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Tuesday, 23 December, 2008
 | Does Gordon's strategy of increasing the payroll vote ever hit the buffers? |
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George Bridges argues that “The middle classes will pay for Brown’s bust”. Against a background of shrinking financial, manufacturing and farming sectors, he argues that the state sector will increase as the middle classes are forced back onto it.
This raises the interesting question whether, Balance of Payments aside, there is any reason why the state service sector should not grow to 100% of the economy and is there any economic difference between a service job that seems useful – such as a nurse or graphic designer – and one which is at first sight less evidently so, such as a “gender outreach worker”. If there is a limit on the size of the state service sector, how do we know what it is? If it is the Balance of Payments which ultimately provides the limit, the first signs of strain will be seen in Sterling's exchange rate.
........ And here's the rub: the State isn’t offering a helping hand to lead the middle classes back to self-reliance; instead, it is getting a stranglehold on their lives. After a decade of Sisyphean labour trying to push the state's rock out of their path, the Middle class has once again been flattened by it, crushing its independence:
Consider education. Thousands thought, like Alastair Campbell, that too many state schools are bog standard; and scrimped and saved to send their children to private 'schools. Today, these are the parents most at risk of being called in for `a quiet word’ with the boss. The upshot : 20 per cent of local authorities expect to see higher demand for state school places. Then there is private medical insurance, held by: four million people: how many of their subscriptions will be scrapped? Likewise with private long term care, which already cripples many families: a quarter of councils report increased demands for state-funded care.
You may say this is no bad thing. If the middle classes didn't evacuate their children from state schools and used the NHS, they might exert more pressure to get real change in these services. But you would not force a man back into a burning building in order to get the fire brigade to come quicker. So why should we have to risk children getting a bad education or picking up an infection in hospital, in order to get change?
Yes, these trends might pass. As people grow richer, they will once again return to the private sector. What is more worrying is the growth in the state itself. Thanks to Gordon Brown, it is now the only growth industry. It employed 14,000 more people between June and September - while the private sector shrank by 128,000: Over the past year the numbers employed in health, education and public services rose by 90,000, while the number in financial and business services fell by 112,000, For all its “efficiency drives", the state is a good employer and a bad sacker. How many of these will be jobs for life, complete with a pension -pumping up the public sector's pension liability of £1 trillion? And who is making the simple point that the more people work for the State, the fewer there are to create wealth to pay for it, and the higher the taxes they have to pay?
The middle classes have been milked to pay for Brown’s boom. They will soon be mugged to pay for his bust. The question is how they will react. John Prescott, in one of his more eloquent moments, said, “We're all middle class now." If he's right; Gordon Brown should be very worried indeed."
George Bridges Sunday Telegraph 22 Dec 2008
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