Show Hide image Internet 28 February 2017 Spitting out the Red Pill: Former misogynists reveal how they were radicalised online Subscribers of Reddit's most notoriously sexist subreddit explain what happens when you change your mind. By Amelia Tait Follow @@ameliargh Sign up for our weekly email * João describes swallowing the Red Pill as a feeling greater than winning the lottery. Aged 17 and a self-described “late bloomer virgin”, he was growing apprehensive about going to college when he stumbled across an online community that seemed to hold all the answers. “I believed in it so much,” the now 24-year-old tells me via Skype from his home in Portugal, “It was such a fantastic thing to me… Back then I used to say that I was so happy about finding out about the Red Pill and pick up artists that I would rather be with them than win the lottery. “I don't know why I believed so deeply because it really makes no sense.” Though João experienced two happy years with fellow Red Pillers, his opinions have now drastically changed. During the course of our half hour conversation, he uses one word exactly twenty times: “cult”. *** The Red Pill is a philosophy, and reddit.com/r/TheRedPill is its home. The nearly 200,000 subscriber strong subreddit describes itself as a place for the “discussion of sexual strategy in a culture increasingly lacking a positive identity for men.” In itself, perhaps this doesn’t sound too bad. In practice, to “swallow the Red Pill” is to accept the uncomfortable truth about reality. The phrase comes from 1999’s hit film The Matrix, in which the protagonist Neo must choose between the Red Pill – which would allow him to escape the Matrix but see the real, darker world – and the Blue Pill – continued existence in his comfortable, but ultimately fake, life. In r/TheRedPill’s instance, the “dark truths” that the subreddit’s subscribers have swallowed are these: feminism is toxic, sexism is fake, men have it harder than women, and everything the media teaches about relationships is a lie. In reality (the argument goes) women don’t want soft-centred men/chocolates; they want to be dominated, controlled, and manipulated. The most extreme Red Pillers even believe that women want to be raped. “Rejection is not rejection,” reads an extract from the subreddit’s most popular post. “When a woman insults you, belittles you, mocks you, or says something provocative to get a reaction — these are all examples of active tests.” By following the subreddit’s advice, its subscribers are promised a life of successful sexual encounters. If they ignore the Red Pill, they will undoubtedly be rejected, cheated on, and dumped. “They have theories that are not easy to prove or disprove, they are based on beliefs like all women cheat, they like cheating, and all women are not loyal,” explains João. “There’s this whole conspiracy thing where women are against you, they are this imagined enemy… as well as there's a whole conspiracy that society is against men, that society is anti-male so to speak, that liberals are fucking up society, that feminism is fucking up society. “I believed everything, everything. And if you didn't believe everything… if you go on Red Pill Reddit and you disagree with someone they either delete your comments or they try to make fun of you and shame you. You can't criticise anything because people will quickly try to diminish you. So I really believed every little thing.” *** Beliefs such as “all women are evil” and “all women cheat” are what are known as conspiracy stereotypes. Like traditional conspiracy theories, they often rely on cherry-picked evidence. The Red Pill in particular exploits evolutionary psychology to argue that women are wired to want men with a strong “frame”. Much of the subreddit’s misogyny is justified by one of their favourite acronyms, AWALT: “all women are like that”. “The movement’s use of evolutionary psychology convinced my rational mind that everything I read was a scientific fact supressed by feminists,” explains Jack, a British 24-year-old former r/TheRedPill subscriber. “I began to see male victimhood throughout society,” he tells me over Reddit’s messaging service. “It fed the confirmation biases that society was built around men catering to women in return for sex.” Mike Wood, a lecturer at the University of Winchester and an expert on the psychology behind conspiracy theories, explains that people who believe in conspiracy stereotypes such as AWALT tend to have what is known as a “Manichean” worldview. “They feel the world is divided into absolute good and absolute evil, and the people behind the conspiracies are of course the absolute evil ones," he says. Psychologists have a concept, entitativity, which describes the extent to which a group of people are perceived as a single entity. "If you think that a group is entitative, it’s like a swarm of bees or ants," Wood explains. "They’re not just a collection of individuals, they’re actually that a single organism that moves with singular purpose. I think that’s probably likely to be true for groups like the Red Pill, that look at women and see just a flock of harpies.” Subscribers' experiences in the real world can reinforce their misogynistic views. Trevor*, a 34-year-old former Red Piller, explains how the subreddit led him to towards more extreme views of women. “When I was 30, I broke up with a woman who just not a very good person,” he tells me over Skype. “I broke up with her one the phone…20, 30 minutes later she shows up [to my apartment] completely hysterical. I remember I had a large metal tin bowl with potatoes on the counter which I was going to cook for dinner or something, and she grabs it, chucks the potatoes all through the