Jackie Ashley has written this morning on the high pay issue, and has noted that the moment Ed Miliband created a good idea the Tories tried to steal it. As she also noted, this has, however, also happened around Labour:
The centre-left thinktank Compass was agitating about excessive executive pay in the New Labour years but failed to persuade the Brown government to fund a proper investigation. The excellent Rowntree Trust, which has done so much to promote fairness, stepped in, resulting in the independent High Pay Commission. And it is really that agenda that has seized the mood and moment at Westminster.
I should mention I too am funded in largest part by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. But as Jackie Ashley notes
There is another lesson that may be even more important: to embrace the value of "outrider" thinktanks and independent thinking. Miliband has had a lot of stick for having too few policies. At this stage of the cycle, that's unfair. What's been lacking, however, is the bubbling creativity of centre-left thinking more generally. You might have expected more ideas about the future of manufacturing, education, the City and public services being proposed from non-official groups and thinkers, pushing Miliband and his colleagues. There are honourable exceptions, but this is hardly a time of intellectual ferment on the left.
That is odd because, as I argued last week, we are moving into a more defined left-right period as the years of austerity bite. People are remarkably ready to make sacrifices and rethink their expectations if they feel society is basically fair and the pain is being shared. The "New Labour" strategy of using the proceeds of boom to pay for better public services, while winking at the excesses the boom produced, now belongs to a lost age.
She's right. Look at many so called left of centre think tanks - many of which in my youth would have been considered centre-Tory - and all they put out is tales of 'fiscal conservatism' and the need for cuts above all else. That's not even thinking: that's acceptance of defeat, the power of the City and subscription to the bankrupt economics of neoliberalism.
But there are honourable exceptions. Of course Compass is one. So is the Tax Justice Network. So is the Green New Deal. Another is Labour Left. And yes, I lob in my penn'orth too.
And it's here - not in the bastions of now discredited New Labour thinking that Labour will find the ideas it needs. It could even start with the last 75 pages of The Courageous State.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
this is correct – personally i put the lack of ideas coming out of Labour down to them not being able to communicate them/get them in the press, maybe its a combination of having only a few ideas and not being able to communicate them?
Just reading Steve Keen’s Debunking Economics. I’m afraid there’s every sign that Labour are still thoroughly entrenched in the neoclassical school. Where are the heterodox advisers?
I agree Carol, the right of the LP is still entrenched in the mythologies of the neoclassical school .. but Ed Ball’s Bloomberg speech was in line with a full blown Keynsian stimulus from which he has had to move back to his 5 point plan.. Darling-esque. I find it perplexing.
My reservation of Steve Keen’s jubilee prescription is that he seems to be content to allow the whole system to recreate itself following a rebalancing of the debt to 15% GDP. I am much more taken with the focus on full employment by the MMT-ers, who maintain that our deficit is too little given our levels of unemployment. One of their main priorities is for government to take back money creation from private banks.
Yes, I was aware of Keen’s jubilee prescription from his interviews and a friend who has read the book thoroughly tells me that Keen is good on analysis but poor on solutions. As someone who took her economics degree in early 80s (as a mature student who was totally cynical about everything taught) I’m particularly enjoying Keen’s description of the academics. There were a few who knew what they had to present was crap, but they were not at the higher echelons. I remember having a ‘disagreement’ with one of the elite about international trade. I told him that the model ‘proving’ comparative advantage was a fraud – where were the stats which backed it up? He just told me to look at the beauty of the picture – which he found very exciting!
The analysis – especially his insight into the maths – is stunning!
When i first read the title of Richard’s book, I was unsure of his choice of title. But Carol’s comment shows it WAS well chosen. New Labour was too frightened to challenge the-then- new orthodoxy of the Washington Consensus and I think it still persists today. Any new idea gets rubbished by the media so it’s easier to present a softer version. Sadly most people using the comment columns of the newspapers seem to prefer to be cynica and dismissive rather than constructive.
lThe Lloyd George’s, Kier Hardy’s, Suffregettes, Annie Besant’s and Lord Shaftesbury’s of the past knew that one had to stand proud for their beliefs and proclaim them, knowing it would provoke mockery, threats and actual violence. But they eventually numbered large numbers of firm supporters and secured results. Soft support can evaporate in the first warm breeze.
I assure you choosing it took lots of thinking
It was a long ‘think in’ with my wife that eventually gave rise to it
It is unusual in that bloggers of the left and right persuasion have noted there is a dearth in ideas from Labour and most point to Ed Milliband and his lack of leadership, direction and strategy as a primary cause. The trade unions muscled Ed Milliband into power, which was against the parliamentary party wishes and he himself was forced into accepting Balls as his shadow chancellor. The poll ratings suggest neither he nor his chancellor are the choice of the British public. However badly the ConDems perform, Labour has again shot themselves in the foot and will be confined to the opposition benches for the forseable future.
no doubt that’s why polls say he would win tomorrow
You confuse Labour ratings with individual ones – and that depends on which poll you read. When asked if they see him as PM the overwhelming public response is no. Even the Guardian raises questions about why he and Labour are not doing much better at a time when the ConDems are handling things so badly. I’m afraid its a Michael Foot / Neil Kinnock scenario all over again. The answer is and always was – Milliband D.
That’s a neoliberal agenda
No thanks
David Milliband Neoliberal ? Come off it !
If you think Labour lurching to the left will win them power, then there is really no hope for a Labour revival.
It’s the only hope for Labour and the country