Britain ’s Liberal Democrats warn of “Greek-style” unrest

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Britain’s Liberal Democrats warn of “Greek-style” unrest
16 April 2010

Britain will be hit by “serious social strife” and waves of
“Greek-style unrest” in the event of a narrow Labour or Conservative
victory in the General Election on May 6. That is the forecast of
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, made in an interview with the
Observer newspaper on April 11.

With opinion polls predicting that neither Labour nor the
Conservatives will win an outright majority, Clegg warned that a
minority government formed by either party would face a crisis of
legitimacy. This could result in “serious social strife” on the
streets, he said, as the administration attempted to impose draconian
public spending cuts in order to tackle Britain’s £160 billion-plus
state deficit.

The massive debt is largely the consequence of Labour’s bailout of the
banks, which has seen up to £1 trillion made available in various
stimulus packages in response to the economic crisis precipitated by
the crash of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

There is no doubt an element of political manoeuvring in Clegg’s
comments. In the event of a hung parliament, the Liberal Democrats
would play a significant role in coalition talks. Clegg has not ruled
out an alliance with either party. Notwithstanding these calculations,
the Liberal Democrat leader’s comments point to an acute political
crisis that is building behind the scenes.

Clegg’s interview appeared as the European Union was meeting to cobble
together a rescue package for Greece, in collaboration with the
International Monetary Fund.

Over the last months, the Greek social democratic PASOK government’s
austerity agenda has provoked strikes by hundreds of thousands of
workers and mass protests. But the government’s pledge of wage cuts
and job losses has failed to satisfy the international finance markets.

With state bankruptcy once again staring Athens in the face, the EU
proposed a “life-line” loan of €30 billion. Set at interest rates of
around 5 percent, however, the stop-gap measure will only increase
Greek indebtedness, while condemning the population to yet more savage
attacks.

The situation in Greece is paralleled by that in Ireland and Latvia,
where even more draconian cutbacks have been imposed. Across Europe,
all governments are making similar preparations.

Britain’s budget deficit is 12.5 percent of gross domestic product,
the same rate as that of Greece. “If you really want a fiscal problem,
look at the UK,” Mark Schofield at Citigroup told the New York Times
last month. “Since the Labour government’s intense fiscal intervention
in 2008 and 2009, yields on British government debt have soared to
among the highest in Europe,” the Times continued. “And on a broader
scale, which includes the borrowing of households and companies, the
overall level of debt in Britain is the second-largest in the world,
after Japan’s, at 380 percent of the country’s gross domestic product,
according to a recent report by the consulting company McKinsey.”

While trying to play down the magnitude of the crisis facing British
capitalism during the current election, Labour set out a £57 billion
deficit reduction programme in its recent budget, while the
Conservatives plan an additional £8 billion in savings immediately.

These measures are only the prelude to a massive assault on living
standards.

Clegg poses the crucial question of how this can be pressed forward in
the face of intense hostility from the broad mass of working people.
He notes that Labour won office in 2005 with the support of just 22
percent of eligible voters. This means, he said, that the
Conservatives could gain an “absolute majority” on just 25 percent of
the eligible vote.

The Observer comments, “But in his own constituency city of Sheffield,
where there are no Conservative MPs or councillors, and a high
proportion of public-sector workers, he fears a ferocious backlash
against potential Tory cuts.”

The danger, Clegg told the newspaper, is that, “Suddenly these people
will be told by a government that has no legitimacy in their eyes that
this government is going to slash and burn, having promised them
something else.”

Clegg is offering the services of the Liberal Democrats as a supposed
means of providing substance to any government’s claim to represent
the electorate. He argues that it is “stating the obvious” to opine
that a hung parliament would be good for the country.

He maintains further, according to the Observer, that, “The
alternative would be to have a government that lacked support across
huge parts of Britain at a time when emergency measures were needed to
cut the deficit.”

There is no question that the Tory Party is largely confined to the
privileged rural shires. There is currently only one Conservative MP
in the whole of Scotland, and just three in Wales. In the largest 10
cities in England, excluding London, there are no Conservative
representatives. Even in London, the Tories currently control just 20
of the 74 constituencies—all of them on the outskirts.

But this begs the question of Labour’s own lack of popular support.
Labour’s control of major inner-city areas is today the outcome of
Britain’s fundamentally undemocratic first-past-the-post electoral
system. Abstention rates in the major conurbations are massive and
growing, thanks to widespread disaffection with Labour.

A Labour government would have no more of a mandate to press forward
its agenda than a Conservative administration. And a coalition of the
Liberal Democrats with either or both of the parties does not change
this one iota.

Clegg has no disagreement with the need to impose austerity measures
on working people. He has called for “savage cuts” to be made in
public spending, while the Liberal Democrats’ candidate for
chancellor, the former chief economist for Shell Oil, Vince Cable, is
calling for a “credible” and “explicit plan” for addressing “the black
hole in the public finances.”

“The Tories talk tough on slashing the deficit, but have only
identified miniscule actual credible cuts,” Cable complained.

The illegitimacy of the next government arises not from parliamentary
arithmetic, but from the fact that the official parties are little
more than sclerotic shells, through which the super-rich and big
business politically advance their class interests at the expense of
the broad mass of the population.

In the absence of a majority win for either the Tories or Labour,
sections of the ruling elite have made clear their readiness to accept
a coalition government. This would be passed off as a “government of
national unity,” thereby providing a veneer of legitimacy to the
austerity measures it has to impose.

Without any public discussion, contingency plans have been drawn up in
the likelihood of a hung parliament. Under the proposals, the period
of time given to Gordon Brown, as the incumbent prime minister, to
form a government has been extended from 6 days to 18.

Even before a single vote has been cast, talks have taken place
between the Treasury and other government departments with the Liberal
Democrats as to their spending plans. Under the contingency measures,
unelected civil servants will be able, for the first time, to “advise”
the parties on forming a coalition. According to reports, the civil
service has already spent months drawing up secret “doomsday” plans
for cuts of 20 percent in public spending so that the new
administration is prepared.

Clegg’s comments should be seen by working people as a warning. As he
makes clear, the purpose of any coalition government, or of a
“national government” of all the parties, would be to safeguard the
political dictatorship of big business against any challenge from below.

Julie Hyland

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/pers-a16.shtml

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