The toxic effects of job insecurity

From lower productivity rates to family dysfunction and from poor customer service to depression and lack of motivation. What lies behind David Cameron's calls for "less red tape".

David Cameron's recent plans to make it easier to sack staff in the first two years of their employment have sparked an intense debate over the nature of Britain's labour market.

After the "fluffy years", it was only a matter of time before the crook-eyed default Tory approach to the world of paid employment would resurface.

The problem for Cameron and the bosses' organisations, however, is that - unlike the Thatcher years - there's very little left in terms of workers' protection for the government to wade in with the axe.

Extreme job insecurity in the UK is already a growing reality.

According to the OECD, Britain is in the top three along with the US and Canada (and well under the OECD average) in the strictness of employment protection index (1985-2008), which measures "the procedures and costs involved in dismissing individuals or groups of workers and the procedures involved in hiring workers on fixed-term or temporary work agency contracts".

Given the companies' free access to casual staff on "zero hours contract", or the free use of "temps" (which, by law, can be hired repeatedly on fixed-term contracts for up to four years before any tie comes into place), the lax regulation on probationary period for regular staff, as well as some of the lowest levels of statutory redundancy pay in the Western world, the notion that Britain's employment regulations may be at the core of the current dole rates is simply comedy material.

If we carry on this way, soon the only crusade left for the British Chamber of Commerce and the Tories to embark upon under the guise of "cutting red tape" will be against the right for workers to empty their bladder or take a crap at work.

However, what the last few days also highlighted is the almost total abdication on the part of the left and Labour in the fight against the galloping job insecurity and its noxious effects.

This line from the normally commendable Stumbling and Mumbling blog bothered me to the extreme. While sceptical of David Cameron's proposals, author Chris Dillow also wrote:

"There’s good evidence that [employment protection] reduces workers’ effort and increases absenteeism. This suggests that - at the margin - Cameron’s proposals might increase labour productivity".

Now, the reason why the above quote bothered me so much is that it shows how toxic and widespread certain myths are that even well-informed and well-read people can buy into them without questioning.

In brief, the Daily Mailesque-fable that a permanent job or certain guarantees at work will automatically turn you into a slacker. They ain't gonna sack me, so why bother, basically.

And how can you dispute that if even the usually meticulous and pro-left Chris Dillow can cite "good evidence" on the matter?

Except that said "good evidence" points to three pieces of research from Portugal and Italy which are solely and exclusively focused on specific (and already obsolete) legislation passed in those two countries in the 1980s and 1990s. Those laws were extremely protective - overly protective in fact - in a way not remotely comparable to anything Britain ever experienced, not even at its unionised peak.

It's like saying "there's good evidence that January is not a cold month and in fact look at this link to prove it". Except that it points to average January temperatures from the Canary Islands and Dubai.

The fact is, instead, that there's literally a mammoth body of research out there warning of the toxic long-term effects of job insecurity (click here for a summary).

Over the years detailed studies took place around the world, from the US and Canada to Australia, Sweden, Korea, Germany and more. The findings leave room to no doubt: there is a clear correlation between excessive levels of job insecurity and a variety of negative outcomes.

The initial advantages of "increased flexibility and lower costs" for the employers are undisputed. But little is ever said about the long-term effects that "casualisation may have on important aspects of national economic performance such as skill formation" and, most importantly, the ticking time-bomb that is widespread casualisation as weighed against "long-term financial planning".

But the strongest and most consistent evidence is the one seen across firms, industries, and countries linking job insecurity with "negative employee attitudes, behavio[u]rs, and health" and with the fact - as noted by several researchers - that "job insecurity is more stressful than job loss itself".

Amongst the negative effects, a "powerful negative influence on motivation", "reduced effort" and "poor safety compliance by employees". Low levels of job satisfaction are also associated with negative employee attitudes, lower customer performance and effectiveness with customers as well as with -in turn- a detrimental effect on group morale.

And that's without taking into account what "the longer term negative effects on workers' depression levels", or "the systemic [relation] between job insecurity and marital and family dysfunction" or, even, the proven effects that "parents' job insecurity has on children's school performance as measured by grades" .

The fact that "job insecurity reduces job satisfaction is attributable to the uncertainty of not knowing how to predict or control job threats".

And that's because, while insecurity in the short-term may spur a worker to perform better if the goal is a latter stage of more protection and various perks, an ongoing perception of "precariousness" will start having an adverse effect, as the worker will feel increasingly uncertain that their persistence can be sufficient enough for them to retain their job.

For a worker with little to lose, the lack of ties will offer no incentives to stop them from slacking off or "looking elsewhere" altogether.

Tory proposals on sacking people are both useless and criminal

Mass sackings: welcome to The Great Conservative Economic Strategy.

Another fine display of 21st century British politics took place yesterday when David Cameron dropped the bombshell on the millions of unwitting voters that it should be made much easier to sack workers in this country ("Firms get power to sack the slackers", Telegraph).

Now, of course, the Tories don't have a mandate for that. They never mentioned any of their "employment reforms" at any stage of the election campaign. They didn't because they knew that voters would punish them for that. And in fact, at this point, if you're an ordinary worker and you still think voting Tories will do you or the country any good, then you may as well chop your own bollocks off. The outcome will not be dissimilar.

It's astonishing that, in the face of the biggest crisis in sixty years, The Great Conservative Economic Strategy amounts to the sacking of half a million public workers, even easier sacking procedures for everybody else and -of course- higher costs of living.

The Tories' proposal is based on the contempt they have for ordinary workers. If you are an employee, you are - by default - a burden, an irritant, a disposable pain in the arse. Whatever the issue, financial or otherwise, you're the first one who should bear the brunt. No matter how much this may undermine morale or loyalty to the company. No matter how insecure it makes you feel. You're not a person. You're just a cheap pawn.

David Cameron's proposed new "Employment Charter" starts from a fallacy the size of the Millennium Dome: the ridiculously simplistic illusion that if you decrease protection at work, employment levels will rise automatically.

This is so all over the place that it's difficult to know where to start. But let's just say that the post-1997 implementation of the minimum wage and new maternity rules in Britain were followed by the lowest dole rates in thirty years. Look, instead, at the swirl of anti-Union laws and other measures brought in by Thatcher. It did nothing to even slow down the sustained high unemployment rates that kept looming large over the 1980s and 1990s.

Or consider Italy and Spain, where the last ten years saw most extreme forms of casualisation and disposable employment steamrolled in. Their unemployment levels are still looking extremely sorry, in fact worse even than before.

The second fallacy is that the Conservatives are making it sound as if the current British labour market was stifling and inflexible, while it is already one of the most boss-friendly in the EU as it's cheaper and easier to get rid of staff in Britain than it is in most of its counterparts.

