The Workers' party? That's us, say Tories in bid to rebrand

'Workers' party' will be used to describe Conservatives as David Cameron tries to rid Tories of their image as guardians of rich

• Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent
• The Guardian, Tuesday 25 February 2014

Conservative party chairman Grant Shapps will say: "The Conservatives are the Workers’ party and we are on your side.” Photograph: Christopher Thomond

They are two words David Cameron's ancestors would more often have put together to describe a summer shindig for the employees on their estates.

But the words "Workers' party" will now be used to describe the Conservatives as Cameron tries to rid the Tories of their image as the guardians of the rich.

Grant Shapps, the party chairman, will stand alongside Sir John Major, the former champion of the "classless society", to announce that the Tories are now determined to show they want to spread – and not defend – privilege.

Speaking at the new Conservative campaign headquarters, the Tory chairman will say: "The Conservatives are the Workers' party and we are on your side."

The name of the Workers' party has a long, if less than noble, history. It was the moniker taken by former supporters of the Official IRA, which split from the Provisional IRA in 1969, when they broke from paramilitarism in the 1970s. Provisionals refer to the Officials as "stickies".

There is also the Trotskyist Socialist Workers' party, which rails against capitalism in the west and used to campaign against the "state capitalism" of the USSR.

The Tories are depicting themselves as the Workers' Party as they try to reach out to blue collar workers. Tory strategists believe that the only way to win a majority, by increasing the party's vote in the north of England and in the Midlands, is by reaching out to voters who may see the Conservatives as the party of the rich – hence the repositioning exercise.

Shapps has decided to go some way to accepting a proposal by the campaigning backbench MP Robert Halfon for the Tories to rename themselves the Workers' party. In a Sun article, Halfon said the party should replace its green oak tree logo with a ladder.

The Tory chairman will keep the party's name but will then describe the Conservatives in the next breath as the "Workers' party".

In his speech, extracts of which were released to the Daily Mail, Shapps will say: "Sir John Major campaigned for what he called a 'classless society, and I would argue this is the society we are fighting for in government today: a Britain where it doesn't matter who your parents are, where you can go as far as your talents and hard work will take you, and where work – rather than benefits – is what pays."

In a sign of the impact of the Tories' general election campaign chief Lynton Crosby, Shapps will release a five point pledge card modelled on the New Labour pledge card of 1997 which sets out the ideas for Britain's "long term economic plan".

The pledges, released to the Daily Mail, are: reducing the deficit, cutting income tax and freezing fuel duty, backing small business to create more jobs, capping welfare and reducing immigration; and delivering the best schools.

Shapps will say of Major: "Imagine a young kid growing up in inner city London – just a few miles from here. His mum and dad are working, but not very rich, trying to pay the bills.

"This young man was not particularly academic. He quit school at 16 and struggled to get on. So let me ask you something: what did the Conservative Party have to offer someone like that? I'll tell you. That young man's name is John Major, and the Conservative Party made him Prime Minister … His life is a symbol of our party. It shows whose side we are on."

The remarks by the Tory chair came as Downing Street did little to distance itself from a report in the Daily Telegraph that Cameron will give an undertaking during the general election campaign not to enter into another coalition even if he falls short of an overall majority. A No 10 source said: "The prime minister has made clear he is going all out for a Conservative majority."

It's not zero-hours contracts that are the problem, it's the bosses who abuse them

As someone who has worked a zero-hours contract, I welcome Vince Cable's consultation – and his intention to crack down on exploitation

• 
• • Ruth Hardy
  • theguardian.com, Thursday 19 December 2013 18.32 GMT

Vince Cable intends to crack down on 'exclusivity clauses [in zero-hours contracts], meaning their workers are guaranteed no hours, but are prohibited from finding work with anyone else'. Photograph: David Cheskin/PA

Vince Cable today launched a consultation on zero-hours contracts, saying he wanted greater fairness, but would not be calling for a complete ban. Having worked a zero-hours contract for just under a year, I think he's right. For many, a flexible contract where you are not obliged to work fits in well with the demands of studying or another job. The problem is not with the contracts themselves, but with the way that employers are abusing them.

It is estimated that about 1 million Britons are on these contracts, and in recent years they have become much more widespread. For those who have a steady source of income that covers rent, food and other essentials, but occasionally need to top it up with extra work (such as students in the summer holidays, or those who have retired), zero-hours contracts can be a good fit for both employer and employee.