apartment… her shirt catches on a corner of a countertop and then she proceeds to tear the rest of it off like Hulk Hogan.” When Trevor decided to call the police, it was he that ended up arrested. “I went from being in my home peacefully to being in a jail cell all because I’m a man and she's a woman. “Now that was a very immoral human being who I was dealing with, certainly not all women are like that but that’s another brainwashing technique of the Red Pill, they say that all women are the same… “It kind of tricks you so you're agreeing about one thing and the next thing you know you're agreeing about all these other things.” *** These “tricks” aren’t accidental, according to João in Portugal, who now firmly believes that the Red Pill is akin to a cult. “If you go to Red Pill and you say something that those guys don't really like then they will just delete your comments or just say that you are a ‘mangina’ or a ‘feminist’ or a ‘cuck’," he told me. "They have this social influence mechanism where they pre-emptively invalidate all criticism by criticising people back… and it is typical of cults to do this.” Other Red Pillers I spoke to also mentioned the threat of harassment. João also believes the Red Pill preys on those who are easily manipulated – be they young, nerdy, insecure, virgins, or simply going through a difficult time in life. Most of the ex-Red Pillers I spoke to were teenagers when they became involved in the subreddit, and most say they were exceptionally lonely at the time. Callum*, a 29-year-old from Western Pennsylvania, has a mild case of Asperger’s syndrome and speculates that “a great many” people on the Red Pill are likely on the spectrum. He became involved with the Red Pill at 19. Though he had spent much of his time at school not caring about girls, he became insecure when he started college. “I worried that I wasn't thin enough, I wasn't tall enough, I wasn't endowed enough,” he tells me over Reddit. “I started getting very bitter about relationships in general. At no point was I ever actually angry or bitter towards women, but I was frustrated with the established societal rules, that men had to put on the show and be the best they could and that women got to pick and choose without trying much themselves, and I wasn't being picked. “When I turned to the Red Pill subreddit I immediately felt like I figured it out. Like a cult, they give you a few obvious truths (men should be more confident, work towards physical fitness, women aren't divine perfect beings to be worshipped but flawed people, etc.). I definitely think that this enabled me to slide into accepting the more toxic beliefs of the subreddit. “Any time someone said something outright sexist or alarming, too much for me, others would interject and say that those are just being angry and we should let them vent.” *** Over the last year, the Red Pill subreddit has become a home for other hateful beliefs. A year ago, the alt-right’s most vocal figurehead, Milo Yiannopoulous, did an AMA (“ask me anything”) on the sub. It is now commonly accepted that the alt-right recruited men from the Red Pill and attempted to radicalise them. In fact, the alt-right has become so conflated with the Red Pill that this month a brand new subreddit – the Red Pill Right – had to be made. “My focus with this new sub is to keep us from diluting the discussion of sexual strategy on our main sub,” wrote its creator. But how has a place designed for discussions about sex and women become so radically political? “That is the power of the ideology,” explains Jack, the British Red Piller. “It gives you a lens that brings out the most cynical explanation of social activities… For a while, it seemed as if a blindfold was lifted and I saw manipulation everywhere.” Jack became involved with the Red Pill when he was 23, and had been single for a “long” time. “I was numb, lonely and desperate,” he says. “It was a terrible time in my life.” Though Jack only spent two months on the subreddit, he quickly fell in with anti-feminist and libertarian rhetoric. “An uncomfortable misogynistic streak grew within me,” he says. “At one point [I] thought that Donald Trump was a good candidate for President.” Like many of the places we frequent online, the Red Pill has become an echo chamber. The psychologist I spoke to, Mike Wood, told me this can lead to people adopting more and more extreme views. "If you’re in some sort of a group that defines itself by its opinions, then people will get more and more polarised over time," he says. "Individuals will try to conform to what the group mandates.” This is true of not just the Red Pill, but its opponents. While radical feminists on Tumblr, for example, become more extreme in their views, so too does the subreddit. In many ways, the extremes of each group justify one another's existence in their minds. “People within the group will try to get social approval from other members of the group,” Wood continues. “So they’ll play to that standard that they’re supposed to live up to – and then people will take it further because they reason ‘If I’m more extreme about this then I will get more approval’, so the norms of the group shift over time.” Jack’s story aligns with this. “Trump represented everything that the Red Pill told me to value at the time in a mainstream political candidate: anti-PC, anti-feminist and social Darwinist policy,” he says. Those aspects of Trump that he still found unpalatable, or racist, he accepted as "a price to pay for the other stuff". *** There exists another misogynistic subreddit which is, in fact, deeper and darker than the Red Pill. Reddit.com/r/Incels is a place for “involuntary celibates” – people who are struggling to lose their