I was intrigued by this comment by John McDonnell in an article on Philip Green published yesterday in the Guardian:
We have a chance now to build Another Europe in which we work with socialists across the EU to end austerity and take on those who attack workers' rights and avoid taxes.
This is not anti-business. It's anti-freeloader. If we allow these practices to continue they will undermine the foundations on which all genuine wealth creation is built. It will create an environment that benefits rent-seekers over wealth creators. It is time we brought an end to the new age of the robber barons. The health of our economy demands it.
There is in this a narrative that I recognise and that I believe might be communicated effectively.
The left have looked for a narrative for some time. Is this the start of one?
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Mcdonnell is a pleasing surprise, not just what to be against but as important what we can be for. This a more incusive economy that delivers income and governance solidarity to mitigate the take all effects that now prevail.
We can begin to do this now through the direct agency of mutual, cooperative and local government. The state as an emancipatory agent which you seem to advocate can only work well if a considerable amout of the intiative is coming throufg the grass root pressure and is already an emergent culture and practice. Lets get on with it. Look at the Cooperative UK web site for interesting info.
UK public spending is higher than the years 2005-07 and no-one is getting revisionist and calling those austerity years. So before making a narrative people like McDonnell need to start explaining themselves.
Because in April 2017 ( or July 2016 for the purposes of doing the naughty without protection ) the new two child rule on new tax credit claims comes into force. The government will no longer pay people to have large families. It will not be the beginning of the end of austerity. It will actually be the beginning of austerity for some people, and it’s a change which is surprisingly popular.
McDonnell’s narrative is back to front.
Stop the drivel. Or lies of you like
Read this https://www.city.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/296301/CITYPERC-WPS-201503.pdf
If you want to contribute here deal in facts, not blatant untruths
“UK public spending is higher than the years 2005-07”
And yet we’ve had 6 years of supposedly cutting the size of the state to “live within our means”.
What on earth are your mates in the Tory party spending all this money on?
Very cursory and incomplete comments. You need to be clearer if you want to make sense to me. It would help if you wrote in complete sentences – the one beginning ‘Because in April 2017 . . . ‘ is incomprehensible. Sorry – I tried to understand you but failed.
I’d like to think so, but the narrative needs to be supported with concrete proposals that can be backed up by evidence and facts.
I like it that Labour is trying to drag itself back into the centre-left position, but it will have a struggle while the Blairites are still being given the oxygen to breath their right-wing dogma (while posturing as the TRUE centre-left!) McDonnell is making the right noises as far as economic policies are concerned, but he’s still trapping himself in the neo-liberal argument of ‘balancing the books’. Whether that is too deflect the right-wing press’s ignorance of how macro economics really functions (the government can create all the money it wants to fulfil any spending decisions it wishes without the need of taxation), or his own ignorance of how fiat currency works, I don’t know.
The balancing the books thing is a problem, I agree
I will keep saying so
I’m afraid I think balancing the books is not too bad scheme. There are lots of get out clauses for the overall balancing of books as we know, so as a method of not frightening the horses – which does have importance as Britain is a major importer of food (which it does not have the capacity to produce itself).
So I think we should live with his deceit as it is basically marketing. I think PQE would create enough of a plus for economic expansion that we could still live with the idea. Cameron and Osborne are effective salesmen. McDonnell has to compete.
Unless the ‘balancing of the books’ thing is a necessary nod to the myth that will take time to dismantle – is Labour as canny as that?
@MayP,
‘So I think we should live with his deceit as it is basically marketing.’
I could not disagree more strongly!!
There are 4 more years to demolish the ‘Government as Household’ metaphor – or to give it’s real name: lie.
That J McD has reneged from that duty is more than disappointing.
And you are asking him to perpetrate what you acknowledge is a deceit.
‘To be guilty of or involving betrayal or deception’ is the very definition of treachery!
No thank you.
Let’s have a brave and honest Shadow Chancellor, please.
The UK desperately needs a leader of the left who can communicate a clear and believable alternative to neo-liberalism.
Had long arguments this weekend with an intelligent friend who is planning to vote for Brexit. Turns out what it boiled down to is mis-directed anger over immigration. This is not the 1970s style racism, but resentment that immigrants are adding to competition for jobs and driving down wages for working people. People are angry about rising inequality and the 99% who are losing out.
I pointed out that immigration actually adds to GDP growth, but he said, aha what about GDP per capita. So we took a look, and despite the dilution effect GDP per capita in Britain has risen every year since 2011. So I said, don’t blame immigration and the EU for the fact that working people in Britain are losing out. This anger should be directed at the UK government and their failure to provide for the schools, housing, nurses and doctors that we need to cope with a growing population.