The problems arise when companies use zero-hours contracts for nearly all their staff, as a way to cut their own costs and limit the rights that their workers have. The distinction between "worker" and "employee" is a complicated one, but those on zero-hours contracts are usually defined as workers, meaning they have fewer rights than employees. Employees are entitled to statutory redundancy pay and the right not to be unfairly dismissed. Not all workers, however, are.

If you want a job with guaranteed hours, to be forced on to a zero-hours contract denies you the psychological security that comes with knowing how much you will earn in a given month. Insecure employment means that you are constantly worrying about money and making ends meet: you can have plenty of hours one week, and none the next. There is no safety net of a minimum number of hours. There is nothing to stop you from earning nothing.

And some companies have even been using exclusivity clauses, meaning their workers are guaranteed no hours, but are prohibited from finding work with anyone else. Vince Cable has announced that he intends to crack down on these, but it is an indication of how exploitative the current labour market is that they have so far been allowed.

Zero-hours contracts enable companies to transfer the burden of an uncertain economy on to those that they employ. They are assured of a pool of workers from whom they can draw in busy times and ignore in quieter times. At the staffing agency I worked for, we were told that some shifts were "non-cancellation", meaning that cancelling the shift (even from ill health or an emergency) would incur a fine of £10. Yet the company was not restrained by its own rules: once I took a day off my internship to make a non-cancellation shift, as I needed the hours. The day before, I was told numbers had been reduced so I would no longer be needed after all. This short-term cutting of shifts happened often, sometimes just hours before you were meant to start.

A culture in which employers are allowed to treat their workers as disposable cogs in a commercial machine is exploitative, and there needs to be more regulation to ensure that those who want a stable, set-hours contract are entitled to one, while those who need to work flexibly can continue to do so. The needs of businesses should not take precedence over the rights of those that work for them – even in an economic situation that seems to have lapped up most of our principles with it.

Debunking the myths of your employment contract

Employment lawyer Philip Landau looks at some of the more common misconceptions about workers' contractual rights

Staff who familiarise themselves with their contract early on can avoid any nasty surprises further down the line. Photograph: Getty Images

Many workers are not aware of their contractual rights. Their written contract of employment (assuming they have one) is often only read in passing and they are consequently surprised – whether positively or negatively – when they have to rely on it. Here are several things that workers commonly believe, but are not actually true:

All the terms of my employment are set out in writing in my contract

A contract of employment is not necessarily one document; it can incorporate terms from a number of different sources, and can be written or verbal.

Express terms are those that are explicitly agreed between the parties (written or verbal), such as your hours of work, job description, notice, wages and sick pay. These terms could be found in a number of different documents such as a written statement of employment particulars, staff handbook, the job advertisement, payslips or, of course, the written employment contract itself.

Certain terms and conditions can also be implied into a contract of employment by common law or custom and practice. For example, both employer and employee have duty, trust and confidence implied into every relationship. If that fundamental trust is breached, a right of action could follow (in an employee's case, this would be a constructive dismissal claim). Other examples of an implied term can include an employer's decision to pay a bonus every year, or an enhanced redundancy pay, which could give rise to a custom and practice to receive such benefits.

My employer can't force me to relocate against my wishes

Yes, it can if you have a "mobility clause" written into your contract of employment. This would entitle it to move you to another location within the limits set out in the contract (unless your employer is acting unreasonably).

If you refuse to move, your employer may be able to avoid paying you redundancy.

If you do not have a mobility clause in your contract, you can generally refuse to move and still be entitled to receive redundancy payment. However, if the relocation is just a short distance (say a few miles) you could still lose this if you are seen to have unreasonably refused this suitable alternative employment.

My employer cannot vary the terms of my contract without my consent

Your consent may, in fact, have already been given when you entered into your contract of employment as there may be an express right reserved for your employer to make the required changes (a flexibility clause). This could apply, for example, to a change in job role or hours of work.

Such clauses are construed narrowly by the courts and your employer must act reasonably, but an employer will be in a far stronger position if the contract allows them to make this change. You may also have "impliedly" given your consent, especially if the imposed change is of immediate practical effect (such as a pay cut or change in commission structure) and you have continued to work without objection after the change. In these circumstances, there is unlikely to be a breach of contract by your employer.

My employer has to pay my outstanding bonus when I leave

If there is a clause in your contract of employment (which there often is) stating that you must be employed and not under notice "as at the bonus payment date", you may lose your bonus entitlement when you leave. Many are caught out when they resign and not aware of this clause.