virginity – to talk. In theory, once again, this is not terrible. In practice, however, the nearly 10,000 subscriber strong group breeds bitterness towards women, and a hatred of “Chads” – men who are romantically successful. Elliot Rodger, the Santa Barbara student who killed six people in 2014, considered himself an incel. For Callum, the Red Piller from Western Pennsylvania, this subreddit spoke more specifically to his own situation. “The feelings of inferiority and utter hopelessness are indescribable and the worst things I have ever felt in my life,” he says. “I think that outsiders looking in just deem these people very bitter and angry and don't understand the long process it takes to get there… It takes a long and drawn out battle with yourself that those people have lost. “It's listening to the voices in your head, telling you how shit you are, telling you that you will never be wanted, never be normal, all your friends and family are laughing at you behind your back at failing at the easy task of finding a girlfriend. You are a walking shame to your gender. Nothing you can do can overshadow such laughable inferiority. You are nothing.” A meme from r/Incels It is easy to see how the inferiority complex of Incels and the superiority complex of Red Pillers both in turn breed hatred and contempt. However, some subscribers to the subreddits manage to avoid being radicalised. From those I spoke to, it seems this is more likely if they have pre-existing political beliefs or circumstances that contradict the theories of the group. Tim*, a 22-year-old from New Zealand, believes that r/Incels didn’t lead him to become a misogynist because he was already interested in progressive and feminist politics. He found the sub when he was 16, after growing frustrated with the advice on Red Pill and other sites. As a self-described “nerdy” young man, Tim felt anxious about how relationships worked. “I'm not very good at following my nose in those sorts of situations,” he says. “I can't dance for instance, because I have no idea what specifically to do, so anything without a ‘rulebook’ is pretty much impossible for me. “I spent so long searching for my ‘rulebook’ until I realised that it's doesn't exist, no one seems to have any clue what makes a relationship happen. It kinda drives you mad thinking like that, that you're the only person in the world who doesn't ‘get it’. That's where places like r/Incels come in.” Tim says that the fact he has always been friends with women might have meant he wasn’t convinced by the group’s misogyny. “It's possible to accept that you'll be alone forever, and accept that you're very unhappy about that, without becoming hateful or misogynistic. But it seems like everyone kind of forgets that,” he says. Louis*, a 19-year-old from Albany, New York, joined r/Incels aged 16, and does feel that it made him more bitter and misanthropic. “You feel the world actively hates you so you need to hate it back,” he says. Nonetheless, he stopped frequenting the subreddit when, like the Red Pill, it began spreading extreme right-wing beliefs. “The alt-right is how I broke from incels as the racism sort of woke me up to the reality of it,” explains Louis, who is black. *** Each of the Redditors I spoke to has a different reason for leaving the Red Pill. João and Jack were both influenced by Mark Manson, author of Models: Attract Women Through Honesty. “Most of what he talks about is the mind-set to care for oneself and strive to improve. Hate is energy better spent finding and enjoying activities you love,” says Jack, who also began reading about feminism. João says he left the Red Pill because he was attracting girls that were “emotionally damaged” and not “mentally healthy”. He also felt like its advice didn’t really work. “I was going out to bars to talk to women and I would have to talk with like literally like 100 girls just to pick up one, so the whole thing is a numbers game, a probability thing,” he says. He now considers himself a feminist and has a “fantastic girlfriend” who he has been with for nearly three years. For Callum, it took “a series of psychedelic trips” to begin getting out of both the Red Pill and Incels. “The very idea of gender was alien to me when tripping hard enough,” he says. When I ask him how he feels about women now, he says: “I still hold on to the belief that women enjoy a major advantage in the dating world even though they suffer disadvantages in other parts of life." Nevertheless he now sees women as "scared, flawed, imperfect humans just like I am". *** Not everyone who has left the Red Pill, then, did so because of some feminist revelation. Trevor, the man who ended up in a police cell after a confrontation with his ex, still holds many of the subreddit’s beliefs. “Look, a lot of what they say is true unfortunately,” he says. “So it isn’t really a question of I don’t believe any of that any more, it's just I don’t believe it’s useful to continuously expose myself to that sort of stuff.” Although Trevor says the Red Pill helped him to “bed an unusually high number of women”, he now desires deeper relationships and hopes one day to start a family. Trevor has only been out of the subreddit for a few months, and it isn’t apparent whether his views will slowly change. As it stands, however, he believes that both women and men are destroying society, that the Red Pill and feminism are equally toxic, and that women who sleep around are "indirectly contributing to the depopulation of the white race". “I’m roommates with some Muslim people here, some Algerians, two girls and a guy, and these people take themselves more seriously," he says. "They kind of understand the importance of the tribe and community