Before I start, a caveat; I use the term “left” in the title as this is the label generally used by those who espouse the ideologies discussed. However, I don’t much like the terms “right” and “left” as they are meaningless today. Rather, I feel that the new battleground is with authoritarianism.
All that said and moving on, I admit to being a little amused by the latest comments from IDS about encouraging a mobile workforce. It has been discussed pretty extensively on the BBC over the past weekend along with sound-bites from Ed Milliband and Ed Balls.
Firstly, what precisely is IDS saying here?
Mr Duncan Smith, the MP for Lord Tebbit’s former parliamentary seat of Chingford, disclosed that ministers were drawing up plans to encourage jobless people living in council houses to move out of unemployment black spots to homes in other areas, perhaps hundreds of miles away.
The former Conservative Party leader said millions of people were “trapped in estates where there is no work” and could not move because they would lose their accommodation.
The proposed scheme would allow them to go to the top of the housing list in another area rather than lose their right to a home if they moved.
Okay, set aside for a moment the argument that actually, the government shouldn’t be involved in any of this at all, and look at it from where we are. The proposal, to give people the option of moving for work by removing the barrier created by housing seems perfectly reasonable to me. Now here’s the rub, back when Norman Tebbit first came out with his “on your bike” comments, I was fairly left wing – I supported the Labour party and pretty much despised the Tories and everything they stood for, but… but… I agreed with him. I was not so blinded by tribal loyalties that I couldn’t see the sense in what he was saying, just as there is sense in what IDS is saying today. Some ten years ago I applied for a job that would have meant moving to Derby. I can’t say that I particularly wanted to move to Derby, but had I been successful, I would have upped sticks and gone. That’s what sensible people do – they go where the work is.
Listening to Balls and Milliband, you would have thought Satan himself had spoken. It’s wrong apparently to think that people might want to move to find work. What we should be doing, Balls told us, is investing in those areas that are unemployment black-spots. I don’t know where this cretin has been for the past few years, but it isn’t on the same planet as the rest of us. Invest what precisely? Okay, if a multinational wants to set up an outlet in the UK, an unemployment black-spot might be an ideal place for them to look for a workforce, but apart from that; what, exactly, does Balls think can be invested? More money stolen from those of us who do work? And what will this investment produce? More diversity outreach workers? Like we need more of those.
And Milliband was no better. He complained about people being forced to move. No one is being forced to move. He is doing what politicians love to do – create a strawman. Every time I hear them speak, I realise that they haven’t moved on from student union politics. The one thing that they are paid to do; indulge in political debate; is the one thing in which they are demonstrably serially incompetent (not the only thing, of course). IDS said nothing about force, but as Labour only understands that, it seems that bug-eyed Ed thinks that’s what everyone else means when they say “encourage” just as Labour understands “voluntary” to mean “compulsory”. The man is an idiot.
What Balls and Milliband want to do is spend more money that we don’t have building up their client vote. Listening to them, you start to wonder if they want people to exist on sink estates with no hope and no future and to keep voting for more of the same. And, listening to members of their client vote being interviewed, it seems that it is mutual. Some stupid, stupid woman when being interviewed in the street, wittered on about creating jobs… What from? Majick?
And therein lies the crux; people have bought the lies. People have fallen for the dogma; that government is the answer to our problems – as opposed to being the cause. And people think that government should “create” jobs out of thin air.
A more desperate example of denial I have yet to see.
Actually it’s a typical leftist trick (straw manning IDS perfectly sensible idea). The statist left don’t have reason on their side so they’re left with manipulating rhetoric.
Why I’m commenting is to take (mild) issue with your dismissal of the terms left and right. I think the “progressive” left does exist, is dangerous, and is culturally and politically dominant across the whole of the west. There is however no “right wing” in any meaningful sense. The normal bogeymen of the “Right” (Hitler, Franco, Mussolini etc) were very much progressive.
I’ve commented on progressive before. It is probably a better term than left. When someone calls themselves a progressive, the hairs on my neck stand on end.
Couldn’t have put it better.
“Every time I hear them speak, I realise that they haven’t moved on from student union politics.”
That’s what it is; career politicians from an early age, they formulated the answers which satisfied their adolescent brains and have stuck with them. Unlike the rest of us, they haven’t had the opportunity to realise that aged 20 we were wrong about a lot of things.
On labels, I think leftist is the best, and I think libertarians should deny them the term ‘liberal’, and reclaim it more. ‘Progressive’ also should be denied them, or at least put in italics when written, or pronounced with hearvy sarcasm when spoken.
I have always considered myself a liberal – understanding as I do what the word actually means. That has not changed. What did change was the realisation that my fellow travellers, in particular the Labour party, were nothing of the sort.
Practicality. Practicality. Practicality. Moving across the country for a job may the solution for an individual. It is not a solution for the sort of mass unemployment we are facing in this country. Tebbit dishonestly claimed it was. Do you see mass migrations of people moving all over the country? Where will these people be housed? Do we have to see the last few square mm of the South East concreted over to house them? If IDS wants to help a few people move to get work fine, let him do it. If he thinks it can substantially mitigate the effects of the recession, then he is an idiot
I see no evidence that IDS is suggesting anything other than offering help to those who want to move and can do so, but are currently trapped by housing.