Sleepwalking...?

Shaun (Simon Pegg) gloriously oblivious to the
catastrophe unfolding around him
[Universal Pictures 2004]

I have a guilty secret. I like zombies. Well, not so much the things themselves, but I have a modest collection of films, books and comic books all set on a post-apocalyptic earth where humans (the living ones) face a breakdown of all the systems they have previous relied on, fighting a daily battle for survival. 

There is something reassuringly formulaic about the genre. Most zombie stories start before things go so catastrophically wrong. The zombie-spoof movie "Shaun of the Dead" opens with the hero waking up, and sleepily stumbling his way to the electrical goods store where he works. All is normal it appears, and people are going about their lives. Yet every radio he passes, every TV in the shop, and every newspaper hoarding outside each shop is carrying a news story about the spread of a mysterious new virus. Yet it is never more than background chatter to Shaun, and he (along with everyone else) is unaware of the significance of the reports, and oblivious to the news as he sleepwalks towards his new destiny... 

Sometimes I feel a little like Shaun, stumbling through day-to-day living while seemingly every news bulletin carries a story - often lower down the news order - about some new disturbance in the national or global economic markets. Greek elections fail to secure a government that will see through austerity measures... Spanish banks may require a bailout... UK manufacturing index falls... billions wiped of global markets as US recovery stalls... all stories from the past few weeks that could be pointing to a wider storm that threatens to undermine the security we have all taken for granted, and to be propelling us to a harsher new world. 

Locals queue at a soup kitchen in Athens
[Guardian Newspaper Group, 2012]

Two years ago, my partner Jenny and I went to Athens for her birthday. It was a busy, bustling and glamorous city. The food and drink in the elegant bars and bistros were expensive, and designer outlets for every major western fashion house stood on every major street. Now the images coming out of Athens are of food banks, soup kitchens, riots and social upheaval. In April, a 77 year-old man committed suicide, shooting himself outside the Greek Parliament because, his note revealed, his dignity would not allow him to "search the garbage for food."

Greece still maybe feels a little distant from us, so Shaun-like we stumble on, the news of social unrest in Athens remains background noise. It couldn't happen here, could it? Maybe we sit up a little more when Spain is mentioned - after all, we have heard of Santander Bank. Still, it's the Eurozone. "Thank God we didn't join," we think, and go back to our cornflakes.

The present government came into power likening the UK deficit to a household budget that had been left vulnerable by too much spending on the family credit cards. After the harshest budget in a generation in June 2010, George Osborne "hit back at accusations that his spending cuts will plunge the economy into another recession" saying that he had "no choice" but to cut, and that  "...we are shaping the economy of the future by promoting a pro-growth agenda."

Spain next?

Less than two years on, the then-feted "Plan A" has failed. The UK is back in recession. Manufacturing is in free-fall. Greece may have this weekend seen the very close election of the pro-bailout New democracy Party to form a new coalition, but after initial relief, most observers feel even this step is still simply delaying the advance of the Eurozone "virus". How long the Greek people will stomach the levels of austerity demanded of them is anyone's guess, and prolonged and sustained social unrest could well bring any newly-formed government down quickly. Other economists say Greece is a mere sideshow, and the real threat is Spain's banks falling. Today, interest on Spanish government bonds exceeded 7% - above the "danger levels" that indicate a banking system in profound peril. The collapse of a Spanish bank would have global consequences, as the collapse of the Lehman Brothers Bank did in 2008.


And here's the point. This is a global economic market. Likening the economy of UK Plc to a household budget of overspent credit cards, storecards and overdrafts is crass, and simplistic. However, it provides a useful scare story if your true intention as a government is to promote cuts and austerity as the necessary "medicine" to get things right again, while pursuing a more ideological agenda of shrinking the state and public sector, and out-sourcing to the private corporations that fund your party. In a global economy, my spending is your income; and your spending mine. If we both simultaneously cut our spending, you become deprived of income, and so do I. The debt looks scarier when faced with this reduced income, so in panic we cut still deeper... You see the problem. The lesson of every good zombie story is that no one survives by simply barricading themselves in and seeing their resources deplete. They survive through co-operation, communication, and trading. 

Ed Balls has overtaken Osborne as most voters' preferred Chancellor
to handle the UK economy

The solution to the economic crisis is not more austerity. It is not working, and it will not work. The solution is to increase investment in the programmes and projects that will create social infrastructure, that will support growth, that will provide jobs to give nervous households greater income. As these businesses and households feel more hop and less fear, they will begin to spend and invest again themselves, and the ever-decreasing circle of austerity is reversed as once again my spending provides you with an income, and your spending provides for me. In France, the people have chosen a government with such a policy; and in the UK people are increasingly supporting Labour. Last week, for the first time, opinion polls started to show that most voters trust Ed Balls, not George Osborne, with our stuttering economy. 


The people of Greece are facing desperate times. Spain may soon follow. In the UK we still have choice - do not let the Tories tell you otherwise. There is a way to deliver growth and jobs, and Labour is arguing hard to see it made policy.  If you agree with us, join us