Neil Kinnock: the speech of a lifetime

As a young shadow cabinet member in 1983, Neil Kinnock outlined his vision of what an electoral landslide victory for Margaret Thatcher would mean for the country. It is now rightly recognised as one of the greatest speeches since World War II. It is now as relevant as it was then. You need only substitute in the current names where you see [....]. The overwhelming ethos of Thatcherism in our present government continues in the same form.


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"If [Margaret Thatcher] is re-elected as Prime Minister, I warn you.
I warn you that you will have pain - when healing and relief depend on payment.

I warn you that you will have ignorance - when talents are untended and wits are wasted, when learning is a privilege and not a right.

I warn you that you will have poverty - when pensions slip and benefits are whittled away by a Government that won't pay, in an economy that can't pay.

I warn you that you will be cold - when fuel charges are used as a tax system that the rich don't notice and the poor can't afford.

I warn you that you must not expect work - when many cannot spend, more will not be able to earn. When they don't earn, they don't spend. When they don't spend, work dies.

I warn you not to go into the streets alone after dark or into the streets in large crowds of protest in the light.

I warn you that you will be quiet - when the curfew of fear and the gibbet of unemployment make you obedient.

I warn you that you will have defence of a sort - with a risk and at a price that passes all understanding.

I warn you that you will be home-bound - when fares and transport bills kill leisure and lock you up.

I warn you that you will borrow less - when credit, loans, mortgages and easy payments are refused to people on your melting income.

If [Margaret Thatcher] wins, she will be more a Leader than a Prime Minister. That power produces arrogance and when it is toughened by [Tebbitry] and flattered and fawned upon by spineless sycophants, the boot-licking tabloid Knights of Fleet Street and placement in the Quangos, the arrogance corrupts absolutely.

If [Margaret Thatcher] wins -

I warn you not to be ordinary.
I warn you not to be young.
I warn you not to fall ill.
I warn you not to get old."

The Nature of Money

This is going to cause you cognitive dissonance. Not just to find out that the whole reality of cash money is a lie, but to understand that you have believed this lie all your life.

Take a £20 note from your purse or wallet. It bears a promise from The Bank of England: "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of twenty pounds".

So far so good.

Suppose you decide one day to go to Threadneedle Street in London to claim your twenty pounds. How will the bank redeem their pledge to you, the bearer? What will they give you in exchange for the note to the value of twenty pounds? Only other notes or coins.

So the note itself is worthless, and the only intrinsic value is in the promise, but it's a promise that the Bank of England can never be called upon to honour.

It is therefore an unenforceable contract.

Have a think about that for a while.

The Austerity Lie

If politicians are ideologically opposed to a particular policy, it's easy for them to say "we can't afford it". After all, that's a concept that people understand. Everybody knows there are things they want, but can't have due to lack of money.

Encouraging us to believe that government finances operate in the same way as a household budget is a trick being used to justify the current savage attacks against the Welfare State. Politicians hope that by offering an economic justification their true motives will not be challenged.

We are told that changes will need to come in the NHS because it has a shortfall of £22bn. We are also told that the welfare safety net, supposed to protect those unable to defend themselves against the worse ravages of the capitalist system, will be subject to a further £12bn of cuts. The necessity for these cuts is based on a lie.

When government decide to renew Trident for £100bn+, or announce the go-ahead for HS2 at a cost of £50bn+, the question of how it will be paid for is never raised. That's because there is no question. They have already committed to carry these things through, and can raise the money they need through the UK central bank, the Bank of England.

The Bank of England can create money for any purpose, and this new money can be used to fund any project. The transaction effectively is one part of the state guaranteeing a line of credit to another part of the state, so that a policy can be enacted to obtain goods or services needed for that project.

So do not be fooled. When you hear that we can't afford this particular service, or there is no more money for that service, what you are really hearing is a politician saying "I don't believe in that politically, so I choose not to fund it from state money." It is not about the money!

Politicians of every political persuasion should be held to account when they use the Austerity Lie, because those who use it are tricking us into accepting their agenda, when they should be representing our interests.

How to defeat poverty worldwide

All of us who watch television are used to charity appeals urging us to give our £3 per month to help mitigate in part against the impact of poverty, hunger, and disease on those members of the human race who are most helpless. We are shown some truly shocking images of the most vulnerable people on our planet, and their unequal struggle just trying to cling to life.

I'm sure that many of us contribute what we can, and every life saved or enhanced is a small victory for humanity. At £3 per month though, plus the annual "give-athons", it will only ever be a series of small victories however many of us make the effort.

Surely so much better for those at the very top of the global economy to take a moment for reflection at how lucky they are to have been dealt such a good hand for their "one chance". To consider that the accumulation of more capital than they will ever have any purpose for is merely a vain and pompous exercise of power over everyone else, and is probably a pathological illness.

If the richest 100 individuals in the world (total aggregate worth $2.029 trillion), each gave 3% of their wealth (thereby raising in excess of $60 billion), Oxfam calculate that extreme poverty worldwide could be brought to an end "at a stroke", and those 100 richest individuals would each still have 97% of their wealth intact.

What a game changer!

Could that ever happen?

