Is There a Better Way?

What future do we have to look forward to? Under the current Tory regime the Hobbesian quote that it may be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short seems apt, particularly for the workers. But, to use a cliché, another future is possible

Frances O’Grady, heir presumptive at the TUC, barring murder or suicide uses this week’s New Statesman to outline the case for a more interventionist industrial policy and an end to the reign of the corporate money men, for whom the only end in every deal is personal gain, preferably in the form of very large bonuses. http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2012/07/frances-ogrady-how-rebuild-britain

O’Grady marshals the facts about the UK’s abysmal investment record competently, and constructs a well made argument about the need for a more interventionist approach, linked to a state investment bank and a more regulated approach to the financial sector, a case that needs to be repeated more often.

In making it she recognises that the traditional divide between the shop floor and the board room is a relic of the nineteenth century and that a new form of industrial interventionism requires a new form of industrial democracy. Few would disagree with her conclusion that: “From the ashes of a financial crash, there is a chance to create a new economic settlement that is more equal, sustainable and democratic.”

But for an alternative to actually to be put into place requires it requires that there is a political party that is prepared to put it into practice. Whether Her Majesty’s Opposition have yet heard the message or are prepared to act on it is an entirely separate question and one that the TUC needs to face up to.

JC