The extract, from The Week, published this morning, feels horribly true:
George Osborne's sham spending review has achieved one aim - it has split Labour and left the two Eds, Miliband and Balls, in total disarray.
The Labour leader and his shadow chancellor look like a pair of motorists arguing about the map. But Miliband's new readiness to embrace austerity has upset Labour dissidents. Right on cue, former Labour cabinet minister Peter Hain and Neal Lawson of the pressure group Compass, have published a letter in the Guardian (also signed by a bunch of academics) warning that continuing austerity measures after the 2015 general election would be "politically and economically disastrous" for Labour.
This is all a great bonus for Osborne and David Cameron. Nick Robinson, the BBC Political Editor, said on the BBC's Today show this morning that one senior Tory minister had told him that it was all "a Baldrick-style 'cunning plan' to wrong-foot Labour". And it has worked.
I'm sure that's true. As I mentioned this morning - this is about electioneering, and Labour does appear to have fallen for it.
It's pretty sad when Ken Clarke did exactly the same in 1997 and Labour fell for that too.
It seems come lessons just aren't learned - including Labour's lack of conviction in social democracy and the necessary economic thinking that goes with it.
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It’s time for the Unions to stop supporting Labour. Indeed, in realtion to labour’s cowardly lack of moral fibre in relation to the bedroom tax, some union members are voicing this. Unfortunately the Tories know how to make Labour cower in the face of the neo-liberal machine. As you’ve said before, Richard, the time is NOW for Labour to become courageous – the test has been failed yet again. perhaps we shouldn’t waste our time talking about them. Hope must lie elsewhere.
Osborne’s strategy is identical to that of the Republicans in the US. Increase the deficit, cut taxes for the rich and corporations and ‘starve the beast’ of Gov’t by arguing that ‘there’s no money left’ /TINA. The result is to hamstring the incoming Democrat gov’t from implementing social programmes. As you say the Eds have fallen for the same trick.
However, the UK as the sovereign issuer of its own currency can never run out of money. We need a job’s guarantee and a New Green Deal. If the Eds have to be transatlanticist, they should look instead to Rooseveldt and Lincoln’s Greenbacks.
All of this is particularly depressing, given the “open goal” of clear Tory failure, and also William Keegan’s sage advice in his article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jun/16/austerity-uturn-ed-balls-mistake?CMP=twt_gu
Someone – hopefully Compass – can get these two Ed wallies to recognize what a DISASTROUS mistake they have made in their latest speeches, letting the Tories trap them in the Tories’ false narrative; that they should IMMEDIATELY reverse course, and go on the offensive to rubbish the Tories’ false narrative (about Labour profligacy and overspending, when the opposite was true – Labour SAVED the economy), and promise to do their damnedest to reverse the cuts, unless the Tories have so rubbished the economy it’s going to be really impossible to do so.
This is the line they should be taking. But they MUST reverse this policy direction, not only because it will lead people like me to leave the Party once again and disillusion many in the Party, but because once the solid stuff hits the fan, and the “Squeezed middle” see that the Tories have it in for them every bit as as much as for the so-called “benefit-dependent-Chavs”, voters will turn on EVERY Party that has supported austerity, including a Tory-lite Labour Party.
Labour’s best strategy is to go on the offensive NOW, to defeat the Tory lies.
I couldn’t agree more
I don’t know if the upcoming spending review is really the cause of this, nor is the Labour acceptance of the cuts a recent U-turn – it goes back a lot further. I’d argue that one can date the surrender of the two Eds on the economy to as far back as early 2012 when Ed Balls said in a speech, “my starting point is that we are going to have to keep all these cuts.” That was the culmination of a concerted effort by the Labour hard right to destabilise Ed’s leadership – it was the time of “In the Black Labour” and a spate of talking heads (mostly ex-ministers or ex-special advisers) in the Guardian warning about the dangers of “shift to the left”. Labour were pretty much level with the Tories in the polls at that time and both Eds panicked and decised to cave in on accepting Tory austerity. Since then Ed Miliband has become much safer after the Labour poll lead picked up but he is still behaving like a man under siege. Like Compass, I think this is a crazy policy but there we go. But for me, The Week article read like it was written by somebody who’d only been watching British politics for a fortnight and didn’t understand the background to the current Labour conundrum.
Fair comment Howard – and the long view is needed – but is no less worrying
The Green Party are the only party with a credible long term economic plan – one which focuses on the transition away from growth dependency to a steady-state economy. Sadly, even in this climate of three pro-austerity parties, they are making little ground.