For many, the structural poverty and dominance of multinationals under neoliberalism have come to be seen as simple facts of life. But the crisis the world has faced over the last two years has within it the potential to become a catalyst for change, shifting the collective consciousness from ‘it is what it is’ to ‘how can this be what it is?’. 

The lack of available PPE and the fact that so many key workers are surviving on poverty pay may once have been perceived as unfortunate but inevitable, but the failures of neoliberal, free market capitalism are becoming impossible to ignore, and demonstrate that a new economy is not only desirable, but necessary to protect future generations. 

The lack of PPE was a difficult issue to ignore. The thought of brave healthcare workers being put in an incredibly vulnerable position rightly angered the country, but the government seemed to receive little blame from many. We know of course that the Tory government deserves some of the blame, but the issue in fact runs far deeper. 

A friend of mine works as a nurse in Manchester. Her contempt for the situation she was left in is palpable – “I walk into Tesco and the security guard had a better mask than I’m advised to use when dealing with covid-19 patients… so no I don’t feel it’s remotely enough”. 

Neoliberalism furnishes the private sector with great power, and reduces that of the public sector; the consequence is supermarkets being better able to protect their workers and businesses relative to the state’s ability to protect the health of its healthcare workers and citizens. This failure of the state to protect its workers, which at one time last year manifested itself in the offering of bin bags as protection, is a structural failure of our economic system, not merely a product of Tory incompetence. 

The ‘rolling back of the state’ has led to a significant decrease in public spending over the course of decades. Public spending as a percentage of GDP in 1975 was just a tick over 48%. In 1988, a decade into the neoliberal revolution, it was just 34%. This has inhibited the state’s ability to fund our public services of course, but has been compounded by the neoliberalism-on-steroids that was post-2008 austerity. 

The NHS has historically seen a 3.7% yearly increase in funding, while in the last decade we have only seen a 0.9% average increase, despite massive additional costs for the NHS. The increase in cost, amongst other factors, is impacted by the reduction in local authority social care budgets. This is on top of a 4.5% increase in the cost of new medical treatments, and the neoliberal marketisation of the NHS, which costs an estimated £4.5 billion every year. This incompatibility between neoliberal economics and the ability to sufficiently fund public services is the root cause in the lack of readily available PPE.

When my friend stated that she rated her day based on how many times she cries, that she was paranoid about not getting tested at the height of the pandemic, and was also redeployed without consultation, it paints a criminally appalling picture of how our essential workers are treated, and begs the question – how can the state show so little care, for those who provide our care? 

Neoliberalism’s purported USP of allowing you as an individual to have control over your own life has manifested into an excuse for the state to wash its hands of basic social responsibilities, from the failure to house people at all, let alone in housing without flammable cladding, to the basic failure to equip those who care for us all. Unlike the many furloughed workers who rightfully stayed at home during the first lockdown, both my friend and the supermarket worker she referred to continued to put on their uniforms and head into work while a deadly virus ripped through our communities. They should be saluted of course, but a clap on a Thursday, was never enough.

The experience of the Covid-19 crisis has punctured a hole in the view that our essential workers are valued enough under neoliberalism. The Labour leadership could now be offering a vision of a future that doesn’t force us to choose between the health of the economy and the health of the people. As a minimum, the leadership should be fighting to secure far higher pay for those who sacrificed so much. And yet, the RCN demands for a 12% pay increase have been completely disregarded by the leadership, notably by Angela Rayner. 

Fighting this shameful timidity is, of course, an urgent priority for all Labour members.

Joe Buckingham is an editor on Campaign Briefing and a member of Leeds Labour Students

Image credit: “Better Pay For NHS Workers Rally – Sheffield” by Tim Dennell is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0