and family." There is one Red Pill belief, however, that Trevor has completely shunned. “One thing I do believe is you can show a little vulnerability to your significant other,” he says. “A little, a little.” *** No one still active on the Red Pill would admit that they are simply lonely, young, or vulnerable. The group is exceptionally hostile to outsiders, and the toxic beliefs on the subreddit easily inspire revulsion and hatred on first sight. But we are perhaps as guilty of considering Red Pillers a complete entity as they are considering all women to be joined together in some evil mission. In reality, there are many complex stories behind the subreddit, with some ex-users even claiming that they were struggling to come to terms with the fact they were gay or trans. Every man on the Red Pill has a different story. However, each of them do have striking similarities. The main one is anger. Like the name of the subreddit itself, it is blazing red. We must understand the psychology behind the philosophy not to condone it, but to better tackle the poisonous spider slowly infecting those across the web. Amelia Tait is a technology and digital culture writer at the New Statesman.
Show Hide image Economy 1 March 2017 The Conservatives have failed to build an economy that works. Here's what Labour should do next The failures of George Osborne are only the tip of the iceberg. But there is hope. By Alison McGovern Sign up for our weekly email * In just seven days, Phillip Hammond will rise in the House of Commons and present his first budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer. How should the opposition respond? There are three important messages that we must communicate. Firstly, that the Tories have presided over seven years of economic failure. Second, that Brexit presents new threats. Lastly, that there are - Brexit or no Brexit – fundamental weaknesses in the British economy that only a Labour government will ever resolve. Perhaps given the context of our fundamentally changing position on trade and economic co-operation with our nearest neighbours, the price of a pint of beer, or a litre of fuel, won’t be the big news, for a change. Perhaps the attention of the press will be - as it was at the time of the global financial crisis nearly a decade ago - on the big numbers: sterling, debt, the deficit. Or, more likely, the pro-Brexit press will give Hammond a pass, as he plays the hand they have dealt him. All the more important, then, for Labour to shun the seminar room, roll our sleeves up, and make a big noise about the Tory economic failures. To be clear. We are currently nearly 30 points behind the Tories in polling questions about trust to run the economy. We have a job to do. Our first task is to demonstrate that even before the EU referendum, George Osborne had dragged down our prospects significantly. When he became Chancellor in 2010 George Osborne set himself one principal economic challenge- to eliminate the UK’s budget deficit by 2015. His failure to meet this target, alongside losing our credit rating, and building up debt, should define him. Brexit of course then added to these woes. Our country looks set to be plunged further into debt now totalling £2 trillion. By 2020/1 the UK is set to be £210bn deeper in debt than George Osborne forecast at the time of the March Budget, pre-Brexit vote. That means increase in borrowing of £122bn over the next 5 years. Now, of course the Tories will argue that it is only a matter of time before this is dealt with as long as the economy keeps growing. Though, note that this is the argument that they criticised Gordon Brown for making in 2006. What’s more, Hammond has already let himself completely off the hook. As the IFS tells us, “Fiscal policy is not currently subject to any fiscal targets that can be met or missed in the remainder of this Parliament.” In other words, all of those debates we had pre-2015 about the importance of dealing with the deficit were just hot air. In practice, the new post-Brexit Chancellor has, unseen, reversed Osborne’s stance. It is a mystery to me why the Tory press have not criticised his profligacy. It is amazing that Tory MPs are not queuing up to explain that borrowing today will be heaped onto the backs of our children. Or perhaps their protestations were just further acknowledgement that it is not actually their children who will suffer if the public finances preclude public investment. It is the many that will suffer. Not the few. In addition to the failure to get to grips with the public finances, there is a new set of risks to our economic prosperity. Firstly, the number of people who are self-employed have grown as a proportion of the workforce since the Tories came to power in 2010. What’s the problem with that you might wonder? The government say we have more people in work than ever before. The problem is the difference in taxation. According to the IFS, the tax advantage in lower National Insurance contributions for a self-employed person over an employed person amounts to £1240 per year. And the OBR say the cost of the trend towards self-employment (particularly the growth of owner-manager companies) will mean tax revenues will be £3.5bn lower by 2021-22, than if this form of self-employment had grown at the same rate as conventional employment. This is a big problem. Will this trend continue? Has the Treasury researched that? What if it speeds up? How can we get more employees paying tax? All questions Hammond must answer. Secondly, Britain’s future age-profile will not be easy on the tax base either. A population that has more older people and relatively fewer people of working age will have greater liabilities to be met by a