By John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent
24 Jan 2012. Westminister. It is High Noon for two major Coalition policies, the “reform” of Welfare and the “reform” of the National Health Services. As the week began, both bills faced major tests in a rebellious House of Lords.
This drama provides a study in contrasts between the stands of conscience of the nations’ Bishops on Welfare Reform (and rebellious Social Democrats among the Liberal Democrats on NHS Reform) and the real politik of the nation’s Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrat leaders.
The drama may also seal the deal for Labour’s current leadership. It comes at a time Labour appears to be imploding rapidly, at least in terms of electorate support, due, it is widely argued, to a right turn in its leaders’ rhetoric, if not their actual policies.
Of the issues, the reform of the National Health Service (NHS) is probably of most interest to (and most easily understood by) most Americans. The United States is itself struggling to define the appropriate boundaries for government involvement in the provision of care. Some have looked to the NHS as a model alternative system. So the debate over NHS strengths, weaknesses, and affordability would be of great interest and an easier connect.
But for those very reasons, the NHS debate deserves a focused article. This I will undertake another time. I raise the issue now only to flesh out the drama that this week represents.
Turning to Welfare Reform
Turning to Welfare Reform, the Tory led Coalition government has introduced several initiatives to dramatically cut the costs of benefits.
The packaging rhetoric is a social conservative attack on the “something for nothing culture.” Welfare recipients are widely portrayed as “scroungers” who do not deserve the support. The Coalition argues that benefits should not pay more than work. It is not “fair” for a taxpayer earning less than a welfare recipient to pay taxes toward that benefit.
Fair enough, but the Coalition is not seeking to increase wages or harmonize tax levels to welfare levels. Far from it. The coalition simply seeks to diminish benefits and force recipients onto an already glutted labour market.
Moreover, the Coalition sweeps together what Americans would recognize as Welfare (support to families with dependent children) together with what Americans would regard as Social Security (recipients of “incapacity benefit” who paid into the equivalent of Social Security while they worked but became permanently or temporarily disabled from performing the work for which they trained or in which they were experienced). Both groups now must make efforts to secure a job or face sanctions. Even failing to accept a “voluntary” unpaid position can lead to loss of benefits for an entire year.
This, in a job market where there are already between 5 and 200 able bodied applicants for every job. Not counting the welfare recipients, most observers project that the ratio of seekers to jobs will only worsen as the UK slips once again into recession. Which employer, given the choice, is going to pick a person with a history of disability when given the option of 5-200 able-bodied and qualified applicants?
The Coalition defends its position on this issue by citing the results of “screenings” conducted by its contract agent, ATOS. ATOS has found 70% of the recipients they have “screened” to have actually been fit for work.
Critics respond that almost half of the determinations that were appealed administratively have been reversed, even though the burden of filing and pursuing the case belongs to the recipient and the hearing officer must apply the law as written rather than question it. Critics also point out that the “screening,” while touted to be by a medical professional is in fact governed by a pre-structured checklist and without consultation with the recipient’s personal physician. I know of a recipient who was found fit to work despite 14 years of various MD’s finding her not. I know of ATOS determining a person in a coma fit for work.
Rebellion in the House of Lords
The government’s proposals have come under heavy fire. Last week saw the House of Lords rebel, successfully introducing 3 amendments to limit the government’s Welfare Bill. This week the Bishops backed a rebellion on a proposed government cap on total benefits.
Americans may have some difficulty relating to the issue without some explanation. The government wants to cap welfare benefits at £26,000 a year. That is over $40,000, a figure that no doubt drops an American’s jaw. Nowhere in the United States does an AFDC recipient receive anything like $40,000 a year.
So what is the problem with the proposal?
First, the cap applies to people American would consider Social Security recipients retired on disability receiving supplemental benefits to compensate for their unique difficulty. Second, the cap also includes amounts paid to support housing.
In London a welfare recipient might have to pay over £1,000 a week in rent. That’s over $1,500 a week or $6,000 a month. Rent alone. The government is not proposing to control rents. It is proposing to cap benefits, effectively cutting the housing benefit, the greatest single item of cost. Capping the total benefits at £26,000 would mean the recipient has two thirds the resources with which to pay the fixed cost of rent as well as the basics of food, etc. With housing benefits often going directly to the landlord, it leaves the recipient without money for basics while locked into a lease. Assuming the recipient can break the lease, the person still must face tearing up roots in an uncertain quest to find a new home that will cost a much lower rent. That is not a likely prospect in London, where thousands of recipients live.
Charities argue that as many as 100,000 children will be made homeless by the cap. The government has not argued with the figure, for, indeed, it is not deniable.
Enter the Bishops.
Americans sometimes think of the House of Lords as a Senate with wigs. But it is more like the Supreme Court, serving as a rare check on the excesses of the more popularly accountable House of Commons. The Lords are appointed not elected. Some are appointed because they are deans within their party. Some are political independents with a recognized expertise or constituency. A very few are the remnants of the hereditary peerage. Some are ex officio Bishops of the Anglican Church.