Currently, bosses already enjoy the possibility of hiring as many agency or casual workers as they please. These come with no tie whatsoever. They are literally disposable.

If, however, the same boss saw fit to recruit "properly", there is a probationary period of up to 6 months in which he/she can sack said employee on a whim - literally - no notice, no motive, no compensation. Nowt.

After that, the boss will still have up to 12 months in which he/she can still fire him without any possible fear of being done for unfair dismissal or forking out a penny in statutory redundancy pay.

At this point, you will already concede that if a manager hasn't clocked who the slacker is without successfully rectifying the situation, it is he or she who should be sacked and not the worker.

And it's not over yet. While unfair dismissal claims can be brought after a year, you have to work a total of 24 months in order to be entitled to the lowest possible allowance of statutory redundancy, which - please note - is by far the cheapest in Western Europe.

However, egged on by the British Chamber of Commerce, David Cameron thinks that all of the above amounts to "too much red tape" and that the period that allows staff to submit unfair dismissal claims should be increased from one to two years.

But the icing on the cake is the Coalition's proposal to levy a charge on workers who decide to still fight their corner. This may be vintage Tory philosophy, but in this case it just borders on the criminal - as it crucially links access to justice not to whether you're in the right or not, but to whether you can afford it.

And, needless to say, it also ignores the fee that plaintiffs already pay their lawyer, or their union in the form of fees, if it is they who provide legal counsel.

Incidentally, unions rarely decide to pursue claims that they themselves think will lack weight. The amount of pre-screening that is done prior to deciding whether to gamble on a worker's claim is immense. And that's without even including the conciliation and arbitration stage.

And even so, official figures say that, in the first quarter of last year, just 11% of cases taken to an industrial tribunal were successful - and a puny 5% for constructive dismissal. Amazingly, this is the system that bosses complain is "weighed against them" and is "affecting employment levels".

The Conservatives are mistaking increased turnovers with higher employment rates. Their new proposals will do absolutely nothing to get people back to work.

All they will achieve is a system where it's easier to sack unfairly and without scrutiny and a workplace where it will be even more difficult, often impossible, for an honest worker to fight bullying and victimisation or to seek protection against unscrupulous employers.

We're all simpletons

Mass public sector redundancies will mean more "freelancers" available, the experts tell us.

In the last few days the British press enjoyed having a pop at Greece and the rest of Europe, quickly forgetting -obviously- the humongous impact of the downturn on the UK. Suddenly it's as though none of it ever happened.

But then look at yesterday's news reports announcing that, with the recession far from over, we're about to witness major redundancies in the public sector. Two weeks ago, Birmingham City Council announced around 1,300 job cuts.

Now, according to a survey carried out by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and business advisers KPMG, many employers are in the process of sticking thousands of redundancy notices through the letter box.

Covering the news, yesterday's Today programme on BBC Radio 4 summoned up a certain expert (I can't remember his name) who reiterated that the redundancies are not going to be a bad thing and that every cloud has a silver lining etc.

Apparently, the pain of having public workers joining the dole queues will be cancelled out by a rise in the number of "freelancers", the good old word that, in the early days of the Blair government, was dangling from the gob of every politician even though it simply means "casual".

When the Radio Four chap pointed out that those "freelancers" won't have any job protection or pension scheme of any kind, the "expert" retorted "Oh but no. It's going to be a business to business relationship" without elaborating - of course. Yes, I know you're smelling something. And that must be the copious amounts of bullshit. Because even a 5-year-old would grasp that a desperate casual or agency worker would sign up for anything, forget pension schemes and guarantees.

This fake one-way optimism, however, is in line with the general assumption that the British public is a collection of simpletons who would swallow up anything.

Like, we've lost count of headlines announcing "the recovery", and it may as well be the case for a few shareholders. Yet we learnt today that the UK rate of inflation rose up to 3.5% (Consumer Prices Index -CPI) or 3.7% (Retail Prices Index -RPI) in January. And this is why pay freezes are being imposed left right and centre, with rises in 2010 expected to range between zero and 2.25 per cent. That is, only for fuckers like me or you, not for executives.

To a lot of people whose rent, utility bills, food shopping and transport are going to eat further into their wages this word - recovery - may end up sounding a little bit hollow.

Causes of inequality according to the right

From surreal and absurd to shallow and hypocritical. How the Tories and the right-wing press reacted to the inequality report.

The National Equality Panel has published a comprehensive report on inequality in Britain, more confirmation that thirteen years of peripheral adjustments and papering over cracks did little to stop the growing gap between a super rich minority and a poorer majority.

The roll call of findings is depressing. In short, the richest 10% of the population are more than 100 times as wealthy as the poorest 10% of society; the gap is wider now than 40 years ago; the gender pay gap is significant and persisting; the UK is the seventh worst country for income inequality out of 30 industrialised countries; Britain has the highest poverty rate in Western Europe and social mobility has declined sharply.

That Labour failed there's no doubt. Thirteen years in government -and with humongous majorities, lest we forget- is an awful long time. They were hardly going to turn into the Robin Hoods of Westminster, but they certainly had the chance to make a more structural impact.

What's more interesting, however, is the clueless reaction from the right. They're barking at Labour's failures yet:

1) They've consistently sniped at any proposal directed at addressing poverty: just think of their fits of rage when the minimum wage was introduced and their fury each time it was raised; or their firm opposition to basic agency workers' rights; or the daily bombardment against social benefits for the unemployed;

2) Only two weeks ago Tory supremo Ken Clarke denied that class divisions exist at all in Britain. He said that society is "classless" and "meritocratic", indeed "transformed" from decades ago - an enviable grasp of the real world for the cigar chomping MP.

And so, according to the Telegraph, "today's equality gap is not a problem that results from the rich getting richer". No. "That is generally a good thing for society", the Tory paper says (without explaining why, of course). "The problem is that the poorer are not getting richer, too". And how do they do that, given that any notion that the low-paid should be paid a little better is invariably seen as a cross between Stalin and the Cloverfield monster?

Rest assured, here's the solution. Look at this:

"the core of the problem [...] lies in education and welfare policy [...] the growth of welfare dependency has crushed aspiration within the family. If you pay people to stay poor, you will never run out of poor people...".

So basically if you're amongst the 1.3m people who lost their job through no fault of their own during the recession, you should forget about help, otherwise you will stay poor. Knock it on the head altogether and bob's your uncle, we're all rich. Just take a look around, the country's bursting with well-paid jobs for the "aspiring" masses, isn't it?

Then there's Max Hastings in the Daily Mail. To him, the root of the problem is even simpler: "It's not the middle classes but social engineering zealots like Ms Harman who are to blame for Britain's inequality gap", he writes. His article takes the scattergun approach: a combination of PC gone mad (based on this non-story from his own paper), the end of grammar schools and lack of good old discipline.

