of thousands of people gathered in one place is quite interesting, but really they’re just standing there (they’re not allowed to move, after all). That can’t compete with the excitement of the handful of people vandalising the treasury building, so TV news shows the vandalism, not the overwhelmingly peaceful majority, and a misinformed viewer takes away the impression that the protests were all about smashing windows and causing trouble.¹⁴

It’s also undesirable, though understandable, that in breaking news situations, news agencies first seek perspective on events from authoritative sources like the police. This is normally quite a good idea, but when the police themselves are directly involved, it’s perhaps better to consider balance and not give their spokesperson quite so much airtime with which to give a speculative and one-sided account of events.

So if you watched the news that night or listened to the prime minister relaying an entirely fabricated story about “police officers being dragged off their horses and beaten”¹⁵, and got the impression that the protesters are all violent thugs bent on destruction and aggression towards innocent police officers, I wouldn’t be surprised about that either. But another side to the story is slowly emerging, pieced together by mobile phone footage and testimonies from people who were actually there.

People like Jody McIntyre, a sufferer of cerebral palsy, who was twice pulled out of his wheelchair and pinned to the ground by police officers, in spite of his obvious inability to cause them any harm¹⁶.

Or Laurie Penny, writing in the New Statesman with an emotive first-hand account from inside the police “kettle”, or this video from students of Birmingham University covering the development of events over the whole day. Or Alfie Meadows, a 20-year old student who suffered a brain injury after receiving a blow to the head from a police truncheon and then being denied access to prompt medical attention¹⁷, and is lucky to be alive. In spite of the emphasis put on violence toward police officers, there seems to have been considerably more (or, at least, more serious instances) going in the opposite direction.

But watching the live coverage of the protest on the BBC News channel, hearing the unedited reporting of one of their correspondents in the crowd, and reading various messages posted on Twitter as events were unfolding; all indicating that after detaining a peaceful crowd without any legal justification for doing so, police told demonstrators they could leave Parliament Square via Whitehall, only to then block the exit and charge into a crowd of schoolchildren with horses¹⁸. They then kept thousands “kettled”¹⁹ without food or toilet facilities, and unable to move until midnight in some cases (in sub-zero temperatures, is it really so shocking that some resorted to starting fires?). Considering all this, it’s difficult to shake the impression that there was an orchestrated effort by the police to incite anger and frustration amongst the crowd in order to justify the heavy-handed response²⁰.

One thing’s for sure: whether or not you believe there is a concerted plan to undermine the the debate by provoking a violent response from demonstrators, it’s undeniably a political boon to the likes of Clegg and Cameron, who can ensure a favourable soundbite by condemning the protesters as “violent” instead of justifying their mess of a policy.