Some employers purposefully choose to fast-track you out of the business to avoid you being employed at the bonus payment date – even if you have worked the full preceding year. They can do this by placing you on notice or making a payment under "pay in lieu of notice clause" in your contract. This is especially the case with bankers' bonuses, even where the announcement to make the bonus payments had been made many months beforehand.

I can work my notice when I leave my job

Once you resign or are given notice, you may think you would usually work that notice period. But assuming your employer has reserved the right in your contract, you could also be paid in lieu of your notice or put on garden leave.

Many individuals want to work for as long as possible as they consider prospective employers have more of a preference for candidates that are still employed. But employers will often want to cut ties early once a termination is on the cards – and pay in lieu of notice. You can't object.

If your employer elects to put you on garden leave, you are not required to attend work for the period of your notice, but are still contractually bound to your employer so cannot start a new job either. This is likely to have a greater impact, of course, if you have a longer period of notice.

It is always good to familiarise yourself with your employment contract so you can make the dealings with your employer work to your advantage when you need to. Or even better, try and negotiate more favourable terms before you sign it, as it will invariably be too late otherwise.

Are you familiar with the terms of your contract of employment? Have you ever regretted agreeing to certain terms or been surprised about what it contained?

Exit Europe from the left

Most Britons dislike the European Union. If trade unions don't articulate their concerns, the hard right will

• 
• • Bob Crow
  • The Guardian, Friday 17 May 2013 21.00 BST

A protest in Brussels. 'Millions of personal tragedies of lost homes, jobs, pensions and services are testament to the sick joke of 'social Europe'.' Photograph: Thierry Roge/Reuters

For years the electorate has overwhelmingly opposed Britain's membership of the European Union – particularly those who work for a living. Yet while movements in other countries that are critical of the EU are led by the left, in Britain they are dominated by the hard right, and working-class concerns are largely ignored.

This is particularly strange when you consider that the EU is largely a Tory neoliberal project. Not only did the Conservative prime minister Edward Heath take Britain into the common market in 1973, but Margaret Thatcher campaigned to stay in it in the 1975 referendum, and was one of the architects of the Single European Act – which gave us the single market, EU militarisation and eventually the struggling euro.

After the Tories dumped the born-again Eurosceptic Thatcher, John Major rammed through the Maastricht treaty and embarked on the disastrous privatisation of our railways using EU directives – a model now set to be rolled out across the continent.

Even now, the majority of David Cameron's Tories will campaign for staying in the EU if we do get the referendum the electorate so clearly wants. And most of the left seems to be lining up alongside them. My union stood in the last European elections under the No2EU-Yes to Democracy coalition, which set out to give working people a voice that had been denied them by the political establishment. We also set out to challenge the rancid politics of the racist British National party, yet the BNP received far more media coverage. Today it is Ukip that is enjoying the media spotlight. Its rightwing Thatcherite rhetoric and assorted cranky hobby horses are a gift to a political establishment that seeks to project a narrow agenda of continued EU membership.

But the reality is that Ukip supports the EU agenda of privatisation, cuts and austerity. Nigel Farage's only problem with this government's assault on our public services is that it doesn't go far enough. Ukip opposes the renationalisation of our rail network as much as any Eurocrat. Yet Ukip has filled the political vacuum created when the Labour party and parts of the trade union movement adopted the position of EU cheerleaders, believing in the myth of "social Europe".

Social EU legislation, which supposedly leads to better working conditions, has not saved one job and is riddled with opt-outs for employers to largely ignore any perceived benefits they may bring to workers. But it is making zero-hour contracts and agency-working the norm while undermining collective bargaining and full-time, secure employment. Meanwhile, 10,000 manufacturing jobs in the East Midlands still hang in the balance because EU law demanded that the crucial Thameslink contract go to Siemens in Germany rather than Bombardier in Derby.

Today, unemployment in the eurozone is at a record 12%. In the countries hit hardest by the "troika" of banks and bureaucrats, youth unemployment tops 60% and the millions of personal tragedies of lost homes, jobs, pensions and services are testament to the sick joke of "social Europe".

The raft of EU treaties are, as Tony Benn once said, nothing more than a cast-iron manifesto for capitalism that demands the chaos of the complete free movement of capital, goods, services and labour. It is clear that Greece, Spain, Cyprus and the rest need investment, not more austerity and savage cuts to essential public services, but, locked in the eurozone, the only option left is exactly that.

What's more, the EU sees the current crisis as an opportunity to speed up its privatisation drive. Mass unemployment and economic decline is a price worth paying in order to impose structural adjustment in favour of monopoly capitalism.

