A time for tough prioritisation

Labour needs to quickly choose between the disastrous and the unpalatable if it is to regain economic credibility

The 10,000 hours of practice that Malcolm Gladwell argues are necessary to make a genius are not without opportunity cost. Becoming arguably the greatest chess player of all time cost Bobby Fischer a youth of obsessive focus and, ultimately, his sanity.

Nothing great ever came without sacrifice. Labour’s values of equality and justice have an enduring beauty that allows members to feel good (and, sometimes, excessively smug) about themselves with no sacrifice whatsoever. But this beauty is empty unless these values are made real.

This sacrifice isn’t just the inevitably hard miles of electoral success: leaflets delivered, voters canvassed, flesh pressed. The sacrifice of the air and ground wars isn’t simply for the poor bloody infantry. It is also, perhaps most fundamentally, for the generals: those whose policy choices give form to the product offering on the doorstep. Because no matter how charming the doorstep patter it will only ever be as effective as the product offered. And these products must be crafted in a context both of extremely scarce resources and voter sensitivity to this scarcity.

This isn’t to say that policy cannot prioritise justice and equality. It is to say that prioritisation must mean prioritisation: to favour one thing over another – endless evenings of solitary chess practice over relaxation and friends, in the case of Fischer; one kind of spending over either another kind or the opportunity to reduce the tax burden, in the case of Labour policy.

While Labour must make virtues both of lean government, squeezing out all efficiencies for taxpayers, and co-operative government, focusing on what the public, private and third sectors can achieve together, not assuming that the answer must be more of the public sector, the bottom line is that justice and equality cost money. Schools aren’t built or bedpans changed for free. If we want the spending that does most to build equality and justice, then, we either need to earmark tax revenues for these purposes or be prepared to sacrifice other kinds of spending.

In our confrontation with these choices we define ourselves. In not choosing, but fudging, we define ourselves as irrelevant. Now, as much as ever before, as J. K. Galbraith knew, politics consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. The unpalatable includes saying “no” to most of the claims upon Labour’s bankers’ bonus tax. Because these revenues should exclusively fund measures to alleviate youth unemployment, as there can be no equality or justice amid the disastrous scourge of youth unemployment. Here credible prioritisation, creating Labour definition, comes from tax hypothecation. Elsewhere prioritisation must mean increases in one kind of spending being offset by reductions in another.

Spending on housing benefit has increased over time in the UK. At the same time spending on new social housing has reduced. It cannot be right that the £20bn which the UK spends annually on housing benefit contains payments well above average housing rent and median wages to some households, while other households with incomes much below the median endure inadequate conditions for want for additional social housing. One household won’t return to work until they access a top paying job, which is likely to extend the period over which they are out of the labour market and supported by the state. Another household contributes to this support through their taxation at the same time as being told to wait for decent accommodation.

While housing benefit should be reformed to ensure that it is not a barrier to returning to the labour market and unlocks funds to increase our stock of social housing, many cuts will have to be made simply to reduce the deficit, not to achieve a more equitable outcome by transferring resources from one area to another. Alongside a limited number of priorities emphasising core Labour values, including youth unemployment and social housing, which we would seek to find additional resources for through reductions in spending elsewhere and ring-fenced tax revenues, deficit reduction itself must remain a central priority.

Jim Murphy has identified cuts that Labour supports towards this end. Other shadow ministers should follow his lead. To cut through with the electorate, though, these cuts must encompass spending items seen as sacred Labour cows. Only by embracing such pain, and winning out in the inevitably contentious arguments that will follow, will Labour be seen as always prepared to put the national interest above any sectional interests. And through such pain we will convince the public that we’d go far enough to eliminate the deficit. Unless we are seen to be prepared to go this far, we will not convince that the government have gone too far.

None of the choices facing the Labour leadership are easy but between them they must now have agonised over them for 10,000 hours. Long enough to know what our priorities are and to make choices that define us in such terms.  

Jonathan Todd is a consultant at Europe Economics and economic columnist at Labour Uncut. He was a parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party at the May 2010 General Election and associate editor of last year’s Pragmatic Radicalism: Ideas from Labour’s New Generation publication. He writes in a personal capacity.

This article forms part of a series of responses to Policy Network's discussion paper In the black Labour: Why fiscal conservatism and social justice go hand-in-hand