As soon as this pub closes.....

The view from the molehill
(with apologies to Alex Glasgow and Chris Mullins)

(While very obviously a layman/foot-soldier's view, this blog looks in a little more detail at issues touched on in the blog, Apprentice! / Tirez les doigts !)

What the Con-Dem government is proposing to inflict in terms of cuts, unemployment and collateral social damage is appalling. (There's a lot of loose talk from the government side about horrendous legacies to future generations in terms of a structural deficit. The legacy in terms of 'the solution' will be far worse. Where I live (Peter Hain's constituency) we still haven't recovered from the 80's and 90's. )

The present 'phoney war' (the talk before the action) is totally surreal, like a slow-motion train crash.

It's not as if the Con-Dem government had a commanding lead, either of public opinion, or of expert analysis and comment. There is in the country a solid phalanx of opinion and expertise (probably not a lot smaller than the ConDem one, in fact) that is coherently objecting to the Coalition programme - an informed, detailed, principled rejection of the programme.
And in practical political terms, Osborne and co only actually have the 'power' to implement their plans courtesy of the Lib Dem parliamentary party - most of whom are probably privately as appalled as those of us on 'this side' (but one can see that they are for the moment left without any good options).

That's for now. When the blitzkrieg actually starts, it seems inevitable the government will lose support as people are actually hurt. We know it's going to be a disaster - the purposeful employment activity of millions lost, the special measures for those already on the margins gone, the welfare costs (even with the benefit cuts) outweighing the intended financial savings, so the whole thing is self-defeating.

Now, consider more fully the issues around mandate, legitimacy and 'moral authority'.
The measures proposed are far from routine - the superlative comparisons vary, but it is clear that in terms of scale of effect and degree of change of direction (i.e. from one government to the next), you have to go back at least to Thatcher. And even that is not really adequate to the Con-Dem aspiration. It is often remarked how unsuccessful the Thatcher governments were in rolling back the state, despite the social and economic damage they did by trying, so even the Thatcher comparison is inadequate. For scale of change you probably have to go back to 1945, (but then there was an exceptional, overwhelming, mandate to 'authorise' it). For a truer comparison you may have to go back to the Geddes' axe - and anyone old enough to have voted for the first time at that preceding election would now be well over 100 years old! So it seems reasonable to claim that to underwrite the government 'morally' today, a wholly exceptional mandate is required .

Whereas, consider the actual electoral facts: in May, Labour won clear-to-overwhelming majorities of MPs from both Wales and Scotland, and the results from England were very regional - there are parts of England where the Governmment has hardly more of a localised mandate than it does in Wales and Scotland. In the present parliament, Labour is the only party with really significant representation from all three mainland elements of the Union.
Moreover, the Government proposals as they now stand include important elements which during the election campaign the Conservatives themselves denied they were considering (the VAT increase being the clearest example) and which the Liberal Democrates explicitly opposed. So within the total package there is a bundle of measures for which the Government cannot claim an electoral mandate in any terms whatever.

And as already noted re the parliamentary mechanics of power: the implementation of this multi-decade-exceptional programme is made possible by the votes of the Lib Dems who secured election by opposing significant parts of it, and many of whom (one must now in charity believe) are probably now as aghast as the rest of us. (If, as a side-outcome, 'our' opposition strategies offered at least some of them something to leap for and cling on to, we should be forbearing. We've made ministers of renegade Tories before now.)

Is this not one of those - once-in-several-generations - moments when 'business as usual' is no longer an option ? If the Labour Party, and particularly its MPs, simply settle down to 'principled opposition' until the next election, the axe will swing, millions of lives will be devastated and swathes of the country will economically marginalised.
Do not these considerations make it reasonable for those of us appalled at what we are threatened with to extend our challenge and opposition well beyond conventional Parliamentary opposition politics?

I ask in all seriousness: should we not be considering a complete social mobilisation of protest, to drive this government from power before it is too late ?

This comment is not a full manifesto - it does not examine what an alternative government would do. ( How could I ? But Apprentice! / Tirez les doigts ! already suggests the way to an answer.) Piecemeal resistance to the cuts by the Unions is predictable but likely to be ineffective and perhaps even unpopular. Whereas a co-ordinated campaign of social resistance including strikes, minimal or non-cooperation with the implementation of cuts by elected councillors and civil servants, sustained widespread demonstrations, could be very powerful. The cuts in the presently proposed Con-Dem version could be stopped.

Are we prepared to try, or is wringing our hands more comfortable ?