smaller number of people to pay the tax required. For example, the IFS tell us that, “simply to keep pension promises and keep pace with rising demands for health and social care beyond 2021-22…we will need to increase annual spending by about £20billion over the next parliament.” These demographic problems are faced by all western developed countries. However, in making immigration cuts the driving force behind every policy of the state, the government have placed an unprecedented and unnatural limit around our ability to change our demographic fortunes. In the end, this immigration policy is like swimming against a strong tide. As nations develop and educate their citizens, women and men end up having fewer children. And people live longer. So, rich countries need immigration to even things up between the age groups. Theresa May can rail against it, but the fundamentals will stay the same. But as this analysis on the impact of lower immigration on GDP shows, the populist dream-world story that all our problems are down to immigration has real-world consequences. There is an assumption in the minds of those who support Government cutting immigration that it is cost-free, practical, and achievable. It is none of these things. It will be costly to our public finances, and bureaucratic for British business. Meanwhile there are even worse problems that Osborne and Hammond have failed on. Growth in wages for most people now appears to be unconnected to the growth in the wider economy. That means that people can no longer expect to do better if the country does better. That must be fixed if we are to unite our country, post the Brexit vote, as I have previously argued. And then, to this picture of woe, add the old Tory story: running down public services. More cuts in public spending are planned for the rest of this parliament, and worse than that, the parts of government that have already delivered the lion’s share of cuts – local government especially – are on the hook for more. Given the impact of these cuts on social care, and therefore, the NHS, the modest increase available for health will come nowhere near the change required by the demographic shift in our country. This is a profound challenge for the UK, and the Chancellor in particular. Do the Tories wish to preside over more sick older people dying in corridors? Do they wish to exacerbate the flow of our doctors and nurses elsewhere as the stress of NHS cuts becomes too much to bear? Are they happy with people waiting longer and longer in pain, or suffer lonely and alone because they can’t afford simple social care? We know too from the National Audit Office that while schools are being asked to save £3billion by 2019-20, “against a background of growing pupil numbers and a real-terms reduction in funding per pupil”. This cannot amount to anything but a cut in resources. And, a generation of young people growing up with ever fewer choices at school, stressed-out teachers, and pressures on parents to pick up the cost of learning, will react in exactly the way I did. They will learn to hate what Tories do to schools. They will feel robbed of chances and choices. And they will never forget. And in case this appears to be party politicking, it’s not just Labour that say public services are being damaged. Sir Amyas Morse, the NAO’s Comptroller and Auditor General has described the process of austerity by which he says, ‘significant damage has been done’. It is all too depressing. So in addition to the seven years of failure and the new demographic pressures, we have the economic turbulence of Brexit. At the time of the Autumn Statement, the Office for Budget Responsibility calculated that the cost of the Brexit vote to the public finances was an extra £58bn worth of debt. But of course, that is not the end. The Tory pursuit of lower immigration, at any cost, will have a substantial cost. Unless they are prepared to turn away from hard-right policies, we will all have to pay. The Office for Budget Responsibility have a range of forecasts looking at the future population structure and the consequences for the national finances, if we assume it is desirable to return borrowing to 40 percent of GDP. The reality is stark. The difference between their central projection, and their low inward migration projection is an extra £10billion in permanent fiscal tightening. That’s spending cuts or tax rises. And worse, Theresa May has made it clear that she is happy to leave the single market, with its common standards and tariff-free access to European consumers for goods that are often made across European borders, rather than within the borders of one European country or another. Now let me be very cautious here. We ought not to exacerbate fears for staff in existing sectors that look to be very challenged by Brexit. There is no benefit to those whose livelihood is at stake in providing a counsel of doom. But there is clear cause to point out the error of Tory ways, and campaign for a better approach that will create a new deal between Britain and Europe that can satisfy our national interest, and the interests of the other 27 countries in the Union. When it comes to current economic arrangements with the European Union, there are two crucial agreements that the Tories are trying to unpick. The first is free movement of European people in order to access labour markets across the EU. The second is the free movement of goods around the European Union, maintained by the customs union which places an external administrative barrier (regarding rules of origin, and other regulations) around the European Union and Turkey, and removes almost all the barriers within the Union. According to the Government, they