Bring back the cane and get those chavvy kids to sit properly and, sure enough, millions of well-paid jobs will materialise and no-one will work for £4 an hour. Ever again.

Because, Hastings informs us, "[i]t is no longer a class divide which disadvantages Britain's poor. Nobody is denied a job or promotion because they don't speak proper or hold a knife and fork right". And stupid us thinking that that was the problem all along.

Then there's Theresa May, Conservative MP and Shadow Minister for women and equalities. She said:

"Labour has had a one-dimensional approach, looking at the symptoms, not the causes. For example, one in six children are growing up in a workless household. We need policies that can make equality a reality."

But Ms May is wrong on two fronts.
First, sod one in six children, under the glorious Tory days of the 1980s and 1990s unemployment was consistently higher than it ever was under Labour- regularly topping 3m. In fact, the last fifteen years have seen, by far, the lowest unemployment figures since the 1970s, a trend that only ended with the crisis kicking in in 2008.

Secondly - and more importantly - low unemployment is hardly tantamount to equality. Like I've just said, dole queues were at their smallest in the years 1997-2007, yet the levels of inequality galloped anyway.

And this is because you stand better chances of winning the lottery than hearing a British MP questioning the "quality" of employment.

Tories and Labour alike had better get this into their head and quick. It matters little if unemployment stands at 5.5% or 6% if so many people in employment are paid a pittance, casualisation continues unabated and so does the erosion of basic rights in the workplace. The minimum wage was a step in the right direction, but obviously not enough.

Look at this ordinary example. A 40-hour working week paid £5-60 an hour. It pays £890 a month. You detract national insurance, council tax, rent and bills to pay and how on earth are you and your family going to escape a circle of depression? You'd have thought that the new Cameron-era would be good at empathy!

Which leads to the only factor that can make a difference. Higher wages. Which, in turn, can either come out of your boss's own goodwill, or from redistribution - read taxing higher incomes.

In Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark the top rate of income tax ranges between 52 and 58 per cent. All of them officially boast the lowest levels of poverty and inequality in the democratic world.

The handbag-full-of-manure theory

How can a society so heavily based on mass consumerism manage the long haul if, at the same time, reasonable wages are denied to so many people?

The decade that was ripped apart by one of the most biting crises since WWII is finally coming to an end.

What's more striking, however, is the fact that lessons are obviously not being learnt. In fact, quite the opposite. The last twelve months have been lined by one convenient red herring after the other, from MPs' expenses to bank bonuses (both no doubt outrageous, especially the latter), while the true roots of the recession seem all but forgotten.

What was kickstarted by the subprime scandal in the US, where hordes of desperados were fed the most toxic financial fodder, was symptomatic of the widespread economic management of the Western world, one based on a fast growing wealth gap on a scale not seen since Victorian times.

Like last week's knee-jerk reactions to Alistair Darling's pre-budget report demonstrated, even the feeblest and most useless attempts at redistribution are greeted by hysterical shouts of "envy", "class war" and "hatred for the wealth creators".

It's the same irrational fury that met the minimum wage, calls in favour of basic rights for agency workers, or any attempt at righting the wrongs of the most ruthless, unbalanced and ununionised labour market since the days of Charles Dickens.

Because beyond the howls that even a mini-tax relief for the low-paid is apparently tantamount to Lenin and Karl Marx doing a Lazarus, the cheerleaders for "filthy rich", "wealth creators", "bank bonuses" and "keeping the talent" are simply incapable of focusing on the broader picture.

During the Blair years, for instance, it was often said that exceptional wealth at the top would inevitably trickle down to the bottom of the pyramid.

The reality is that the only thing that trickled down was a shower of credit cards, insane mortgages and ridiculously irresponsible loans dished up to the desperate. But it was only a matter of time before the policy of further ripping off the most financially vulnerable was going to end up bursting like a swollen, pus-filled spot. The trite old saying that chickens come home to roost proved wiser than a hundred top economists lined up together.

Whether in catering, call centres, factories or shops, you can only have a mass of underpaid, unprotected workers at the bottom for so long.

How can efficiency, smiles, loyalty and professionalism be expected if the most casualised labour framework invites the exact opposite?

More to the point, how can a society heavily based on mass consumerism manage the long haul if, at the same time, reasonable wages are denied to, literally, masses of people? Sure, they can stick it on plastic, buy goods on HP, or get a 110% mortgage with a car thrown in for good measure too. And no doubt they'll feel parts of the vibrant professional classes for a while. Fantasy island, basically.

Yet it's the equivalent of stuffing a ton of manure into a handbag. For a while you may kid yourself that it's manageable, or even believe that a bigger shovel's gonna make the job easier, and yet in no time the handbag is going to be full to the brim, bursting at the seams, with nowhere for the dung to go except all over your hands, face and clothes.

We may keep ignoring all that, but at whose peril?

Casual, dynamic and crap: a tale of modern employment

Other countries are finally talking about it. Some have started to grasp that, especially in a recession, job insecurity is a liability and not an asset.

Tim started a job. An ordinary job like many others. Nothing fancy, some kind of admin position that pays about a grand a month, maybe a little less. He was told he'd start as a casual, today's best way "to get a foot in the door", while enjoying the benefits of a dynamic, modernised and flexible market.

It soon dawned on Tim that his working conditions weren't the same as his "permanent" colleagues. For instance, with no sick pay for casuals like him, that nasty ear infection that had him bed-ridden for a few days meant less money at the end of the month. Dynamism, basically.

Not only that. Being off sick again carried the modernised risk of his employers no longer calling him. Like it happened to that gangly bloke across the office floor. He missed a few too many days and they simply told him to get his coat. They can do that. There is no contractual obligation, nor are there any notice rights.

Of course, when they asked Tim to work ten days in a row, it was within his rights to say no but, again, he may have done so at his peril. When it comes down to it, who are his managers going to pick: the chap who's just doing his regular hours or the billy-no-mates with no life who's saying yes to each and every overtime request?

Tim remained a casual for 15 months. Fifteen months of dynamic, modernised insecurity playing on his mind, knowing that he was disposable at any moment.

And yet he was doing exactly the same job as those colleagues on a permanent contract. There was no 'casuality' in his job. It was no short-term stop-gap, no fixed-term project or maternity leave cover.

Being a 'casual' meant that his pay started basic and remained basic, that he was cheaper to hire, that he was sackable on a whim and enjoyed no sickpay entitlement, no holiday rights, no pension rights and no redundancy rights whatsoever. As older colleagues left or retired, they were gradually being replaced one by one by dynamic staff like Tim.

