American political strategist Roger Stone once described the general election as a "mass media exercise", and true to his observation the major political parties in Britain are leaving no stone unturned to use, utilise and influence the media to their advantage. While tabloids like the Mirror and the Mail are at daggers drawn when it comes to Labour and the Conservative parties respectively, the Express has sided with the UK Independence Party (UKIP) this time, and The Sun dividing its loyalty between the Tories in Britain and the Scottish National Party (SNP) in Scotland. Among the major broadsheets the tilt of The Guardian with Labour and that of The Telegraph with the Tories are an open secret and they make little effort to conceal or camouflage their stances, and The Times toes a more centrist line.
The debate on public spending is at the heart of this year's election campaign with the major political parties, gauging the public mood, are committing themselves to save the National Health Service (NHS) from any possible cuts, only to be questioned by their rivals on accounting credibility to balance the books and economic trustworthiness to manage the deficit in the long run. In the process, however, each political party is craftily overlooking the lapses in its own spending plan.
The austerity practised by the the Conservative -Lib Dem coalition over the past five years has caused immense hardship to people on low income. The euphoria over employment figures is subdued by the chronic problems in youth unemployment, under employment and ridiculously morbid "zero-hours contract". Prime Minister David Cameron looked helpless when encountered by Jeremy Paxman on the contract which is professed by the Tories, allegedly "to make people's lives more flexible."
The Camerons and the Osbornes are also overlooking the economic realities of under-employment and disguised unemployment. The rising employment figures seem ridiculous when you find a Bulgarian project manager working as a cleaner earning around £8 an hour. The person might not have had any other option but to take up the job, and that added to the employment figures of Mr Cameron, but surely this is under utilisation and misuse of professional skills ultimately resulting in wastage of resources. .
Historically, the Labour Party suffers from lack of trust when it comes to the economy and it has become more so after 13 long years under New Labour, when they professed Labour values but acted more like the Tories at the centre of the party's political spectrum. Although a respectable civil servant has argued that Labour is not to be be blamed for the financial crisis engulfing Britain, but over spending and wasteful spending are detriments to social and economic justices that Labour leadership proudly claims to achieve.
In the midst of claims and counter-claims on public spending, with all political parties trying to show how magnanimous they are, what is missing in the campaign trail is a detailed plan to instil a sense of aspiration in the British society, especially among the youth. No political party has articulated any plan on how to enhance the aspirations of the British youth and influence them to acquire new skills so as to utilise them through gainful employment. Even the UKIP which is constantly crowing against the influx of immigrants from the European Union (EU) and allegedly grabbing the jobs from the British people, are not asking the indigenous people to aspire high or speaking out any plan to make them more enterprising.
Years of post-war social security and welfare have rendered a large section of the British population susceptible to state patronisation in the form of benefit. Even a couple of years ago people would compare their entitlement from benefit and remuneration from jobs and in a substantial number of cases the former overtaking the later.
Entitlement (to benefit) irrespective of achievement (enhancement of employability skills and job prospects) may be arguably good social justice but not necessarily wise economics. The system of entitlement without any commitment to deliver, prevalent over the years, has subjected the working population to stunted aspiration, limited or no entrepreneurial skills and above all a flawed sense of self respect.
Tightening of benefits and monitoring (carried out by the staff at the Job Centre Plus) have resulted a new form of systemic fraud by which young people attend further education colleges, work placements and skill centres, to save their benefits, but hardly pick up any knowledge or skill from there (mainly due aspirational deficits), making bulk of the public expenditure to train them wasteful.
The major political parties competing on public spending and those like the UKIP taking the vexed path of blaming the immigrants for everything ill and evil in Britain should first chart out their plans not only about allocating the taxpayers' money but how they will instill a sense of dignity and enterprise among the working population, a large proportion of whom are otherwise unemployed.
They ought not lose sight of the fact that austerity is an imposition but aspiration is an achievement.
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media commentator.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
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