On Monday 7 June, David Cameron made a speech in which he set out his view on tackling the budget deficit and debt. In a ‘textbook’ attempt at blaming the predecessors while preparing the public for the emergency budget on 22 June, he set out three reasons – the size of debt repayments, foreign investors, and the possibility of higher interest rates – for why he believes “there is only one option in front of us: to take immediate and decisive action”.
I am in no doubt that the budget deficit must be addressed, and must be a priority for the new coalition government. But I do not agree that the immediate, harsh and unfair cuts that have been swung into action are the right way to achieve this. And while I am in total agreement that the three reasons he gives underpin the need for a clear and cohesive plan for deficit reduction, not one of them tells me why it needs to happen immediately, when immediate action risks our economic recovery. Indeed, as the CIPD report today shows, unemployment is likely to rise to three million – for the life of this parliament – if the government chooses this course.
The day after Cameron’s speech, I gave my maiden speech to the House of Commons. In it, I warned the government about the impacts of their actions, and in particular of the consequences of undermining the strong, sustainable growth that is key to bringing the deficit down. The Labour government succeeded in securing a fragile recovery which this government must ensure is entrenched, not reversed.
Cameron seemed to dismiss the need to be worried about a strategy for growth by claiming that “much of the deficit is structural”. That is to say it would not be resolved by the increased tax revenues and decreased benefit expenditure that comes as a result of growth. Of course the deficit would not be eliminated by this alone – no-one is saying that – but the answer is still not be to pursuing a strategy that looks likely to choke off the existing economic recovery and further worsen that proportion of the debt that is cyclical. And a policy for delivering strong growth and a better balanced economy would reduce the structural deficit too – as that depends on trend growth.
David Cameron has justified his actions by the need for ‘confidence’ in our economy. Without this, he rightly claimed, investors would simply go elsewhere. But he doesn’t seem to have considered the impact a double-dip recession on investors and confidence. Again, it is absolutely right that we should have a clear plan for how the deficit will be brought down – but it will be this, with the reassurance that a further recession will not be the outcome, that will bring the all-important confidence.
The prime minister at least acknowledged that the UK is not in the same situation as Greece. While I am relieved to hear that he is seeing sense on this issue – unlike his Liberal Democrat colleagues who are using their ‘Greek defence’ as the excuse for changing their minds on how and when the cuts should come – he needs to throw his glance further than Greece, and look to learn the harsh lessons from Japan. Today, debt in Japan is 190 per cent of gross domestic product, which is 2.5 times the level of the UK. Japan’s debt is so high precisely because its government did not take swift action to ensure that its economy emerged from recession with strong growth. We are not yet Japan, but Cameron should heed the advice of Adam Posen, an external member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee. In a speech last month he said that “The UK and US economies are at low risk of turning Japanese in the sense of having recurrent recessions through macroeconomic policy mistakes – but deflation itself cannot be ruled out.”
‘Immediate and decisive spending cuts’ may sound tough and decisive, but Cameron’s coalition must not risk the economic destiny of Britain for political expediency. They must accept we are not Greece, while learning the lessons of Japan. And Cameron must not be swayed by the misconceived adoption of austerity measures in other European countries – which I believe are a panicky overreaction, and in themselves could be dangerous for the global economy. As the US treasury secretary Tim Geithner said this week, plans to get borrowing down need “to happen in a way that’s growth friendly”. It is for this reason that David Cameron – regardless of what reasons he gives – is plain wrong. The very worst thing he could do right now for our economic future is to take £6 billion out of the economy with no simultaneous plan for securing future growth, jobs and a rebalanced economy.
