Jon Cruddas: an opportunity wasted - 16 comments

Warning: this post contains criticism of Jon Cruddas. One of the difficulties that arises when spreading the writing of a post across a day two days is finding public opinion shifting against you, making it seem all the more churlish to appear to pick upon a decent bloke. This awareness does motivate me, what with my being a human being, your sufferance of my occasional rants on these pages, and the target being a Labour MP who has impressed many. Nonetheless, I try to criticise when I think it's due, and I'm happy to publish and be damned. So, onward.

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Having read Liam Byrne and Bill Rammell's earlier article ("An utterly false choice"), I can see why Jon Cruddas might have been riled, but I found his response [via Stuart] equally gloomy reading.

The earlier article seemed content for electoral politics to be pitched at the voters most likely to tilt a General Election Labour's way, with little criticism of the legitimacy of the ambitions and priorities of a few (lucky) slices of that society being made the priorities for a future government, ignoring such trifling concerns as freedom, equality, justice, or the democratic aspirations of the rest of the electorate.

Unfortunately, rather than savaging the original piece for these obvious omissions, or finding some way to engage the entire Labour movement in a plausible crusade against poverty and injustice worldwide (two priorities for any Labour Party, surely), just about all Jon could conjure up with was a vapid appeal to "traditional" values. At no point did we learn what these traditional values are, how they equip us to reduce poverty and meet future challenges, who these "traditional" voters are, or what their needs are, let alone whether those needs are best met by those traditional policies. Does "traditional" really boil down to the following?

Everything anyone remotely likely to vote Labour don't like about politics today, and any favoured policy from the past that is no longer in current use, for whatever reason.

Sorry, but anyone who insists upon using terms like "core" voters (no less silly a term than "swing" voters), and "Labour values" is being abstruse, whether deliberately, or otherwise. It denies potential voters the opportunity to judge candidates and parties on the basis of the policies they might actually carry out, and the chance to judge the accuracy, applicability, plausibility, and likelihood of success of those policies. Sure, there's no General Election in the offing, but there's no harm in a politician who wants to be remembered for their policies to act like there is.

References to "core" and "traditional" remind me of the futility of searching for ideological purity - in our case, the mythical "Real Labour". It's a label more often adopted than bestowed. It's not hard to suggest groups in society - the poorest, for starters - who should expect the most attention from a Labour programme. To what extent their concerns tally with traditional Labour voters (who I'm not yet convinced aren't, in fact, substantially more middle class than is believed), I don't know, but the policies Labour should be pursuing are what work particularly well for the disadvantaged, whether the policies are old or new.

Perhaps this is unfair - there is a little politics in Jon's piece:

Too often the second-term Labour government ... [arrived] at policies such as differential top-up fees that not only owed more to free-market dogma than our traditional values but were also deeply unpopular among swing voters.

This is unhelpful in several ways. The need to address higher-education funding dates back to substantially before 2001, with several different funding/fees options on the table, and this need was felt within the Labour Party just as much as elsewhere, so it's hardly accurate to claim the current policy just materialised. And, hang on, why would a government overly concerned with swing voters stick to a policy that, so it is claimed, fails to deliver those middle class votes? Could it be that there was an impulse behind the policy that Jon's analysis fails to spot?

Appending "dogma" to "free-market" is (I regret to say) a fairly common rhetorical trick on our side, used either to restrict discussion to comfortable or agreeable arguments, or to signal one's statist credentials to supporters, masking off huge areas of policy exploration - for example, road pricing that simply asks drivers to pay the social cost of their driving, then let's them alone - at a stroke. Funnily enough, support for university fees is one of the few policies I've held consistently over the past decade or so, even back to the days when I might have used similar language, but one problem with traditionalists is their tendency to cherry-pick those "traditions" that suit them. For example, I can't help feeling "If you have the means, you're going to have to make a pretty good case before we subsidise you with taxpayer's money, but we'll give the most help to those who most need it" is a better established expression of Labour values than "All potential students have a right to free higher education, whatever the cost, whatever their means; and taxpayers have the corresponding responsibility to pay, whatever their means." You might not agree with my choice, but at least you didn't slap "dogma" on the one you didn't like.

The idea that we need lectures from Rammell, the minister for top-up fees, on winning back aspirant voters frankly beggars belief.

We could, of course, turn that around and say:

The idea that we need lectures from Cruddas, the Member of Parliament for Dagenham, on winning back "traditional" voters frankly beggars belief.

In fact, that's pretty generous: Rammell, after all, was tarred with "minister for top-up fees"; he no more "lectures" than Jon does (though I've already stated that I strongly dislike the inferences of Rammell and Byrne's piece); and besides, Rammell didn't - to my knowledge - make any claims about the popularity of the introduction of (deferred) higher education fees, nor should that be a priority for any Education Minister.

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I don't have a problem at all with Jon's housing suggestions, but if he can make a difference in that area, wouldn't it be more sensible for him to position himself to take on a future housing portfolio, rather than gun for a Deputy Leadership job that would deny him a direct input?

Likewise - and I'm tailing off a little, here, so bear with me - I don't have a problem with the suggestions about political activity...

They think this is modern, but actually today's voters are more likely to respond to active, campaigning parties that are properly rooted in their local communities.

... insofar as anyone disagrees with that. The statement isn't wrong, or harmful, it's just lost its value through overuse. Saying it might meet our fairly low expectations, but showing that you have a unique solution, or a unique ability to achieve an existing solution, is what will restore value to the fine sentiments.