1. The Lib Dems achieved 23% of the popular vote. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2010#Results
2. Recent polling showed their level of support had dropped to just 8% — a fall in support of almost two-thirds — although it has since recovered slightly. Source: http://today.yougov.co.uk/politics/voting-intention-analysis-14
3. If you remove the bank bailout (which all three of the main parties supported) from the equation, the national debt in 2010 was in fact lower than that left by the outgoing Conservative government in 1997. Source here, though you’ll have to come with me the last few steps! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7733794.stm
4. The only one who gets any sympathy from me is Simon Hughes, not because he doesn’t partake in this kind of sophistry, but because he always gives the impression of having been physically bullied into it.
5. Economists at the Institute for Fiscal Studies seem to think so: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11998992
6. I hear a lot of people saying things like “Why should I subsidise the education of, for example, doctors, when they earn so much more than me?”. This is a simplistic argument that ignores the fact that doctors and other graduates do work which is beneficial to everyone.
7. In fact we managed to find money to start the NHS and welfare state in far worse economic circumstances: http://econ.economicshelp.org/2009/03/historical-national-debt.html
8. It’s some crumb of consolation to me that the one I voted for, Jenny Willott, resigned from her position in the government in order to oppose the measure, though whether even that will save her skin, only time will tell. Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-11963134
9. 2.5% — inflation has been above this level every year since 2002, with the exception of the recession in 2009 (Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10612209). It is currently 3.3% (Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/14/inflation-rises-to-3-point-3-percent-november). I used this calculator if you want to try different figures yourself: http://www.whatsthecost.com/cpi.aspx
10. According to the Daily Mail, the national average salary is £25,540: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1293121/Average-annual-salary-drops-2-600-just-months.html
11. 40% higher rate tax band starts at £37,400, and the student loan repayments will be 9% on anything above the £21,000 threshold.
12. I won’t go into all the ups and downs of the new system because it is enormously complex and I could write another full-length essay purely on this subject (indeed this is one of its most significant drawbacks), but one of the most overlooked parts of the proposal is the increase in interest rates on the debt. “Money Saving Expert” Martin Lewis has written several times about this issue: http://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2010/11/04/stopping-graduates-repaying-student-loans-early-would-be-a-terrible-mistake/
13. Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/only-a-quarter-of-all-graduates-will-pay-off-loans-2158168.html
14. Here is a photo from one of the protests where the police left a riot van in the middle of a “kettle” (presumably with the idea that it would be torn to pieces and subsequently used to portray demonstrators as savages). Do these kids, who formed a protective ring around it to stop people from vandalising it, look like thugs to you?
15. If he believed this to be true, he was misinformed. Watch what actually happened to the one officer injured by a horse that day: http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/12/11/were-police-really-dragged-off-horses-and-beaten-by-students-no/
16. I don’t mean to patronise him, far from it, he has since shown himself to be very capable, keeping his cool in the face of moronic questioning from the BBC’s Ben Brown in a way that few others could: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXNJ3MZ-AUo
17. Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11978884
18. See for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axWyu1t4rkE
19. How many arrests (for minor crimes which don’t even warrant custodial sentences) does it take to justify detaining thousands of innocent people?
20. I was amused to hear the police spokesperson initially, presumably mistakenly, report that there had been “provoked violence against the police”.

Not by me however. I went to the organised protest against the visit and I will endeavour to explain the reasons why I object to the visit, and to the pontiff himself, with special attention paid to his role in the continuing child sex abuse scandal.

Let’s get the Nazi stuff out of the way straight away. It’s a despicable, cynical lie¹:

“Even in our own lifetimes we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live.

“As we reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny.”

The Nazis did not want to eradicate God from society. In fact they saw atheism as synonymous with communism, and as such were deeply suspicious of it. Most Nazis were undoubtedly Christians, many Catholic, and Hitler wasted no time in establishing an entente² with the Vatican. Hitler himself was raised as a Roman Catholic and said on the subject:

“We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.”

Regarding denying our common humanity to many, “especially the Jews”, this is precisely what the Catholic church did for over a thousand years³, forcing them to live in segregated neighbourhoods from which we inherit the Italian word ghetto⁴, and teaching that all Jews bear the collective responsibility for killing Christ. Although they have made peace with the Jews (albeit only beginning the process as recently as 1965 with the advent of the Second Vatican Council), they still deny the rights of others — of which, more later.

This is not to deny that atheists have committed great crimes against humanity, they certainly have. The likes of Stalin and Mao were responsible for more deaths than Hitler⁵, and were both avowed atheists, but to refer to their wicked acts as examples of “atheist extremism” is as wrong-headed as attributing Hitler’s atrocities to his Catholic upbringing.

He goes on to attack Britain’s nearly-secular society in a similar, albeit more nuanced, way to his colleague Cardinal Kasper, who likened landing at Heathrow Airport to finding oneself in a third world country on account of Britain’s tolerance of ethnic minorities, and was subsequently stricken with diplomatic gout⁶.

Frankly, every part of this attack is laughable, and it’s difficult to imagine an intelligent person (which I have no doubt the pope is) delivering these words sincerely. I suspect, rather, that it is intended deliberately to whip up anti-atheist sentiment amongst his followers, and draw the attention of his detractors away from the real issues. In this respect it has been somewhat successful.

So, without further ado, the real issues.

The Catholic church has a long history of prejudice and discrimination against various groups of people. As previously alluded to, this seems to have been, despite the criticisms levelled against “Nazi” atheists, predominantly Jews⁷, though in recent times the victims of its teachings are more likely to be found amongst its own congregation — notably homosexuals⁸ and women. In fact, the church considers not a single woman on Earth fit enough to be a priest, drawing this sarcastic jab from Richard Dawkins:

“He is an enemy of women – barring them from the priesthood as though a penis were an essential tool for pastoral duties.”

