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Only social democratic solutions are capable of addressing the crises
we face.
I was listening to a
French trade unionist recently who started his speech by saying ‘there
is not one crisis, there are three crises’ – and then added,
rather cheerfully, ‘at least’. He was referring to the economic
crisis, the environmental crisis and the demographic crisis, which together
make a complex mixture of short and longer term challenges for Europe, individual
member states and the world. What distinctive positions has social democracy
to offer on these matters?
I will concentrate here on the economic crisis, which looms above everything.
We have lost 7 per cent of European GDP in 18 months, and EU unemployment
is rising – perhaps it will reach 12 per cent by the winter’s
end – and young people are its disproportionate and blameless victims.
David Cameron, incredibly, has blamed big government – big Labour
government – for the crisis and the misery created by it, never once
mentioning the irresponsible role played by those in financial markets.
And what is more, though with honourable exceptions, the press seem to be
allowing him to get away with it. Why are we incapable of attributing the
full blame to the banks and the others where it rightly lays? We now know
that light-touch regulation with that lot was never going to be enough.
But if the idea sticks that the crisis is all the fault of the government,
then the obvious solution is going to be to cut public spending and prune
government severely. Labour is doing the right things but needs vigour and
force to explain why.
There is already wide pressure, and not just in the UK, to pronounce the
end of the crisis and start cutting public spending. That EU governments
may act prematurely and choke off the recovery is the ETUC’s biggest
worry at the present time. (In 1937 a premature move by the US Congress
to balance the books killed the recovery that was starting to take place,
and the recession did not end until World War Two.) The British Conservatives
– and Liberal Democrats – favour cutting spending now, but this
would be a huge and dangerous step. It would cause a depression on the 1930s
scale if they carried out the intentions they stated at their recent party
conferences. There is a genuine divide between the parties on this issue.
And the fight to resist cuts must stir the energy and commitment of all
on the left.
Yet the relative popularity of parties of the right is not just a UK phenomenon.
Though there are some exceptions, in general Europe’s left is failing
to attract support, at a time when it should be in the ascendant. We know
that raw and unregulated free-market capitalism has precipitated the greatest
economic crisis in the post-war period, but voters generally are looking
either rightwards or (a minority) further left.
Some centre-right politicians (for example Chancellor Merkel and President
Sarkozy) have moved to implement socially sensitive policies, impose tougher
financial regulation to curb ‘Anglo-Saxon’-style capitalism,
and adopt an environmentalist agenda. They will undoubtedly at some point
move to cut spending and deficits, but so far they have responded to the
crisis by adopting a social democratic agenda. They are sitting in the socialist
chair – apart from Mr Cameron, who is spectacularly out of step with
his centre-right colleagues on this – as he is on the Lisbon Treaty.
On that point Mr Cameron is taking the ‘Little Britain’ not
the ‘Great Britain’ line. His vision of the EU combines hostility
with prejudice, and ignorance with pettiness. Never before has a major British
party seemed so out of step, so provincial, so imbued with ‘island-mentality’.
There should be a real opportunity here for Labour if we take it.
Admitting that some previous policies were not so brilliant would help.
Was it such a good idea to duck UK entry into the euro? The much-prized
British flexibility on its currency has resulted in a devaluation of 25
per cent in the value of sterling against the euro; the UK economy has become
smaller than that of Italy; Britain looks set to have a longer recession
than any other major European economy; and our exporters so far seem not
to be benefiting from our cheap currency. Could we now perhaps acknowledge
that euro entry could help reshape the UK’s economic strategy, so
that its focus becomes more long-termist, export-orientated and geared towards
serious production, rather than towards the maintenance of a short-term
speculators’ paradise based on real estate bubbles.
An Irish trade unionist recently told me how he had hoped for most of his
life to see capitalism collapse, but he now wanted it to survive. He is,
of course, dead right, and social democracy has a vested interest in this,
as does all of society. But what kind of capitalism? The social democratic
answer must be a long-termist, social market one, based on open markets
for sure, but also with strong welfare states and public services, and adequate
worker rights and trade union freedom. And it must be unapologetically European
and internationalist.
The case for social democracy will never be as black and white, as dramatic,
as capitalism versus communism. But most polls tell us that most people
are social democratic, and even when they vote for right parties they expect
social democratic policies. We have been seen that in France and Germany.
So social democracy has a future in Europe. Social democratic parties must
take advantage.
John Monks has been General Secretary of the ETUC since
2003. This followed sixteen years as Deputy General Secretary and then General
Secretary of the Trades Union Congress in the UK. He has been a member of
the Council of the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS),
and of the Economic and Social Research Council; he was for seven years
Vice-Chair of the Learning and Skills Council, and has been Chairman of
the UK Co-operative Commission. He is Chairman of the People’s History
Museum in Manchester and also a visiting professor at the University of
Manchester.
To read more articles,
and make a comment, go to
http://www.goodsociety.social-europe.eu
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