http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle5864410.ece
What do Christopher Wren, William Beveridge and Jean Monnet have in common? The architect of St Paul’s, the inspiration for Britain’s welfare state and a French official who launched postwar European integration would seem to share little. Yet what unites them provides a vital lesson for today: in the middle of turmoil, Wren, Beveridge and Monnet all had the courage to dream of an entirely new way of doing things.
After the Great Fire of London, Wren quickly saw there was a chance to design the city anew. Roads were widened, sanitation was improved, plumbing was laid. Beveridge understood that the prewar social order – disfigured by unacceptable levels of poverty and inequality – could be overcome with the same spirit of solidarity that characterised Britain’s wartime effort. Equally, having witnessed two world wars, Monnet had the foresight to propose a joint Franco-German coal and steel community that quickly made war between these two old foes unthinkable.
These men realised that economic and political crises can make the unthinkable thinkable, the radical mainstream. The same ambition is now required. We have a choice: do we patch things up and hope to return to the economy of old, or do we build something new? There are three crucial choices that we must confront as we navigate through this economic storm.
First, while much of the recession in Britain was created by Gordon Brown’s lamentable failure to tame a housing boom or adequately regulate the City of London, this is a crisis of globalisation. More precisely, it is a crisis created by the woeful gap between the globalisation of finance, of trade in goods and services, and the rules and institutions designed to regulate the global economy.
Global economic integration has outstripped the rules made to tame it. So any political vision for the future must rest on a plan to create new international rules. On this, Brown has the right instincts but the wrong strategy. He rightly talks about the need to reform the International Monetary Fund and create a new financial architecture. But he wrongly assumes that this can be done through some lofty deal between the British prime minister and the US president. Rather, he should set a precedent in his own back yard, forging an ambitious European Union deal on the reregulation of financial services. This will serve as a stepping stone to a wider international deal.
It was telling that Brown was happy to lecture the US Congress last week on the dangers of protectionism, even though he had left a European Union summit just two days earlier where he appeared to exercise little political leadership to prevent a dangerous drift towards protectionism in France and elsewhere.
The Conservatives are in an even worse position. The only real contribution that William Hague, their foreign affairs spokesman, has provided is a tired, nostalgic speech on the Commonwealth. Unless the Conservatives understand that there is no alternative but to pool some sovereignty at European level, to regulate economic forces that have long escaped the clutches of the nation state, they are in no position to govern Britain.
Second, the collapse of the City’s casino culture also raises profound questions about the wisdom of trickle-down economics. Ever since the City was unleashed in the Big Bang by Margaret Thatcher, the assumption has been that astronomical wealth at the top will somehow trickle down to everyone else. That is why Conservative and Labour governments have tolerated an unforgivably unfair tax system in which the masters of the universe in the City can pay less than half the tax on their capital gains than their cleaners do on their wages. There is something seriously wrong in a system that tolerates such a heavy tax burden on people on middle and low incomes, yet allows large corporations and super-wealthy individuals to pay fancy accountants to avoid taxation altogether.
This economic crisis must give way to a new age of social mobility in which the tax burden is significantly lightened for people on middle and low incomes, paid for by closing the loopholes that benefit only a tiny handful of the wealthiest individuals and biggest companies. Everyone should pay their fair share. The age of trickle-down economics is over.
Finally, we must bring together the need to create new jobs with the need to protect our planet. Despite green rhetoric from this government, Britain is still a laggard in the creation of high-tech green jobs. Worse still, when Brown borrows billions of pounds in our name, he spends it on an entirely wasteful one-off Vat giveaway that won’t produce a single new job.
He could have used that £12.5 billion to insulate every school and hospital in the country and install energy-saving smart meters in every home. He could have created thousands of jobs today and invested in the green infrastructure the nation needs for tomorrow. The fact that he didn’t was a triumph of short-termism over long-term national interest.
Do we continue to waste money, miss opportunities and turn inwards? Or can we learn from Wren, Beveridge and Monnet, start anew and build something different for the future from the rubble of our past mistakes?
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I agree with the 1st comment :-
Whilst the wealthy individuals may seem fair game, they will only live where thay can get the best tax advantages. Penalise them, and they will simply move abroad. The point that is missing is that the City of London provided huge tax revenues to build hospitals etc. Lose that for ever?