In line with this peculiar preoccupation with sex is a concerted campaign against the use of contraception, forcing many of the world’s poorest people to raise families that are larger than they are able to support, and contributing to the two million deaths⁹ annually due to AIDS¹⁰. So apparently committed are they to the spread of this affliction that they have consistently pronounced that even a married man may not wear a condom to protect his wife from contracting HIV¹¹.

But perhaps most emotive of all the charges are those of child sex abuse that seem to have been bombarding the ramparts of the Catholic church since time immemorial. The evidence (summarily dismissed as “petty gossip” by Pope Benedict) continues to mount, and it has become abundantly clear that the church has had — and still has — serious problems with how it treats these cases. The full extent of the scandal is beyond the scope of this essay, but naturally the buck stops with the patriarch himself and I’d like to take a brief look at his role specifically.

In his previous life as Cardinal Ratzinger, serving under Pope Jean Paul II almost thirty years ago in 1981, he was made head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Roman Inquisition, no less), which counted among its responsibilities investigating the part of priests in the sexual abuse of children.

In 1985, in this capacity as head of the CDF, Ratzinger wrote in response to Bishop John Cummings, resisting his request to defrock US priest Stephen Kiesle in spite of a 1981 conviction (not an allegation, a conviction) for tying up and molesting two boys. His letter suggests he was more concerned with the perception of the church in the media than the welfare of Kiesle’s congregation¹²:

“Consider the good of the Universal Church. It is necessary for this Congregation to submit incidents of this sort to very careful consideration, which necessitates a longer period of time.”

Kiesle remained in his position until 1987, six years after he was convicted of sexually abusing children.

In 2001, shortly after being tasked specifically with investigating cases of the sexual abuse of children, he signed a letter sent to every bishop in the church, worldwide, explaining:

“It must be noted that the criminal action on delicts reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is extinguished by a prescription of 10 years. The prescription runs according to the universal and common law; however, in the delict perpetrated with a minor by a cleric, the prescription begins to run from the day when the minor has completed the 18th year of age.”

“Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret”

In other words, if any case of sexual abuse is reported, it is to be dealt with internally within the church, and under no circumstances should the details be made public, or revealed to, for example, the police, until the victim of abuse has reached twenty-eight years of age (or, in practical terms, never).

The dubious statehood of the Vatican grants the Holy See the ability to deal with these delicts under its own legal system, known as canon law. Canon law, which prescribes that alleged child abusers are dealt with in secrecy and with apparent disregard for the seriousness of the ’sin’¹³, is the preferred method of disciplining paedophile priests. According to human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC¹⁴:

“[Canon law] has no public hearings, no DNA test facilities, no enforcement mechanism, and the most severe punishments – excommunication or an order to return to the laity (without entry on a sex offenders’ register) – bears no comparison with the sentences of imprisonment or community service that can be expected under criminal law.”

It is simply not a legitimate substitute for the judicial system of any developed country. If Pope Benedict was really intent on cleaning the church of this “filth”, as he has described it, he would hand the records of all these cases over to the police and allow them to be dealt with by the proper legal processes. His continued failure to do this is inexcusable, and can only be described as a wilful and concerted effort to conceal full extent of the abuse and obstruct the course of justice — a crime of complicity in perhaps thousands of cases of abuse — surely a greater offence than any single instance of abuse.

An international criminal of his standing should be immediately arrested on attempting to enter Britain, but the invitation to a “state visit” renders him immune from prosecution. Reason enough, surely, to protest the invitation. A lot has been said about the protest, however, and little of it has been supportive. Comments, evidently by people who did not attend, have frequently including the words “militant”, “aggressive” and “anti-Catholic”, but this does not chime with my experience of the event, however. My experience was peaceful and generally good-natured, with only a couple of shouts of “shame on you” from Catholic interlopers sullying the positive atmosphere.

I just cannot comprehend how campaigning for justice for abused Catholics, and for the safety of potential future victims, can be perceived as “anti-Catholic”, and I continue to be surprised and disappointed by the antipathy, and even outright hostility, towards those whose intentions, unlike the church, are pure.

Such, I suppose, is the mindset fostered by years of unquestioning obedience to authority. Despite the vast majority disagreeing with him on many of the points I have raised¹⁵, British Catholics still revere the pope to such a degree that they could perhaps be fairly regarded to have broken the first commandment¹⁶.

