The election of stark choice

The choice in this election is stark.

While all the parties are involved in a bidding war there are nevertheless major differences not least on values.

Lynton Crosby, George Osborne, David Cameron and their supporting cast thought they had it all mapped out. They’d spent five years blaming the last Labour government for the economic mess that they had inherited. Every cabinet member Tory or Liberal Democrat along with allies in the right wing press repeated this mantra ad nauseam.

They reckoned they had pulled off an economic miracle. They’d bragged that they had created thousands of new jobs. They boasted that the economy was growing faster than other advanced countries and that wages were finally rising.

It’s a chimera. Productivity is at an all-time low. The economic re-balancing has not happened we’re still too tied to the city and any rises in pay can be explained by record low inflation.

This election is being fought with a scarred landscape as the backdrop.

A landscape made up of a precarious jobs market. A landscape blighted by inequality greater than seen for decades and a landscape of low paid jobs, zero hours working and bogus self-employment.

We shouldn’t grace zero hours with the suffix ‘contract’ since all the obligations are heaped on the worker and none on the bosses. And in these dire times a cruel trick has been perpetrated on people desperate for jobs who are forced into signing self-employment contracts.

Here’s how it goes. Workers are employed by agencies masquerading under the misnomer of ‘umbrella companies’ only these umbrellas don’t provide any protection. Far from it as workers have to pay both their own and the employer’s national insurance contributions. Then salt is poured into the wounds as these self-same workers find themselves without hard fought employment rights such as holiday or sick pay. It doesn’t end there. This insecure low wage Kafkaesque economic landscape stretches into old age as they don’t qualify pensions.

So much for creating thousands of jobs. The reality is they are jobs that don’t give most people what they want – security, dignity being able to pay their own way, and the opportunity to prosper and thrive. Instead what we have according to the Trussel Trust in 2013-14 is a million people having to use food banks. Iain Duncan Smith has presided over the harshest conditions in welfare with sanctions leaving people desperate and he even has the cheek to claim that people only go to food banks because they are there.

 Stirring

But something is stirring. It genuinely feels (and I know that perception and reality have to be in sync) but this last week, as the days countdown to the 7^th of May, and with opinion polls fluctuating up and down albeit only by one or two percentage points there appears to be a realisation that the Tory map has road blocks. And these roadblocks are being set up by Ed Miliband and the shadow cabinet.

While the Tories protect the very wealthy and a seeming entitlement that the richer you are the less tax you need to pay Labour unveiled plans to close tax loopholes and the clincher was the commitment to abolish non-dom status.

Tory high command sent out Michael Fallon to go over the top with the absurd contention that Ed Miliband had knifed his brother in the back and would do the same to the UK’s defence policy. It was meant to divert attention away from Labour’s plans to get the super-rich to pay their taxes.   It backfired spectacularly.

For too long Ed has been underestimated by his opponents. Now his resilience has confounded them.   We are seeing clear and coherent policies that are cutting through and finding traction among the electorate.

It is not only Tory wobbles that have been on display one of the finest moments for me was Nigel Farage being slapped down by the leader of Plaid Cymru and then in the Scottish leaders debate the whole panel in harmony turned on UKIP. And they were cheered on by the audience. It was very satisfying. UKIP by their own deeds have stalled and are going into reverse. That’s not to say problem solved, it hasn’t but neither can they hold the media in thrall.

So let the Tories keep pandering to the rich by giving them tax breaks Labour is right to come out fighting with a raft of radical policies. Abolishing the bedroom tax, protecting the NHS, building thousands of houses these are values of social justice and they are the values of the Labour movement.

This article appeared in Tribune earlier this month