People can’t understand why they can’t have what nation states could deliver half a century ago

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Larry Elliott has an article I want to signpost in the Guardian this morning. It's worth reading in full, and not just because he's another Green New Dealer who is still signalling that all we had to say is still the only alternative economic show in town. As he puts it:

The decision to embrace the discipline of the global marketplace has proved disastrous for parties of the centre left. They did well enough during the late 1990s and early 2000s, when cheap imported goods flooded in from China, but were bereft of ideas when the global economy hit the wall in 2008. Where there would once have been a plan to re-regulate capitalism there was instead an intellectual vacuum.

Quite so. And as he adds:

There are some obvious lessons to be drawn from this. The first is that the mainstream parties need to come up with policies that do things for people rather than do things to people. The record shows that the managed capitalism of the cold war delivered better results than the unmanaged capitalism since.

Exactly. Again, as he says:

People want now what they have always wanted: a job, decent pay, a pension, a roof over their heads and a sense that their children will be better off than they are. They can't understand why the global economy can't deliver today what nation states could deliver half a century ago.

We can still do that. It just requires a Green New Deal. And if we don't? Back to Larry:

There is one final lesson. If mainstream parties don't come up with the answers, the evidence is that voters will look elsewhere for solutions. The rise of populism explodes the myth that they have nowhere else to go.

That's the fear. And it's very real. So the real question is, when will the left of centre listen, take note and act?


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