People of Britain — and Catholics in particular — you do yourselves a great disservice when you extend such obsequious hospitality to this tyrant.

1. And a real-life invocation of Godwin’s Law to boot!
2. The Reichskonkordat — an agreement giving guarantees to the Catholic church in Germany. You can find out more on Wikipedia.
3. The period of the Papal States in Italy, from 752–1870. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_States
4. Source: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ghetto
5. Source, this fascinating list of 20th century death tolls: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm
6. Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11325699
7. In lifting the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson, a vociferous holocaust-denier, Pope Benedict has been accused of insensitivity towards Jews himself.
8. In fact, just about anyone who doesn’t fit into the Adam and Eve mould.
9. Many of the victims are children, the vast majority of whom, notwithstanding the intentions of Catholic priests, must be presumed to have never committed the grave sin of having sex. Source: http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm
10. Ben Goldacre’s excellent Bad Science blog has dissected this issue with considerable poise.
11. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_teachings_on_sexual_morality#Contraception
12. Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8612457.stm
13. In fact, ordaining a woman as a priest is considered as serious a transgression as sodomising a child.
14. Source, this article covering canon law in more detail: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/07/canon-law-abuse-priests-escape-punishment
15. 90% object to the doctrine on abortion, 96% on contraception and 89% on homosexuality, Source: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-m-ssHbL-egJ:uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100912/tuk-catholics-at-odds-with-church-6323e80.html+british+catholics+disagree+with+pope&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=safari
16. “I am the Lord thy God…  Thou shalt not have any other gods besides me… thou shalt not bow down to them or serve them”

Housing is one of the biggest issues facing Britain today, and it was barely even touched upon during the recent election campaign. As I tweeted during the third leaders’ debate, the problem is not just, as the politicians would have you believe, a problem of supply. The market has been manipulated in order to artificially inflate prices.

Far from being happy with having somewhere to live, the modern home-owner expects to have their cake and eat it too. The generations preceding my own have got used to the idea that housing is an investment — houses are no longer homes, they are commodities. Recent history shows, however, that when basic human needs are commodified, people inevitably suffer².

This concept can be illustrated with a simple, if absurd, example. Imagine a world where everyone needs a hat. Perhaps the sky is falling in over Britain (literally, not figuratively — that’s already happening of course). There are around 60 million people, and around 60 million hats. There are just about enough to go round, so although they are not plentiful and cheap, the price remains reasonable.

Now imagine that a certain proportion of people buy an extra hat, perhaps just to be on the safe side. This means that demand outstrips supply, and the price of hats goes up³. Although there are still enough hats to go around, some people have to go without.

Now, because the price of hats has gone up, some wealthy people see a way to make some money — by buying more hats and holding onto them for a while. Because this increases demand and further reduces supply, the price continues to rise. Meanwhile, those who can’t afford to own an overpriced hat have to rent from the people who have extra hats, earning them even more money. Meanwhile their investment continues to appreciate in value.

Now, the government, who really should be putting a stop to this nonsense by stepping in to ensure that everyone has at least one hat, instead notice that because these hats are so much more expensive, and because of the additional transactions that are happening as people rent hats, their tax revenue has increased considerably. They decide that this unsustainable situation must be maintained, and they intervene to ensure that it is. They make a token effort to produce a few more hats, just to show that they are doing something to help, but these hats are just as expensive as the old ones and just as inaccessible to first-time hat buyers, so it’s really an empty gesture.

This fictional hat market seems ridiculous and irresponsible. Now, re-read that unlikely-seeming scenario again substituting the word hat for house, and realise, if you haven’t already, that this situation is real.

Knowing this, it’s difficult to come to any conclusion other than that, although profitable, it’s basically immoral to own a second home. With which other basic human need would you be allowed to take twice as much as you need and lock away what you don’t use? Imagine if it were done with food. Hungry? Hard luck. Food is now scarce, you’ll have to pay over the odds!⁴

Ok, you might point out (and several have) that these second-home owners are relying on this investment to provide for them in retirement. What can be wrong with that? They need to provide for themselves don’t they? Sure, but my generation won’t have this luxury, so what am I to do? Of course, I’ll have to set aside some of my income. Seems obvious enough, so why couldn’t our parents do that instead of spunking it all on, for example, paying back credit debts?⁵

