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Roger Warren Evans
Roger Warren Evans
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Life must go on, after the 2003 Bournemouth Roadshow. But just in case you missed my Bournemouth obsessions, here are my priorities.. Hidden Blair Agenda
What is Blair's game-plan? Bournemouth was characterised by a bewildering lack of substance. It is clear to me that in the longer-term radical Party constitutional reform is needed, if the political resources of the Party are now to be turned to creative effect.
I think he is planning a High Noon show-down with the public sector unions. He knows how popular, electorally, that would be. Between them there is no "Big Issue" - but there is an accumulation of pin-pricks, and he plans to orchestrate them into a dramatic showdown... Pensions
My hunch is that the inadequacy of old age pension provision - both public and private - is the greatest common political concern among our fellow-citizens. Yet Bournemouth was silent on the matter. Very few Fringe meetings addressed it - mainly those sponsored by the financial services industry salivating at the prospect of further business - as "State provision" loses momentum. The vultures are foregathering. Only Frank Field (a rare smile from him, here...) came up with a new perception, and a true shaft of realism. Unemployment
Gordon Brown gave a great barn-storming speech last Monday. He revelled in the last six-years of "economic success", and he is entitled to do so. He is even entitled to take full credit for his welfare-to-work drive, with all its Scottish Presbyterian overtones. But this record obscures a key underlying systemic weakness of the UK system, which Labour should not ignore - namely, the woeful inadequacy of UK unemployment benefit. We should be learning lessons from the current debate about Directors' periods of notice - all workers should have a decent period of notice on full pay, to enable them to adjust to the loss of employment. That is what the bosses fix for themselves, and what's sauce for the goose...
Confronting
Now - as a socialist businessman myself - I certainly do not wish to see any return to the old aggression towards the corporate sector, which still characterises much of the Old Left. But there are grave fault-lines in the global legal structure of the corporate sector which the Left must address. It will take a decade of international negotiation to effect real change - but we must make a start. We must seek the right language of reform, seeking allies both within the corporate sector and more widely. That is what my own campaign is all about Tame the Corporations.
Minimum Wage
I don't want to be a Party-pooper. And the New Labour cadres at Bournemouth were trumpeting the success of "Labour's Minimum Wage" in raising the incomes of the poorest households. I devoted one of my scarce Fringe slots to the Fabian meeting on Minimum Wage and the relief of poverty. But it confirmed my view that Minimum Wage is...
"Two-tier" Workforces
As with Minimum Wage, this is a subject which engages my perception of the operation of markets and trading systems. I disagree with the TU drive to impose public service terms and conditions upon the trading sector. If the maintenance of public-service terms-&-conditions is critical to the quality of any public service, that would be one good reason for not out-sourcing in the first place. I recognise that, and in my view the privatisation process has already gone too far in some sectors (I would, for example, reverse prison privatisation). But if the decision is made to transfer a function to the trading sector, the disciplines of that sector should be allowed to operate. We are wrong to impose upon this particular section of the trading sector, the constraints and rigidities... What do you think? Drop me a line
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