It's been called ‘slippery slope’ politics, and it's a threat to all the Left hold dear; Natan Doron gives a timely warning over the latest Tory tactics.
Natan Doron is a researcher at the Fabian Society
There exists a certain type of politics: George Lakoff called it ‘slippery slope’ politics; it’s something the right are very good at. You take a concept you despise – if you are George Osborne or David Cameron, a typical such concept would be the idea of universal benefits – you introduce an initial change that can be sold as a sensible idea. Crucially, you frame it in a way that gives it broad appeal.
Running with our example, you suggest that paying rich people child benefit is pointless and also unfair. The change slips by with only muted opposition. What has happened though, is that you’ve successfully undermined the whole notion of universal benefits.
By framing untargeted benefits as something unfair, you’ve taken the first step down the slope and to the edge of the cliff. Fairness for welfare is now targeted welfare.
This now puts the left on the defensive. The one sentence about universal benefits being unfair is then countered with numerous paragraphs, reams of data and quotes. All of this serves the purpose of showing how undermining universal benefits damages future possible expansion in the welfare state.
As Tim Horton pointed out at the time, we’re moving from solidarity to sympathy. The return to discussions of deserving and undeserving poor. All impressive defensive arguments but not enough to resonate with the public. We need to better understand this.
While we must be careful to not be seen defending indefensible and unpopular positions, we must also be careful that in conceding seemingly sensible changes we do not contribute to the broad undermining of principles we hold dear. We must learn to recognise slippery slope tactics when they are being deployed. This calls for identifying the areas where the coming battles of values will be played out.
In recent weeks we’ve seen signs that Tory MPs are testing the waters around the right to strike and the minimum wage. On April 26, Dominic Raab proposed a motion in parliament to change the laws around industrial action for transport and emergency sectors. The motion was that a majority of unionised employees will have to be part of any vote to strike.
Like the child benefit cut, this initial step sounds intuitive, sensible even – but the motion manages to cast doubt over the legitimacy of all strikes. It’s the first step on a slope to making striking harder and harder. What starts as 25% thresholds eventually rises to 50% and then to 75%. Before we know it the power of the unions is ever more eroded.
Even more recently Philip Davies MP suggested disabled people should be allowed to work for less than the minimum wage to allow them to compete for jobs. Davies was rightfully attacked from all sides of the political spectrum. The Tory party distanced themselves. He himself remained unrepentant. He pushed the idea that making exceptions to the minimum wage to allow certain people to compete was a valid and worthy cause.
When the minimum wage was introduced, David Cameron was opposed. As a recent Labour List article noted, Cameron would not now voice such opposition, knowing that an all-out attack would be unpopular. Much better would be to start making small exceptions, frame them as sensible and start to chip away at the credibility of the notion.
You could say something like:
“We don’t want to get rid of the minimum wage – we want to upgrade it.”
While the undermining of the minimum wage is still a Tory work in progress, recent polling (pdf) for YouGov suggests the right to strike is something seriously under threat. Only 24 per cent back the current law allowing a strike ballot to be passed legally, however low the turnout. More broadly, however, people do support the right to strike for a whole range of sectors.
By failing to oppose a change to the threshold law, we are failing to support the right to strike itself, a right being slowly eroded by a government hostile to unions in principle.
Universal benefits, the right to strike and the minimum wage represent years of progress and three of the greatest achievements of a civilised society. What the right are teaching us is that having solid defences of these ideals is not enough to protect them from slippery slope politics. Tory Press HQ would rubbish this and state that the views of maverick backbenchers should not be relied upon as indications of government policy.
But their views are formed by the same underlying values as Cameron and Osborne. We need to start going on the offensive. This means talking about these things in a frame that solidifies why they are so important to our vision of the good society.
The Living Wage is one example of how we can do this. When Christopher Chope MP talks about allowing employees “the right” to opt out of the minimum wage, that gives us the platform to go on the offensive. Only a Tory MP could undermine the minimum wage during a time of falling living standards. We should start to make the same argument we made for the minimum wage and argue even louder to introduce an increase to the Living Wage.
At a time of austerity and increasing pay at the top, the public would understand and support this. Tory opposition to the policy would look like what it was: mean and draconian. We would have successfully framed a debate that spoke to our values. The public would remember why they used to have a Labour government; they’d thankfully remember why the Tories haven’t won a majority at a general election since 1992.
We know what we want to protect. We have to get much better at doing it. The only way to do this involves setting out a moral vision for why those achievements are so crucial for our society; battle lines are being drawn – we have been warned.
33 Responses to “Cameron’s reforms take us to the edge of the cliff”
Ed's Talking Balls
Everyone needs accommodation too.
Ash
Chuntering Testicles –
Sure, but most people (especially outside London) are in a position to cover the costs of their accommodation privately; whereas most people are *not* in a position to cover the cost of their healthcare, education and pensions privately. (Child Benefit I’d put in a somewhat different category – it serves the same purpose as the Family (tax) Allowance it replaced, i.e. ensuring that people with dependent children make a smaller net contribution to the tax system than people without dependent children.) So it makes perfect sense for the state to provide healthcare, education and pensions universally, but only to get involved in subsidising the cost of accommodation in specific circumstances.
Ed's Talking Balls
No, you’re picking and choosing in an attempt to suit your argument. It hasn’t worked.
And as for ‘Chuntering Testicles’, aside from having coined yet another possible nickname for Labour’s discredited Shadow Chancellor, you’ve not enhanced your point in any way. About as witty and helpful as me inserting a ‘g’ before your username.
Leon Wolfson
13eastie – Before the banker-caused crisis, the economy was in a better state than Major left it. Do read up before you talk about the failure of your favoured party.
Society’s return can be seen clearly in things like the rapid, virtually unpredicented, fall in child poverty. Which is turning rapidly back the other way now, under your Tories.
Ash – Reinstate proper rent boards, and most people will be able to afford accomodation. Combine that with a hefty tax on unoccupied properties…
Leon Wolfson
And “universality” has different meanings. Everyone, for example, is entitled to minimum wage in this country. Everyone should also be entitled to affordable utility bills, accomodation and so on – some of these things are means-tested, others are not.
The problem is that means-testing itself is often done in uneven, damaging ways – child benefit being changed to penalise single-earner families is one example – and things like the minimum wage, which SHOULD be an absolute, is attacked under the cover of it.
Unless I can be assured that these things WON’T be attacked, I’ll oppose errosion of universal benefits purely to defend those. No, it’s not optimal, but the Tories have shown these chances can’t be given to them.