Just as all taxpayers famously had to bail out the banks, now the younger generations must pay for the excesses of their parents⁶.⁷ While the buzzword of the Conservative portion of our new coalition government is ‘responsibility’, it’s ironic that most of the responsible (i.e. young⁸) voters didn’t vote for them⁹.¹⁰

The reluctance of the politicians to discuss this problem is understandable. A large and growing number of (generally young) “first-time buyers” are struggling to afford even a modest home and naturally want the prices to come down, while an even larger group of (generally older) home-owners are cheering for the bubble to keep on inflating, and, if they can afford it, buying up all the property they can get their hands on. As a representative of both these groups, how do you reconcile their diametrically opposed demands? No-one seems to have an answer¹¹.

As the number who are unable to buy property inevitably grows to outnumber those who can, however, the need to find a solution will become more urgent. It hasn’t happened yet, but I predict that this issue will soon become big enough to lose somebody an election¹².

1. Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/house-and-home/property/no-place-like-home-the-generation-who-cant-afford-to-buy-1921781.html
2. Recent memorable examples include corn, oil, and so on
3. This is a fundamental principle of markets, that the price of something is dictated by the disparity between demand and supply. Still waiting for that iPad? Don’t imagine Apple are working as hard as they could be to get it to you quicker.
4. Bear with me here, let’s imagine for a second that this isn’t actually happening!
5. Britons’ personal debt overtook our GDP (the value of what the country makes in a year) in 2007. Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/money/loans-credit/for-the-first-time-britons-personal-debt-exceeds-britains-gdp-462825.html
6. It’s not just financially either. For example, older people are much less likely to be concerned about climate change, so while young people are changing their lifestyles to live more sustainably, we will have to go much further in this area too, because older people will not. Source: http://www.csreurope.org/news.php?type=&action=show_news&news_id=2150
7. Another example of the inequities are university tuition fees. If you’re starting university this year, you will have to pay an average of £10,000 for your basic three-year course (Source: http://www.direct.gov.uk/…/Gettingstarted/DG_171573). Your parents, if they went to university, paid nothing. Your student loan? That could add up to as much as an extra £24,000 which you will have to pay back. This debt could be a financial monkey on your back until well beyond your 40th birthday. Your parents, instead of the loan, were given a grant that they didn’t have to pay back. So you could leave university with a burden equivalent to two-years’ salary in debt that your parents never had.
8. If this is a contentious statement, let me qualify it by pointing out that the young will necessarily be more responsible than their parents because of the mess we now find ourselves in. Our parents could easily be represented by Liam Byrne: “I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left”.
9. The Times concludes that the Tories haven’t outpolled Labour amongst young people for 27 years: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7101528.ece
10. In fact, some people (mostly Conservatives, would you believe) take this argument further than I will. Tory MP David Willetts, our new Minister for Science, no less, has written a somewhat controversial book on the subject subtitled “How the baby-boomers stole their children’s future”.
11. Although, the new government’s proposed increase in Capital Gains Tax, despite being attacked from all sides by the people who stand to lose out, might well have a positive effect
12. This could happen in one of two ways: either the prices stay high and the growing mob of first-time buyers demand something is done, or prices fall and disgruntled property owners take out their frustrations on the incumbent party. Basically they’re damned no matter what happens.

The current situation basically developed because some investment bankers decided that a nice, ethical way to make money would be to push loans on people who had no hope of ever paying them off (commonly known, rather euphemistically, as “sub-prime”), insure themselves against this outcome for a whole shit-ton of money, and wait for the cash to roll in¹.

Of course, lots of people lost their homes and any prospect of living a normal life ever again, and the poor bastards who invested their money in these loans (mostly conservative pension funds) lost everything. Anyone who had any money left sensibly decided that they wanted to have it back while they still could. They sold their stocks and shares and the market collapsed. Then to really compound this clusterfuck, the insurance companies and hedge funds that provided the insurance on all this bad debt found themselves in a situation where they suddenly owed a lot more than they could afford to pay. They all went bust and the banks didn’t get their money back either. But the bankers responsible for these risky deals made a hell of a lot of money.

So why did we have to bail the greedy fuckers out? What happened?