In Britain and across the EU, healthcare, education and every other public service face the same business model of privatisation and fragmentation. Indeed, the clause in the Health and Social Care Act demanding privatisation of every aspect of our NHS was defended by the Lib Dems on the basis of EU competition law.

But governments do not have to carry out such EU policies: they could carry out measures on behalf of those who elect them. That means having democratic control over capital flows, our borders and the future of our economy for the benefit of everyone.

The only rational course to take is to leave the EU so that elected governments regain the democratic power to decide matters on behalf of the people they serve.

After 800 years, the barons are back in control of Britain

The Magna Carta forced King John to give away powers. But big business now exerts a chilling grip on the workforce

• 
• • George Monbiot
  • guardian.co.uk, Monday 16 July 2012 20.30 BST

King John, surrounded by English barons, ratifying the Magna Carta at Runnymede. Photograph: Time Life Pictures/Getty Image

Hounded by police and bailiffs, evicted wherever they stopped, they did not mean to settle here. They had walked out of London to occupy disused farmland on the Queen's estates surrounding Windsor Castle. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that didn't work out very well. But after several days of pursuit, they landed two fields away from the place where modern democracy is commonly supposed to have been born.

At first this group of mostly young, dispossessed people, who (after the 17th century revolutionaries) call themselves Diggers 2012, camped on the old rugby pitch of Brunel University's Runnymede campus. It's a weed-choked complex of grand old buildings and modern halls of residence, whose mildewed curtains flap in the wind behind open windows, all mysteriously abandoned as if struck by a plague or a neutron bomb.

The diggers were evicted again, and moved down the hill into the woods behind the campus – pressed, as if by the ineluctable force of history, ever closer to the symbolic spot. From the meeting house they have built and their cluster of tents, you can see across the meadows to where the Magna Carta was sealed almost 800 years ago.

Their aim is simple: to remove themselves from the corporate economy, to house themselves, grow food and build a community on abandoned land. Implementation is less simple. Soon after I arrived, on a sodden day last week, an enforcer working for the company which now owns the land came slithering through the mud in his suit and patent leather shoes with a posse of police, to serve papers.

Already the crops the settlers had planted had been destroyed once; the day after my visit they were destroyed again. But the repeated destruction, removals and arrests have not deterred them. As one of their number, Gareth Newnham, told me: "If we go to prison we'll just come back … I'm not saying that this is the only way. But at least we're creating an opportunity for young people to step out of the system."

To be young in the post-industrial nations today is to be excluded. Excluded from the comforts enjoyed by preceding generations; excluded from jobs; excluded from hopes of a better world; excluded from self-ownership.

Those with degrees are owned by the banks before they leave college. Housing benefit is being choked off. Landlords now demand rents so high that only those with the better jobs can pay. Work has been sliced up and outsourced into a series of mindless repetitive tasks, whose practitioners are interchangeable. Through globalisation and standardisation, through unemployment and the erosion of collective bargaining and employment laws, big business now asserts a control over its workforce almost unprecedented in the age of universal suffrage.

The promise the old hold out to the young is a lifetime of rent, debt and insecurity. A rentier class holds the nation's children to ransom. Faced with these conditions, who can blame people for seeking an alternative?

But the alternatives have also been shut down: you are excluded yet you cannot opt out. The land – even disused land – is guarded as fiercely as the rest of the economy. Its ownership is scarcely less concentrated than it was when the Magna Carta was written. But today there is no Charter of the Forest (the document appended to the Magna Carta in 1217, granting the common people rights to use the royal estates). As Simon Moore, an articulate, well-read 27-year-old, explained, "those who control the land have enjoyed massive economic and political privileges. The relationship between land and democracy is a strong one, which is not widely understood."

As we sat in the wooden house the diggers have built, listening to the rain dripping from the eaves, the latest attempt to reform the House of Lords was collapsing in parliament. Almost 800 years after the Magna Carta was approved, unrepresentative power of the kind familiar to King John and his barons still holds sway. Even in the House of Commons, most seats are pocket boroughs, controlled by those who fund the major parties and establish the limits of political action.

Through such ancient powers, our illegitimate rulers sustain a system of ancient injustices, which curtail alternatives and lock the poor into rent and debt. This spring, the government dropped a clause into an unrelated bill so late that it could not be properly scrutinised by the House of Commons, criminalising the squatting of abandoned residential buildings.

