UK Edition
Is voting in the UK today like shopping in a Soviet supermarket? Now the Conference season has ended, that seems to be a rational question to pose.
After Liverpool, we know a little more of how Labour intends to govern. The party has been circulating a 116 page policy document that will form the core of its manifesto next year, and Peter Mandelson – “omnipresent” at Liverpool, according to reports – rather gave the game away in a speech at a dinner at the conference.
There he told his hosts, the City of London Corporation, that they were “almost to the left” of Labour these days. His message: don’t worry, we’re the continuity Conservatives. It’s funny he should say that, for when it comes to industrial policy, the Conservatives have governed as continuity New Labour.
Mandelson famously boasted that he had “reclaimed industrial strategy from the smokestacks of the 1960s and 70s” for Gordon Brown. His interventionism was enthusiastically embraced by Vince Cable for the 2010 coalition government.
And it persists today, in the legacy of “sector deals”. Some ten economic sectors covered, ranging from aerospace to tourism. But not all sectors are equal, and here both parties agree that one is more equal than the others: renewable energy.
Labour promises us an “accelerated transition to net zero”, but the Conservatives, despite wishing us to think otherwise recently, still promise to take us to the same destination, at more or less at the same pace.
Many of the mandates remain unchanged. One example, as The Telegraph has reported, is the ZEV (zero emission vehicle) ratchet, which imposes quotas on car manufacturers, requiring EVs to comprise 80pc of a car maker’s total sales by 2030, or face a £15,000-per-engine fine for falling below the quota.
Of course, net zero itself is mandated by legislation: a 78pc reduction in the UK’s CO2 emissions by 2035. Only by modifying primary legislation can a government be released from these obligations. Neither party appears remotely willing in doing so.
We now know that Labour has promised a “national wealth fund” and a Great British Energy – amongst dozens of new quangos. But these we already have, just in different guises.
And for some Conservatives, this still isn’t dirigiste enough. One Conservative newsletter has been heavily promoting the economist Mariana Mazzucato as recommended reading – twice in September.
Mazzucato advocates “mission-oriented industrial and innovation policies” to “change capitalism”, the subtitle of her latest book, and direct “institutional and behavioural change” in areas such as climate change and social justice.
I have previously compared her desired model to Mussolini’s Councils of Corporations, the instrument by which the state directed all economic activity. This may be unfair to the Italian dictator – for even Il Duce didn’t call for climate lockdowns.
The Reader’s editor Gavin Rice, who runs the Future of Conservatism Project for think-tank Onward, tells me I should be more open-minded about receiving such exciting new ideas. But such tribal posturing leaves some major concerns unaddressed.
Over the past two decades, both parties have vowed to create high value, well-paying jobs and apprenticeships. But we’ve ended up with a low wage service economy dependent on low-skilled mass immigration – a humiliating Deliveroo Britain where workers are increasingly beset by job insecurity.
The most curious convergence between the Parties is emerging over how to deal with Big Tech monopolies, and artificial intelligence.
Evidence is emerging of the tech monopolies supranational power.
Evidence in a lawsuit filed by the The Federal Trade Commission, along with 17 US states, alleges that one of Amazon’s stealth schemes, codenamed “Project Nessie”, allowed it to raise prices by $1bn.
Amazon rejects the claim, but something similar has emerged in the ongoing Google antitrust lawsuit. Here another secret scheme, codenamed “Project Momiji”, allowed it to raise prices in 2017 by some 15pc, without advertisers noticing.
Businesses large and small pay the bill, and ultimately pass the cost along to consumers, in the form of more expensive goods and services. Monopolies are able to do this, and antitrust has become a populist bipartisan concern in the United States – but curiously, not Westminster.
And far from railing against powerful monopolies, Labour is snuggling ever closer to big tech, Politico has reported.
Here we detect the influence of the technocratic Tony Blair Institute, funded by tech giant Oracle to the tune of tens of millions of pounds, and the creepy sounding “Labour for Long Term”, aligned with the cranky effective altruism movement. Labour’s policy document contains a commitment to “long-termism” – which may or may not be a dog whistle.
“Anything that causes a fall-out with a powerful lobby is off the agenda,” one pro-market Labour movement figure told me last week.
That’s quite understandable, but by converging, both parties seem to have forgotten why they were there in the first place. Whether its markets or workers’ dignity, key concerns have been thrown under the bus. They merely compete for attention, to be the most tech utopian of them all.
Some may find this analysis cynical. Perhaps dedicated Westminster correspondents, who have been trained since infancy to detect subatomic traces of policy differences, rather like sniffer dogs, will disagree. But to the rest of us, the major parties increasingly resemble brands of one omnipotent, but rather useless Uniparty.
Whoever wins the next election, Big Tech will hold the power
Antitrust has become a populist bipartisan concern in America – but curiously, not Britain