Essentially, as a nation we have become far too reliant on banking to provide economic growth² and before the bubble burst the banks were making a huge amount of money and they knew that if they could only break free from the shackles of what turned out to be sensible regulations, they would make an awful lot more³. The view of the government, and particularly then-Chancellor Gordon Brown, was that under his prudent stewardship the days of “boom and bust” were over⁴. Under pressure from the banks and the free-market advocates in the Conservative party, and sensing the prospect of an enormous tax windfall⁵, they relaxed the rules allowing the banks to make riskier investments. For a while this worked great. Everybody enjoyed the benefits of credit they couldn’t really afford, the banks made a fortune, and so did the state. But it turned out that Brown was wrong; the days of boom and bust were not over at all.

Because of the fact that we got complacent and (to use an excruciatingly overwrought analogy) put all our golden eggs in the banking basket, allowing our industry (such as it was) to wither, we now find ourselves in a difficult situation. If the banks (which provide almost 7% of GDP by themselves) go to the wall, so does the British economy.

In an outrageous and ironic twist, all the libertarian bankers who had argued so vociferously against state intervention in the form of regulations, came and shamelessly begged the government to help them in their hour of need⁶. It was at this point, just after the nick of time, that Brown and his advisors lost confidence in the free-market and found solace in the teachings of John Maynard Keynes.

Keynes argued, back in the 1930s (during the Great Depression), against the traditional idea that the job market was just the same as any other market, and subject to the same simple rules of supply and demand. He proposed that because the workers (the supply) are also buyers (the demand) — they spend their salaries on the things that other workers are employed to make — the supply and demand model breaks down⁷. His theories were widely accepted after the second world war and proved very successful until the 1970s when a different approach espoused by Milton Friedman, highly critical of Keynes and all but the lightest of government intervention, caught the attention of Reagan in America, and Thatcher in Britain. His ideas provided the basis for Thatcherism, and the enduring Conservative philosophy that governments should be small with minimal levels of tax and public spending (from whence comes the unconvincing euphemism of “Big Society” that is so central to their current manifesto), and markets should be free and unregulated.

This ideology led to the privatisation of all kinds of public services, and the crushing of the pesky trade unions (who argued against the will of the markets in advocating higher wages for workers), and successive governments, including New Labour (departing from old Labour socialist ideals), continued to operate in this way, until the recession hit and the likes of America and Britain, under Obama and Brown, were forced to intervene in a big way to prevent the implosion of pretty much the entire global economy.

Having bailed out the banks and kept things afloat, Brown was faced with a situation where the wheels of the economy, the banks, were paralysed by fear and needed some serious grease. In what must have been a living nightmare for the Conservative party, he decided to nationalise the banks (everyone else could enjoy the irony of nationalising these paragons of private enterprise), and essentially print money by injecting billions of pounds into the monetary system.

It’s important to note, with an election fast approaching in which the biggest issue by far is the economy, that whatever happened in the past to get us into this situation⁸ the Labour party ended up doing the right thing, and now is on generally the right track to lead us on the road to recovery in investing more now so that the economy becomes strong enough to walk by itself. The Liberal Democrats are following basically the same agenda. This is anathema to the Conservatives, however, and all the ideas that their current crop of MPs has grown up with. They are facing an ideological cataclysm and are really struggling to face up to a situation where the state must intervene to prevent stagnation.

As such, they are absolutely the worst candidates to marshall the country back into the black.

But you don’t just have to take my word for it. On Tuesday April 27th (yesterday, as I write this) the Institute for Fiscal Studies, an economic think tank, published a report⁹ which, as well as examining the effects of Labour’s 13 years of government, ran the rule over the three main parties’ financial policies. It was highly critical of all the parties, suggesting that they are not being clear enough about where they plan to make savings, and are leaving voters in the dark with which way to vote. Some of the interesting findings are:

• The Liberal Democrats’ proposed raising of the tax-free personal allowance to £10,000 would provide a stronger incentive for people currently on unemployment benefits to find work, and a stronger incentive for those earning less than £10,000 to earn more, than the Conservatives’ planned cut to National Insurance. This means that levels of unemployment would be reduced.
• Because the Tories plan to raise taxes the least (and indeed give tax breaks to millionaires¹⁰) they need to cut public spending the most. In fact these cuts will be the most severe in post-war history. The burden of these cuts will fall mainly on the poor.
• Although none of the parties has set out how it will tackle the budget deficit in full (blaming Labour’s refusal to carry out a pre-election spending review), the Lib Dems have identified 25% of the measures required, compared with the Tories’ 17% and Labour’s 13%.