And this is what's happening all the time - and increasingly so. The calls for flexibility and modernisation of the labour market turned into a device to push down wages, erode rights and transfer 100 per cent of risks on the (casual) employee.

As previous recessions had been partly blamed on too much employment regulation, the dogma became that "employment-flexibility-will-benefit-society".

Sure, some benefited no doubt. Cutting costs on employment meant more profits and bonuses at the top. On the other side, however, vasts numbers of people remain precarious for years, unable to afford things and relying on credit for the most basic stuff. Chances are labour market flexibility and dynamism became some of the factors contributing to the country's widening income gap.

It's also interesting that the biggest recession in 60 years has taken place within the framework of the most flexible employment system since the 1930s - meaning that an unregulated labour market is no guarantee of business stability whatsoever. Not only that. In a downturn, think of the social impact of having millions of people losing their job with the shock absorber of a redundancy package as opposed to walking home completely empty-handed.

This is why other countries have finally started to grasp that, especially in a recession, job insecurity is a liability and not an asset. In Spain, the government and unions both publicly slammed CEOE, the CBI's Spanish equivalent, for using the recession as an excuse for more flexibility. "What we need is an entrepreneurial reform", said union leader Candido Méndez, adding that a culture of low salaries, cheaper redundancies and low investment "is not the solution".

Most surprisingly, similar words were uttered in Italy by conservative Chancellor Giulio Tremonti. Two days ago, he called for "an end to [labour] casualisation", adding that "permanent jobs should be the foundations of social stability". Mr Tremonti went further: "In the US, your pension funds depend upon Wall Street and, if the tide turns, you end up eating kitkats [living] in trailers and [will have to] deprive your children of an education".

In the UK, however, that's a non-debater. The one attempt to introduce guarantees for 'agency workers' after 12 weeks on a given job went up in smoke last week and, for all the renewed Tory talks of "social stability" and community cohesion (and with people like Iain Duncan Smith allegedly singling out patterns of "family breakdown"), the notion of reforming the labour market towards more job security is not even remotely on the agenda.

And yet, with more and more people either starting a family on shaky financial grounds or being put off altogether, increased employment protection would certainly help to revert the trend.

Labour betraying agency workers

The government turns its back on the Agency Workers' Directive.

With last week's Tory conference was peppered with proposals coming straight from the Thatcherite book, Labour was handed a slight chance to make up some lost ground. Instead, they've just scored another massive electoral own goal.

This weekend, in fact, to the cheers from the CBI and other employers' organisations, Labour announced they're backtracking on their promises to finally adopt the European Working Directive, a set of measures aimed at protecting the most vulnerable workers in Britain while, at the same time, preventing full-time staff being undercut by cheap agency recruits.

The government has now said that the Agency Workers Directive will not be implemented until October 2011, meaning that it will be left to the whim of the next Tory government - meaning, in turn, that it will probably be scrapped.

Aimed at 1.3 million agency workers in Britain, the Directive intended to introduce equal treatment on basic pay, redundancy rights, breaks, maternity, holiday entitlements and time off. This would have covered agency workers after 12 weeks on a given jobs -ending the current discrimination between casual and 'direct' workers.

More and more firms are in fact gradually replacing permanent staff with agency workers, as the latter are automatically on the back foot: cheaper to hire and instantly sackable, with no redundancy rights and not even the right to a written statement of their contract. A recent study by the TUC confirmed what everybody already knew: that "temps" are by far the worst treated workers in the country.

It was a chance to mark a clear difference between those who support tax cuts for millionaire heirs and those who defend the most exploited, precarious and vulnerable workers in the country. Labour missed it.

Welfare handouts, idle people and Portillo's clanger

Lazy notions that go back and forth like a tennis ball between Daily Mail columnists and neo-Conservative politicians have become their default ideological background.

On August 30, former Tory MP Michael Portillo penned a Sunday Times article carrying the headline 'Idle young should be entitled to nothing', a celebration of the ideology and beliefs of controversial American libertarian Charles Murray, a bloke who gained fame in the 1980s and 1990s for his statements about "the underclass" and the alleged link between ethnicity and intelligence (see here for an overview).

Particularly surprising is the fact that the champion of such ideas is Michael Portillo, the man who, a few years ahead of David Cameron, called for a Tory makeover that would disentangle the party from the deepest right-wing morass it was stuck in. Compare in fact Portillo's mid-90s 'SAS speech' with the cuddly toy TV personality currently hopping from one settee to another on Andrew Neil's This Week.

In any case, Portillo is guilty of superficially rehashing ideas that don't have a leg to stand on now any more than they did back in the Eighties. Notions that go back and forth like a tennis ball between Daily Mail columnists and neo-Conservative politicians to the point that they've grown into their default ideological background.

One phrase in particular struck me for its staggering degree of superficiality. Commenting on "the welfare reforms of American liberals [that] paralysed the economic progress of millions", Portillo writes: "State handouts devalued education, discouraged work and marriage, encouraged teenage pregnancy and undermined parental authority. The same has happened to the poorest people in Britain, only more so". Just like that. Action. Consequence. Black. White. Right. Wrong.

Except that the above statement is a "Best Of'' of logical fallacies. Through the mother of 'irrelevant appeals', Murray's (and Portillo's) personal opinion, legitimate though it may be, is deployed as The Gospel Truth even though it's not based on a shred of evidence: state handouts→single parenthood→teenage pregnancy→dearth of parental authority. Essentially, a Daily Mail-sponsored wet dream.

Cue the Murrayite notions of 'deserving' and 'undeserving', 'the welfare state boosting idleness' and the inevitable call to 'cut benefits', which rings particularly shallow as it stems from a country, the US, where people don't even get free healthcare and where waiting lists for PHAs (public housing agencies) are regularly of three to five years and often closed to new applicants such is the lack of availability.

Sunny Hundal on Liberal Conspiracy was the first one to highlight the irony of Modernising Tories veering back to bad old habits. Not many are aware in fact, but Charles Murray is on the payroll of the American Enterprise Institute, the glorious think tank that handed the world eight years of George W Bush, Dick Cheney & Friends. So much for "change".

The discussion that followed, however, failed to pin down the flaws in Portillo's article. If it's true that Britain's welfare state is behind idleness, single parenthood, teenage pregnancy and the breakdown of good old family values, how come most Western European countries (with much more generous and comprehensive forms of welfare) are not experiencing the same dysfunctionalities, at least on the same scale?

This is a simple questions that the Murrayites will never be able to answer. Let's start from teenage pregnancies. We all know the UK is no.1 in the Western European table (pdf). But what's striking is that it's not just prudish religious countries with big families gathered around the dinner table like Italy (where sex education is not even allowed on the curriculum) that are doing much better. The ultra-emancipated Netherlands, as well as Sweden, France, Finland, Germany, you name them, can piss all over the UK's figures.

