Source, Real World Economics Review, here
I'm not sure mjuch more needs to be said about the intention of neoliberalism.
Except that George Osborne wants to promote it still further.
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There is a problem here that nobody really wants to discuss, when are ‘we’ going to take back the labour party? What your graphs should also be showing is how the shift from the 1980’s onward was caused by a the labour party turning their back on the concerns of lower income workers (God forbid we mention the class word). Thatcher didn’t just break the back of the unions and industry she smashed the labour party. Now we are left with two right wing parties and nowhere to go. We can all sit around and lament the rise and rise of neoliberalism (and academics in particular have been doing so for nearly 30 years) but until the cancer is cut out of labour party what chance do we have? God knows the libdems haven’t the stomach for what needs to be done!
I’m afraid I no longer think the Labour Party can be saved.
Look at “Red” Ed. Almost nothing to say about the NHS changes. Nothing about welfare reform, apart from Labour missed the opportunity to be tougher. Nothing about supporting the public sector.
Plus I now read that Samantha Cameron’s best friend is Ed Milli’s wife. Talk about an incestuous political class. The Blairites are a cancerous worm around the heart of the Labour party and they have money and institutional backing, unlike most of the left of Labour.
I honestly think that direct action and civil disobedience have more chance of affecting government policy now.
After hearing the wonderful Danny Dorling and Ruth Levitas speak today at Plymouth University, I TOTALLY agree with you. I think maybe people are just really coming to terms with the full extent of Labour’s betrayal. I asked Ruth Levitas if she had any faith in the labour movement to which she replied ‘depends which day you ask me’… We discussed the possibilities of the green movement and in particular the idea of sustainability as offering a potentially counter mobilising discourse, but as an Australian I feel the sustainability umbrella does not harbor much sentiment for the social (or the suffering of people). However, I do feel that new (and some old) left groups and counter arguments are gaining some ground, a refreshing example of this can be seen within documentaries (i.e. Adam Curtis and the surprisingly good Matt Damon narrated ‘inside job’). But yes, the Millibands are really the Milly vanillas.
Sounds like an inspiring evening
Agreed totally with the above comment. I think post is excellent by the way. But I have been round the country all year, noone can fight what is happening because when they fight they find themselves dressed up as Labour support. And we are on track for something huge, with no means of fighting it.
Superb chart.
Proving graphically what anyone studying the data already knows.
Thanks Richard, this should be on the front page of every newspaper.
On the link you provided someone made the point that you could just as soon draw the vertical line at 1971 rather than 1979. I think that is true, and it made me wonder how much of it was due to the Nixon Shock in 1971 and whether – this will be anathema to you – what we really need is a return to the gold standard.
I’m slightly more optimistic about Ed Miliband than some people on here… the main problem Ed faces is that significant numbers of people near the top of the Labour party are annoyed that he destroyed the Blairite dream of the party becoming an exact clone of the Tories, and these people have made it their business to undermine his leadership at every turn. Expect more rumblings of discontent around party conference time. The most vulnerable time for Ed will be May 2012 – particularly if Labour doesn’t do that well in the local elections and if Ken Livingstone doesn’t win the London mayor election ( I think Ken will win but most people I speak to don’t).
Also the Labour party is still in the Blairite mindset of only saying things if they’re popular. Understandable in some ways – Blair won three elections (well, two and a half) after all. But the problem is that polling shows that on some topics (not all) the public is a long way right of centre – social security and crime being two examples (35% of people wanted to use live ammunition against rioters for instance). It takes real guts to fly in the face of that and we haven’t seen that kind of gutsiness in Labour probably since the Michael Foot days. Hopefully Ed will be emboldened by his performance on phone hacking which was first class, and put some of his critics in his place. I like the guy and want to believe in him as a social democratic alternative to the current shower, but I can understand people writing him off, because progress over the last 12 months has been slow at best.
Strong sympathy with that Howard
Like you I have some faith in Ed Miliband – he’s making progress
But he needs to be bold to continue it
John McDonnel should’ve been made Labour leader. We beed somebody with a decent pair to push for an alternative economic program.
Of course, with McDonnell being a confirmed left winger, it was never going to happen, was it?
Expect more members to walk away from the Labour party as it stubbornly refuses to jettison neoliberal policies.
For “beed”, read “need”! That’s an awful lot of ‘e’s’! 🙂
A graph of inequality in the UK, showing a similar pattern, was used by an economist in a presentation to economists.
I pointed out that the low inequality times equated to strong unionist times – I thought it was pretty obvious.
There was dead silence.
I was later called ‘very radical’ for this.
Even Krugman has said that we didnt realise how important unions were till we pretty much lost them as a force.
Too right. The unions have a serious PR job to do.