The Centre for Welfare Reform, a citizen think tank formed in 2009 and based in Sheffield, has published a statment in support of basic income. It can be read in this kind of manifesto:
Over the past few decades there have been successful pilots of UBI in many other countries and there’s growing grassroots support for testing the idea and for exploring many of the practical questions that need to be resolved to make UBI work for everyone. In our view, now is the time to pilot UBI in the United Kingdom.
This twenty-minute podcast features Reverend Liz Theoharis, a long-time advocate and activist for poverty reduction and elimination. She had led a campaign called the “Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival”, a direct revival of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Poor People’s Campaign” in the 1960´s. In the podcast, she argues that poverty is not only a matter of lack of resources (to live), but a more encompassing issue which involves climate change, workers’ rights, housing, and economic empowerment. To her, poor people are at the center of society’s driving force, which means that something like basic income would change the name of the game in economic and societal terms. Other issues, like universal healthcare, quality education and housing are also discussed, as parallel policies to which basic income would be a complement, but not a replacement.
In this 30 minute podcast, the possibility of introducing an Universal Basic Income (UBI) in Ireland is analyzed, if it were introduced in a ten-year timespan. Lúí Smyth, representing the activist group Basic Income Ireland, talks about reasons to implement basic income, and how it could affect life in Ireland. Ian Golding, an economist, Oxford University professor and a regular Financial Times contributor, also features on the podcast, with his view on basic income and its relation to the Irish tax structure.
The event will occur on Monday 28th to Wednesday 30th of September 2020, and is entitled “Basic income, the ecological crisis and a new age of automation”. Submission of abstracts can be done until Friday January 31th, 2020, considering the following main themes / questions:
Can basic income play a role in tackling the multifaceted ecological and social crises confronting the world today?
As climate change and the ‘new age’ of automation continue to re-shape the globe, can and should basic income form part our answer to these challenges?
Can basic income be part of a Green New Deal or is a Job Guarantee a better way forward?
Can basic income promote ‘de-growth’ and genuine sustainability?
Should automation and digitisation be used as a justification for basic income?
What is the evidence regarding the impact of these technological processes on the availability of jobs?
Is basic income an adequate replacement for any technological unemployment that may occur (now or in the future)?
John McDonnell’s proposes to include a basic income pilot in the next Labour Party’s manifesto, an intent which has been going on since 2016, at least. During 2018 a working group was formed, led by professor Guy Standing, a prominent economic advisor to McDonnell and specialist in basic income and related issues, giving rise to the publication and presentation in May 2019 of a detailed report about its applications within the UK’s context. McDonnell dubs this new manifesto as “more radical” than the previous 2017 manifesto, probably also including the more urgent measures to curb carbon emissions, relating to the impending climate emergency.
McDonnell, a 40-year companion to Jeremy Corbyn in politics, is now sure that “at least one pilot” should be set up in the United Kingdom territory, as soon as the Labour Party gets elected to government and Corbyn sits as Prime Minister. This is still being internally drafted within Labour’s top advisors, but McDonnell remains confident. He has said that “we’ve had [basic income pilot] bids from Liverpool, Sheffield, [and] a couple of other places”. Meanwhile, in Scotland, a basic income feasibility study is being developed, involving the localities of Fife, Edinburgh, Glasgow and North Ayrshire.
