No, No, Nigel.
Nigel Lawson did not get where he is today through being bashful or at all reticent about his own talents so he does not take kindly to any criticism about the way he handles the financial affairs of British capitalism. That is why, some time ago, he dismissed the analysis of a large group of economists with the inadequate—and untrue—sneer that they were a bunch of teenage scribblers. That is why he is locked in an apparently unbreakable conflict with Thatcher and her toadies and why, as it is rumoured, he may take his talents and his touchiness off to some well-paid job in the City, where they are prepared to pay a lot to know all about the impotence of Chancellors of the Exchequer straight from the horse's mouth.
For Nigel is no longer a success. Against a rising tide of criticism and in face of all the evidence he can only insist that he is in complete control of the situation, working to an effective plan which is moving smoothly into operation. Of course there are some doubters, as financial observers consider what is happening to prices and the balance of payments but Lawson's response to these is that his remedies are taking rather longer to be effective than he at first thought. We only have to wait a little longer, be patient and trustful of the Law- son talents and all will come out well.
What worries Lawson's enemies—and many of his admirers—is how long this argument of postponement can hold good. As the Chancellor has to revise, again and again, his forecast of how much prices will rise by and how high interest rates will go in the near future, he begins to look like anything but a man in control. Perhaps he is hanging on in the hope that there is still time for the cyclical nature of capitalist trade to come to his aid so that he will be able to publish some statistics which make it seem as if his measures are indeed working. If that happens it will probably add quite a bit to the wage he can expect from his job in the City; he will retire from office in all the glory of a prophet fulfilled; what he assured us was only a "blip” was indeed that.
The success of that will be greater as more people forget how often, and how spectacularly, the forecasts of Lawson and his experts have been discredited in the past. The Tories came to power ten years ago on the promise that their priority would be to eradicate inflation, by which they meant that they would stabilise prices. For a while, as the rise in prices began to flatten out, they were able to claim that their policies were successful (in fact the two are not connected). But as the trend in prices has changed Lawson has been forced to revise again and again his forecasts about the rate at which prices will go up. Almost as soon as it was out of his mouth, each of his forecasts was outstripped by what actually happened. How long will this go on? How long can Lawson keep it up? How long before the voters begin to wonder whether the economy is under anyone’s control?
Teaching us a lesson.
The background to these events is that it is not so long ago that Lawson was making the claim to have conjured up an "economic miracle" for British capitalism; only just over a year that Thatcher was describing his budget as "brilliant". Some of this euphoria was based on the lowering of income tax rates, which so many workers mistakenly believe to be a sort of barometric scale of their prosperity. And some of it was based on the steady lowering of interest rates which, as more and more workers are forced to commit themselves to a lifetime of mortgage repayments, have assumed the same kind of false reputation as income tax rates. Part of the Lawson coda was that low interest rates not only bring us all prosperity but also contribute to its growth, so that the rates would move in a downward spiral while our living standards spiralled upwards. Now all that has changed and those working class dreams have, in many cases, turned into nightmares. The present orthodoxy is that low interest rates are not a form of prosperity but a symptom of a malignant economic disease. They must be forced upwards, to teach us all the evils of living beyond our means.
The popular explanation for all this confusion is that Lawson and his experts are having a little temporary difficulty in sorting out some passing, unpredictable problems. Anyone who believes that will believe anything. It does not require any great feat of memory to recall that every Chancellor has had to face similar problems and that they have all responded in the same way (if not with the same lack of modesty) as Lawson—with the promise that they are only postponing success for a while. Clearly, there must be an explanation more in tune with the facts.
However consummate their expertise, however seductive their promises, the people who claim to be able to control the economy of capitalism are really floundering about in impotence. Lawson's changes of policy and his ever-lengthening string of broken promises are not the result of his notoriously arrogant and pompous conceits. It would be no different if he were the most modest and retiring of men for his job is one of trying to do the impossible.
Not in front of the voters.
Perhaps it was people like Lawson Honourable Members had in mind, when they were so uneasy about allowing the TV cameras into the House of Commons. It is one thing to be seen by millions reading a carefully constructed harangue of the working class for not working hard enough, expecting too high wages or for wanting too much of life's little (very little, in their case) luxuries. It is quite another to be shown up by the camera's merciless eye as a spluttering buffoon. For many Labour Members it is one thing to allow themselves to be filmed addressing ecstatic crowds about building the new Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land. It is quite another to be exposed, in a classier kind of soap opera, as the Percy Sugden or the Jack Duckworth of the Commons.
Some of the arguments used against letting in the cameras, such as that it would provoke even more irritating behaviour from the louder MPs and stimulate the rise of media favourites (like Percy and Jack) were deployed a long time ago in the rearguard action against allowing reporters to record parliamentary debates for the press. The question must be asked, now as then, whether Honourable Members are ashamed of their behaviour, whether they feel they have something to hide from the viewing voters.
If they were aware of what actually goes on in the world—and much of what they say and do leaves that open to doubt— MPs would realise that the exposure they have to fear most is of the uniformity of their impotence to affect the problems of capitalism. This is not only a matter of being shown up as ineffective but also of the viewers having it rammed home to them that the clashes in the Commons are sham affairs, at most over trivialities and not worth serious attention or of influencing how people vote at elections.
Television has already allowed us to sit at home while we watch our leaders, represented as all-knowing, all-caring, all-powerful (there is no point in having leaders unless they come up to these exacting standards) are shown up as blundering helplessly from one crisis to another sustained only by their own self-esteem. This is an encouragement to workers to develop their own consciousness, take their own decisions, run society in their own common interests. What is more likely to happen, if TV is allowed freely into the House, is that Members will mend their ways. No more dropping off during debates; no more yobbish heckling and jostling; only established eccentrics licensed to sport strange clothes and wild hair styles. It is important, to our legislators, that they keep up the pretence of representing our interests. And even more important to us that we see through the pretence.
Ivan
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