The House of Lords, among whom the landowning class is still well-represented, approved the measure. Thousands of people who have solved their own housing crises will now be evicted, just as housing benefit payments are being cut back. I remember a political postcard from the early 1990s titled "Britain in 2020", which depicted the police rounding up some scruffy-looking people with the words, "you're under arrest for not owning or renting property". It was funny then; it's less funny today.

The young men and women camping at Runnymede are trying to revive a different tradition, largely forgotten in the new age of robber barons. They are seeking, in the words of the Diggers of 1649, to make "the Earth a common treasury for all … not one lording over another, but all looking upon each other as equals in the creation". The tradition of resistance, the assertion of independence from the laws devised to protect the landlords' ill-gotten property, long pre-date and long post-date the Magna Carta. But today they scarcely feature in national consciousness.

I set off in lashing rain to catch a train home from Egham, on the other side of the hill. As I walked into the town, I found the pavements packed with people. The rain bounced off their umbrellas, forming a silver mist. The front passed and the sun came out, and a few minutes later everyone began to cheer and wave their flags as the Olympic torch was carried down the road. The sense of common purpose was tangible, the readiness for sacrifice (in the form of a thorough soaking) just as evident. Half of what we need is here already. Now how do we recruit it to the fight for democracy?

If socialists really did run the show, working people would benefit

 Rather than having to engage in debate, an opponent can be dismissed as extremist

 Owen Jones in The Independent

Having just moved to north London, I was perturbed to be woken on Tuesday morning by a whirring sound in the distance. When I glanced at the Telegraph's front page later that day – which revealed that multi-millionaire Tory donor Adrian Beecroft had accused Vince Cable of being a socialist – I realised it must have been Karl Marx spinning violently in his Highgate Cemetery grave. The great man shouldn't take it to heart: Beecroft strikes me as the sort of bloke who would accuse opponents of privatising the first-born for being a bit "pinko".


Beecroft's smear on the good name of socialism was triggered by Cable's description of his proposals to shred Britain's remaining workers' rights (not least by allowing bosses to fire at will) as "bonkers". Given the contents of Beecroft's report for the Conservative Party, the certifiably non-socialist Lib Dem was being rather mild-mannered.

We are in the most protracted economic crisis since the late 19th century because of a financial collapse and the Government's decision to suck demand out of the economy, and yet our economic elite still attempts to scapegoat people's rights in the workplace. I doubt that the Confederation of British Industry – fervent supporters of Beecroft's plans – believes it for a second, of course: they are merely class warriors attempting to exploit a crisis to push policies that would otherwise be politically impossible.

But it does demonstrate how "socialist" is regarded as the ultimate insult by much of our wealthy elite, who have been in a virtually uninterrupted triumphalist mood since Margaret Thatcher defeated their political opponents in the 1980s. Similarly, an increasingly hot-tempered David Cameron routinely slams Ed Miliband for being "left-wing" at Prime Minister's Questions; it was once fashionable for the media to label the Labour leader "Red Ed". It is much like the term "liberal" in the United States: in the 1950s, even Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower described himself as such, as did huge numbers of American voters. Liberal US scholar Lionel Trilling once felt able to dismiss conservatism as "irritable mental gestures". But now "liberal" is largely hurled as a term of abuse in US political debate, with few mainstream politicians willing to associate themselves with the label.

Socialism used to be a term the Labour Party was more than happy to champion. In its historic 1945 manifesto, Labour announced that it was "a Socialist Party, and proud of it", with the ultimate objective of establishing a "Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain". But the word hasn't made an appearance in a Labour Manifesto since 1987. Curiously, Tony Blair repeatedly spoke about socialism in his early days as Labour leader but, given that no one really believed he was a socialist, it was more a case of "the lady doth protest too much". For Blair and his adherents, if there was a rare, sentimental need to dust off "socialism", it was to mean nothing more than platitudes no decent person would disagree with, like "community" and "fairness".

The reason "socialism" came to be seen as a swear word was twofold. First, Thatcher made it abundantly clear that she was at war with what she regarded as socialism. In her memoirs, she described post-war Britain as a "socialist ratchet" and, reflecting on the 1983 general election, she argued that "socialism was still built into the institutions and mentality of Britain". In her mission to "create a wholly new attitude of mind", as she put it soon after her first election victory, she appeared to crush "socialism" into the dust.

In what was fortunate timing for Thatcher's acolytes, the Soviet empire began disintegrating as her project reached its climax. Although almost all socialists abhorred Stalinist totalitarianism (by the 1980s, at least), these were regimes that described themselves as "actually existing socialism". Their collapse was portrayed as the final discrediting of socialism, and the ultimate vindication of capitalism.

