Basic Income, credibility and leadership
We are trying to build the social support system of tomorrow with the politics of today. That is a tricky endeavour. You have to not only develop the right values and principles for a new system. You have to try to understand an economy and society that is nascent and emerging whilst demonstrating that an alternative system can work. The advantage of the status quo is that it exists – the warts can be tolerated.
Basic Income – the case for which is here – is in this space. It asks challenging questions of reformist politics. As an alternative it is very easy to dismiss; that’s in the nature of major social reform. It’s just not responsible to do so – as a social reformist. Unfortunately, Basic Income has now been sucked into the reality distortion machine that is the Labour leadership election.
In recent months, the RSA, Compass, the Fabians (tentatively) and the Adam Smith Institute have proposed forms of Basic Income within a wider system of social supports. The Citizens’ Income Trust have crunched the numbers – brilliantly – for decades. The Finnish Government is embarking on the first of a series of Basic Income trials next year. Similar trials are expected in the Netherlands, Canada and, on a smaller scale, in the US. There is a credibility to this wave – whether you support Basic Income or not.
The politics of today make this discussion fraught and difficult. But it’s expanding and entering the bloodstream nonetheless. The current Labour leadership is moving towards the idea and the Greens and the SNP have already declared support. The GMB and Unite trade unions have passed motions in favour. In all this, they join parties in power at national level in Canada and Finland and local power in many other places. Support exists for Basic Income across the political spectrum (as does opposition – it’s not a left v right issue).
The UK Labour Party was established to win elections in order to enact the type of social reforms that industrial society needed. Once Labour forgets its reformist mission as well as its need to be elected then what is its point? So to hear one of the candidates in the Labour leadership election election, Owen Smith, dismiss Basic Income as ‘not credible’ yesterday was a real kick in the stomach.
You may think you have a better alternative to meet many of the economic and social needs of time. You may feel that Basic Income stretches political possibility too far currently. I don’t agree but these are perfectly reasonable debates. But when you say ‘Basic Income’ is ‘not credible’ as a social reformist then I worry. Labour exists to not only imagine but to achieve a better world. If it can’t even imagine better then what will it achieve?
In a personal capacity.
