A blessing in disguise?

So, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) predicts that UK economy could shrink by as much as 2.9% next year as bank lending continues to stagnate. Yet the very same Windows Live headlines for today, 27 December, also noted in its top story that “internet retail group IMRG estimates e-shoppers will splurge £103.6 million, up from the £84 million spent last year”.

Is this possibly the large throw of the dice from desperate gamblers keen to rake in what they can with what they have got left, or while they still have jobs? Can we really spend our way out of recession as Gordon Brown proposes? Interestingly, it seems that the top selling items are high quality televisions and laptop computers being bought by people upgrading existing equipment, rather than buying something for the first time.

The problem for Brown and his ilk is that, once we have upgraded our TVs and computers, what will we spend money on then, even if we still have a job? Yet another new bathroom or kitchen? Yet more clothes? The latest playstation? The fact is that most people in the UK and other affluent societies already have most of the necessities of life, much of it with designer labels attached, so do we really need more of the same? Is increased consumption really the answer to having a decent quality of life?

Surely the answer is not to encourage more profligate and unnecessary consumerism, but to spend money on improving our infrastructure and public services, in ways which make less demands on the environment and non-renewable resources and make us a better society? Even more importantly, can we use our human and material resources to make the world a fairer and more sustainable to live in? When the wealth of the richest 200 people in the world equals the total wealth of the poorest 40% of the world’s population, something needs to change.

The current recession is a well overdue wake-up call to reassess what we need and want out of life. When the material necessities for a decent standard of living have been met in the West, largely thanks, it has to be said, due to the efficiency of markets, it is now time to move on and ask less material questions, such as what do we need to be happy. This is an issue which markets are not equipped to address. We need a new vision and leaders to help realise it.

Those of us born during or just after the last world war know what it is like to manage with little. We are therefore possibly better equipped to cope with recession than those born later, when things were easier. We also remember times when people had a sense of community and consideration for others before Thatcher and Reagan set in train a selfish, greedy approach to life which even denied that such a thing as society existed! The irony is, of course, that having destroyed something that they said did not exist, the Tory Party under David Cameron now claims that we live in a broken society that, yes, the Tory Party can rebuild!

The real tragedy is that New Labour was so desperate to reassure Middle England that they would not raise taxes that they did Thatcher’s work for her by continuing her economic policies, only with even greater emphasis on state control. The temporary hope that Gordon Brown would change direction after Blair headed off to make his millions to whoever would pay him proved illusory, leaving us with a government which is morally, philosophically and intellectually bankrupt and an official opposition which is elitist and opportunistic.

So what can we expect from the Liberal Democrats? Clegg may lack charisma, but is making a sound case for a fairer society and for policies to address climate change. Since we live in what are challenging times for optimists, maybe the best we can hope for is for a hung parliament in which the LibDems have sufficient influence to make Vince Cable Chancellor of the Exchequer under a government led by anyone other than Gordon Brown. After all, it was him who did more than anyone to get us into this mess.

We desperately need politicians who have a sense of what is needed in the post neo-liberal world into which we are moving. The current recession will hopefully provide the conditions for such a new vision of society and economics to emerge and the right leaders to help realise it.

The reason why so much is expected of Obama is that he appears to understand these concerns and have the qualities needed to address them. The recession will hurt countless people in the short term, but if this is what it takes to bring humanity to its senses, it will turn out to be a blessing in disguise.