Helen Martin: Let's get our priorities right for the new year

Published on Monday 28 December 2009 09:42

IT IS traditional at this time for columnists to look back at the year – or, in this case, the decade – and pick out the highs and lows. The "Noughties", and especially the last couple of years, have been dominated by low spots, so it would be nice to think that by looking forward it would be possible to bring some joy to the party.

I'd love to say Happy New Year, but the unhappy truth is that for most of us, things can only get worse. Like the impoverished widow who turned to a loan shark to pay the leccy bill, we might have averted disaster and kept the lights on, but now it's payback time.

Pay freezes, job cuts, reduced public services, industrial action, tax hikes and price rises are all coming our way to repay the crippling debt of "broke Britain" and finance the burdensome costs of war.

In some ways, our society is more broken and less able to cope with financial hardship and pull itself out of the mire than it has ever been.

If the bankers felt unfairly blamed and under pressure to cut out the bonus culture before, that will be nothing compared to the anger that is about to be unleashed as the full force of economic collapse works its way down to Joe Public's pocket.

Politicians of every hue are happy to trot out the soundbite that we must all "pull together in these difficult times". But so far they have been totally ineffective in bringing about a unity of purpose and convincing the elite (some of those in the financial sector, for example) that they too have to struggle along like the rest of us.

The bankers' argument is that we need top people to produce top performance, and that these brilliantly talented ones who are going to lead us Moses-like to the financial promised land require top remuneration and big incentive bonuses.

We could all argue that. We need top nurses, teachers, policemen, soldiers, ambulance drivers, salespeople, journalists and bin men. Every walk of life would do better if it could afford top rewards to attract the best it could get. If the rest of us can accept that's not possible in the circumstances, why can't the banks, who have more responsibility than most for the mess we are in?

The same can be said for the lacklustre efforts to bring MPs' expenses to order.

Nothing will be as much of a disincentive, or create more unrest and revolution, or limit our desire to work together for recovery, as the knowledge that while ordinary people are looking ruin in the face, certain sections of society remain exempt in a millionaires' la-la land.

"Every man for himself" is an entirely destructive philosophy in times of hardship. Take John Lindsay, the former East Lothian chief executive who recommended his own redundancy just before retiral age and is now launching a legal bid to further enhance his pension pot at public expense. It's easy to knock him, but who can blame him with role models like Sir Fred Goodwin, Michael Martin and the RBS board who threatened to resign if their hallowed bonus system was thwarted? Chancellor Alistair Darling says he doesn't want to reward failure. Too late. It's endemic in business and politics. There's no shame attached to it, and a one-off 50 per cent tax on inexplicable bonuses is not going to change that.

In public, there may be a hint of condemnation. In private, the colleagues and peers of rewarded failures are saying to each other: "Good for him for getting away with it. I'd have done the same myself." Even Tony Blair has abandoned his "man of the people" persona now that he's no longer PM and is openly revelling in his multi-million-pound career while the country he left in his wake is in tatters.

Of course, everyone wants to do the best for themselves and their family. There will always be rich and poor.

But the New Year resolution for whoever wins the next election should be narrowing that gap, uniting the country, making people feel there is some point in working hard towards prosperity and demonstrating that no-one is creaming off riches on the back of others' poverty.

Slogging away on minimum wage with no savings or pension and being taxed to the hilt simply to feather someone else's luxurious nest belongs in medieval England. We need Robin Hood, not the Sheriff of Nottingham. Fairness, not favour.

Good government is about more than doing sums, balancing budgets and increasing GDP. Right now, moralists, psychologists and sociologists are maybe just as, and even more, important as economists in mending fractured Britain – and more likely to help us regain genuine prosperity.