POLITICS
The road from compassion leads nowhere.
Better take the road from unfeeling
BRUCE ANDERSON
The government had some good for- tune on Wednesday. The latest unemploy- ment figures showed another sharp fall, further heightening the contrast between Britain and the rest of the European Union. At a press conference held to pro- claim the good news, Michael Heseltine insisted that jobs ought to be an election issue. Though he may well fail to make them so, he was right to try.
The Tories' record on jobs and their strategy for jobs prove two points. The first is that the past 18 years have been a suc- cess; the second, that there are crucial dif- ferences between new Labour and old Major. Britain used to have one of the worst labour markets in the advanced world. A combination of dominant trade unions, cowed employers and tack-handed government intervention ensured that our productivity levels were much inferior to our competitors'. The only reason that the nominal unemployment figures were not substantially higher in the Sixties and Sev- enties was the prevalence of redundant jobs and subsidised jobs on a scale unprecedent- ed outside the Soviet empire. Much of the notional increase in unemployment in the early Eighties was caused by the elimina- tion of those non-jobs.
How different everything is today. No area of British life has changed so radically as the labour market, which is easily out- performing Germany and France and almost ready to vie with the United States and Japan. The Left would have us believe that this has been achieved by job insecuri- ty, part-time work and sweatshop wages; not so. The economist David Smith has recently demonstrated that average rates of job tenure and turnover have hardly changed in 20 years, while the numbers of those working part-time rose far more rapidly in the Fifties than in the Eighties or Nineties. Moreover, despite the United Kingdom's relatively low levels of unem- ployment, in most of the rest of the EU there is a far higher proportion of the workforce in temporary employment. There has been a marked increase in job insecurity among two professional groups who have a disproportionate influence on the debate: journalists and academics. This may explain why so much of that debate has been based on misleading assertions.
Nor is there • any truth in the sweatshop wages allegation. On average, real wages in this country are rising healthily, as are living standards. If current rates of improvement are maintained, Britain could surpass both Germany and France within a few years.
There are low-paid jobs and low-paying employers. But is that undesirable? This is where there is a basic, instinctual difference between Right and Left. The Left seems compassionate; the Right, unfeeling. But the road from compassion leads to higher unemployment. The road from unfeeling leads to jobs and prospects.
To the Right, a job is something you retain by offering goods people want to buy at a price they are prepared to pay. So when a right-winger hears about some young lad working for a rough-tongued boss who pays him £2.20 an hour for a 50-hour week, his immediate response will be, 'At least he's gaining experience, and the best way of rec- ommending yourself to an employer is to have a job already.' To the Left, however, a job is an entitlement. 'How would you like to work for £2.20 an hour?' a left-winger would say: 'Where are the shop stewards, the inspectors and the regulators who should be helping that poor lad? Thatcher may have suppressed them, but Labour will use Europe to bring them back.'
If social chapters, minimum wages, work- ing-time directives et al. did ensure that every low-paid employee instantly received a significant pay rise plus an improvement in working conditions, there could be no further argument. The Right would be wrong and the Left would be right. In reali- ty, these new regulations could have only one effect: an immediate and sustained rise in unemployment. However generous the rights granted under the social chapter, they cannot be exercised from the dole queue.
When confronted with this, New Labour are guilty of prevarication, especially on the social chapter. It is not untruthful to claim, as they do, that the social chapter has hard- ly been used, but it is misleading. Once we signed the social chapter, much of Britain's employment law could be overruled by directives forced on us by qualified majori- ty voting. Mr Blair has claimed that he could veto anything he disliked; he must know that he would have no such power. Given the record of the EU on such mat- ters — the way, for instance, that health and safety provisions were used to enforce the working-time directive — there is every reason to assume the worst, even though the current Continental system is doomed. If they are ever to return to levels of unemployment compatible with social sta- bility, Germany, Spain and France will have to repudiate much of their Social/Christian Democratic heritage and pass under the Thatcherite yoke. This could happen sooti- er rather than later, precipitated, perhaps, by German unemployment rising to over five million and by riots in France. A lot of Continentals now acknowledge the need for change, but there is only one problem; they are not in a position to influence the EU.
In Brussels and Strasbourg those respon- sible for employment matters are display- ing a double reaction characteristic of intel- lectuals confronted with the practical con- sequences of a bankrupt theory: denial combined with pressing ahead even faster. This will fail, but if we are not careful Britain could be embroiled in that failure. Our economic successes ought to encour- age emulation in Brussels; instead, they arouse jealousy and resentment. For obvi- ous reasons, most Eurocrats are reluctant to analyse the reasons for Britain's healthy labour market and the Continent's failures; to do so would mean a painful reassess- ment of their own ruling assumptions. They would far rather make one last attempt to make Euro job-regulation work, by forcing us to share their burdens.
The outcome would be predictable. There would be a marginal alleviation of European unemployment problems; some employers who would otherwise have escaped W Britain would see no point in doing so, while Britain's ability to compete in European markets would be diminished. But most of the British job losses would benefit nobody, Messrs Blair and Mandelson have never taken much notice of the problems faced by youngsters who are trying to enter the labour market. Tony Blair was once shad- ow employment spokesman, but he showed no interest in hard thinking about the pre- conditions for a successful labour market.
The Sun interviewed Mr Blair this week. They ought to have asked him what plans, he had to make it easier for Sun readers kids to find jobs. The honest answer would have been that he had no such plans; that by signing the social chapter, he would indeed make it harder for them to find jobs, but that he was not interested in Sun kids' jobs. He was only interested in Sun parents' votes.
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