Features - James Halliday

Politicians who wish to be regarded as shrewd have happily clutched at Mr Clinton’s campaign slogan "It’s the economy stupid". After all, the slogan proved effective enough to get rid of Bush the First — Bush the Elected as history books may some day dub him. So why shouldn’t it work for others? There has to be a wide measure of acceptance that economic well-being is required before any progress can be hoped for towards a happier and more comfortable life for any community.

Economists themselves promote the importance of their own field of study with such success that we live in an age when many political activists are ready to assume that no other study matters. Never mind informing yourself about, a people’s history, or about the psychology and emotions which that history has largely brought into being. It may be true that, to use an American expression, people "vote their pocket books", but again it may not, and certainly not always. The best economic interests of a wage-earner are seldom served by voting Conservative and the Conservative working man put Conservative Governments into office for most of the century recently past. It’s time we stopped giving any credence to the silly shallow notion that, if all of us pursue our aspirations without any outside control or interference, then everyone’s hopes will be realised. If that is what Adam Smith said then he was a cheat or a simpleton. Surely all must realise that one man’s success is gained at the expense of another’s defeat; beggar my neighbour is a tactic far from abandoned.

What we ought to appreciate is that "the economy" really means much the same as "society". It means not just skills, tactics, devices and know-how, but it means also the beneficial consequences of wise economic policies.

Consider for instance the present or potential spending of the Scottish Executive on the targets which they are forever telling us represent their priorities and "what the people really care about" —hospitals, schools, safe streets and environmental services. They and we can differ about the adequacy of sums proposed, but that’s not the end of the story. What about the assertion — very possible the fact — that increased funding is being swallowed up in pay rises for workers in these various sections? Giving some thought to this idea must remind any sensible mortal that public services, and the pay of those who provide them, were brought to the point of collapse by the cynical and ruthless denial of adequate funds by the Thatcher and Major administrations, followed by the equally squalid policy of the first Blair government.

The memorial to the work of these governments is to be observed in the decrepit schools and hospitals, and clapped-out railway system and work forces increasingly embittered. After years of neglect there is no way back, at least for the workers. If new money is offered, and is spent on fabric, the lot of the workers will never return to the comparative levels of 1979. Doctors will continue to emigrate, railwaymen will continue to exhibit discontent, nurses will be paid with compliments and little else, and teachers will find that the connection between their function and the culture of learning is lessened by the minute, and be paid accordingly.

So Mr McConnell presides proudly over public squalor and some private affluence, albeit rather less gross than in the Thatcherite heyday of wide boys and cowboys. Instead of enjoying the standards to which their resources and efforts should have entitled them, his people are in too many cases, left to nurse their ailments which are often in themselves indications of poverty; hoping some day, some how, to be spared the graffiti, defunct mattresses, cans, bottles and the occasional burned-out car, which can be encountered as they move about their streets. This is failure on some scale. An economic policy greedy, foolish and unfair, has produced a desperately unattractive society, as it was bound to do.