The Means To The Middle

Listening to James Delingpole on Any Questions, it is astonishing that he still does not see the point. If we believe in the social, cultural and political need for a large and thriving middle class, then we have to support and deliver the very extensive central and local government action without which such a class cannot exist.

There is no private sector, at least not as that term is ordinarily employed. Not in any advanced country, and not since the War at the latest. Take out bailouts or the permanent promise of them, take out central and local government contracts, take out planning deals and other sweeteners, and take out the guarantee of customer bases by means of public sector pay and the benefits system, and what is there left? They are all as dependent on public money as any teacher, nurse or road sweeper. Everyone is. And with public money come public responsibilities, including public accountability for how those responsibilities are or are not being met, accountability and responsibilities defined by classical, historic, mainstream Christianity as the basis of the British State and as the guiding inspiration of all three of this State’s authentic, indigenous, popular political traditions.

Privatisation, globalisation, deregulation and demutualisation have turned out, in the most spectacular fashion, to have been anything but fiscally responsible. The same is true of a generation of scorn for full employment, leading to the massively increased benefit dependency of the 1980s and the institutionalisation of that mass indolence down to the present day. The transfer of huge sums of public money to ostensibly private, but entirely risk-free, companies in order to run schools, hospitals, railways, rubbish collections, and so many other things: is that fiscally responsible? Bailing out the City at all, never mind so that it can carry on paying the same salaries and bonuses as before: is that fiscally responsible? Even leaving aside more rarefied academic pursuits, is it fiscally responsible to allow primary education, or healthcare, or public transport, or social housing to fall apart? Is that good for business? Are wars of aggression fiscally responsible? Are military-industrial complexes?

Far from our having grown richer since 1979, we have in fact grown vastly poorer: only a generation ago, a single manual wage provided the wage-earner, his wife and their several children with a quality of life unimaginable even on two professional salaries today. This impoverishment has been so rapid and so extreme that most people, including almost all politicians and commentators, simply refuse to acknowledge that it has happened. But it has indeed happened. And it is still going on. Look at Britain today, and you will see the "free" market's overclass and underclass, with less and less of a middle except in the public sector. Public sector haters and the enemies of middle-class benefits are no more in favour of a thriving middle class than they are in favour of family life, or British agriculture, or a British manufacturing base, or small business, all of which are likewise dependent on government action in order to protect them from the ravages of capitalism.

Middle-class French people refuse to believe the stories of the underclass (or the overclass) in the "Anglo-Saxon" countries. But they are still horrified at the activities of their own, which would be too minor to attract comment here or in the United States. And they are still in a position to take a stand against those activities, because France continues to will, not only the end that is the existence of a large and thriving middle class, but also the means to that end in terms of government action. Those who do not will those means, cannot will that end.