Tony Blair once offered a pledge card to secure votes. I happen to think they're a good idea.
Here's are the commitments I want from Labour:
1. Job creation through a Green new Deal to increase tax paid and reduce welfare benefits to clear the deficit
2. Tackle the tax gap to close the deficit and restore pensions
3. Recreate the NHS, social and welfare services under public control for the benefit of all
4. Break up the banks so they can never again bring our economy to its knees
5. Build social housing to create jobs, real wealth and to provide a home with long term security for all families
You could tidy the wording: this is a Sunday morning post-breakfast effort. The reality is though that these measures tackle people's fears, and offer hope at the same time. They're the essential combination for any party seeking power in 2015.
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Would you consider slippimg in to the list in no.3, “the schools”?
A policy of Full Employment and restoring the NHS to public control must be at the top of the agenda.
I hope both are implicit in this…
I would like a pledge from Labour to have a debt jubilee as recommended by Steve Keen and Michael Hudson. Looking at data for personal and national debt I agree with them that debt has gone beyond our ability to pay, causing debt deflation. This causes stagnation as too much money and taxes are extracted in servicing debt. It is impossible to pay it off because of the exponential growth of debt due to compound interest.
I wonder however if many Labour MPs are aware of the fact that banks create the money supply as debt and are not just intermediaries between savers and borrowers. The “too far to fast” mantra gives me the impression that they believe that cuts are necessary to clear debt, but at a slower pace. Do they realise that 97+% of our money is debt, and that it is important to reform this, and write the unpayable debt off?
Dealing with the tax gap would then be even more effective because more of the taxes taken could be used on services, and less on debt. Monetary reform would also prevent further debt.
I would certainly like to see it, but I have my doubts that anything like that will ever be adopted by Labour. I don’t know if you are aware of what is going on with Labour in Scotland just now, but Johann Lamont (the Scottish leader) has just moved the party sharply to the right announcing that if Labour win the next election she will end universality for nearly all social programmes the Scottish Parliament runs. The SNP has of course immediately attacked her for this, but the real damage is that the Tories are supporting her and welcoming her converting to their position.
Scottish Labour is increasingly independent of the UK party in policy terms, so this does not necessarily reflect on the direction the UK party will go in, but when the party in Scotland is behaving like this it makes it rather hard for me have much faith in Labour at any level.
I agree – what they’re doing is scary
It’s why I am asking Labour to make these pledges – because I am almost but not quite as scared of right wing Labour as I am the Tories
Iain and Richard – I really cannot believe the Scottlish Labour Party has embarked on such a retrograde path! Have they learned nothing from the past?
Once you abandon universalism you get two things:
a) a vast increase in bureaucracy (just when they are cutting staff to deal with it) as means testing needs to be used to decide who should get what, implying inevitable mistakes, unfairness (with all the parphernalia of appeals, implying more unnecessary manpower which could be more usefully deployed elsewhere) and reduced take-up
b) The “ghettoisation” of welfare, so that it becomes more and more a means of last resort, stigmatizing those who resort to it, when in fact welfare serves the useful purpose of keeping people from abject penury, and gives them some spending power, so helping keep the economy afloat.
Worst of all, however, such a “conversion” to the failed Tory line really is a case of “the rats joining a sinking ship”, as the neo-liberal experiment has, in the opinion of all (except those who still persist in admiring the Emperor’s new clothes) been an abject failure for most people.
Has Johann Lamont never heard of Barbara Castle’s answer to why even the Duchess of Westminster should get Child Benefit = pay it out to everyone, then tax it back from the rich. Simple, clear-cut, non-bureaucratic, equitable. Sounds like the Scottish Labour pArty is in danger of vanishing up its own backside!
Indeed
I would also add a full employment policy.
Implicit in (1) I hope….
In my view it is something that should be stated unambiguously.
OK
Fair comment
Somewhere in all of this, there is the need for a constitution. Until the UK and/or its current constituent parts envision the kind of country/countries they want to be, and write constitutions to express those visions, we will continue to be at the mercy of the elite capture of our nations and their institutions.
While I agree whole heartedly with much of your opinions on what would make a better society I can’t help but be completely appalled by the idea of job creation. The current socio-economic system incentivises destructive resource consumption purely in the name of financial gain distributed towards people that need it least. Continual validation of the concept that you need to perform tasks which feed the consumer machine in order to “earn” money that is used to buy the invented products and so complete the cycle of waste is something we need to stop. This process is killing the planet and destroying the communities that make life bearable.
In this country we’re well past the point where GDP growth is beneficial and it’s time to measure progress in ways that improve the quality of life.
The Beginning of the End of Work
The Equality Trust
A Citizen’s Income
Job creation, building homes for real people, is of value
For consumption alone it is not, I agree
1. Original, but tried and tested anywhere in the world? You want to take a punt ?
2. Can’t argue against. But like to know where in the world a Tax Authority has been succesfull in doing this (without harming its economy).
3. Nice sentiment. But “re-create” ? The NHS was underfunded and poorly run from the start
I saw this for myself. Where in the world is your model for this? There will never be enough resources.
4. Fine, but how will you break up the banks of the rest of the world? Its a small and competitive world is it not?
5.Where are you going to build these houses? Not everybody want to live in say, Burnley?
Is that really the best you can do?
They’re not even worth replying to, they’re so feeble
Breaking up the banks is not the right thing to do. More small banks and building societies failed than large banks in the crisis. The answer is proper regulation. UK banking regulation up to the crisis, and I am including the regulation itself plus the actual enforcement of it, was dismal. Many banks managements were incompetent but the regulators were even worse, with a lack of understanding of the issues. There are plenty of examples of highly concentrated banking industries around the world that are far more stable than the UK due to proper regulation, like Canada, Australia, South Africa. Breaking the banks up won’t make the sector more stable, nor will it improve competition, in fact it will make it far difficult for consumers to compare between banks products.
It’s both that are needed