wish to get out of this union in order to have the freedom to negotiate new Free Trade Agreements with other countries. This is a highly disruptive approach. Many British workers are employed by multinationals: global companies that rely on multinational supply chains to make their products. You can’t just place administrative barriers in their way and expect zero impact, in the hope of Free Trade Agreements that may never come. These though, are the medium-term risks. We can already see the immediate cost of Brexit. The fall of sterling against the dollar and the euro provides a clear judgement on the relative strength in the British economy compared to the USA and the Eurozone. The Bank of England says that there is evidence that the falls in the value of sterling are related to perceptions of the UK’s future trading arrangements, and that the volatility we have seen since the Brexit vote looks set to continue. The fall in sterling is an important factor in the inflation rise that the Bank predicts. Recall the lack of growth in real wages since the crash. If inflation picks up, and employers are unable to match price growth with wage growth, the price of Brexit will become ever more clear. Not just in our national accounts, but also in our personal accounts. Price rises will inevitably hurt those on fixed incomes. But the impact of rising prices will also be felt by those who the government has targeted for cuts: low-earning, working families. The freeze on tax credits, and other parts of the social security system that support people of working age, will become more painful as inflation kicks in. Further, it will make life harder for those struggling to keep small businesses going in low-pay areas, and exacerbate the pre-existing crisis in town centres that are fail due to having too few customers. Sadly, it is many towns that voted overwhelmingly in favour of Brexit that, without help, will be at the sharp end of any downturn. In many ways, whilst Brexit has caused this drop in the value of sterling, the inflation versus wages and tax credits squeeze will be demonstrated in a worsening of economy for those locked out of growth, in a fashion that was ever-present since the global financial crisis. It is a ‘same as it ever was’ weakness in the British economy. The lack of shared growth is not new, but Brexit makes it worse. And it is a problem that hurts families as parents wrestle with the financial stress, and guts confidence in towns all across Britain. Sadly, that’s not the only weakness we’ve lived with for far too long. Yes, I remain deeply concerned about the impact of Brexit on my constituents and my country. Yet the greatest failure of the past seven years is not the Brexit vote itself. That vote may be the cause of economic risk and insecurity. But it was also the consequence of economic insecurity. Too many people in our country did not have a stake in the status quo, so quite logically voted for change. They expressed their disquiet with the Tories who had done far too little to change the fortunes of the many. And there is no clearer indication of the unhealthy state of UK economic policy than the state of our infrastructure and housing. The OECD has told us that “protracted underinvestment has taken its toll on UK infrastructure.” This is true. But what’s more, our infrastructure investment is exacerbating, not dealing with, profound imbalances in the British economy. But first consider the length of time it has taken the UK to decide about airport investment. Crucial infrastructure beset by politics on all sides. The same could be said for HS2. It has taken so long to decide to do it that the debate has crowded out all discussion about other railways infrastructure needs. Similarly on energy. Political parties might disagree about the energy mix, but the increased capacity as a whole that our economy requires rarely receives the attention it deserves from policy makers. The Tories rightly adopted Ed Ball’s idea of a National Infrastructure Commission. But it isn’t clear that the process for taking decisions is developed enough yet to move investment on more quickly. The NIC is still dealing with a plethora of local authorities, and the absence of devolution to English regions makes this process unnecessarily cumbersome. George Osborne’s city deals does little to resolve this problem given that they cover a very limited section of the population. Yet it’s not just as simple as a lack of capital investment in our infrastructure, or investment being dragged out too slowly. Analysis by Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute last year highlights a staggering regional inequality in infrastructure spending in our country. Based on figures from the government’s own national infrastructure pipeline, they found that planned infrastructure spend per capita in London (£5305) was over two and a half times that in the North West (£1946), over six times that in Yorkshire and Humber (£851) and thirteen times that in the North East (£414). Poor infrastructure is a key driver of low productivity, according to the ONS GVA per hour in London is around 30 per cent above the national average, while every other region bar the South East lags well behind. But it also influences housing. When investment and jobs growth is concentrated in the South East, it causes overheating of the economy there. Figures from the DCLG show that 44 percent of the projected growth in the number of households in England by 2039 will be in London and the South East. This in turn has an effect on house price growth, with London house prices racing away from the rest of the country. The practical effect is that the regional imbalance in the economy is