Rest assured though, here comes the lazy rebuttal: "It's because other countries don't dish up a council flat and benefits to teenage mums. You get to stay home with your own mum and get a little bit of extra help on top of that", wrote one libertarian commenter. Another myth.

There may be a difference in providers, regulations, standards and other important factors, but almost each Western European country has a social housing system biased towards single parents. And it couldn't be otherwise, as they're often amongst the most economically disadvantaged. This exhaustive comparative research from the LSE (pdf) is an excellent tool for those who have the time and patience to go through it, but it's simply false that Britain's the one country where young single mothers are handed council flats like sweets in a playground.

In Holland you can be entitled to €300 a month on top of your flat, in Denmark it's €398, while in Spain the Ayuda al alquiler programme offers people under 30 who earn less than €22,000 pa €210 to encourage them out of the family home. The examples are countless but one thing is clear: council flats don't even begin to explain why British teenagers get pregnant way more than their continental counterparts.

And that's because the notion that Britain's the Eldorado of those planning a career in freeloading is a big, fat, lazy misconception. From dole handouts (£50.94 per week for 16–24 year olds), through to wage subsidies and social housing, if some people managed to put down their Daily Mail for once, they'd grasp within minutes that Britain's home to one of the stingiest welfare systems in Western Europe.

But let's suppose that the mouthwatering prospect of gold plated council flats in Castle Vale and Chelmsley Wood (for our Brummie readers) is what's turning young British girls into breeding machines. Doesn't it sit at odds with the highest abortion rate amongst Western European teenagers?

It is also undisputable that the percentage (as well as the quality) of council homes dwellings available has dipped spectacularly. In 1979, 29% of homes were rented from local authorities. In 2005, the combined percentage of local authorities and housing association tenure was 18% (source: Community and Local Government Housing Statistics, 2006). If the surge in single parenthood and teenage pregnancy was being met by a shower of council flats then, statistically speaking, something doesn't add up either.

The acute observer will also pick up on the fact that, for all their political posturing, the Conservatives are quick to forget that one-parent families surged during the glorious Thatcher years. In 1971 the UK had 570,000 one-parent families. By 1986 it was one in seven families and it reached one in five by 1991 and then 26 per cent by 2000 (see here).

The fact is: there is no simple answer to Britain's social problems and the Tories would do a good job to realise that and quick. It may be equally tempting to say that it's all Maggie's fault and that laying claim to the EU's broodiest teenage girls, most rat-arsed youngsters and busiest clap clinics is all directly linked to the destruction of communities in 1984, to the pressures of the most casualised and unprotected job market, or to the biggest wage differentials in Europe. Or we could even blame the randiest tit-based tabloids and media of the western world for turning society's values upside down. In fact that's already been said. But that too would be simplistic.

In the meantime, if the Tories fancy pointing the finger at the welfare state for all of society's ills while quoting a man who wrote that black people are genetically less intelligent than whites, then they should be our guests. It may well turn into one of this year's biggest political own goals.

The only progressive statement possible

Another think tank is launched and the usual suspects get excited as they dust off the same old soundbites. Not an ordinary person in sight.

This week former Minister James Purnell got tired of sitting at home staring at his fridge magnets and launched his new project Open Left, sponsored by a think tank called Demos.

Cue a series of contributions in the Guardian and beyond. From Polly Toynbee to Billy Bragg, Tony Benn and John Cruddas, the Usual Suspects Brigade of Labour MPs and commentators have been engaged in an "open conversation aimed at renewing the thinking and ideas of the political left".

A great deal of it, however, is a simple rehash of ivory tower-debates regularly taking place since circa 1994. Just look at the number of those 'think tanks'. They're all thinking and you can hear the cogs whirring: Demos, Compass, Civitas and Politeia, one Latin or Greek name after the other.

In those places, professional politicians and veteran commentators are in their element, blabbering about 'change', 'modernising' and 'way forward', 'choice', 'equality of capability', 'open society', 'bigtent politics', a staggering selection of hollow-sounding bits and pieces whose significance to most British people ranges from very little to 'what-are-they-on-about'.

Like noted here, right from the start, Open Left suffers from the usual syndrome: it's an exclusive collection of MPs, Guardian journalists, think tank members plus a squad from Oxford Uni.

So while these chaps talk, think and tank, no doubt with the best of intentions, more families continue to see their homes repossessed, bankruptcies triple in number, and the dole queues swell up - all under the expert watch of Labour (the party these people are mostly aiming their think-tanking at).

And in the meantime Britain's workforce has become the most casualised in Europe, some get sacked at an hour's notice, and a lot don't know if they get rehired tomorrow or next week. Many low-paid get taxed and wonder if it's actually worth the hassle.

Britain's reinforced its status as one of the most expensive countries to live in the EU, so much that millions of people routinely top up their meagre wages with a binge of credit, digging further down each day.

Consumers see their utility bills, bus fares and train fares going up like a possessed escalator and tabloid-induced fears are the best distraction available. Little wonder apathy and political disillusion have reached levels previously unknown to man.

So before I get bogged down with a roll call of problems that would make Joy Division sound cheery, this is the massive political statement that should come from the British left and lead the way in Europe:

Labour and/or the LibDems should announce a radically different way of selecting MPs for the next elections. They should state loud and clear that their ways have changed as they pick a substantial quota of candidates from ordinary women and men: consumers, call centre workers, minimum wage staff, shopkeepers, nurses, Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, bankruptcy victims, factory workers, people on the dole, workers who’ve been on casual “contracts” for years…treated like shit at work, facing the problems that millions of ordinary people face everyday.

It may look like a freak show to an old Westminster-dwelling freeloader but it's a massive progressive statement and the only one that would strike a chord with the electorate. Something in line with the real problems of the real world and not the usual chit chats amongst the usual suspects that go under the guise of a Latin word.

And if this sounds populistic to a think tanker, then they should see what their stuff sounds like to millions of ordinary people.

The Crisis: forgotten victims

Temping workers and victims of repossessions. Who's talking about them?

Amongst the forgotten victims of The Crisis, as we already pointed out in February, there are agency or casual workers, i.e. the millions of people left with no protection whatsoever in the midst of the country's worst downturn in sixty years. This is the legacy of the most business-friendly set-up since the 19th century.

Yet, the bosses and their political mouthpieces are growling that the the labour market should be made even more flexible and that the minimum wage should be freezed or even reduced.

While the bailing out of banks is still regarded as a given across the political spectrum, the fact that hordes of people (don't forget that Britain features about half of all temping/agency workers in the EU) lost their jobs without any notice or redundancy money has hardly made the front-page news. When the word 'flexibility' became one of the staples at the political table in the 1990s, it was dressed up as a stepping stone towards a shiny permanent career.

