Police constables.
Cab drivers. White van men. All have been at the centre of recent controversies
surrounding the supposed attitude of the political establishment toward us
lesser mortals. Latent condescension has burst out in the form of dismissive
language or imagery used in the heat of the moment. Maybe this is because so
many of our clucking politicos spend too much time cooped-up in Westminster
(yes Ms Mordaunt, we can all resort to fowl based metaphor). Yet when it comes
to the language of politics I’m less concerned about the occasional harsh word than
the constant use of meaningless phrases that treat us all like idiots.
Top of the list in
the next few days, with the Chancellor of the Exchequer due to deliver his
Autumn Statement on Wednesday, will be ‘long-term economic plan’. Until fairly
recently ‘Plan’ barely featured in British political rhetoric, the soviet era
overtones derided by the right and avoided by centre-left social democrats. But Conservative
politicians in particular have rehabilitated the word, applying it to almost
everything, especially economic policy. Presumably focus groups have been found
to like the idea that government has some stated purpose and direction. The
trouble, however, is that a while a meaningful plan ought to be clearly
articulated at the outset and pursued according to a timetable of deliverable
measured objectives, ‘plans’ are nowadays rarely set out in this way.
For example,
George Osborne refers to the governments/Conservative’s ‘long-run economic plan’
as though everybody knows what it is and how it is supposed to work. The
inference is that a clear course was set in 2010, that evident progress has
been made in pursing it, and that changing the plan would be harmful to the
economy. The Chancellor has been very successful in establishing this idea in
the public mind-set. Indeed, most political commentators rarely question the
premise. But there is no long-term economic plan. Mr Osborne has, and is fully
entitled to pursue, a series of policy objectives designed to advance his party’s
ideological vision but in no sense are these being benchmarked against or
delivered according to anything that deserves to be called a plan. As a result,
and the ideal convenience for a politician, whatever appears to be going well
in the economy is attributed to the plan, while whatever fails is either
ignored or attributed to some unexpected event.
Ask for a detailed
statement of the long-term economic plan from 2010 and you won’t get one –
leastways nothing that would resemble a serious organisational business plan. The
closest one gets is the fiscal deficit reduction plan. This was clearly set out
in June 2010 with an expected timetable of progress but subsequently altered so
as to extend the timetable, which now also looks unlikely to be achieved.
Insofar as this is the core of the ‘long-term economic plan’ it thus represents
a changing plan that is proving very long-term in being delivered.
The Chancellor can
of course look to the economy more generally rather than simply to the public
finances, with the return of strong economic growth in the past 18 months and
rapidly falling unemployment presented as evidence of the success of his plan. However,
while like any Chancellor in his position, Mr Osborne understandably seeks to
take a political advantage from this there is little solid evidence that the welcome
recovery and jobs outcome has anything to do with a plan implemented since
2010.
The rhetorical hype
surrounding the Chancellor’s first Budget almost five years ago implied that
getting to grip with the public finances would provide an almost immediate
stimulus to economic growth of a kind more balanced toward exports and business
investment than household consumption. If Mr Osborne’s 2010 plan envisioned two
years of flat economic growth followed by a still mainly consumer-led recovery without
improvement in net exports, he didn’t tell us at the time.
As for the jobs
boom, this has been most welcome but again not obviously attributable to any
long-term economic plan. The Chancellor has benefitted from the fruits of flexible
labour market policies implemented by successive governments, Conservative and
Labour, since the 1980s. These have turned the UK economy into a mass job
creating machine that ensures low productivity workers are priced into work
rather than remain long-term unemployed. But what Mr Osborne has failed to do
is buttress this kind of flexibility with measures to give a quick boost to productivity and real
wage growth. If the Chancellor claims his plan is responsible for the sharp fall in
unemployment, which is questionable, he should also tell us if real wage
stagnation was also part of the plan and when and why as a consequence of the
plan it will start to improve.
The ‘long-term
economic plan’ will echo beyond the Autumn Statement through to the Budget and
General Election. Doubtless it will be joined by equally simplistic political
rhetoric surrounding ‘the cost of living crisis’ and ‘getting tough on
immigration.’ I appreciate that such has been the stuff of political discourse since
people first started to climb the greasy pole and thus that things will
probably never change. But it’s nonetheless important that we take time to
shout out that the Emperor hath no clothes, lest the bad language of politics ultimately
drown out the voices of reason.
