Step forward Sajid Javid. He is the Tory's new Business minister. He replaces that man of the people and ex Shell boss, Vince Cable. On the morning of 12 May he announced on BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he was 'passionately' in favour of free enterprise but,
'Not in a position at this point to decide what deregulation exactly would be.' However he knew about a bit of regulation that would, perhaps, help sate some of his his passion for free enterprise and which was a priority. Then, without much prompting, his passion erupted in comments about 'strikes' as he called them. (Not disputes.)
'We've said there will be a minimum threshold in terms of turnout of 50% of those entitled to vote, we've also said that when it comes to essential public services at least 40% of people (of the entire workforce) need to vote for strike action'.
The new Business Secretary added that the ban on the use of agency staff during a strike would be lifted.
Sajid Javid made no reference to the election of the May 7 Tory government on 37% of the 66% of voters eligible to vote. The Tories' 'victory' would not meet the public sector criteria for a 'valid' strike. The Tories are 6 million votes short. In the 2001 General Election, Blair formed a government based on 40% of a 59% voter turn out. There were no objections from the Tories, and yet that election came perilously close to failing even the new private sector criteria for strike action.
How is it that the UK's new Business Secretary and his political allies do not apply the same criteria to workers' organisation as to business or to politics? And even should industrial action pass though his hoops, he is promoting organised strike breaking to attack the democratically decided worker's action from another angle anyway.
Even the constricted democratic norms that apply to Westminster are unavailable to labour organisations. Working class democracy is a contradiction in terms. It can challenge 'existing', enfeebled democracy, as did the self organisation produced by the Miner's strike of the mid 1980s. It is therefore not valid. It should be illegitimate. Only 'enterprise' is to be 'free.' It does not require any democracy at all.
And then there is David. The other Miliband broke his silence and from New York peremptorily set the agenda for the contest for the new Labour leader.
He told us that his brother Ed and Gordon Brown before him had been forced into turning backwards. They had not built on the success of New Labour. They had not embraced voters'
'Aspirations' and not promoted 'inclusion.' Since then, these two words have turned into a mantra for Labour's candidates, for pundits and for all sorts of commentators and hangers on.
Aspiration is not hope for the future. It is a desire - for yourself or those that you are close to. It is a state of mind similar to personal ambition. What David is telling us here is that the atomisation and defeat of the working class in the UK means that the big majority of people now only care about themselves and their families. They no longer consider or take responsibility for others, even others who may be like themselves. And that these feelings are reinforced by the breakdown of large scale industry and traditional communities. People want to 'get ahead' and the main means of doing that is their own initiative.
In David's book inclusion however has its own peculiar meaning. David says that now people all want to be rich, then we have to include those who are rich. And to include people who are rich, Labour needs to support them, praise them, cheer them on and welcome them in the shared leadership of society.
So, Labour must embrace aspiration - those who want to be rich, and inclusion - those who are rich. Then the Labour Party will stop going backwards! Once this is the core of the party's approach then you can attach the bells and whistles you need, education, education, education, Iraq war, PPI etc.
Where to begin? What is the key economic/political fact of the last 45 years in the West, most certainly including Britain - a fact so big and irrefutable that even both Milibands have referred to it. It is the impetuous and irresistible growth of inequality. How can any political organisation in the West which purports to stand for the majority, avoid policy, front and centre, on that question? While it is true that much large scale working class organisation has been destroyed, and the proportion of manual labour, and the size of units of production reduced, in the last 45 years the gap between those who must work to live and those that have capital has ballooned. What has already happened in Britain is that those who labour are relatively much poorer than those who do not, when compared with their parents.
How is this fact of life, this material reality of existence reflected in peoples' understanding of themselves and others like them? It is true that much of the older work bonds and shared living spaces have broken up. In part that experience has deflected class consciousness from direct production. But what is it that sustains the deep and abiding support for institutions like the NHS or the need for state pensions, or unemployment benefit? It is the sense that social capital is now, more than ever needed to offset the harsh and often singular experiences of badly paid labour.
This is why the 'aspiration' and 'inclusion' formula of Miliband senior is so hollow. And basic facts of the May 7 election bear this out. A sociological, demographic and economic survey of Scotland reveals a society very similar to England (and not at all just the North of England.) Unless we believe (and some, even on the left do believe) that the idea of nationhood has so overwhelmed the ex-canny Scots that they cannot see their own true political interests, that great forces are now being driven by the power of malevolent ideas alone, that the nationalist SNP leadership do not really believe that their majority vote in Scotland would not, now, produce a majority for independence, then what we see instead is an enormous movement by the Scots, using the best machinery available, against austerity and the Tories. And there is nothing innate in the English that prevents the same.
The new reality of the British, and of large parts of the Western European working class, is that they have, once again to be called together, not in aspiration but in solidarity; not in defence of special interest but in the interests of all who must work to live, not to include the rich but rather to take their resourses back for the social good. The British Labour Party has shown little sign of such an approach for decades. The first shots in the leadership campaign, sadly, show every sign of going backwards.
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