The crisis of work: why I’ll be backing Universal Basic Income at Liberal Democrat conference
Later today, the Liberal Democrat Conference will be debating a motion supporting a commitment in principle to a Universal Basic Income (UBI). The arguments about UBI have been well-rehearsed, on both sides. I shall be voting in that debate — and I hope to be called to speak — in support of the principle of UBI for all those familiar reasons. I’m not going to rehearse those arguments here.
But for me there is one powerful argument that needs to be at the heart of the debate.
Traditionally, politicians of all parties have seen work and employment as the path out of poverty. The political debate is dominated by slogans about work and jobs. It’s a formulation that goes back to the Beveridge Report and the belief that providing work would not only deal with the mass unemployment that Britain suffered in the United Kingdom, but would provide the economic and social stability that would ensure there was no resurgence of Fascism in Europe. And, for decades, it was a policy that worked. The 1950s and 1960s were the decades of Butskellism, of full employment when rewards were shared, people’s standard of living steadily increased and — as the social reforms of the 1960s showed — societies became more open, more tolerant, more generous.
But that is no longer the case. It is increasingly obvious that there is a profound crisis of work. In recent years, in the United Kingdom at least, we have had something close to nominally full employment. But that has disguised the fact that, as living costs — especially housing - have soared, real pay has steadily fallen; that jobs are increasingly insecure. People are working longer and longer hours, but finding it increasingly difficult to pay the bills. And for those who are able to earn a little more, the marginal tax rates — measured in particular in the withdrawal of benefits — for those on low pay are often far greater than for the better off. We have become a rentier economy, in which increased national income has accrued as the income from sweating assets, not from work.
And the economic scourge of modern Britain is not the mass unemployment of the 1930’s; it is in-work poverty, the fact that work, for millions of people, simply doesn’t pay. The basic deal, as it were, of capitalism — that it is possible to obtain a decent sufficiency by selling one’s labour — has become a fantasy. And as automation becomes an ever greater reality, it recognises that the model of full-time work for all is just unsustainable.
And yet the political rhetoric around work and employment still talks about hard work as the way out of poverty. You get on if you deserve to. Politicians of the centre-left talk about “hard-working families”, apparently unaware of the sheer cruelty of that language in a society where people work at more than one job and still struggle to put a roof over their heads, while landlordism runs rife. It’s all too easy for an economically-failing society to find scapegoats, to indulge in easy and cruel rhetoric about those on benefits — diverting attention away from the systemic realities.
And this is not just a problem of personal misery: it damages the economy too. It means that with millions of people facing uncertain, declining incomes, the economy is inherently less stable. And that becomes even more damaging as we face a series of crises that will change the way our economy functions: Covid, Brexit, and above all the looming crisis of climate change. It is no coincidence that the Nordic economies, with their generous welfare systems, are best equipped to adapt to economic change; prosperity and generosity are partners, not antagonists — especially as we question the way we define wealth and prosperity, and seek to include wider measures of wellbeing.
We need to challenge the crisis of work. And I’d argue that the best way of doing that is to adopt the principle of Universal Basic Income. As a matter of principle a basic income would not only restore dignity and values to millions of lives; far from being unaffordable, it would have a powerful macroeconomic effect, increasing stability and sustainability. It creates the conditions for ensuring that economic change does not bring the existential immiseration of millions of people.
It certainly isn’t a panacea — those on the far neoliberal Right have long argued that UBI could be used to dismantle the state. Liberal Democrats know that we need a strong, enabling state too. And it is obvious that a fundamental reform of taxation has to be part and parcel of any move towards UBI.
The Liberal Democrat debate today is about the principle of UBI — it is not about particular systems. It gives the Party a mandate to work up detailed schemes, so it is essential that the debate this evening does not get hung up on detailed costings; we don’t want to fall into the trap that the Green Party fell into in 2015, when some of us feared that one disastrous media interview when then-leader Natalie Bennett clearly wasn’t intellectually on top of the issue and got hammered on the hypotheticals of particular schemes could have killed UBI for a generation. But it is back, and one reason why is the effect of Covid and how it has forced us to think fundamentally about the issues of how we manage an economy in a time of crisis, and what economic activity is possible. We’ve learned that doctors, nurses and care home workers really are more important than bankers. Hearts and minds are open to change; that is a rare opportunity for a new big idea.
I’m one of those who believes that by going into coalition with the Tories in 2010, the Liberal Democrats lost their way. I believe now is the time for us as a party to rediscover those liberal, radical values that motivated us in the past; to be at the forefront of addressing the crises of our time with big, bold economic thinking.
For Liberals in 2020, this could be our Beveridge moment; our opportunity, in a time of crisis, to forge a narrative that could change our society fundamentally. We cannot let that go. Adopting a policy of supporting the principle of UBI could be our moment.
