Look around you to the left's criticism of the Rally Against Debt. What do you see? An open exchange of ideas? A complicated debunking of the movement's aims? No, you see two things: people rejoicing in the fact that their union-funded self-interest march was bigger and a left-wing circle jerk over the fact that they managed to infiltrate the Rally and get some dumb signs in.
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On the first point, yes, when you have 2,500 taxpayer-funded organisers for your union events, it isn't going to be that hard to get some numbers together. When you're marching in your own selfish interests, for your own jobs and your own pay, this applies doubly.
The 'March for the Alternative' was just such a self-interest march. It united a range of vested interests all of which rely on the productive sector of the economy to fund their lifestyles, including but not limited to:
- Dying unions trying to stop the decline in their memberships, and now have a membership of just 15.1% in the private sector, which translates into a 1400% higher rate of strikes in the public sector than in the private sector. Obviously for them, the march was an opportunity to show they can accomplish something, but also a drop in public sector employment will mean a drop in trade union membership.
- Public sector workers marching for their own pay and perks, while they already earn a lot more than private sector workers both in pay and in other benefits (pensions, shorter working hours, better job security).
- People marching for their own benefits. Given that the government has only targeted incapacity benefit cheats (in a reform proposed by Labour) and middle class earners' child benefit, most of these will be self-interested benefit cheats and middle class earners who feel that their £50,000 a year isn't enough to bring up a child on.
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By contrast, the Rally Against Debt was a movement in the national interest. A movement to say this is about time that we dealt with the debt and built a platform upon which we're not spending £120 million a day on interest payments.
We attracted people from UKIP, the Tory party, the Lib Dems, the Libertarian Party and the MRLP, all united under one interest, the national interest. We had some great speakers including Martin Durkin, Nigel Farage MEP, Bill Cash MP & Matt Sinclair, and I got to meet one of my blogging idols, James Delingpole [/suck-up].
It was a good day, there were beers, there were laughs, there were chants and there was a serious message to protect our future and that of our children & grandchildren. We don't want the country to end up going to the IMF like the Portuguese and the Greeks, and being forced into EU controls over our tax rates forever, nor do we want to be paying for their bailouts because they followed Labour-like spending plans and ended up with ridiculous national debts.
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What we found out yesterday is that it's a lot harder to get people to rally in the interest of the nation's future than it is to get people to march in the interests of their pay and perks. Having said that, all great movements start off small, whichever side they're on, and there is determination to do Rally Against Debt 2 from the organisers, which will attract a larger number of people as we get more time to promote it.
What we're finding out today is that the left surprisingly lack any reasonable arguments against our ideas. By mocking us because of lack of numbers, or because they got a couple of infiltrators in, all they're doing is ignoring the true clash: a clash between left wing ideology and the need for fiscal responsibility.
57% of the public support the current cuts or deeper, and all four (yes, including Labour) of the best-polling political parties at the 2010 General Election supported huge cuts. We have the majority, so if they want to talk about numbers they can start there, but a majority alone doesn't make your ideas right.
What is obvious to all is that a constantly increasing debt is not sustainable. The far-left will call for anything in order to avoid spending cuts to their ideological big state, but mostly they concentrate on tax hikes and growth, paradoxically ignoring the fact that the two are largely incompatible with one another.
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They also like to ignore the fact that we already have a very uncompetitive tax regime, 95th out of 139 in terms of extent & effect of taxation on business according to the World Economic Forum and the 83rd worst of 86 for top rate of income tax according to KPMG, just below Denmark, the Netherlands & Sweden. Clearly this is not the right country to hike taxes up in.
I've already gone over the pure growth argument on this blog and shown that it won't work. Even assuming a great growth rate, we would achieve full deficit reduction to zero around 2022, with a national debt of over £2 trillion and yearly interest rates of an eye-watering £78 billion a year (£215 million a day).
I don't expect the left to attack these arguments, because their ideology won't allow them to accept that we're right, and there's no precedent nor fact that can show any of the above to be wrong. What I did hope was that the left would engage with Rally Against Debt and propose cuts which won't hurt the vulnerable, and will allow us to tackle what is a national problem.
But reasoned debate and cooperation seems to be a step too far for them, so they retreat back to mocking and insulting their opposition. Good job showing your true colours, lefties.
Well done, RAD organisers, can't wait for RAD 2.