For masses of workers, however, the only permanent thing they got to know was a non-stop "temping" condition in unprotected, dead-end, low-paid jobs. In the words of TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber, "Too many employers are using agencies to replace secure jobs with reasonable terms and conditions with badly paid, insecure agency staff. Far from providing a bridge to permanent work, this runs the risk of creating an underclass of workers who cannot get permanent work, who have no loyalty to employers, and who have to move from part-time job to part-time job. "

Most importantly- and you won't hear any politician talking about this - this same temping army have spent years in the labour market without any chance of signing up to a pension scheme. If you consider Britain's post-WWII history, this is unprecedented, especially on such a large scale. The risk is that when this generation reaches pensionable age, millions of extra people will be left the wrong side of the poverty line.

Also, the victims of repossessions are hardly hitting the news. You don't have to be a left-wing liberal to realise that losing your home must be one of the worst experiences imaginable. And this is happening to 75,000 families this year on top of the 45,000 in 2008. Think of the amount of documentaries or investigative reports that could be made on the subject.

And yet you'll find that "Smeargate" and the naval-gazing and toss-arguing about Labour's weakness and inability to connect with people (this one by John Harris is a classic example), are receving a hundred times more attention. Stuff that, to most, sound incomprehensible at best and irrelevant at worst.

Millions of people are gagging to know: which political group is ready to offer immediate and factual help to the forgotten victims of the crisis?

A tale of exploitation

The redundancies at the Mini car plant in Oxfordshire confirm that agency workers are the most vulnerable victims of the downturn.

If anyone still wondered why the 1.5m UK agency workers need urgent protection, take a look at what's happening at the BMW-owned Mini car factory in Oxford. The expression "second class employee" doesn't stretch far enough to describe it.

As it stands, these are people who still don't enjoy equal pay, holidays, leave for mothers and the right to not be dismissed for joining a union. Courtesy of New Labour's bowing down to the CBI, the government's watered down version of the Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill means that agency workers can still:

- be fired at will without notice;

- have no general unfair dismissal right;

- no redundancy right;
- no right to a written statement of their contract;

- no right to request flexible working time;

- no parental or paternity leave.

To find out more about the Oxfordshire job losses, click here.

For more on the subject of agency work, click here to read T&G's dossier Simon's story: the truth about agency employment in the United Kingdom.

This time don't blame it on the Unions

Unlike in the Seventies, today's massive downturn has nothing to do with 'striking unionists'. It's taking place in the most business-friendly set up Britain's enjoyed since the 19th century.

The Independent on Sunday today quotes Government sources predicting a return to 70s flavoured three-day working weeks as a last ditch attempt to avoid mass unemployment ("Britain is facing return of three day week"). It makes for good headlines. Say the word 'crisis' and comparisons to the Seventies are immediately drawn.

But if the Winter of Discontent and the rise of Thatcherism are always explained as the inevitable result of decades of strong unionism, nationalised industries, high taxes and overregulation, today's massive downturn is something else altogether. Like Nick Cohen wrote in last week's Observer, "today's crash cannot be blamed on striking trade unionists". If you consider lower income tax at the top, weak trade unions, the explosion of casual work, the availability of cheap foreign labour, City de-regulation, tax avoidance and excessive pay at the top, in 2009 Britain is going bankrupt after two consecutive decades of the most solidly business-friendly and worker-unfriendly economic set-up since the 19th century.

Let's have a look at each factor.

After reaching its top at 83% in 1974, the top rate of income tax was brought down by the Tories to 40 per cent, amongst the lowest in Europe. When Labour got in they made sure they'd leave it untouched. In the meantime, they were extremely generous in setting their capital gains tax rates.

Between 1979 and 1982, City de-regulation saw the abolition of exchange controls and the end of restrictions on lending and hire purchases. Mrs Thatcher revealed in her memoirs that she took "the greatest personal pleasure in their removal".

Mass privatisations remained the order of the day for three consistent decades. Zealous neo-liberal ideology was thinly concealed by calls for 'efficiency' and 'choice', with the prescription that a state burdened with the management of industries, utility companies and railways would always be bad.

And then there's the Trade Unions. The Tory governments of the 1980s proudly introduced several anti-Union pieces of legislation which, in spite of election pledges to the contrary, New Labour never tried to modify. In 1999, official statistics showed that strike activity in the UK was "at its lowest level since records began" in the late 19th century, placing Britain amongst 'low-strike' EU countries.

It may be a coincidence but, more than anywhere else in Europe, the waning of unionisation in Britain coincided with the galloping casualisation of the labour market. From 13 million members in 1979, Union affiliates went down to just over 7 million in 2000. According to the Department of Trade and Industry, only one in six employees in the private sector were union members in 2006. Right when they were most needed, the Unions were pushed to the side by the dominant discourse.

And in fact, the last thirty years saw the notion of permanent employment becoming a privilege. 'Flexibility' became the word every self-respecting politician had to reel off in public. Translated into plain English, that meant the thriving of temping and agency work.

The continuing closure of the manufacturing industry was partly offset by the availability of lower paid employment in the service sector. They may have been on a temporary contract and 40 per cent their original salary, but like a Blairite automata would have told you, they were not on the dole. Skills and training on offer in the days of manufacturing were replaced by the call centre or temping agency. Those who've had the misfortune of working there know that these are places who leave you hating the rest of humanity for the rest of your life without teaching you a trade.

For all the patronising talk of a working class replaced by 'knowledge workers' and organised labour unseated by "self-assured freelancers setting their own terms and running their own lives as they stride from job to job" (to quote Nick Cohen's Pretty Straight Guys), truth is Britain quickly became a nation of low-wage sales assistants, data input clerks, receptionists and call centre workers doing the longest hours in Europe. Yet flicking through the papers in the years of Cool Britannia, negotiating your way past big-brother-o-meters and pop-idol-latests, the general feeling was one of a classless society where we were all freelancers, at worst, and wealth creators, at best.

Blair was always happy to boast that Britain was enjoying the lowest unemployment rate since the Seventies. What he never said though, is that -unlike thirty years before- a huge percentage of people in employment were not on liveable wages, parked as they were in the thin wedge of flexible work. And if truth is anything to go by, a BBC report brought the revelation that unemployment in 2007 was actually higher, at 5.5%, than it was in 1979.

Not to mention that UK-based companies have enjoyed for a few years the added opportunity of cutting more costs and making even more money by offshoring entire departments to countries were labour is cheaper.

Think of all the utility companies, banks and insurances who answer the phone from India or Bangladesh. That was unheard of twenty years ago.

