competing elites, confucianism and group-grid theory

Yesterday’s post made the point that the UK budget cuts of 81 billion pounds over the next 4 years are as much ideological as financial in intent. Colin Talbot’s Whitehall Watch makes two important points – first that welfare, defence and the criminal justive system have taken the brunt of the cuts rather than education or health .
And, second, the extent too which government leaders have reneged on what they promised during the April election campaign eg on student fees.

How far we need to cut is the really big issue that has been obscured by the ‘how fast’ cyclical debate and to which we still don’t have a full answer. Nick Clegg and other have been emphasising the four-year Spending Plan (up to 2014-15) only takes public spending down to 41% of GDP, the same of New Labour’s proportion in 2006. True, but that’s already 2% points below the 50-year average (43%) and more to the point the Government plans are still headed downwards after 2014-15. They are planning to cut still further in 2015-16, even after they have balanced the books, stripping out another £15bn or so of public spending and taking us down to under 40% of GDP. How much further do they want to go is the real question? Are we heading for a qualitative “rolling back of the frontiers of the state”? So far we don’t have a clear answer, but the indications suggest we are.
If so this does represent a massive change in policy for the Conservatives and their Liberal Democrat allies. It was only three years ago that the Tories were happily signed up to matching Labour’s spending plans (then at about 41% of GDP) and the Lib Dems wanted to spend even more! No talk then about public spending “crowding out” the private sector or the state being too big. Shrinking the size of the state is a perfectly legitimate policy aim – but it is not one anyone voted for at the last Election because none of the three main parties put it forward.

The British public has never had a high opinion of its political masters – and respect sunk to a new low after the revelations of MP expense claims. Now, however, a critical link has been blown away from the chain of argument for representative democracy. When you promise several things in manifestos and campaign statements and then do the opposite only a few months later (with no changes in conditions to be able to use as justification) then you have destroyed the basis for political legitimacy. Now we have at last, in the full light of day, the Schumpeterian system of democracy – one of „competing elites”. The role of the unwashed public is simply to choose (on whatever basis – looks or trust) who will govern us – not in any way to influence what they will subsequently do. The one problem in such a political system that the elites then have no real legitimacy – ie no reason to expect us to obey them – as the French (and indeed Chinese) have long recognised with their traditions of popular mobilisation and government retreats.
Seen in this light, differences between Chinese and most western systems relate less to the operation of the formal political system than to the issue of freedom of citizen and media expression. Most European governments are coalitions of parties (in which policies are hammered out in secrecy after elections). And the monopoly Chinese communist party has 75 million members after all. Political parties are simply the mechanism for selecting leaders who then negotiate policies (within adminstrative, financial and political constraints which are fairly similar everywhere). I have to confess some growing sympathy for the Confucian idea of leadership selection discussed by Daniel A Bell – whereby they are formally groomed according to clear criteria. At the moment, political leadership is subject to the „accidental”or „fatalist” principle (to use the language of grid-group theory; for example, noone designed George W Bush – he just emerged from a tortuous process and series of accidental events! Confucianism uses a more deliberative and hierarchical process to try to select leaders who are judges to have the qualities reckoned to be needed for leadership. As someone with strong anarchistic leanings, I should be drawn more to the fatalist school – but I simply don’t like the results!
The real difference between systems seems in fact to be how openly critical the public and the media are allowed to be – and this has got 2 dimensions. First the amount of actual choice on offer in the media (very limited in the USA where all media channels are basically owned by 4 companies); and, second, the consequences of adopting dissent positions (very harsh in China).

Coalition Government's 100 billion cut

From the priest’s chants, it appears that it is yet another feast day? So I limit the external work to reducing the large pile of branches outside the house to sackloads of sticks which I store in the backroom – and to carrying the very light stuff to the track at the bottom of the garden for burning. No power saw today! I don’t want to scandalise the neighbours!
I’m glad that Craig Murray is back blogging again – after some major house rehabilitation apparently. He has a brief remark on the UK Coalition budget which has just announced 100 billion of public spending cuts over the next 4 years.

The Comprehansive Spending Review announced today is designed to bring public spending back to the same level in real terms that it was in 2006/2007. It is not radical. It is not nearly radical enough. The state sector is much.much too large in this country. We could have a much smaller public sector which at the same time was much more effective at wealth redistribution. 500,000 public sector job cuts hardly scratches the surface of needed reductions in our ludicrous bureaucracies. The Private Finance Initiative, Internal Market mechanisms, fee and academy schools - and their hordes of accountants and administrators should all go and be replaced bysimple direct provision of necessary services. Local income tax should fun over half of public spending, decided upon and provided close to the point of delivery. And the UK should be broken up anyway.

Murray does know what he’s talking about – having been an HM Ambassador and also Vice-Chancellor of a University.

There is some confusion about how much of the financial debt of the british Government comes from the banking bailout; how much from the significant increased public spending of the previous 5 or so years which Brown chose and thought would be covered by economic growth which was torpedoed by the global meltdown; and how much from the welfare consequences of the economic decline of the past 2 years. But a recent blog did an excellent job of exposing some myths being perpetrated by the government. And the BBC economics correspondent - Stephanie Flanders - whose blog I have only today discovered - cast the appropriate light on the confusion. And it is consistent with Craig Murray's argument.
What, however, seems clear is that the coalition is using the consensus about the crisis to push through an ideological agenda. The maverick John Grey has a good post on this. And both the increase in the budget of the International Development Department and the sacle of the cutback of the BBC budget are proof of that.
Prospect magazing gives an interesting insight into how of the influentials see the problem and its solution - as well as an overdue comment about the money which tighening up tax avoidance could realise.

I thought something interesting was going to happen when 37 Conservative MPs indicated they would vote last week against the latest, utterly unacceptable demand from the EU for an increased budget. But it was not to be. What sort of planet is the European Commisison living on to expect increased budget when all members are reducing their budgets – and what sort of pusillanimous creatures are the various EU national governments made of to accept increased payments to a system which pays its officials such salaries, pensions and severance payments???? Actually it's worse than that - the EU for leading member state politicians and officials is like heaven - a better place to go after their life in national systems finished. So they have an interest in the totally immoral level of payments - open and hidden.
I’ve been wanting for some time to write about this. Open Europe does a good job of exposing the various nonsenses. See also BBC Gavin Hewett's comment.