Another week, another coalition split story: this time, the brouhaha over the Beecroft proposals to strip back ‘burdensome’ employment regulations. Tories on the front and back benches want a flash of rightwing ankle to let business off the leash; Lib Dems rally to Vince Cable as he dismisses the idea as ‘scaring workers silly’.
Well-informed readers of Progress will doubtless already know about the proposals to introduce no-fault dismissals and exempt small firms from some job protections. Even for this government the proposal is pitiful: not only are we rightly repelled by workers’ rights being rolled back, but the government has failed to produce any evidence that these proposals would increase jobs or economic performance.
The importance to Labour, though, lies not so much in the proposals themselves – woeful and worthy of spirited opposition though they are – but in what they say about the coalition and in particular, the Tories.
First, they show the Conservatives to be highly suggestible – so long as they are predisposed to be sympathetic to the people doing the suggesting. In this case the group is business owners: not only are the Tories close to them, but they see a virtue in being seen to have their interests at heart. That business owners think regulations are burdensome isn’t surprising – they always do, in every country.
How much business owners gripe about regulation is not correlated to how much regulation there actually is, and in fact the UK already has one of the least regulated labour markets in the developed world. Regulations are picked on as a proxy for the fact that simply having employees is a burden – you have to train them, allocate them work, and monitor their performance. Nobody should underestimate the difficulties of running a business and providing employment, but it shouldn’t be controversial to suggest that the UK’s problem isn’t bosses being cowed by overpowerful workers mollycoddled by extensive rights.
The reason the government can’t provide evidence that the proposals will aid growth is simple: it won’t. That the Tories seem surprised by this suggestion is proof of just how uncritically they accept the claim that businesses suffer burdensome regulations. Tories simply never ask, when told that less red tape means more jobs: by how much? How many more jobs? How much less regulation? Is worker protection really why you are wary of investing in new plant, equipment or employees?
Second, it shows how desperate the Tories are for ideas and the poverty of new policy innovation in the modern Tory party. Deregulation is one of the favoured classics of the old Conservative crooners. For those whose political sensibilities were shaped in the 1970s and 1980s it is close to being the only thing in the toolbox – and when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
After Margaret Thatcher was defenestrated by her own party the Tories spent a generation searching for a sense of purpose that was both authentic and different. The emergence of the deficit as a salient political issue in 2008 gave them what they’d been striving for: never mind the fact that until the previous year they had backed Labour spending plans, as of now Conservatism is, and always has been, about rigorous fiscal responsibility and rectitude. The glee with which the Tories have approached the issue and used it as the central purpose of their entire programme shows that it gives them a deeper, more philosophical level of comfort.
When faced with a new imperative – say, the need to secure growth and reduce unemployment – which threatens this course, there is a seemingly natural progression. Begin by ignoring the problem or saying you’ll solve it when you’ve achieved your central mission. When that wears thin, progress to the next stage – where the government appears fixed at the moment – and claim that the new problem is, very conveniently, a subsidiary of your main mission; this is what leads the government to deflect criticism of the lack of growth policy with an increasingly tenuous claim that lower debt is crucial to economic performance.
When a new problem can’t be ignored, people and political parties are forced to consider the fact that their original proposition may be wrong. When this stage is reached old orthodoxies reappear – their efficacy taking second place to the comfort they bring their users, and the distraction from having to face difficult, undermining questions.
After a prolonged honeymoon in office, in which the public largely gave the government the benefit of the doubt, problems are starting to set in. As disquiet increases and their ideas get wilder Labour will oppose them with increasing confidence, and will reap a reward in popularity for doing so.
But we should bear in mind that this unhappy psychology is not unique to Conservatives. As we cautiously start to believe that this may be a one-term government, we need to start asking ourselves why we should win, as well as how we can win. This means taking a firm look at our own weaknesses: are there groups and opinions to whom we are suggestible, or about which we are largely accepting and uncritical? When times get tough, what are the hobby horses we mount for one last ride? The government which takes office after the next election will face the most malign political and economic climate for a generation: Labour looks close to winning the next election, but will require mental toughness to face the challenge that comes next.
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David Green is a member of Progress and a former Labour party organiser
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What is “red tape”? I know someone who owns a small residential care home. Despite successive emails and
phone calls, the local authority has failed for six months to pay the fees due for one of the residents. In this case, more, not less, red tape would have forced the local authority to pay what it is legally and contractually obliged to do.
Oh – and surely it was a lack of red tape, too (here called regulation) that helped to bring in the financial crisis.
Workers in Britain have the worst workers rights in the whole of Europe, we need more protection not less. if a boss can sack an employee for no fault why cant a employee sack the boss for being incompetent, bad bosses make bad employees,bad bosses make poor productivity, the facts are there to see, good employers have higher job satisfaction and higher productivity.
we need more rights to protect us from poor management, and Labour need to Repeal the laws that favour the bad employer.
Labour also need to remember that the UNIONS made the Labour party for the working man to have a say and work with them not as they do now, with anti union pressure groups like Progress with a right wing tendencies pandering to the bankers and markets.
Labour is full of PR men as MPs who have little or no knowledge of what its like to work on a Factor floor,to wait for your pay so you can eat, to struggle to heat your home of fill your car so you can get to work.
maybe you can get some of your MPs that you support to actually do a job swap and try to do a physical Job then they will see what real work is,rather than the papering they get as an MP and then tell me i need to work harder so their Banker friends can make more Profits.
The Labour Party Is The Workers Party set up by Unions for Unions, and the Workers will Have their Party Back from the PR men.