Right-Wing Programmes For A Right-Wing Executive
The draft budget and program for government announced by the Six County executive on Thursday (October 26) underline the right-wing, neo-liberal agenda of that body.
The budget and the programme for government are primarily the work of Stormont finance minister Peter Robinson and first and deputy first ministers Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, but they have also received the early approval of their colleagues on the executive.
From the privatisation of schools to the under-funding of the health service, the proposed plans are a continuation of the ‘new Labour’ ideology imposed by British direct rule ministers for much of the last decade.
The draft budget will kick-start the building of 18 ‘public-private partnership’ schools – where private companies build and maintain schools in return for mortgage-style government payments – while the programme for government proposes integral private involvement in the areas of social housing and further education.
Trade unionists in the Six Counties have already expressed concern about indications in Robinson’s budget that public sector jobs are to be slashed.
NIPSA general secretary John Corey was particularly scathing.
“We will not stand by and allow arbitrary, unjustified public service staffing cuts without any regard to workloads and public service demands to go unchallenged,” he said.
However, probably the most worrying aspect of the Stormont proposals is the ringing endorsement they have received from the rich and powerful.
Declan Billington, chair of the Confederation of British Industry said the draft budget will “build confidence across the Northern Ireland (sic) business community to join with government in investing in our future”.
“We’re relieved and delighted that we’ve been listened to by the Stormont executive,” said Michael Wightman on behalf of the wealthy Northern Ireland Manufacturing Focus Group. Philip McDonagh of business advisers PwC called the executive’s plans “exactly what we hoped for when the business community supported the return of devolution”.
Éirígí chairperson Brian Leeson said the programme for government and the draft budget were an indication of both the intention and the incapacity of the Stormont institutions.
“In terms of economic policy, Peter Robinson is somewhere to the right of George Bush. Yet he is the politician who has the responsibility for devising an economic programme for citizens in some of the most deprived areas of western Europe.
“In terms of education, the increasing use of ‘public-private partnership’ schemes to fund the building of schools is totally unacceptable and can only lead to a situation where our educational institutions are run on the basis of profit-making as opposed to what is good for students.
“This encroachment of the private sector into areas that should most definitely be operated in the public interest can be seen across the board. Whether it’s the proposal to build a strategy for social housing ‘in partnership’ with property developers or the plan to ‘increase the commercialisation of university and college research’, the program for government and the draft budget have the fingerprints of neo-liberal thinkers all over them.
“Even if the Six County minister for finance and his colleagues had the most progressive and socially sound intentions, the privatisation agenda could not be effectively countered.
“This is the case because the institution that operates in Stormont is not a government. It is an administrative body for the policies of the British government – which it relies on for monetary handouts. The British government will distribute these handouts in such a way as to make privatisation practically unavoidable – unavoidable, that is, for politicians who will implement any policy, however distasteful, in order to keep the Six County institutions running smoothly.
Brian concluded: “For anybody who is interested in measuring economic and social growth in terms of human development and not private profit making, Britain’s Stormont institutions are proving to be worthless at best and counter-productive at worst. Their policies and their existence should be opposed at every opportunity.”