Beecroft's use of "socialism", then, relates to a theory called the "Overton window", which describes what is seen as politically acceptable at a given time. Rather than having to engage in a debate over the merits of bosses being able to dismiss their workers at will, an opponent can be dismissed as a "socialist", which – for Beecroft – is code for "extremist" or "someone with views outside of what is politically acceptable".

The irony of it all is that socialism, of a sort, is actually flourishing in Britain – for wealthy people like Beecroft. The taxpayer bailed out the banks that caused the crisis, allowing them to carry on much as before, courtesy of public money. Private companies such as "welfare-to-work" business A4e leech off the state, as do private contractors throughout our public services. Indeed, our NHS is set to become an even more lucrative opportunity (at taxpayers' expense) for private health care firms like Care UK than it was under New Labour.

The taxpayer splashes out three times more subsidies on private train companies than they did on publicly owned British Rail. Private landlords get away with charging extortionate rents, knowing that the state will pay billions subsidising them through housing benefit. Wealthy individuals enjoy tax relief on their pensions worth billions. Socialism for the rich is thriving while, for everybody else, it is capitalism red in tooth and claw.

If socialists really were running the show in Britain, they would be building a society run by, and in the interests of, working people. Our banks – propped by the British people – would be taken under genuine democratic control, forcing them to operate in the interests of society as a whole. Our booming wealthy elite would be forced to pay a fair share of tax (or, in some cases, any tax whatsoever). After the disastrous failures of market economics, real socialists would be taking our utilities – such as the railways and rip-off energy companies – into social ownership: not old-style, statist nationalisation, but democratically run by workers and consumers. They would bring down welfare spending, not by kicking people at the bottom, but by building social housing, introducing a living wage, and creating jobs. And they would be reversing the scandalous lack of rights that workers have in the workplace, which is what ensured that wages were declining for many before the crash had even happened.

Instead, we have a government (of which Vince Cable is a pillar) ruthlessly forcing working people to pay the immense cost of getting capitalism out of its mess. Beecroft may feel frustrated that it is not politically possible to adopt his attacks on workers' rights wholesale, but he can rest assured that this is a government that stands for people like him – and those pesky socialists could not be any further away from the corridors of power.

In the UK 2,800 bankers earn over £1m. The claim that rare skills command a premium does not apply to them

Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian, 23/11/2011

Here's a game you can play at home. Ask your friends how much they reckon the head of human resources at Cadbury, the chocolate company, pocketed for the last year for which we have figures. In my experience, the guessing will open at around the £100,000 or £150,000 mark. Then, realising that the answer must be stunning or else you wouldn't be asking the question, people go higher, suggesting £300,000 or even £500,000.

Those who place their bet at that very top end tend to smile at the absurdity of it, acknowledging in advance the madness of such a high salary. So far, in two years of playing this game, I have never seen anyone get the right answer. Which is that in 2008 Bob Stack, then head of HR for Cadbury, was rewarded with a package totalling £3.8m, including £2m in exercised share options. The aptly named Stack retired with all that and an £8m pension pot, paying him £700,000 this year and every year.

It's a choice example, even if Cadbury, gobbled up by Kraft, is, like Stack, no longer part of the British corporate scene. No matter how inured you think you are to runaway executive salaries, laid bare by this week's report of the High Pay Commission, that one makes the jaw drop. For Stack was not some master of the universe CEO, heading up a global financial behemoth. He ran the personnel department at a chocolate company. That's not a trivial job. But a basic package of nearly £2m a year? It makes no sense.
Ask people to pinpoint the problem and they might struggle to be specific. They just find it appalling that, as the commission found, today's CEO is often paid 70, 80 or over 100 times the salary of their average worker, when three decades ago the ratio usually stood at 13 to 1. A gap has turned into a vast, ever widening chasm.

Why does this matter exactly? You can't simply whine that it's unfair, insisted the executive recruiter Heather McGregor on the Today programme. "Anyone over the age of seven who complains that things are not fair needs a reality check," she said.

Deborah Hargreaves, the High Pay Commission chair, is ready with grown-up, hard-headed arguments for why runaway pay is bad for business. When those at the top are getting so much more than their subordinates, workers get demoralised, Hargreaves told me; absenteeism increases, and staff refuse to engage with management or support the corporate mission. When the average salary has increased just threefold over the last 30 years, it makes workers sullen and resentful to note that, say, the head of Barclays has seen his pay rise by nearly 5,000% over the same period.

