Fascinating comment in the Guardian this morning:
Willie Walsh, the British Airways chief executive, will launch an excoriating attack on the government on Thursday for the absence of a coherent growth plan, accusing ministers of "warm words and cold action".
At the British Chambers of Commerce conference in London, he will say this government and the last Labour administration "produce a growth strategy every week, but none of them up add up to anything".
Let's unpack that for a minute. First, he's saying he wants the state to have a growth plan. Now that's an interesting admission.
Second, he says that it's been a failure of neoliberal governments not to have one. Another interesting admission.
Third, he's implicitly saying as a result that without the state taking the lead then the private sector goes nowhere. That's true.
Fourth, in that case he admits the state needs the resources to deliver such a plan. That means paying tax is essential. And yet he argues business taxes must be cut. That's absurd: that makes him guilty of thinking much worse than any government.
Fifth, he implicitly says that the state has to do the things the market never can universally to make this work. That includes supplying the private sector with educated, housed, healthy workers who can afford to take the risk on working for the private sector because there's an adequate safety net to let them do so. The state's failed in that role for too long too.
What he's really calling for is a Courageous State.
But he's too frightened to say so.
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This is not one of your better blogs. I presume it is meant to be taken as “humourous”?
No, let me assure you of two things.
First I mean it.
Second I’m right.
Walsh clearly knows it.
When we acknowledge it we can solve the problems in our economy. Until then we’re in deep trouble.
The problem is your denial of the truth
No he’s not. Walsh is doing psychological ‘framing’ in which he holds two contradictory ideas at the same time, and then blames the government for not finding his confidence fairy.
Richard, I don’t think he is to scared to say it, and I think he probably will say it. He has nothing to lose, being an Irishman working for a Spanish company. He may even be doing us all a favour!
Even by your own standards, this is a pretty twisted interpretation of Walsh’s words.
What else did he mean then?
Please elucidate what a man who calls on government to have a central plan for growth mean bar the fact that he believes the government plays a central, and even core, role in the economy?
The CEO of The Range was actually imploring the government to use subsidies to business(his word not mine) on Channel 4 news last night in order to grow the economy.
Willie Walsh:
“This cappuccino’s far too weak,” and “No – I’m not going to pay more for a stronger one”
Buy The Courageous State.
Yay!
I interpreted it as meaning the government should be fighting against the proposed aviation tax that was all over the press at the weekend. In the aviation industry “government growth plan” generally means “building new airports, reducing landing fees and scrapping transport taxes”, doesn’t it?
That’s not a growth plan
That’s a suicide pact
I don’t think anyone is arguing that Willie Walsh and Richard have the same view as to what the State’s plan for growth should be. The real point is that Walsh is not one of those ideologues who think that growth is encouraged by the State not being involved in the economy. I’m afraid it is only pretty much in the Anglo Saxon world that “free market” tendency has much sway – on the Continent nearly all businessment see a role for the state in directing the economy – and the attachment to free market economics is pretty minimal. If you look at the world as a whole the free marketeers are pretty much a lunatic extremist fringe.
@Stephen – would love to agree with you, but tell that line about “lunatic extremist fringe” to the poor bastards in the Developing World who have suffered from the IMF’s “Structural Adjustment Programmes” (now being visited on Greece, by the way) and the World Trade Organization’s obsession with “open markets” = markets permeable to dumping of 1st world subsidized goods which have destroyed indigenous markets. Or the Mexicans who have been shafted by NAFTA! Or those living in the eco-systems destroyed by World Bank dams and other programmes – all versions of TINA, and an almost theological “Don’t confuse matters by an appeal to the evidence” obsession with “free trade”, usually to be interereted as “you let me freely enter YOUR market on OUR terms, where you can exercise the “free choice” of “like it or lump it”. FAIR trade is what we need = markets regulated in the interests of ALL the players, and not just the powerful.
He’s only got himself to blame. Wasnt he one of the business leaders who were calling on us all to vote in the Conservatives in 2010?
Is there anybody reading, this who feels comforted by this? Certainly not me.
Right-wing thinking is riddled with contradictions. I can’t work out whether they are being deliberately medacious or if they are genuinely stupid. I would guess Cameron is the former and Simon Heffer’s the latter.
Here are some prime examples of their twisted logic.
1. The state should back off and be shrunk, but the taxpayer should prop up the banks and subsidise slave wages paid by cash-rich corporates.
2. Free markets are best, but cartels and monopolies should not to be challenged.
3. People have only themselves to blame for being uneducated, but we should also deny them the ability to obtain a good free education.
4. The state should be small, but should wage unnecessary and illegal wars in foreign lands.
5. The answer to privatisation failures is not public control, but more privatisation.
6. Industry and hard work is the answer to poverty,but it is the idle rentiers who hold all the wealth and power.
7. Tax cuts and bonuses are essential to motivate the wealthy, but tax cuts and income rises for the poor encourage idleness.
8. Taxes are evil and should be avoided wherever possible – but it’s right that taxpayers’ money is spent on setting up private ‘free’ schools.
9. Freedom and democracy should be embraced, but normal people should be monitored, protest curtailed and dissent silenced.
10. We can’t afford to save the planet.
You’re right
I may use thjose today, with your permission
No problem Richard, though it’s not an exhaustive list! Apologies for the typo in ‘mendacious’.
Keep up the good work.
Had to have a laugh at Neil’s statement that right wing thinking is riddled with contradictions.
If I had the time and inclination I could compile a list twice as long for contradictions in Left wing thinking. You don’t have to be Left Wing to be anti Neo Liberalism by the way.
And the NHS and the Civil Service are greatly in need of reform. I do wince at the rose coloured and conservative mentality in this area. I could write a series of books at the stupidities of State Control. But fair enough, you have wriiten a book first, and I have just bought it. I genuinely look foward to it, hoping for new input, which to be fair you do have, I just hope it is not full of the usual tired left wing cliches.
On the basis that, generally, I learn more by listening than talking, with the agreement of the moderator, could you please supply your list. Then anyone who wanted could learn from the items on the list for improvement.