becoming bad for London too as even high average London wages struggle to keep pace with the rising cost of housing. Instead of increasing supply to keep try to take the heat out of the housing market, the government has driven demand through policies like Help to Buy that have only fuelled more growth in house prices in the overheated capital. The National Infrastructure Commission does not have housing infrastructure under its remit. Surely this is a mistake that must be corrected? New towns built in the post-war years are popular places to live, take the heat from cities, and could continue to be developed. And possibly, the NIC could consider the scope for new New Towns in the north where there is existing infrastructure that could be developed alongside them to build up the case for businesses to relocate away from the south. And as well as financial capital for new infrastructure, we also need to consider how long the UK has struggled with developing human capital also. Unemployment may be low. But there are a sizable number of people who could join or do better in the labour market if they were able to gain further skills. And what’s more, low productivity in Britain requires an effective plan to raise the skill level of those in work. We cannot sustainably grow any other way. This, sadly is not a new analysis. The same could (and was) said of Britain a decade ago. Reviews of skills training in 2006 and 2011 said that we needed a concerted effort to raise not just the number of apprenticeships, but crucially, the quality of training available to apprentices. Since Leitch, a decade may have passed, but we still witness the same problem of low skills concentrated amongst groups of people in specific areas of the country. Unfortunately, the government’s central policy on apprenticeships will not resolve this problem either. As the IFS have explained, the apprenticeship levy will raise in tax, “far more money than the additional resource planned to go into apprenticeship training.” Nearly £3billion of new taxation, much of which will not be spent on the skills training it is designed to promote, and worse, a tax that - because it is a payroll tax - is likely to reduce wages even further. The problem doesn’t end there, however. Government training schemes – such as Train to Gain or previous apprenticeship models - in the past has often driven firms to simply re-label existing schemes, in order to meet Government targets. This mistake is repeated yet again with the apprenticeship levy. It is time we took a whole new approach. Add to this cuts to colleges of further education. Now, whilst it is right that young people have a structured route to good on the job learning through apprenticeships, we also have a large number of people in work already who need to improve their skills. For those whom school was not a success the first time around, colleges can be a second chance. Yet funding for adult education has been cut by 14 percent in real terms since 2010. Of course, standards, must be high, spending for the sake of it won’t work. But we need to rebuild these important institutions that can offer adults a chance to change course, or correct the mistakes of the past. In much of the discussion about new technology, the assumption is that there will be less work for people to do. What economic history tells us, however, is that it is actually likely to be different work. And that while status, culture and identity may be significantly changed, the idea that people will be happy to exist on state hand-outs rather than with the dignity of work for a living is wrong. The profound mistake of the Thatcher period was that during rapid economic change, little attempt was made to smooth the path between one kind of work and another. We ended up with large numbers of people existing on benefits, while we had a skills shortage elsewhere. In some ways the change was too rapid, too abrupt for any policy to combat the negative impacts. Inequality rose so rapidly as the City ballooned and manufacturing fell sharply. Imagining a way through that combination of the Big Bang of new technology in the City of London, and the long-term shift away from manufacturing, that didn’t leave some people feeling left out is hard. But that is a lesson to us about what the consequence could be of very disruptive new technology today. The institutions of the state are very important in smoothing the path when the economy is changing rapidly, and surely the lesson of the 1980s is that if the state does not play its part, poverty and inequality will blight British towns for a generation. Those institutions we need at a time of turbulent chance do not end with adult education. The Beveridge plan for a welfare state was written at a time when it was just assumed that women would not work if they were looking after children. It is a world that no longer exists, and is not coming back. That is why one of the newer functions of the state: as a commissioner and funder of childcare is such a vital area of policy in responding to the current economic turbulence. Yet, for an issue that was at the heart of the general election in 2005, 2010, and 2015, the issue of childcare is now relatively overlooked. This is ludicrous. Tooley Street Research found that those working in low pay sectors, such as retail, were held back from seeking promotion because of lack of effective childcare. If dealing with low skills is one part of tackling Britain’s productivity crisis, then challenging ourselves to reach towards free universal childcare must be another. We need to free those with childcare responsibilities to put all their skills to work if they choose to. Often though, pre-school childcare has been