There is a problem with the women in this culture. Yes, I know, there are problems with men, too. Believe me, I have heard about them for the last forty years. Some of it true and fair, much of it neither. It was a necessary dialogue just the same. So is this. To understand this we need a brief look at history. Women, in the past, were denied voting rights, couldn’t own land and didn’t have much access to employment that would give them the freedom to make it on their own. This needed to change, and of course, did, as can be confirmed with a cursory glance at the world around you. I laud those changes. But the problem was in how we got here. The reality is that the gender roles of our history were traps for both men and women. Women were relegated to home and children; men to sacrificial roles as protectors and providers. It wasn’t a conspiracy. It was just a matter of survival, and for many thousands of years it worked quite well to that end. But once men made the environment safe enough for women to metaphorically “leave the cave,” it was only natural and right that men change and allow that to happen. And ladies, we did. This is the simple but accurate truth of the matter. Men and women developed gender roles that facilitated the survival of the species. And once those roles were not necessary, they did begin the often complicated path to change. The problem here is that your knowledge of these historical events is largely shaped, convoluted rather, by feminism. Feminists taught you that your history with men was of unremitting evil; that you were chattel, slaves to men who held all power and shut you out with extreme intent. They even gave it a name. Patriarchy. It is a word that has become synonymous with oppression. But feminists were loathe to remind you that “Women and children first,” was the patriarchal mantra, and that much of the social norms, even when misguided, were a product of a code adopted for the sole purpose of preserving your life. It wasn’t always fair, but the unfairness wasn’t always yours. Men died by that code, and trained their sons to do the same. The fact that we still do is the subject for another essay. So what happened? As feminist distortions were increasingly embraced, and intertwined with the legitimate need for change, men did what they usually do. They reacted to the message and not the messenger and unblocked the entrance to that cave. Many of you spit on us on the way out. Many of you still do. It has to stop. This isn’t just about decency. And it is not just about the chasm of mistrust that separates us from each other, or the legions of the walking wounded from this godforsaken gender war. It is about our future. The vilification of men that you have accepted as appropriate now translates to catastrophe for our sons, for your sons. The problem is that what we say, think and feel about people invariably translates into what we actually do to them. Nowhere is this more evident than with our sons, in the here and now. If you take an honest look at the academic environment to which our boys are subjected, you will see that their masculinity itself is under attack with ideology that teaches them they are inherently flawed. Christina Hoff Sommers documented this in her highly recommended book “The War Against Boys.” She writes, “The pedagogy is designed to valorize females, such as teaching history in a woman-centered way. Boys are to be inspired to revere Anita Hill and to “enjoy” quilting. At the same time, schools discourage activities that are natural and traditional to boys, such as playing ball together.” She goes on to say, with sad accuracy, “Most parents have no idea what their children are facing in the gender-charged atmosphere of the public schools.” What Sommers didn’t add to that but I will is the fact that most parents have no idea about this because they choose not to. As girls and girls programs increasingly flourish, boys are falling to the sidelines in ever growing numbers. The results of that are chilling. Boys are more likely than ever to drop out of school and engage in delinquency and other problems. They are representing less college graduates every year. With this diminishing education and wholesale marginalization, they are on a fast track to being the “second sex,” that position that so many feminists touted as the greatest evil of human history when they claimed it applied to women. This is the lasting legacy of spitting on men. Your sons will not be the exception. Young men now grow up to be destroyed in corrupt family court systems where women are encouraged to and even praised for using children, their children, like pawns in order to drain the father of assets. And those same children also have their badly needed connection to their fathers severed in the process. When those exploited, abused children start quite naturally to act out and get in trouble, we blame the father who was removed against his will, for of all things, being absent. And the “freedom” women gained on this frenzied path of vengeance and victimization? It doesn’t appear to have settled well. Women are growing increasingly violent. They are matching men in domestic violence, blow for blow, and they are causing the lions share of injury and death to children in the home. But we don’t speak of these things. We are not supposed to. In your position as the identified victim, and mine as the identified perpetrator, there is supposed to be an indelible silence on these matters. For the most part, there is. That silence is destroying us. And it is a silence that is maintained with the collusion of shallow, weak men and misguided, self-serving women, which is to say most of the culture. The only answer I can think of is for men, and for women, to change. Perhaps you will consider this before concluding that men’s rights activists are whiners or woman haters or products of bad mothers. You might actually decide that most men’s rights activists are men who above all else, seek justice. For their children, for themselves, and ultimately for you. I hope that a few of you will read this and consider it the next time you hear someone say “men are pigs,” or when you hear a woman refer to her first born child as “the insurance policy,” or before you nod your head in unconsidered agreement with whatever negatives about men happen to be making the rounds. All of this will be visited on your sons, and their sons. I hope too, that some of you look at your sons and think, and ask yourself what kind of world in which you really want them to live. When your sons choose wives and marry, I hope you consider the agony they will go through when “taken to the cleaners” and robbed of their children in the family courts. You will be forced to stand by powerlessly and watch them have their hearts ripped out. As always, it will look much different to you when the system you help maintain with your silence crushes your son, and not just some obscure, unknown male whom you quietly think is getting what he deserves. It will happen to more than half of them. The best prevention for this last one is to teach our sons to choose carefully; to scrutinize a woman before committing his life and work to her; to evaluate her morals and values as a woman prior to putting a ring on her finger. or even whether it is wise any more to marry in the first place. But how can we do this if we keep teaching them that such evaluations are the stuff of misogyny? Indeed, how can we do this if scrutinizing women at all is such a taboo? And therein lies the rub, ladies. It is indeed time, just as it was for men, for women to be held to scrutiny, and to account. More importantly, it is time for women to do this on their own. I’ll do my best to provide a fair and compassionate mirror in my writings. It is always up to you whether that mirror is a place you want to look.