The Tories have tacitly made a very important concession
When back in 2013 Labour leader Ed Miliband announced a 20-month freeze on energy bills the Conservative Party went into paroxysms of rage. The announcement was a ‘con’ that would not be out of place on the pages of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, according to the Tories.
These were not the shrill cries of the party’s backbenches, either. No, they were the words of no less than the prime minister and the chancellor. Commenting on Labour’s 2013 price freeze announcement, they said at the time:
“We have to address the causes of prices, rather than effectively come up with what is a con.”
– David Cameron, 10 October 2013.
“I know he wants to live in a Marxist universe. He needs a basic lesson in economics.”
– David Cameron, PMQs, 9 October 2013.
Meanwhile the chancellor George Osborne described the energy freeze as something out of Das Kapital.
Conservative cheerleaders in the press didn’t hold back either. Here was Allister Heath in the right-wing newspaper City AM:
“…price controls have been tried thousands of times throughout history in hundreds of different markets and always fail“.
So what do we take from this? Well presumably that all price controls are nascent signs of Marxsim-Leninism that ought to be thoroughly opposed by all right-thinking people.
And yet what’s this we see coming over the horizon today? Only a Conservative party promise of a …rail fare price freeze.
There is already a restriction in place limiting increases in fares to RPI (retail prices index) inflation which has been in place for two years. However under today’s Conservative proposals this will be extended until 2020, saving, so the Tories claim, around £400 per rail commuter.
A price freeze in other words – and the sort of thing the Tories previously decried as an unfailing sign of incipient socialism.
It would be an exageration of course to claim that we are all Marxists now, but there is hope: the Tories have with this policy tacitly made a very important concession to the left: that market mechanisms by themselves do not – and cannot – solve all of our problems.
Welcome aboard, comrades – perhaps we’ll see you in Cuba over the summer…
James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
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16 Responses to “David Cameron comes clean: he’s secretly a Marxist”
nodbod
You’re correct there. I live 50 miles from London and last year two of us wanted to go to London and back over three days. If we wanted to go Friday and return Sunday we were being quoted in excess of £60 each! By going late Friday and returning mid-morning Monday we got returns for about £15 each. Luckily I did not lose work over it but at £60 each it was cheaper to drive and pay parking. My opinion is that it is a service and should be in state control and priced to break even or just in profit.
Leon Wolfeson
Well, railways here are heavily subsidised, as they are in other Western countries. In fact, that subsidy has gone up. But so have the prices, well above inflation.
I travel maybe twice a year on the railways these days, and only then because National Express have cut back from ~fifteen coaches a day on that route to one (and higher priced), because they own the railway franchise and don’t want the competition!
David Lindsay
Miliband can and should trump Cameron immediately and obviously, by promising to bring each franchise back into public ownership as and when it came up for renewal.
Moreover, he should undertake to act against one of the great scandals of Rip-Off Britain, namely the failure, to put it mildly, of the bus companies to pass on in fare reductions the fall in the price of oil.
G.davis
This male… So he calls him self a man should not run our country, he’s a disaster!!! Disgrace, n il refuse to live in this country if this man stays priminister!!!!!!!
G.davis
I’m all for ukip , I’m far from racist , it’s not about race , wen I was a child this world was safe, now it’s not u can’t let ur kids play out without worrying, bring back our own country wear we all stick by each other and defend one another …. Back to a safe place …. Any1 that shunt be here …… Go bk to ur own country n let the children of our days live there lives in there own country with out fear of being robbed or raped!!!!! UKIP send them all back!!!!!!!