Free-wheeling capitalists should be particularly alarmed, says the commission. Gargantuan executive pay is sapping enterprise: people who might have been risk-taking entrepreneurs have no reason to start their own businesses when they are so comfortably looked after at corporate HQ. And of course such winner-takes-all rewards warp the wider economy. Housing in London is just one example. The bonus boys have driven up prices at the top end, pulling the whole housing market out of reach of would-be first-time buyers at the other end. It's trickle-down economics at its worst: the wealth of the rich doesn't cascade downwards, but its corrosive consequences do.

Defenders of the wealthy brush aside such talk, certain their critics' real beef resides elsewhere, in envy or a retro-communist desire for uniformity. "Move to Cuba" was McGregor's most succinct soundbite.
In one way she's right: concerns over worker demoralisation and reduced entrepreneurial spirit do not lie at the heart of the matter. Our objection to telephone-number salaries goes deeper. What it comes down to is desert – a notion so deeply ingrained that, yes, even a seven-year-old can grasp it: the belief that people should deserve the rewards they get.

That's why the "move to Cuba" remark was so off beam. Most people have long accepted that there will be a differential in pay that, in the hoary example, the brain surgeon will earn more than the dustman. People understand that some skills are rare and therefore command a greater premium. They even accept that this can result in extreme outcomes, with the likes of Wayne Rooney trousering £250,000 a week. But none of that logic applies to the current state of corporate pay.

Rooney is truly a one in a hundred million talent; there might be just two dozen people in the world who could match his skills. But with all due respect to Bob Stack, that is not true of him. Nor can it possibly be true of the 2,800 staff in 27 UK-based banks who, according to the Financial Services Authority, received more than £1m each in 2009. Whatever these people are able to do, it's clearly not rare.

Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian 23/11/2011

Ah, comes the reply, but these are the cream of the international crop, among the very best bankers in the world. The commission report blows a hole in that tired argument, revealing there's hardly any cross-border poaching of corporate talent. Not many of our monolingual high earners could work abroad and even fewer would want to. They like it here and do not have to be paid lottery jackpot money to stay.

So rarity and competition can't justify these rates, and nor can any old-fashioned notion of desert: there is no society-wide consensus that says these people do such valuable, critical work they deserve their riches. On the contrary, we lament that the City lures maths and science graduates who might otherwise have become great engineers or scientists, paying them instead to move digits on a screen producing nothing of any discernible value whatsoever.

When reward slips its moorings from merit, this surely poses a danger that goes beyond our economic prospects. What message are we sending the next generation of Britons? Why should they aspire to become a surgeon or a headteacher or a judge, when those once top-paid jobs now earn a tiny fraction of the salary attached to a relatively cushy, low-risk seat in the boardroom or on the trading floor?

Strikingly, the commission found that even the mega-earners do not kid themselves they deserve their pay. They admitted that they had got lucky, that they worked no harder and risked no more than those earning much less. But they did think they were "entitled" to what they got. Hargreaves draws no parallel with the August rioters, except that they "showed that same sense of entitlement, that they could take trainers or a TV, as those bankers who thought they could take a bonus, even if they had brought a bank to its knees".
The commission has plenty of bright ideas for change. Ignore the City bleats that meaningful action has to be international, which sadly is impossible: action has only been impossible up till now because the UK, batting for the City, has blocked any EU attempt to tackle high pay. But the larger change will be cultural. We need to revive the lost notion of merit and desert, to make those bagging huge, undeserved salaries feel a sense of shame or at least loss of reputation at such unwarranted rewards. We have the Fairtrade scheme, so why not a Fair Pay kitemark granted only to products made by companies who pay defensible rates? Such a seal of approval should be given only sparingly – only to those who have really earned it.

I'm starting to think that the Left might actually be right

 Charles Moore in The Telegraph on 23/7/2011

It has taken me more than 30 years as a journalist to ask myself this question, but this week I find that I must: is the Left right after all? You see, one of the great arguments of the Left is that what the Right calls “the free market” is actually a set-up.

The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything.

In the 1970s and 1980s, it was easy to refute this line of reasoning because it was obvious, particularly in Britain, that it was the trade unions that were holding people back. Bad jobs were protected and good ones could not be created. “Industrial action” did not mean producing goods and services that people wanted to buy, it meant going on strike. The most visible form of worker oppression was picketing. The most important thing about Arthur Scargill’s disastrous miners’ strike was that he always refused to hold a ballot on it.