The Feelgood Britannia years saw the country towering over its European rivals in terms of executive pay and bonuses. As Polly Toynbee and David Walker wrote in their book Unjust Rewards, "pay for top executives has been rising by many multiples more than the average pay". In 2006-7 chief executives' pay in the FTSE 100 companies "soared by 37% over the previous year". "In that year national average pay increased by 4% while the chancellor, Gordon Brown, insisted that public sector pay increases be held at 2%".

The UK financial set-up meant tycoons and zillionaires were invited in with open arms and both eyes turned blindly towards tax avoidance and tax havens.

To give you an idea of the dominant discourse in pre-credit crunch Britain, consider how discreet New Labour remained in the face of the devastating effect the non-dom tax avoiders had on the London housing market, where tens of thousands of ordinary families were being priced out by the new arrivals.

Compare it with how Blair and his government likened the firefighters' wage demands in 2002 to the apocalypse, warning that it would cause "terrible damage to the rest of the economy", while the Tories went as far as brandishing the FBU "a bunch of idiots" and a "disgrace to their country". The double standard in rhetoric was outstanding.

Banks netted year-on-year record profits (Barclays' in 2006 were 35% up on 2005, and a similar trend was met by all major British banks until the crisis kicked in) which coincided with the staggering expansion of credit. During the Feelgood years, total de-regulation meant the UK became the country where more credit cards were dished out than hot meals. In 2006 it was reported that "two-thirds of EU credit card debt [was] British". Anybody, casual workers, students, people on the dole, even dogs were generously offered credit.

De-regulation, the service economy, profiteering, low tax, weak Unions, banks running riot, casualisation and the end of permanent employment. When you look at those factors altogether, it dawns how the prophets of neo-liberalism, 'the end of history' and all that bollocks may need a new set of scapegoats this time.

Us and Them

How the right is already winning the argument in the crisis

They're already at it. Last week, from the columns of the Observer, Nick Cohen showed he hasn't totally lost it and warned us of the lesson of history. In times of crisis and rising unemployment, it's the far-right that benefits the most: "As the hard times start to bite, the obsession with identity politics will certainly lead to communal groups competing for scarce resources and shouting 'racist' every time a grant application is rejected".

Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail is, along with the Daily Express (who else), wasting no time. Look how the Express is already banging on about "IMMIGRANT JOBS SHOCK". According to their "EXCLUSIVE" revelations: "The figures produced by the Office for National Statistics reveal that the number of British-born adults in work here fell by 365,000 in the past two years. During the same period the number of foreign-born adults working in Britain has soared by 865,000".

And here's were the simple, tribal, right-wing analysis stops. But this is why it is so popular, precisely because it's so monodimensional. "There's too many non-white faces around". Period.

But they don't tell you the reality of what exactly has been happening for the past fifteen years. They don't tell you the story of how a country was ransacked, not by the "immigrants", but by the City and the Corporations successive governments have been sucking up to in the name of blind faith and a certain ideology.
There are three crucial aspects that need exploring.

One. How manifacturing was allowed to kick the bucket. Read: the way the economy has been managed with Thatcherist (monetarist) policies and a total bias towards the City for the past thirty years. A sector dedicated to producing something tangible and generating real, not virtual, wealth was actively made to practically disappear, which is exactly how hundreds of thousands of British (whatever that means) jobs went and entire communities remained crippled. A small example: when Rover was going bust in 2000, Tony Blair went on record as saying that it is not for the state to step in. A rescue package was refused, nevermind thousands of families and the local economy were in for disaster. That is only one example but that's been the undisputed drive since 1979.

Two. The way the much trumpeted '21st century service economy' was allowed to outsource tens of thousands of jobs to other countries. Again, more British (whatever that means) jobs going and nothing there to replace them. You name one big corporation, whether a bank, an insurance or a utility company, that didn't transfer entire departments and call centres to India. They were already making trillions in profit, as they were, in Britain. But this way they thought they could make quazillions. Obligation to the territory? Customer service? UK jobs? Come on, you commie fool! It's the free market! And if you really, really, want to keep us a call center down in Luton, then you have to accept even lower wages and even crappier working conditions. If not, off we go to Bangalore.

Three. The way small business has been crippled by the rise of Clonetown Britain. Now the Daily Mail is wailing that small business is choking, but wasn't their idol, Margaret Thatcher, who in 1989 paved the way for Sunday shopping and massive retail de-regulation? Isn't this how one Tesco megabox after the other was allowed to trample over 'small business' in the name of unregulated free market? Aside from the question of who was more likely to accept whatever anti-social shift was required, when you get a humongous supermarket with their enormous financial means to stay open whenever they can, how on earth are small businesses supposed to hack it? But why should we care? Weren't we told that there's no such thing as society?

So the Thatcherite chicken is coming home full circle and SHOCK HORROR MASSIVE IMMIGRATION is just the inevitable by-product of greed. So who are those 865,000 IMMIGRANTS the Daily Express is ranting on about? The poor souls that you see taking the underground or the bus first thing in the morning to go and clean that office (I wonder how many scrub the floor away at the Express). Or those who serve that extortionate espresso at "costa fortune" for the same wage 'British' people were doing it in 1982. Or a good chunk of the staff fulfilling the rota demands of 24-7 hypermarkets. These are the only people who have accepted some amongst the worst working conditions in Europe (think working hours, casualisation, low wages, non-unionisation).

The Dailies of this world, Express and Mail, need to clarify what they stand for.

Britain's Best Social Observational Films

Still owing to Q magazine's quest for the unlikeliest list, here's the ultimate roll of honour of the best British movies that brought realism and social observation to the big screen.

Letter to Brezhnev (1984)

Directed by Chris Bernard. With Alexandra Pigg, Margi Clarke
Imagine how crap Liverpool was in the 1980s that Teresa (Margo) begs the authorities for a visa for entry into the Soviet Union. Her dream is to find the Russian sailor she met during his passing trip to Liverpool. Hence an unlikely letter to the other side of the iron curtain. But will Brezhnev help?

It's a Free World (2007)
Directed by Ken Loach. With Kierston Wareing.
Imagine a film-director successfully tackling head-on the bane of our time, labour casualisation, illegal immigration and the dramatic effects on the working class. Ken Loach did it and what a superb one he pulled off.

East is East (1999)

Directed by Damien O'Donnell. With Om Puri, Linda Bassett, Jimi Mistry.
Hilarious and dramatic in one go, this caused a right stir when it came out. Set in 1971's Salford, it's the story of fish-and-chip shop owner George Khan expecting his family to follow his strict Pakistani Muslim ways. But with his kids born and brought up in Britain, it turns out a bit more complicated than expected. Plenty of funny vignettes. Includes the classic line "wash your bastard curtains, you dirty cow".