seen purely through the lens of child development. So, whilst free childcare for low income families with two-year-olds is having a positive impact on the development gap pre-school, the problem with a system that targets resources just at those with least (as the extended hours for disadvantaged two-year-olds does) is that you inevitably don’t reach everyone who could benefit. And resentment is likely to occur between those getting more help and those who aren’t. Moreover, the current restrictions the government is placing on the new extension to 30 hours of free childcare for three and four-year-olds for working parents, fails to enable those in training or those looking for work to do so – this is where the biggest gains in productivity lie. Take the means test away and everyone can focus on that which really matters in childcare: quality and availability. We know that good quality childcare during the early years can be the difference between confident parents and children, ready to get the most out of school, and those who are falling behind already at too tender an age. And universal childcare need not be as expensive as other parts of our social security system. We currently on spend about £6bn a year on childcare, compared to around £100bn on the state pension. A moderate increase in commitment to our nation’s children would enable more parents to work, which would be good for the government’s income, the prospects for those families, and would help to tackle the productivity gap that has held our country back. In fact, investment in childcare would pay for itself in the medium term through higher tax receipts and lower welfare bills. The IPPR has calculated that for every woman that returns to work after one year of maternity leave, thanks to universal childcare, the government would gain £20,050 a year in the medium term. But, while institutions like colleges and childcare help everywhere, as we plan for our future, I cannot help but see the greatest challenge we face is the unequal nature of our economy. As discussed above, the huge difference in infrastructure spending in the difference regions of our country is representative of an economy that is fundamentally divided. And, this economic inequality has led to deep dissatisfaction in many parts of our country. That change that happened in the 1980s – with the city of London charging ahead, and areas of mining, manufacturing and heavy industry falling way behind – scarred the economy in many parts of the north and midlands of England. It was hard for younger people to see a way ahead, so many of them left. This has left towns dominated by older people, those existing on disability benefits, and lower skilled jobs for example in care or retail. Yet – despite this maddeningly unequal picture - the OECD acknowledge that Britain had in reality had no regional development policy at all since 2010. None at all. And, they have demonstrated that productivity gains were in reality only made in Greater London and Scotland between 2000 and 2013. The truth is, despite the pause in inequality growth as Gordon Brown fought off poverty through Labour’s time in office, in some important ways, we are still living with the long hangover of the Thatcher years. Cities like Liverpool, Newcastle, Sunderland and Birmingham, now up off their knees, have been placed at risk again by the Tories. And what Thatcher began, Brexit could finish for good. Labour must have a power-sharing plan that cannot be undone as George Osborne undid the regional institutions that were addressing inequality. We now need a permanent settlement. Seven years of Tories wedded to austerity for local government, ignoring the knock-on consequences for hospitals and schools, and prioritising tax cuts for corporations, has taken its toll. The UK’s budget is still – nearly a decade after the global financial crisis – in deficit. Our debt is rising, and the combination of long-term shifts in our liabilities, the Bank of England’s market operations, and the movement of sterling makes this a more risky situation than ever. Meanwhile, even the head of the National Audit Office is spelling out the damage done to public services by austerity handed out by the Treasury to town halls. Notably but not uniquely, social care is underfunded. Pensioners who were once allowed to be generationally poor by the Thatcher and Major Governments are now left in their 80s and 90s without sufficient care to end their life with dignity. The Conservatives could not be more blameworthy. And Brexit is both consequence and cause of their failure. The vote was a vote of no confidence by the public in Cameron and Osborne’s plans for Britain. Now Theresa May has a mapped out a Britain that takes a lead from the hard right and the far right, rather than the rhetoric she herself has employed. It is party and politics first, economics and the national interest a poor second. Labour’s job is to consider again the long term strategic weaknesses in our economy. Whether that is rebalancing through infrastructure, housing, and major sites of employment, or making sure there is a ladder from entry level work, through training, to a career, we must have a new vision for Britain. In the end, our economy matters not for its own sake. It is the means not the ends. But the ends are important. The economy is the means by which British people are able to be and do all the things they might wish. Their dreams and hopes - British dreams and British hopes - count for something, and people cannot just be left with the terrible hand the Tories have dealt them. Labour has a job to do to rebuild our economy, and it’s a job that cannot wait. Alison McGovern is Labour MP for Wirral South.