The role of the Bishops may take a little translation for Americans. Americans are used to the clergy wading into political issues from the pulpit. I dare say it would not surprise an American to hear that a clergyman delivered a sermon protesting a measure that would make 100,000 children homeless, especially given the unwillingness of the Coalition to even consider rent controls. But the church has no comparable place in American political life to the place the Bishops have in the House of Lords. Church leaders are not ex officio members of the Senate, nor can they lead the Senate in rejecting a measure floated by the House of Representatives. In the UK, church and state are not separate.
This week in the UK, the Bishops of the Anglican Church led the charge to clip the wings of the Coalition’s Welfare Reform Bill. They introduced an amendment to exempt child benefits from the calculation of the proposed $26,000 cap and they won.
The Bishops could have done no less. They serve a Boss pursuant to a contract to which the Bishops all pledge their lives and sacred honour. They may not recite the Shema from which the First Commandment comes, but they are bound to the First and Second Commandments. The Kingdom of G*d does not conduct polls to determine policy based on populist sentiment. The contract’s standards of righteousness apply regardless of popular sentiment.
The standards of righteousness are clear. The Second Commandment is, Love Thy Neighbour as Thyself. Some translate this as Sympathy, others as Empathy, but it is more active than that. Sympathy may be the still, small voice speaking in Empathy’s divine wind, but one person acting accordingly is the G*d particle. The acid test is the treatment of society’s marginal, something the government might bear in mind the next time it proposes that Education Secretary Michael Gove write an introductory letter for the anniversary distribution of the King James Bible to the nation’s schools.
The Bishops could not fail to stand this test and they didn’t fail. They performed firmly and decisively.
By contrast, the silence of the Labour leadership during the debate was deafening. Labour expressly did not object to a cap in principle, but opined without opposing or seeking to amend the bill that its details might need examination. Even the Coalition member Liberal Democrat peer, Paddy Ashdown, added his voice to the opposition although he, too, professed not to object in principle. As the debate raged across Twitter and in the media, commentators from every persuasion noted the absence of Labour’s leadership from the debate.
It comes at a time when Labour’s popularity among the electorate is rapidly imploding. In less than 6 weeks it has moved from a 4-7% lead in the polls over Conservatives to an average 1% behind at 38% to 39% of those intending to vote. The ratings of Labour leader’s Ed Miliband have fallen to the dismal levels of California Governor Gray Davis prior to the recall election.
From leading a resurgent Labour in November to leading a collapsing Labour in January - what happened?
Barrels of ink spill to explain this. Miliband seems to think he needs to move his pitch to sound, at least philosophically, more in tune with New Labour. His brother David, a New Labour figure from whom Ed took Party leadership in a surprise victory supported by the Unions, is reputedly busily trying to bridge the gap between the Leader and the New Labour faction.
The Coalition spins it as the Coalition winning the economic argument. But notice the Conservatives have moved only 2-4 points and represent less than 2/5 ths of those intending to vote. Notice the polls do not disclose who is undecided or who is not intending to vote at all.
The point is, Labour is losing support from Labour’s base, not that the Conservatives are winning the argument or that Labour’s base wants its leadership to embrace New Labour policies.
How did this happen?
Labour’s leadership adopted a new rhetorical packaging over the past few weeks. Without giving an explanation why they did this, Labour’s leadership began to tell public sector employees that Labour could not promise to reverse Coalition public sector cuts. As noted, Labour has not objected to the Welfare Reform Bill or its caps in principle. They have adopted a murky commitment to something they call “predistribution” instead of “redistribution” as a governing social/economic principle. They’ve stopped banging on about their 5 point alternative economic plan.
They have launched a distinction between moral business and immoral business practice. This distinction offers very little in the way of actually distinguishing characteristics to the Prime Minister’s own narrative on this same topic. It all remains a vague and general preamble to attacks on the Prime Minister for either not doing enough or doing too much along what Labour seems to consider as the right lines of initiative.
In short, Labour appears to be taking the “lesser of two evils” tack.
The electorate seems to have read it, however, as “Me too.” It has been like the proverbial pin to the balloon of opposition to government policy, and more vigorous opponents have seen it as betrayal. Probably the most accurate interpretation of the polls is the current leadership is not seen to represent a credible alternative to the existing Coalition.
To be clear, I never thought Ed Miliband would be Prime Minister. I once compared him to Adlai E. Stevenson. My apologies to Stevenson’s memory.
Miliband now more reminds me of Michael Dukakis or maybe even more accurately, Gray Davis. Miliband and his team appear awkward rather than slick political technicians with their eyes on the polls, talking to each other. If informed by a conscience it is only one voice among many in heads foremost arguing the case for Real Politik.
This image stands in stark contrast to the Bishops, who are now widely dubbed the Real Opposition. I doubt they have achieved this because of not talking to people outside Westminster or only listening to the pundits who babble the conventional wisdom. They do. But it appears to an outsider that Labour’s leadership just does not hear anyone but each other and the Westminster pundits interpreting what the people say.
The balance of this week appears to be building toward a rebellion among Socially Democratic Liberal Democratic MPs and Lords. More on this in a subsequent article. As the week moves into the drama of the future of the NHS, the question will be whether Labour politicians find the conscience to stand like Bishops or prefer to remain the lesser of two evils. If it is the latter, expect to see Labour’s standing deteriorate further and its leadership replaced or to find the Labour Party sink even further in the polls listing toward the level of the Liberal Democrats.