representatives have also drilled their influences into the unelected civil service. A
history of revolving doors between high-level business and high-level “public service”
guarantees that the point of view of the rentier class is far better represented in
government than rural citizens, the squeezed middle or the first-time southern buyers
unable to keep their heads above coalition water.
“The civil service, as it currently stands, works only for the part of
Britain that financially benefits from global corporatism”
I'm not suggesting that such a form of capitalism has no value at all. Even those of us
who find ourselves in this fearful squeezed middle – in essence, the voters who will
assign to Labour its future moral majority or not – understand that large companies
provide essential services w hich smaller firms might not be able to provide as well, or
at least with the same reliability.
However, when government begins to consistently fall down more on one side of the
fence than the other, and when virtual monopolies can raise their prices in ways that
bear little relation to their real costs, then it is probably time to start agreeing with Ed
Miliband’s One Nation approach. And in particular when we talk about the South. As
the Southern Taskforce document suggests: “In southern England, too many people
and places aren't sharing in the prosperity enjoyed by a few, and too many hard
working people struggle to get a fair deal for themselves and their families.”
So what can Labour do to make its message work in southern England? The
government and civil service should work to improve peoples’ living standards,
because in times of poverty, we need more government intervention not less. But it
needs to be accurate and focussed. The Tories have always been right on the
rhetoric: there's no point in Big Government throwing lots of taxpayer money at a
problem. Politicians should behave as enablers of voters' lives, rather than simply
being interested in lining their own pockets. (In practice, of course, big governments
led by centralising Tories have always thrown public-sector resources at the
welcoming purses of their rentier capitalism sponsors, with the recent privatisation of
Royal Mail an example.)
“Politicians should behave as enablers of voters' lives, rather than
simply being interested in lining their own pockets”
The challenge, then, is as follows: Labour must work out a way of achieving the kind
of localising focus on the problems which face southern England. This it must do in
at least three ways: through a responsive government supported by a civil service
which creates the right conditions for economic and cultural activity for all its citizens;
through a culture of real service to the voters and taxpayers footing the bills; and
revolutionise.it
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