A Challenge to Inequality?

Over the last few years evidence has been gradually mounting that wealth/income inequality is harmful for all of us.

The 2009 publication of The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett highlighted the many ways in which inequality can exacerbate a whole host of social ills across the spectrum.

This was followed in 2013 by Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty suggesting how inequality is also bad for all of us in economic terms.

There are many supporters of these ideas among whom are economist Joseph Sitglitz, academic Prof. David Harvey, New York Mayor Bill di Blasio, the Occupy movement, and even it seems the IMF.

The power of these theories is in the strong evidence based logic which informs both The Spirit Level and Capital in the 21st Century.

One thing is for sure, the current neoliberal agenda has been shown to increase wealth/income inequality as part of its structural outcomes. There has been much talk of the 1% and the 99%, and it seems that this is the reality with which we now live. By inference then, neoliberalism actually harms us all both socially and economically.

Prof David Harvey has raised the question as to where a challenge will arise to this overarching ideology which seems to serve us badly in the long run. It seems that the challenge, if and when it comes, can only come from the left in the form of a definite "opposition" to the neoliberal core values of global deregulation and free market economics.

In the UK The Conservatives, The Liberal Democrats & UKIP seem firmly to support the neoliberal agenda, but quite worryingly, The Labour Party also seem content to propose how their policies will operate within that same framework, rather than providing a clear and distinct "opposition" to neoliberal values.

Len McCluskey, General Secretary of the trades union "Unite" has intimated that if the Labour Party are not prepared to take up this banner of "opposition", then the unions would consider forming a workers party for that purpose.

I am sure that 35 years of the failed experiment of neoliberalism has been quite enough for most people, and there must be a political challenge to it very soon. It remains to be seen whether the UK Labour Party will be able to see the bigger picture and will have the courage to seize the moment.

There are many who feel a sense that we are on the edge of a paradigm shift concerning the relationship between state and people, and it would be my personal hope that we can be guided forward by some committed politicians to achieve a positive outcome to serve us all.

How to Divide and Rule

There has it seems been much discussion about the intensity of the nasty comments and downright hatred directed towards benefit claimants on social media following TV programmes such as "Benefits Street" and "Don't Cap My Benefits". Lots of people are sickened by the lack of compassion and empathy, and indeed by the sheer scale of the brutal comments aimed at benefit claimants.

There is an explanation to all of this. Just suppose that the government had decided their ideology was against the provision of a social security safety net for the most vulnerable members of our society. They want to dismantle it but need to make sure that the majority of the electorate do not turn against them.

Now let us suppose that the government were able to influence the news media to instigate a persistent campaign to stereotype benefit claimants in some negative way, perhaps "undeserving" or "skivers" or "getting money for nothing". If this were successful in changing public perceptions, the government might be able to effect its desired cuts against these people without fear of a backlash of public opinion, or of losing too many votes.

This is how prejudices are managed for political ends. This is how politicians set us against each other to distract from what they are really doing:

"...it is perhaps surprising how easily stereotypes and stereotype threats are established, even in artificial conditions. Jane Elliott, an American schoolteacher, conducted an experiment with her students in 1968, in an effort to teach them about racial inequality and injustice. She told them that scientists had shown that people with blue eyes were more intelligent and more likely to succeed than people with brown eyes, who were lazy and stupid. She divided her class into blue‐eyed and brown‐eyed groups, and gave the blue‐eyed group extra privileges, praise and attention. The blue‐eyed group quickly asserted its superiority over the brown ‐eyed children, treating them contemptuously, and their school performance improved. The brown‐eyed group just as quickly adopted a submissive timidity, and their marks declined. After a few days, Elliott told the children she had got the information mixed up and that actually it was brown eyes that indicated superiority. The classroom situation rapidly reversed."

[Wilkinson, Richard; Pickett, Kate. The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone]

After this a turning point?

A few weeks before the 2010 General Election, Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King told the American economist David Hale that whoever won the election would make themselves so unpopular because of austerity cuts that they would be out of power for a generation.

Interestingly, austerity was not the only option, and arguably should not have been an option at all. Financial crises in other places and at other times have clearly demonstrated that Keynsian demand-side expansionist policies kick-start economies, whereas austerity and cuts strangle the genesis of economic growth.

Given the lessons of history and a prescient warning from Mervyn King we might wonder why Cameron, Clegg, Osborne & co. have taken their chosen path. The question is easily answered of course, when we see that over the past 4 years the winners have been the 1% over the 99%. This sounds like a cliche and I only wish that it were.

This coalition government decided very early on that this might be their last chance of power for some time and have abandoned any sense of decorum in their indecent haste to fill the pockets of their paymasters.

The ideological fervour of sticking to the principles of neoliberalism, together with a last chance smash & grab asset stripping agenda have damaged the UK economically, socially & politically, and it will take a long time to set it right again.

The Cameron-Clegg administration will be remembered as possibly the worst UK government ever. The irony is that they think they have weakened democracy in the UK, but history will show that the reaction to this Orwellian nightmare will be demands for a new political settlement, based in challenges to the inequalities we now recognise as being the drivers for many of our economic and social ills.