Austerity: economic necessity or right wing revolution?

We British have a healthy scepticism when it comes to our politicians. We also tend to accept the general view that most of us are sensible people inclined to the middle way of politics, perhaps leaning slightly to Right or Left, and dismissive of what we are told are the extremes. This mindset, part of the post-war consensus, worked reasonably well in the years after the Second World War when even the Tories would not seriously have considered changing the fundamental nature of state provision, such as the NHS.

The consensus was brought to a juddering halt in 1979 with the election of Margaret Thatcher. With the slogan "Rolling back the frontiers of the state", she proclaimed a belief in free markets and a small state, rejecting planning and regulation of business and people's lives. Instead, government should confine itself to the essentials: defence and the currency. Everything else should be left to individuals to make their own decisions and take responsibility for their own lives.

The post-war consensus - under sustained attack since 1979

Margaret Thatcher spelt it out in 1987: "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first." In other words, if you've got a problem, sort it out yourself because the state is not there to help. This was a direct, deliberate slap in the face for advocates of the post-war consensus, and I think it's fair to say that opponents of the new regime were extremely slow to challenge the new dogma. In some respects, nearly 38 years on, many of our politicians still haven't caught up.

Privatisation was the first large-scale manifestation of the new order. Flogging state-owned industries was made acceptable by bribing the public with under-priced shares that could be cashed in for an immediate profit. This softened the public for the next stage: the selling off of public services. So confident were they that privatisation had become acceptable that in time they decided they no longer needed to offer the public shares at all. The rhetoric of 'a share-owning society' was no more than a means to an end.

A lot of the opposition to Thatcher consisted of little more than demonising her; while hurling insults might make you feel better - getting it off your chest, as it were - it didn't achieve much, and made the opposition look boorish and extreme. The political psyche of many of Britons today is still determined by the long-gone post-war approach: while the majority continue to reject what they are told are the political extremes, they have subliminally absorbed the vilification of the Left, by both Governments and their allies in most of the capitalist press. As an example: Jeremy Corbyn's politics would not have been seen as far Left in the 1970s, and indeed Harold Wilson gave Tony Benn, whose politics were akin to Corbyn's, a cabinet post. Now the Labour leader is depicted as an outdated and hopelessly adrift Soviet-style apparatchik, and this black propaganda is succeeding.

Government expenditure is a matter of choices, not of financial necessity. For example, last year Parliament voted to replace our Trident nuclear weapons system, which will cost at least £205 billion*. In contrast, NHS providers overspent by £2.45 billion in 2015/16. In the last 16 years, we have been fighting almost continuous wars and conflicts of various kinds, while house building has ground almost to a halt, young people can't afford homes, and homelessness is hitting record levels. We could have chosen differently: most countries in the world, including many that are comparable to the UK in political and economic terms, do not have nuclear weapons of any sort, and have not engaged in constant war, a nation's most costly activity in both human and financial terms. All we have to show for the vast fortunes squandered and human lives lost is the serious destabilisation of an already volatile region of our planet.

How does austerity fit into this? We are told that cuts in public services are necessary to balance the books (a cosy euphemism if ever there was one), at both local and national levels. Local authorities (LAs) have had millions cut from their grants from Government, and many are struggling to maintain services that they are obliged to provide by law. LA functions that aren't essential to child welfare and social care, such as parks, arts centres and libraries, are especially vulnerable. Protests have been limited in their vision. To take libraries as an example, while many local 'Save Our Library' groups have been set up, and have achieved the occasional success, few of them challenged the cuts to LA funding: for the most part, they addressed the consequences, not the cause.

Cutting funding to LAs has been sold to us as an economic necessity, but in reality it is a continuation down to local, even street, level of Thatcher's rolling back of the state. If you want a library or a park, do it yourself. Recent Government statements that families should take primary responsibility for care of their elderly relatives are an extension of the same dogma into social care, and tough luck if you haven't got a family.

Since 1979, taxes have been devolved downwards from the rich to everyone else. When Thatcher was elected, VAT was 8%, but she immediately increased it to 15%, and it is now 20%. VAT is a poll tax, in that we're all charged the same, irrespective of ability to pay. At the same time she progressively cut income tax: the basic rate of tax fell to 25%, while the higher rate was slashed from 83% to 40%. This has had the effect of passing the tax burden down to the lower levels of the income ladder. It hasn't ended: in November 2016, Theresa May promised to give the UK the lowest rate of corporation tax of all the world's top 20 economies. If business pays even less tax, guess who picks up the bill?

Such moves have been justified by the myth of the 'trickle down effect', whereby the hard work of 'wealth creators' would lead to benefits for society as a whole. In reality, we have increasing numbers of workers on the minimum wage and zero hours contracts, or subjected to minimal wage rises, wage freezes or even cuts.

If the Government's rhetoric of balancing the economy had ever been sincere, then they have completely failed, because borrowing is at least £60 billion greater than planned. But they haven't failed: rolling back the state, cutting or privatising public services, reducing what they call 'dependency' are all part of the destruction of the welfare state that was designed to provide its citizens with social security 'from the cradle to the grave'.

The present Government's policies, like those of the Coalition before it, are intensely ideological, but so many of our fellow citizens, with that British scepticism of political extremes, cannot see it that way. They cannot accept that one of our mainstream parties has been waging war against the supportive society that many of us grew up in and which is being wilfully dissolved before our eyes.

Attacks upon organised labour, severely diminished in its influence though it is, are part of the plan to create a compliant workforce, grateful for whatever scraps of employment can be thrown their way, with no more bolshy unions to obstruct the progress of the enrichment of our 'betters' - as they doubtless see themselves.

It's not too late to do something - it is never too late - but the longer before we as a people reject the neo-Thatcherites, both in Government and those who lurk within opposition parties, the more disruptive the dislocation and the greater and more costly the essential task of reconstruction will be.

* This is the Government definition of a billion as a thousand million, rather than the traditional British definition (a million million).