The question is not how we will pay for it but what sort of society do we want to create?

“Our human compassion binds us the one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.”

Nelson Mandela

For weeks, indeed months it can’t have escaped the public’s notice that Brexit has been appearing as the main headline story in the media. It has to be said that it has proved the perfect distraction from the real stories about the state of the UK and the effects of four and more decades of neoliberal thought which has dominated policy making and 9 years of crushing austerity in the form of cuts to public spending. Until this week that is. Three news items have by their proximity brought to the fore the consequences of the pursuit of ideology and austerity on the lives of UK citizens.

The IFS, in its recently published Deaton Review ‘Inequalities in the 21^st century’, announced its intention to carry out a comprehensive five-year study with the aim of better understanding inequality.  It will, as part of its brief, look at the role of government policy in influencing the inequalities.

As the report noted, the UK has one of the highest Gini coefficients (measuring household income) in Europe. From being relatively stable in the 60s and 70s, it rose sharply in the 80s and has remained unchanged since the early 1990s. Charities working at the sharp end of the consequences of poverty and inequality have been reporting for some time on the huge rises in top incomes going to the 1% of richest households which has nearly tripled in the last four decades. However, the report also notes that there are other factors which determine how people view their wellbeing. Of course, people do care about how much they get in their pay packets and whether it meets their needs, but they also have other concerns. As the report suggests, dignity and security are not always to be measured in strict monetary value. People not only consider how their income is acquired, whether it is received in benefits or whether people are employed in stable jobs with decent pay, but also in terms of their physical health and mental wellbeing; whether they have stable and secure family lives and working environments, feel socially included and can make a useful contribution to civil society. The determinants of health and wellbeing are not to be measured purely in monetary terms but in the delivery of a vision which, instead of creating a society of left-behinds, puts public purpose at its heart and establishes an economy which works for everyone. These should not be aims related to a particular political ideology, but a common-sense approach. Politicians should be servants, not masters.

Since the 1970s a damaging ideology has coloured successive governments’ policies, and all the gains achieved as a result of the post-war consensus have been gradually whittled away. In the post-war period, citizens benefited from full employment and job security, higher standards of living and a fairer distribution of wealth. The nation benefited from a state which forged a dialogue with its citizens and engaged in the delivery of public purpose from the setting up of the social security system, a publicly funded and delivered NHS and state provided education. Those objectives were replaced with so called ‘free-market’ ideology which focused on diminishing the role of the state in public service provision in the belief that the ‘invisible’ hand of the market would create efficiency and value, and the primacy of the individual over the interests of the collective.  From the mid-seventies onwards, politicians developed an unhealthy relationship with deficit and debt; abandoning their role as keepers of a balanced economy for that of balanced budgets.

The consequences for the 21^st century is a world in which poverty and inequality are rife and in which the primary role of the state has become one of banker to the global corporations whilst maintaining the pretence of a fully functioning democracy.

We are experiencing the effects of cumulative disadvantage, not due to individual failings, but rather the deliberate pursuit of policies reflecting a political ideology which has focused on serving the interests of business and global corporations and the creation of an individualistic, consumer society. We are verging on crisis, if we are not already there, as division fractures society and causes it to break down. The rise of homelessness, food banks, child poverty, insecure employment and crime. Increasing numbers of people with mental health problems and unable to secure the right support. People with disabilities being left on the edge due to a failing social security system which no longer provides any sort of safety net. The tragedy of people driven to suicide as the only way out of their problems. The IFS authors referred to it as ‘deaths of despair’. It is shocking, but not unsurprising to read in the report that evidence indicates that the rates of long-standing illness and disability among people aged 25-54 has been rising since at least 2013/14.  Just three years after the imposition of austerity by the current government.