A Taste of Honey (1961)
Directed by Tony Richardson. With Dora Bryan, Robert Stephens
Big screen adaptation of Shelagh Delaney's play, it's the epitome of 60's English kitchen-sink drama and an almost revolutionary one for its time. The story of Jo, a reclusive 17-year-old girl smothered by her domineering, alcoholic mother, her unexpected pregnancy and her friendship with Geoffrey, a shy and lonely homosexual. Half of The Smiths' early lyrics include a nod and a wink at this amazing drama.

My Beautiful Launderette (1985)
Directed by Stephen Frears. With Saeed Jaffrey, Daniel Day-Lewis.
Entrepreneurial ambition, class envy, mistresses, racism and homosexual politics are an explosive mix any time, any place. In 1980s' England? You're not kidding.

Raining Stones (1993)
Directed by Ken Loach. With Bruce Jones, Julie Brown, Gemma Phoenix. This is Loach at his finest. Set in Major-era depressed Lancashire, it bravely depicts the typical dynamics of the British underworld around a story of social deprivation, petty crime and debt. Gritty realism like the Americans can only dream of.

The Last Yellow (1999)
Directed by Julian Farino. With Mark Addy, Samantha Morton
Slated by critics, this inspired tale of nerdiness, loneliness and despair put Leicester on the map. It features a mulleted thirty-something compulsive liar and geeky loner Kenny. The pair decide to turn into hitmen to avenge a brutal attack. Cue a National Express trip to London and the result is disarmingly hilarious.

The Full Monty (1997)
Directed by Peter Cattaneo. With Robert Carlysle, Mark Addy
If you say you haven’t seen this one yet then you're telling a porky. The Full Monty epitomises that particular British blend of gloom, clumsiness and great comedy that has become the UK's cinematic trademark. Unemployed steelworkers decide to put on an amateur strip show to make ends meet. An amazing depiction of how entire communities got stamped out by Thatcher's policies.

The Mark of Cain (2006)
Directed by Mark Munden. With Gerard Kearns, Matthew McNulty.
The first British film about the Iraq war, it's a mostly-true story centred on the permanent effects of what two soldiers have seen and done as they return from their tour of duty. Showing how sleepwalking into the army entails more consequences than a game of Command and Conquer.

All or Nothing (2002)
Directed by Mike Leigh. With Timothy Spall, Lesley Manville.
Set in a grim London tower block, it's an extraordinarily ordinary story about family life, emotional ineptitude and everyday drama. A hollow relationship that drags along like a stubborn dog and is kept half-alive by small ordinary events will suddenly be tested by something unexpected and much more serious than daily tiffs.

This is England (2007)
Directed by Shane Meadows. With Thomas Turgoose, Stephen Graham. Propelling Meadows to the role of the chief storyteller of his generation, it's a faithful take on some of the English youth cultures of the early 80s. A tale of gritty realism set in the North of England in 1983, it shows how the beauty and fraternity of a light-hearted gang is spoilt by the return of an old friend, a psycho now completely in awe of the BNP's ugly far-right rhetoric.

Saturday Night, Sunday Morning (1960)
Directed by Karel Reisz. With Albert Finney
Finney's debut as he plays nasty-piece-of-work Arthur in this impressive take on the changing attitudes of 1960's British working classes. Arctic Monkeys found it inspiring.

Nil By Mouth (1997)
Directed by Gary Oldman. With Ray Winstone, Kathy Burke
This highly acclaimed drama depicts a grimly accurate picture of domestic violence, abuse, alcoholism and denial. Including fantasic interpretations by both Winstone and Burke. With extra marks if you consider it was Oldman's directing debut. Keep those tissues handy.

The Italian elections

This Sunday the Italians return to the polling booth for the second time in two years. Silvio Berlusconi is running for the fifth time. This time, "he really seems to have broken loose from all restraints", writes Giovanni Parisi from Italy.

In less than a week Italian people will be called to vote for the new Parliament and Government after about two years of Mr. Prodi’s power.

The characters and the subjects of this electoral campaign are very similar to those of the other European countries. We have two main parties, a left-wing and a right-wing, and several other minor parties, usually called “midgets”. The political debate is about the issues that worry all continental societies: economic growth, tax reduction, salary, security, crime, immigration.
However, the peculiarities of the Italian way are not less than the resemblances with other countries.

First and foremost, there is a huge anomaly called Silvio Berlusconi. Head of the “Popolo delle Libertà”, the richest person in the country (€ 139.245.570 income declared), owner of private TVs and newspapers, president of the most successful football team in the world, inveterate playboy despite his 71 years of age, amazingly Mr. Berlusconi still manages to attract a lot of people thanks to his charisma and impudence. In this electoral campaign he really seems to have broken loose from all restraints. In the first meeting with his supporters he tore up the electoral program of the Democratic Party. After that he declared himself worried about the possibility of electoral fraud by his opponents. During a TV interview, when a young unemployed girl asked for his opinion about the lack of stability in jobs, he suggested that she should marry his son or other rich boys like him. Berlusconi’s disdain for the basic rules of fairness in the electoral campaign is well-known, while his never-ending boasts still surprise any reasonable person!

On the other front, the new centre-left Italian Democratic Party is adopting a totally different strategy. Its leader, Walter Veltroni, is having a very serious approach towards voters, trying to focus on his manifesto rather than on unhelpful bickering with Berlusconi. And, believe me, this behaviour in Italy is so unusual! First of all, his choice to “walk alone”, severing the alliance with the communist party, clearly shows his willingness not to compromise with anybody about the contents of his program. His plan is very pragmatic: any ideological approach to the problems is wiped out. He confirmed his intention to keep the Italian troops in Afghanistan while being very critical of Bush’s war in Iraq. As regards internal issues, he advocates tax reduction for small and medium-sized companies in order to help them develop and to boost the economy. At the same time he maintains that salary increases must be promoted and job casualisation eradicated! Challenging commitments, no doubt. What is really astonishing is that, more or less, PDL’s political plan seems to be quite the same, at least as far as internal matters go. Aside from a manifesto about the dangers of communism and an enumeration of Berlusconi’s merits as a politician, basically PDL's core voters agree with PD about the actions to be taken in order to solve Italy’s everlasting problems. So, it’s not as if Italian electors were going to choose among different programs as it should be in a mature democracy: it will be just a matter of trust in the candidates.

In this respect Veltroni could have an edge on Berlusconi thanks to his good management of the city of Rome (he has been Mayor since 2001) and his transparent past as a politician. A very significant act of his electoral campaign took place in Sicily where he clearly took a stand against mafia and camorra. Addressing Mafiosi, he said: “Please, do not vote for us. We do not want your votes!” He’s been the only candidate to speak like that. We know that the votes connected to mafia are in the thousands and, in a very uncertain situation, may be crucial for the election results…And Berlusconi didn’t say a word about that…

(Giovanni Parisi)