Scrutinise the manifestos as much as you like, we don’t have much to go on here. At least three-quarters of the savings are a mystery even to the parties (or perhaps they are just afraid to tell us). We can only try to get a feeling for the inclination of each party to have any idea of what they might do. The final leader’s debate, focussing on the economy, should provide our best opportunity to answer some of these questions, and I will be watching closely.

1. This is called a Credit Default Swap, or a Derivative, which are terms you might have heard. The process behind this is actually pretty complex and I’m not going to go into detail but there’s a really simple explanation of the principles here which should help you get your head around it.
2. Banking, despite producing nothing tangible at all, contributes £70 billion to the UK’s GDP. Source: http://www.bba.org.uk/bba/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=469&a=7447&artpage=all
3. We are perhaps too obsessed with the idea that we need perpetual economic growth at all, but that’s another argument
4. Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/sep/11/gordonbrown.economy
5. Banking provides 25% of corporation tax income. Source: http://www.bba.org.uk/bba/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=469&a=7447&artpage=all
6. Most notably (and disgustingly) Matt Ridley, the chairman of Northern Rock, which was totally nationalised.
7. This is as far as I’m going to go in explaining Keynesianism, but I highly recommend that you read this “brief” explanation of it by Aaron Swartz. It is really superbly written and helped me to understand macroeconomics! It sounds dull but money really does make the world go round and it’s super interesting (at least, it is to me) to understand the driving forces behind it. Ok, there’s an even shorter version too.
8. For the record, Labour were the governing party but the Conservatives were complicit in the deregulation, and even pushed for yet more relaxing of the rules. For the Liberal Democrats, Vince Cable famously warned, against the prevailing wisdom, that the British economy was becoming too reliant on credit and that deregulation might lead to problems.
9. The report itself can be read here: http://www.ifs.org.uk/election/ebn_summary.pdf
10. As I explained last time.

If you vote Conservative, you’re choosing tax breaks for millionaires over jobs for teachers. It sounds polemical, but this is a fact, and not one disputed by the Conservative party. Allow me to demonstrate.

The Conservative Party Manifesto claims that four million households are caught in Gordon Brown’s Inheritance Tax “trap” and outlines a policy that “will raise the Inheritance Tax threshold to £1 million, taking the family home out of Inheritance Tax altogether for the vast majority of people”¹. What they don’t say is that the current threshold of £300,000 already precludes the vast majority of family homes from being liable for Inheritance Tax². They also claimed this policy would “help millions of people who aspire to pass something on to their children”, in fact only 8,000 homes (worth between £300,000 and £1 million) would be lifted out of Inheritance Tax liability completely, while a further 3,000 (worth more than £1 million) would be partially helped. Either a lot of people are living in each of these homes³, or they are being economical with the truth.

Inheritance Tax raised around £3 billion last year⁴. This is more than the budgets for pre-primary, primary and secondary education all put together⁵.

The Tories’ planned cut would cost the treasury £1.8 billion a year, and their plans for bridging this gap are pretty insubstantial⁶. This is the worst kind of regressive, invidious tax break for the rich few, paid for by the many, that causes so many to regard the Conservative party with deeply held suspicion and distrust. They are right to do so.

Let’s examine another of their other flagship policies: tax breaks for married people. Sounds innocuous enough — especially if you’re married — even if it is only worth a maximum of £3 a week. But the less well-publicised side to this offer is that you can only claim it if you are the only one of the partnership who works. So for all the insistence that “although it may only be a gesture, it is a positive one nonetheless that reinforces the state’s commitment to marriage as an institution”, it can equally be seen as a gesture of the state’s commitment to the subjugation of women⁷. It evokes the stereotype of old-fashioned, bigoted Conservatism that the party has worked so hard to try to dispel.

It’s also a gesture that even in these frugal times, when public services and benefits to disadvantaged people are threatened with cuts, the government can afford to give token tax breaks to the people who least need them. They criticise Labour for failing to address the growing gap between rich and poor, but they openly pursue policies which would undoubtedly exacerbate the problem.

Elsewhere we find more indicators that the Thatcherist free-market ideology associated with the old Tories, the credibility of which has been so damaged by the global economic crisis, is still at the root of many modern Tory policies.