What do Christopher Wren, William Beveridge and Jean Monnet have in common? The architect of St Paul’s, the inspiration for Britain’s welfare state and a French official who launched postwar European integration would seem to share little. Yet what unites them provides a vital lesson for today: in the middle of turmoil, Wren, Beveridge and Monnet all had the courage to dream of an entirely new way of doing things.
After the Great Fire of London, Wren quickly saw there was a chance to design the city anew. Roads were widened, sanitation was improved, plumbing was laid. Beveridge understood that the prewar social order – disfigured by unacceptable levels of poverty and inequality – could be overcome with the same spirit of solidarity that characterised Britain’s wartime effort. Equally, having witnessed two world wars, Monnet had the foresight to propose a joint Franco-German coal and steel community that quickly made war between these two old foes unthinkable.
These men realised that economic and political crises can make the unthinkable thinkable, the radical mainstream. The same ambition is now required. We have a choice: do we patch things up and hope to return to the economy of old, or do we build something new? There are three crucial choices that we must confront as we navigate through this economic storm.
First, while much of the recession in Britain was created by Gordon Brown’s lamentable failure to tame a housing boom or adequately regulate the City of London, this is a crisis of globalisation. More precisely, it is a crisis created by the woeful gap between the globalisation of finance, of trade in goods and services, and the rules and institutions designed to regulate the global economy.
Global economic integration has outstripped the rules made to tame it. So any political vision for the future must rest on a plan to create new international rules. On this, Brown has the right instincts but the wrong strategy. He rightly talks about the need to reform the International Monetary Fund and create a new financial architecture. But he wrongly assumes that this can be done through some lofty deal between the British prime minister and the US president. Rather, he should set a precedent in his own back yard, forging an ambitious European Union deal on the reregulation of financial services. This will serve as a stepping stone to a wider international deal.
It was telling that Brown was happy to lecture the US Congress last week on the dangers of protectionism, even though he had left a European Union summit just two days earlier where he appeared to exercise little political leadership to prevent a dangerous drift towards protectionism in France and elsewhere.
The Conservatives are in an even worse position. The only real contribution that William Hague, their foreign affairs spokesman, has provided is a tired, nostalgic speech on the Commonwealth. Unless the Conservatives understand that there is no alternative but to pool some sovereignty at European level, to regulate economic forces that have long escaped the clutches of the nation state, they are in no position to govern Britain.
Second, the collapse of the City’s casino culture also raises profound questions about the wisdom of trickle-down economics. Ever since the City was unleashed in the Big Bang by Margaret Thatcher, the assumption has been that astronomical wealth at the top will somehow trickle down to everyone else. That is why Conservative and Labour governments have tolerated an unforgivably unfair tax system in which the masters of the universe in the City can pay less than half the tax on their capital gains than their cleaners do on their wages. There is something seriously wrong in a system that tolerates such a heavy tax burden on people on middle and low incomes, yet allows large corporations and super-wealthy individuals to pay fancy accountants to avoid taxation altogether.
This economic crisis must give way to a new age of social mobility in which the tax burden is significantly lightened for people on middle and low incomes, paid for by closing the loopholes that benefit only a tiny handful of the wealthiest individuals and biggest companies. Everyone should pay their fair share. The age of trickle-down economics is over.
Finally, we must bring together the need to create new jobs with the need to protect our planet. Despite green rhetoric from this government, Britain is still a laggard in the creation of high-tech green jobs. Worse still, when Brown borrows billions of pounds in our name, he spends it on an entirely wasteful one-off Vat giveaway that won’t produce a single new job.
He could have used that £12.5 billion to insulate every school and hospital in the country and install energy-saving smart meters in every home. He could have created thousands of jobs today and invested in the green infrastructure the nation needs for tomorrow. The fact that he didn’t was a triumph of short-termism over long-term national interest.
Do we continue to waste money, miss opportunities and turn inwards? Or can we learn from Wren, Beveridge and Monnet, start anew and build something different for the future from the rubble of our past mistakes?
===========================
I agree with the 1st comment :-
Whilst the wealthy individuals may seem fair game, they will only live where thay can get the best tax advantages. Penalise them, and they will simply move abroad. The point that is missing is that the City of London provided huge tax revenues to build hospitals etc. Lose that for ever?
Comment