A key symptom of popular disillusionment with the Left was the moment, in the late 1970s, when the circulation of Rupert Murdoch’s Thatcher-supporting Sun overtook that of the ever-Labour Daily Mirror. Working people wanted to throw off the chains that Karl Marx had claimed were shackling them – and join the bourgeoisie which he hated. Their analysis of their situation was essentially correct. The increasing prosperity and freedom of the ensuing 20 years proved them right.

But as we have surveyed the Murdoch scandal of the past fortnight, few could deny that it has revealed how an international company has bullied and bought its way to control of party leaderships, police forces and regulatory processes. David Cameron, escaping skilfully from the tight corner into which he had got himself, admitted as much. Mr Murdoch himself, like a tired old Godfather, told the House of Commons media committee on Tuesday that he was so often courted by prime ministers that he wished they would leave him alone.

The Left was right that the power of Rupert Murdoch had become an anti-social force. The Right (in which, for these purposes, one must include the New Labour of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown) was too slow to see this, partly because it confused populism and democracy. One of Mr Murdoch’s biggest arguments for getting what he wanted in the expansion of his multi-media empire was the backing of “our readers”. But the News of the World and the Sun went out of the way in recent years to give their readers far too little information to form political judgments. His papers were tools for his power, not for that of his readers. When they learnt at last the methods by which the News of the World operated, they withdrew their support.

It has surprised me to read fellow defenders of the free press saying how sad they are that the News of the World closed. In its stupidity, narrowness and cruelty, and in its methods, the paper was a disgrace to the free press. No one should ever have banned it, of course, but nor should anyone mourn its passing. It is rather as if supporters of parliamentary democracy were to lament the collapse of the BNP. It was a great day for newspapers when, 25 years ago, Mr Murdoch beat the print unions at Wapping, but much of what he chose to print on those presses has been a great disappointment to those of us who believe in free markets because they emancipate people. The Right has done itself harm by covering up for so much brutality.

The credit crunch has exposed a similar process of how emancipation can be hijacked. The greater freedom to borrow which began in the 1980s was good for most people. A society in which credit is very restricted is one in which new people cannot rise. How many small businesses could start or first homes be bought without a loan? But when loans become the means by which millions finance mere consumption, that is different.

And when the banks that look after our money take it away, lose it and then, because of government guarantee, are not punished themselves, something much worse happens. It turns out – as the Left always claims – that a system purporting to advance the many has been perverted in order to enrich the few. The global banking system is an adventure playground for the participants, complete with spongy, health-and-safety approved flooring so that they bounce when they fall off. The role of the rest of us is simply to pay.
This column’s mantra about the credit crunch is that Everything Is Different Now. One thing that is different is that people in general have lost faith in the free-market, Western, democratic order. They have not yet, thank God, transferred their faith, as they did in the 1930s, to totalitarianism. They merely feel gloomy and suspicious. But they ask the simple question, “What's in it for me?”, and they do not hear a good answer.
Last week, I happened to be in America, mainly in the company of intelligent conservatives. Their critique of President Obama’s astonishing spending and record-breaking deficits seemed right. But I was struck by how the optimistic message of the Reagan era has now become a shrill one. On Fox News (another Murdoch property, and one which, while I was there, did not breathe a word of his difficulties), Republicans lined up for hours to threaten to wreck the President’s attempt to raise the debt ceiling. They seemed to take for granted the underlying robustness of their country’s economic and political arrangements. This is a mistake. The greatest capitalist country in history is now dependent on other people’s capital to survive. In such circumstances, Western democracy starts to feel like a threatened luxury. We can wave banners about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, but they tend to say, in smaller print, “Made in China”.

As for the plight of the eurozone, this could have been designed by a Left-wing propagandist as a satire of how money-power works. A single currency is created. A single bank controls it. No democratic institution with any authority watches over it, and when the zone’s borrowings run into trouble, elected governments must submit to almost any indignity rather than let bankers get hurt. What about the workers? They must lose their jobs in Porto and Piraeus and Punchestown and Poggibonsi so that bankers in Frankfurt and bureaucrats in Brussels may sleep easily in their beds.

When we look at the Arab Spring, we tend complacently to tell ourselves that the people on the streets all want the freedom we have got. Well, our situation is certainly better than theirs. But I doubt if Western leadership looks to a protester in Tahrir Square as it did to someone knocking down the Berlin Wall in 1989. We are bust – both actually and morally.

One must always pray that conservatism will be saved, as has so often been the case in the past, by the stupidity of the Left. The Left’s blind faith in the state makes its remedies worse than useless. But the first step is to realise how much ground we have lost, and that there may not be much time left to make it up.