Jim Sillars: The Lamont doctrineOct 05, 2012 by Jim Sillars
Johann Lamont’s ham-fisted handling of universal benefits is an exposé: of Scottish Labour’s fatal flaw, a collective mind encircled by a bridle, so they can only think of Scotland as a province of Westminster; and of why Scotland and its people have to escape from the United Kingdom.
Ms Lamont has revealed that Better Together means poorer together, because implicit in her call for a debate is the admission that in the years ahead, if Scotland votes No, the Scottish Parliament faces cut after cut in the diminishing amount of cash available to it. So far, the cuts have caused job losses, frozen wages, and a hard struggle to maintain levels of services. As we have only experienced 10 per cent of the austerity drive, with the rest to come after 2015, Johann has revealed the harsh reality coming towards us if we reject independence. The cuts to come will be propelled by the need to reduce the UK national debt, now over £1trn.
The Yes side must ensure Scots know what Lamont knows: that if we vote No, Scotland will be locked inside the UK for ever more, facing a future of savage reduction in public services with the inevitable day coming when universal benefits too will come under threat. That reality of ever diminishing resources requiring an era of cuts, is the truth that lurks behind the Lamont doctrine. That’s the point that should be hammered home by the SNP.
If we vote No, then whoever controls Holyrood will require a socio-economic philosophy as a guide to how those fixed budgets are to be carved up. If Johann Lamont’s speech was indicative of her philosophy, then the men and women at whose feet I learnt my socialism would be staggered by how the party they helped build, has become a morality-free and analysis-free zone. For Ms Lamont and Douglas Alexander to claim that attacks upon the benefits that matter most to the poor is compatible with Nye Bevan’s socialism and Labour’s traditional values, take us into the Orwellian world where bad means good.
As a grandparent in a devolved Scotland, but only in a devolved Scotland, with its fixed and falling budget, I would sacrifice part of the social benefit of the bus pass (now over £240m a year) if the choice was between it and my grandchildren’s education. But that choice is not necessary. Scotland is a country rich in resources which, if fully available to us, and properly managed by our own sovereign government, means no conflict between grandparents and grandchildren, and no insulting accusations of pensioners getting something for nothing. Just think what a pleasure and health benefit it is for an older person, on the basic state pension, to have a day out from Glasgow to the Highlands using the bus pass, without which he/she could never do. What kind of socialist derides that as a freebie?
Ms Lamont fails to understand that there is a difference between something ‘free’ and something ‘free at the point of use.’ Pensioners pay taxes, some through income tax, and all pay the same rates as the rest of us on VAT and other indirect taxes. We provide ‘free at the point of use’ services to the elderly because as people reach and go beyond retirement age their energies run down, and few have the same earning capacity as when much younger; and because the low level of state pension and the loss of value in company pensions can severely restrict their lives. Society, through the mechanism of the state, seeks to improve their situation by creating benefits which, if applied universally, do not require the indignity and high administrative costs of means testing.
Of course universality gives the very wealthy the same as the average pensioner. I doubt if Fred Goodwin – when he comes of age – will have a bus pass, but if he does, that is not a valid reason to take it off the vast majority who are not as rich as he. Labour, by using gibes about the rich, a tiny minority, who can access a universal benefit, in order to cut it for the majority who need it, takes politics to a new low level of morality. It is as dishonest as it is obnoxious.
As opinion polls show, students are not popular. Lamont sees them and tuition fees as another easy target. The specious argument is that they are undeserving of free tuition because, with their degrees, over a lifetime, they can earn more than the young person leaving school to work at 16.
Any socialist with a modicum of ideological guidance knows that any big earnings gap between young worker and student, is not the fault of the student. It arises out of the imbalance in favour of capital over labour’s wage bargaining when there is heavy unemployment. Any socialist should know that if we construct an economic policy leading to full employment, we alter the balance in favour of the workers’ bargaining power. To set young worker against young student is plain and simple, a shameful Tory trick.
There are two reasons for free higher education. One, that society should encourage and facilitate the fullest intellectual and personal development of all young people through education, enriching their understanding of the complex world we live in, as an aid to building a civilized society of good citizens. The other, is that educating the young is a vital tool of economic management. World power has shifted East, and it is no accident that Asian countries have placed a premium on education, education, education, knowing the benefits that flow from it economically. To compete, we had better do the same and enable our young talent to flourish. By the way, Johann, don’t you realize that it is what today’s students accomplish in the years ahead, in the laboratories, technologies, and businesses they run, that will decide whether they can afford to pay your pension?
http://www.holyrood.com/2012/10/the-lamont-doctrine/
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