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I don't think I'm simply being pedantic here: having the opportunity to write for a popular and influential publication should be an opportunity to appear sensible, thoughtful, accurate, interested in the truth - and what works. Coming across as close-minded, and with a preference for warm, woolly, catch-all terms, doesn't seem to me to adequately reward the reader for their time.

Carbon Trading - no comments

This post was partly inspired by Polly's piece (via S&M) on carbon allowances/trading, as well as the one on Labour's front page (now disappeared, though this covers an earlier draft of the Government's plans). I did start it about a fortnight ago, which is why everyone's moved on to other topics. Anyway, key quote (from Polly's):

Miliband's electric radicalism comes in his plan for personal carbon allowances. Here is where social justice meets green politics for the first time. Give every citizen the same quota of energy and let them buy and sell it on the open market. The half of the population who don't fly will make money from selling their quota to the half who do. Drive a gas-guzzling 4x4 and you will have to buy a quota from the third of the population with no access to a car. Who could complain about such transparent fairness?

I can't deny that the liberal side of me would be interested by the establishment of a free market in carbon units. Labour supporters are both accustomed, and quite correct, to attend to those who lose from market outcomes, when so often the result of systematic injustice, but what would 'exploitation' look like in a market like this - with equal allocations of resources for all, and that leaves people free to buy/sell in a rational manner? Having provided equality of opportunity, there must be less of a moral imperative to compensate those who made themselves worse off by buying or selling unwisely, or by missing opportunities that were open to all. If that sounds too cold, compare that scenario with one of a society that seeks to promote equality of opportunity (rather than outcome) without a prior equalisation of assets/resources (as radical as that would be), even though every aspect of it is imbued with the results of past inequalities. If ours is to be an "opportunity society", then surely it must be judged on the basis of the results of - and our attitudes to the results of - just such a carbon market.

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How could such a market work, and what might be the consequences?

I'm assuming, for this, that the Government sets a "fixed exchange rate" between a "carbon unit", which I'll call CU, and, say, a kg of produced CO2; that it establishes the market by calculating the total CU entitlement from the year's emissions target, then distributes those CUs equally among all CU account holders (all of us), either in one go, or - ideally - monthly portions. Presumably all (carbon-using) energy bills would require a payment in CUs, in addition to the monetary cost.

The next assumption that the carbon market has sufficient public support/Governmental commitment that people can assume it's unlikely to disappear any time soon (what would be the point, otherwise?) I'm further assuming that, because the Government's overall aim is to reduce carbon emissions (albeit in a roundabout way), annual/monthly CU distributions will fall over time. Both premises introduce an element of risk - in the sense that people who continue to produce/contribute to high emissions may find it harder and more expensive over time to obtain the CUs they need to fuel their lifestyle, as the supply of CUs decreases. One more assumption: that CUs "live" longer than a year (or a month, as discussed), and therefore that a CU issued in Year 1 can be 'sold' in Years 2 or 3, for example. If so, an opportunity arises within the CU market for those on low incomes to use their relative numerical superiority and (given equal allocations) high proportion of CU ownership, to produce a redistribution of income. Fund managers, working on behalf of the poor, could sell CU options to affluent, high-emission individuals. By purchasing options - the right to buy, months or years in the future, CUs from the poor at a particular price, decided today - the high-emission rich would be able to reduce the risk that they are unable to afford to maintain existing fuel usage in the future, at the cost of paying the poor an 'option premium'. This would redistribute a small amount of income (minus a fund-management fee) to the poor very quickly. The downside, however, is that the bulk of the redistribution will be moved into the future, for that is when the options expire and the high-emission rich finally buy their CUs.

'Congestion charging' and tax changes could happily coexist with the CU market provided the aim was to ensure that what motorists paid reflected the full environmental/social cost of their motoring. Road tolls and fixed-rate congestion charges would go further to reduce vehicle usage and emissions, and would almost certainly have more of an effect on emissions than the CU market. However, the burden would hit the poor hardest. Even with CUs offered equally to all, individuals would still hold different levels of capital, with differing capacities to liquidate that capital: for example, compare a rich individual's ability to sell a high-spec, gas-guzzling vehicle, with a poor person's inability to replace an inefficient heating system with a more modern one that would allow them to make better use of their CUs. While the affluent would be able to switch to public transport out of choice, perhaps claiming to have done so 'for environmental reasons', the poor would be more likely to do so out of compulsion, because they are in much less of a position to replace a polluting lifestyle with a less polluting one. If the Government did go further down the road of legislation in order to make the greatest impact on emissions, it would only be fair if the poor were compensated. It would be fraudulent - not to mention counterproductive - to claim to be establishing a "free" market, where economic decisions can legitimately attributed to a free choice, and not to do so.

For more on this, here's an article from the US Congressional Budget Office on "Who Gains and Who Pays Under Carbon-Allowance Trading?".

As an aside, it would be nice in theory to have a system in place whereby CUs could be traded for free. The Government could fill this role, allowing the poor to sell CUs without transaction costs. As to whether the Government could legitimately involve itself in the option trading mentioned above, that seems unlikely. Well, let's face it, the whole carbon allowance scheme sounds pretty unlikely, but if it did exist, I don't see any reason why the poor couldn't be organised, and the above trading scheme operated for nothing - by trade unionists? - or by a firm that charged an overall fee, rather than many individual ones.