It seems to me that we are now in an unreal World where Tory elites have somehow managed to put the blame for their failed policies onto the EU. However, we must admit that Labour are also partly to blame for failing to clearly expose this lie, and offer an alternative vision for inclusive growth based on sustainable investment.
I fear we may yet lose the vote on the 23rd, but there is still time for a clearer message from Labour to make a difference.
I agree
And have done what I can
I heard what Corbyn had to say and McDonnell is basically reinforcing it. Good!
He has also mentioned the ‘S’ word.
I believe it to be a myth that Labour has ‘not been saying anything’.
The Tory focus in the media only wants to listen to BREXIT and REMAIN arguments if one of the Blue Brothers is also present (Ca-moron or fellow posh boy Johnson and anti-intellectual Gove).
Corbyn’s reluctance to share a platform with either is principled – it may also be damaging I agree – but at least he not pretending to agree with scumbags who have (1) created this totally unnecessary business in the first place and (2) have done more harm to real people’s lives than continued membership of the EU will ever do ( Blairites like Gisella Stewart and Khan please take note).
I mean – here we are being lectured by the Tory party on the consequences of staying and leaving the EU when in fact those consequences have actually been the results of their own policies since 2010.
A Russian novelist would have a field day with such plot.
Why have the left on here have no faith that we could flourish with a vote leave, because if we do, you have a amazing platform.
We know that vote leave will result in the left’s chances being contractually destroyed by a right wing government before we ever get a chance
Totally correct. I’m extraordinary anxious by Brexit. I’ll try to put something together over the next few days but I think it will be an economic disaster for Britain and cause Scotland and Ni to leave. It could also destabilise Europe which is already stressed over the refugee crisis.
Not sure why my last comment did not make it, but I try again. I do not for one minute believe that scenario would happen, and why are you so sure Europe is more left that Britain, it isn’t.
You posted a long list of comments that seemed irrelevant
As your editor I did you the favour of deleting them
Any policies of which can be overturned in 2020 by a Labour Government, if that’s what the people of the UK want.
Unlike EU treaties, no UK government is constrained by the laws of the previous administration, and Cameron’s desperate, floundering threat to undermine pensions and the NHS in the event of Brexit is a direct and illogical attack on his own voting base that he is party will need in four years’ time. (Not sure he really thought that one through..!)
On one hand, in the event of a Brexit, UKIP will have no further raison d’être, the Tory Party will no longer be able to blame the EU or immigrants for its abject economic failures, and, as an added advantage, the UK will no longer be bound by Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty – not a bad outcome.
On the other hand, post-Remain, the grievances that the poor white working class have will not have gone away – and if anyone thinks that a Remain vote will be the end of the story, they’re wrong – UKIP will end up with more support than ever, and increasingly from ex-Labour supporters rather than Tories, because nothing will change; their circumstances will deteriorate, and they won’t thank Corbyn.
Personally, I’m beginning to feel like wholeheartedly abstaining from this referendum; partly because I feel I’ve been forced into taking sides in a fight I wasn’t looking for – and brought about solely to steal UKIP votes for Cameron’s Tories at the last election – and partly because I resent having to choose between pushing my country into either a pool of freezing acid, or a trough of boiling oil!
A government cannot overturn international treaties very easily
And considers itself bound by contracts
You are missing the ways in which binding takes place
You mean that the UK will become a one party state?
How would the government achieve this?
Until very recently we had political hegemony
Now we have major controls on the right to freedom of speech and association
Unions are under massive threat
So are NGOs and academics
Tie up future governments contractually and the job is largely done
‘those consequences have actually been the results of their own policies since 2010.’
shouldn’t that be take n back to 1979 or even 1976, when Labour became monetarist? Where we are now is a 40 year development.
Great to hear the following ‘banned’ bits of vocabulary coming back into circulation:
1) ‘Socialist’- now back in the OED, maybe Sanders has given us all permission.
2) End Austerity
3) Worker’s Rights!
4) rent-seekers
5)Robber barons.
Bingo-at last. Maybe, just maybe, they are getting that narrative.
Great quote from Alan S Blinder from 1988 even more applicable now:
‘As rational individuals, we do not volunteer for a lobotomy to cure a head cold. Yet, as a collectivity, we routinely prescribe the economic equivalent of lobotomy (high unemployment) as a cure for the inflationary cold. Why?’
Blinder was clear there was no issue of having inflation of 6%. I think Richard has mentioned that 5% is fine (I hope I remembered rightly).
perhaps McDonell could add that to his list of myth buster.
I am tolerant to 5%