It looks as if money is going to be centre stage for the coming election. However, this time it seems to be about that ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ as producing money (the work of the economy) takes a back seat for the problem of spending money (we haven’t got).
If the success of New Labour was built on the back of the aspirations of the new consumer generation, where the creation of an abundance of money was seen as going hand and in hand with the realization of individual and social values, all three parties seem to be at a loss for how to talk about money when it is no longer abundant – it is now scarce.
Labour in this respect are acting a bit like parents who aren’t being honest with their children about the extent to which their collective lifestyle is about to change. Daddy and Mummy (Brown and Harman!?) are still making the pretence of going out to work, but unfortunately their Uncle Darling (who is also their bank manager) knows the real truth. So now we are all sitting round the kitchen table wandering whether it is the family holiday, Dad’s new car or the cat which has to go.
The Conservatives seem to be taking a more puritanical line (ironic given Brown’s Presbyterian roots, but then sons always rebel against their father’s attitudes especially when it comes to money) with the comfort of being in opposition and therefore not actually spending any money at the moment; at least if you discount certain of their number with a penchant for duck houses and subsidized salads.
So why doesn’t Labour make it a collective problem? Surely we are all responsible for the ‘credit bubble’ in our own small way?
Perhaps it is a reflection of what Mandelson referred to on Monday when talking about the positives of Brown as PM – his ‘big picture’ mentality and ‘long term decision making’. You meet people like that all the time inside the top of organizations, politically astute operators who concern themselves with the internal system rather than the customer at the door. Labour in this respect have become institutionalized, unable to envisage a different reality to the one they so fervently believe in and need to cling on to when all around the world is changing.
Do the Conservatives get this new reality? They are certainly more open to the idea that extending the idea of ‘ownership’ in society is a good thing for encouraging both individual entrepreneurship and individual responsibility but I can’t help feeling that the ‘Conservative’ instincts will be to go back to what worked in the past rather than being truly open to creating wholly new mechanisms for collectively ‘nudging’ us towards a more sustainable balance between what we produce and what we desire to consume. An instinct which seems to be showing itself in their ‘if you see Sid’ considerations.
The LibDems by contrast seem to be enjoying themselves imagining all sorts of frugal futures, but again are very short on ideas for how we as individuals are going to be enabled to make this a reality. Clegg doesn’t seem to have thrown off his Management Consultant past, producing reports that are reminiscent of the bad old days when employing consultants really was like lending someone your watch to tell you the time.
Thatcher may have been famously misquoted that ‘there is no such thing as society’ (there are only families and individuals) in her Readers Digest article, but by the same token the can be no such thing as society without individuals getting together to make it happen. Until we understand what it is that people need to get control of their money, we won’t understand the collective levers that will help get us back on track. It is not only politicians who have had their world of money shaken to the core, and like politicians there seems to be little effort for re-thinking and re-making money so that it fits with what we, collectively are trying, and need, to achieve.
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