Although not specifically addressed by the IFS report, this has been accompanied by the wholesale selling off of the public assets which form the essential public infrastructure a healthy economy requires, along with privatisations of public services. The paradigm of public service has been replaced by one of corporate greed. It is instructive that only this week the government has decided to reverse its part privatisation of the probation service which failed as predicted. Added to the fate of Carillion and other state funded private companies this demonstrates the paucity of the claim that public services are more efficient when they are privately run. How many more will have to fail before the penny drops that public money going into private profit delivers benefits to no-one except CEOs and private company bank balances and when it goes belly up the public purse can always be called upon to settle the losses.  From banks to big companies it has become a question of privatising profits and socialising losses.

Added to the IFS report is the publication also this week of the ONS’ latest statistics on unemployment and pay.  Whilst government ministers give their policies the credit for the lowest unemployment rate since 1971, the reality on the ground is that people still struggle to make ends meet, with many subsisting in a zero-hours, part-time, gig economy with wages still lower than a decade ago.

The figures may look impressive and something to write home about, but the reality is something different.  The omission by the government in reporting this great ‘success’ is that in 1971 governments still pursued the goal of full employment as a policy choice something which was abandoned shortly thereafter. From then on, it was working people and their families who paid, and are still paying, the economic price in terms of loss of employment and income stability all to suit business to achieve a competitive edge. Dumping people on the scrap heap to serve a profit motive.

In other news, the National Crime Agency announced at a report launch earlier this week, that unless police receive significant resources it risks losing the fight against organised crime.

The breakdown of society is also shown very visibly in the rise of both violent and organised crime and while it is denied by ministers, these rises coincide with the imposition of government-led austerity and cuts to public spending. Since 2010 44,000 police officers and staff have been lost to cutbacks and according to the NCA, organised crime is at record levels. The author of ‘McMafia’ Misha Glenny who chaired the launch said:

 “In the past 10 years what is really striking is how this industry has grown inside the UK. Austerity has been absolutely critical in this, partly because of the reduction in police capacity but also because of the continuing increase in inequality. A lot of victims of organised crime tend to be people on the margins who don’t have a voice. When you get an impoverishment of the population, which is what we have had over the last 10 years, you get an increase in desperation, and that opens up opportunities.”

As a spokesperson for the NCA remarked organised crime undermines ‘the UKs economy, integrity, infrastructure and institutions.’

None of this was necessary and indeed has proved very harmful. Instead of a government serving citizens, it has used false analogies to drive its self-serving political agenda.  But there is an alternative.

If we as citizens could determine what sort of future we wanted for ourselves, our families, neighbours and friends what would we say? Opinions would no doubt be diverse and some downright offensive or even scary. But having been at the sharp end of austerity and cuts to public spending for the past 9 years and seen the very real, lived consequences on the lives of too many, if asked people might include on their list of priorities a fairer distribution of wealth, public services which work efficiently and effectively, a benefits system which is fair and doesn’t penalise those least able to help themselves, universal services free at the point of delivery for education and health, access to good, well paid employment and an affordable public transport system. And let’s not forget delivering on the environment to secure the future of humanity and the planet. Sounds pretty sensible, doesn’t it? These, what might be termed social goods, form the basis for a society that works well and supports a healthy economy which is also able to address the inevitable economic downturns which occur from time to time. Of course, with such a list without doubt the next question will always be ‘can we afford it’ and ‘how will we pay for it?’ Politicians, in particular, are adept at asking it if anyone presumes to suggest what we could achieve with the political will.

But in the world of monetary realities, any government operating as a sovereign currency issuer could choose to spend with that aim in mind. They don’t have to wait until enough tax has been paid to spend, they don’t even need to borrow to fund what is known as a deficit which, whilst having all sorts of scary connotations with the national debt, reflects our savings and the money circulating in the economy. It might be the government’s deficit, but it is certainly our surplus, without which the economy could not function.

The only consideration for any such government will be resources. Do we have them and if we do who will appropriate them and how will they be used? Having enough money should never be part of this equation. The continuing cost of austerity on society should be the wake-up call. The only thing we can’t afford is not to act.