This includes, critically, their economic policy, in contrast with Labour’s broadly successful Keynesian interventionist approach (also used with great success in the States and elsewhere). The success of this policy is particularly marked when compared with the likes of Ireland, which followed plans that are still being endorsed by the British Conservative Party, and now find themselves in so much trouble (while UK unemployment levels are below what was forecast by the IMF, Irish unemployment is double the forecast⁸⁹.

Looking deeper we find ambitions to switch social care to a US-style voluntary insurance model, just as the US leaves this discredited, costly and unfair system behind¹⁰, and ideas to outsource education, policing and healthcare to the public at large, the logical conclusion of which — as the only agents realistically capable of running these services outside of government are in enterprise — is privatisation. The Tory prospectus would bring the same deregulated free-market forces that worked so well for the economic sector into our schools, hospitals and police stations.

So is this really the change that the British public is looking for?

I don’t think so, and I believe that the reason many lower- and middle-class people — who only stand to lose were the Conservatives to be elected — intend to vote for it anyway, is because of the insidious, though increasingly visible, influence of the Conservative media.

Since removing its backing from the previously subservient Labour party, the Murdoch media empire has bet the farm on a Conservative government, and intends to bring its not inconsiderable influence to bear to ensure that it gets one. For a price, of course¹¹, payable on taking government. In return, Tom Newton Dunn, the Sun’s political editor, is reported to have recently proclaimed “It is my job to see that Cameron fucking well gets into Downing Street”, and his paper (amongst others) is demonstrably doing the best it can to make it happen, through fair means or foul¹².

Former Sun editor David Yelland, writing in the Guardian last week, exposes the vice-like grip of the right-wing press on political process, and, in revealing that the Lib Dems have hitherto been too insignificant to attract the attentions of it, provides all the reason I would have needed to support them.

But I had already made up my mind to support them before I read this (and indeed before Nick Clegg’s appearance on the first televised leader’s debate catapulted him and his party into the public consciousness). I believe that under the photogenic surface, they really do represent a fresh approach. In contrast to the outdated ideologies and dogma of the traditional parties is a different style, a blueprint for evidence-based government.

The Lib Dem science policy spokesman, member of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, formidable exponent of evidence-based policy, and general scourge of bullshit¹³, Dr Evan Harris, spells out a compelling vision (and one that is backed up by their manifesto¹⁴) of a future Britain made Great again by investing heavily in science and technology, so building a stable foundation for recovery from economic misadventure and towards a more prosperous future.

It sounds terribly corny, but I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that in this election we have a choice to make between fear, and hope.

I know which one I’d rather be a part of.

1. Source: http://www.conservatives.com/Policy/Where_we_stand/Economy.aspx
2. The average UK house value in 2009 — including London — was £219,832, coming in comfortably under the threshold
3. By my calculations, assuming “millions” means more than 2 million, that would mean at least 182 people living in each house.
4. To be precise, £2.85 billion for the year 2008-2009. Source: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats/tax_receipts/table1-2.pdf
5. At £2.7 billion for 2009. Source: http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_education_spending_20.html#ukgs302
6. Source: http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/2010/03/15/closing-the-non-dom-black-hole/
7. I know, it’s a stretch, but so is the idea that £3 a week will encourage stronger marriages.
8. Source: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2010/01/pdf/c3.pdf (chart on page 19)
9. There are a lot of contentious points here, I acknowledge, but I plan to go into more detail on the economy in a future essay
10. Source: http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/04/tory-social-care-policies-will-hit-the-poor-hardest/
11. Compare James Murdoch’s speech at the Edinburgh International Television Festival to Conservative media policy (this piece by Jonathan Freedland does the job for you) and tell me if you can spot the difference. I can’t.
12. Some examples of the foul: failing to cover a poll showing the Liberal Democrats are less feared by the electorate than the Tories or Labour, printing anti-Clegg stories complete with a soapbox for Conservative heavyweight Ken Clarke, blanket coverage of minor Lib Dem infractions and pro-Tory propaganda in their Election column, and perhaps even leaving fake and incriminating documents in a taxi? Perhaps not, but it’s an awfully convenient thing to have happened by coincidence.
13. You can read all about his credentials on the Skeptical Voter wiki here. He doesn’t mess about.
14. See the Guardian’s assessment of their science policies here