It was the late John Kenneth Galbraith who popularised the term ‘conventional wisdom’ in his 1958 book ‘The Affluent Society’. He wrote:
It will be convenient to have a name for the ideas which are esteemed at any time for their acceptability, and it should be a term that emphasises this predictability. I shall refer to these ideas henceforth as the conventional wisdom.
Conventional wisdom – that is ideas generally accepted as true by politicians and the public – dominates Scottish politics, but such ideas, although widely held, generally go unexamined. Some elements of conventional wisdom, of course, stand up to scrutiny; others do not.
Last week the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Johann Lamont, dared to question the conventional wisdom that certain services ought to be offered to all Scots regardless of their income and ability to pay. She was not proposing to end ‘universality’; she was simply making the point that the introduction of some benefits since 1999 was increasingly unsustainable.
That was hardly a controversial point, although it was immediately attacked as a ‘lurch to the right’, ‘neoliberal’ or, more crudely, ‘Tory’. It’s also been portrayed as a ‘cut’, when in fact Lamont is proposing to spend the same amount of money (the Scottish block grant) in a different kind of way. That’s not a ‘cut’; it’s a re-prioritisation of existing government spending.
Of course it suits the SNP (and others) to depict it that way, and already press releases refer regularly to Lamont’s ‘cuts commission’. Naturally, few pause to reflect on the history of universal provision. Free personal care for the elderly, free bus travel, free bridge tolls, free prescription charges and a council tax freeze were not lynchpins of the post-war settlement, rather they were all introduced – by the SNP, Labour and Liberal Democrats – in the devolutionary era.
Nicola Sturgeon tweeted on Sunday that the ‘inescapable logic of Labour’s argument on universality is that some people should lose child benefit or pay for NHS treatment’. That is a nonsense, especially when you could turn that statement on its head to argue that the ‘inescapable logic’ of the SNP’s extension of universality is to make everything – perhaps even food in supermarkets – free. The principle of universality has always been applied on a case-by-case basis; to question its application in one area is not necessarily to question its application in general.
No mainstream political movement – not even the Conservatives – doubt the state ought to combat what Sir William Beveridge identified as the ‘five evils’: want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. Of course parties differ over the type – and financial extent – of provision for tackling each, but none proposes ending it altogether. To suggest, as some critics have, that Johann Lamont intends to do so is utterly simplistic, not to mention insulting.
But, as ever, the ‘Scottish Left’ has swung into full hyperbolic action, the bloggers Bella Caledonia and Robin McAlpine spewing predictable (not to mention black-and-white) bile about the treachery of Ms Lamont. I found myself wondering how they would have reacted in 1951 when Hugh Gaitskell proposed prescription charges for dental care and spectacles. Doubtless they would have dubbed the future Labour leader a ‘neoliberal’.
To the paranoid ‘Scottish Left’ (which, ironically, probably constitutes a smaller proportion of the Scottish electorate than the Conservative Party), the welfare state is under constant attack from the forces of Conservatism. They spent the 1980s railing against Mrs Thatcher’s ‘destruction’ of the NHS, again in the late 1990s under Tony Blair, and yet again under the present coalition government. One would have thought there’d be a limit to the number of times an institution could be ‘dismantled’, ‘destroyed’ and ‘attacked’.
Funnily enough the NHS, together with the benefits system, survived the Thatcherite onslaught, as it will survive contemporary reforms (for the record I’ve never thought Andrew Lansley’s proposals made sense). Political debate must necessarily rage around how the welfare state is paid for and delivered, but to conflate that with its ‘destruction’ is puerile and simplistic.
So amid the inevitable noise, Lamont posed some pertinent questions: why should Scottish Government ministers with incomes of more than £100,000 receive free prescriptions? And why should working-class school-leavers attending colleges endure substantial cuts (and real ‘cuts’ at that) in order to protect predominantly middle-class students at universities like St Andrews and Edinburgh?
The SNP and the ‘Scottish Left’ have no real answer to such questions beyond fuzzy rhetoric about social justice. Instead they conceal populist giveaways with the phoney rhetoric of social democracy. The SNP has created, and is now claiming to ‘protect’, a formulation of the welfare state that did not exist until circa 1999. I doubt even Nye Bevan would have died in a ditch to preserve free bus passes for those able to afford chauffeur-driven cars.
Of course follow-through is crucial. Although Johann Lamont has tackled the central fraudulence of Salmondism, that Scotland can enjoy Scandinavian-style public services while paying relatively low taxes, she now has to set out precisely which universal services Labour would end in government and how the necessary means-testing would work. Some of her language was also unfortunate (‘something for nothing’) and will be mercilessly exploited by her opponents.
Nevertheless, it seems to me beyond argument that those with higher incomes ought to pay more towards certain public services (either directly or through higher taxes), otherwise where does one draw the line? Should everyone with earned income pay a flat rate of tax? Should everyone – regardless of income – receive housing benefit? Of course not. Free prescription charges do not equal ‘universality’.
That Lamont’s argument can be caricatured as ‘Blairite’ or ‘neoliberal’ is symptomatic of Scotland’s increasingly debased political culture, under which any challenge to the conventional wisdom is immediately shouted down following cursory – if any – examination. That is no way to do politics and the Scottish Labour leader ought, at least, be applauded for bucking a depressing trend.
David Torrance is a writer, broadcaster and political historian. He is the author of biographies of George Younger and Alex Salmond
