Caroline Lucas has a first rate letter ion the Guardian today, which I'll reproduce in full since I saw it before publication:
News that Ed Miliband will accept the government's spending cuts, as a starting point for 2015-16, as well as supporting a cap on welfare spending, confirms fears that we now have three parties of austerity at Westminster. Instead of trying to outcompete the government in some kind of masochistic virility test to see who can threaten the greatest austerity, an opposition party worthy of the name would be making a far stronger case that austerity isn't working, and offering a genuine alternative.
At the People's Assembly meeting in London on Saturday, more than 4,000 people gathered to build a movement to do just that, based on a recognition that the best way to address the deficit is not by cutting public spending, throwing people out of work and slashing welfare, but by investing in jobs, particularly jobs in the labour-intensive green sector, which would address the growing climate crisis, as well as the economic one.
Borrowing, based on record low interest rates, a serious crackdown on tax evasion and avoidance, and green quantitative easing to deliver investment directly into the new jobs and infrastructure that the UK urgently needs to make the transition to a more sustainable economy, would all do far more to address the deficit than the confused Tory-lite policies set out by the Labour frontbench.
Caroline Lucas MP
Green, Brighton Pavilion
I entirely agree.
Yesterday I mentioned that Allyson Pollock is one of my heroes. Caroline Lucas is another.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
If Ed Miliband came out with a manifeasto for the left, as did Michael Foot, some bright spark (probably within Labour’s Blairite factiion) would make the connection with the ‘Longest sucide note…’) The dominant right-wing press would love it, their slick machinery would click into action, Miliband would be toast and Labour would not get elected. With the greatest respect to Caroline Lucas she can come up with left leaning policies because she not a serious threat to the establishment.
Perhaps the answer is to tell straight forward lies – Cameron and Clegg did and got away with it (so far). It appears that speeches and statements about policies, maybe even manifestos, are aimed at editors and jurnos who seem to think that it is their job to filter what is said into their interptretation of how people will react.
Should Politician go back to face to face contact with the electorate on the hustings? Would the electorate turn up and listen?….I wonder
You obviously have not read the letter from Barry Walker in the same Guardian. He says the savage cuts by Brighton Council to the pay and conditions of their lowest paid workers shows that the Greens are the fourth party of austerity.
You are right, I had not
I also know Caroliine does not agree with what the council has done – which is what happens in politics
So too is the crisis Brighton faced part of th current dilemma of politics.nthe obvious solution to the problem in Brighton was to scale up very low pay – which Labour should have done. But Tory cuts have prevented that. No wonder the Greens have faced a problem.
I am we’ll aware unions have been critical and I am sure the issue could have been better managed but you are offering a simplistic analysis as far as I can see.
“The Institute for Government is already predicting an austerity election in 2020. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says a future chancellor will have to find another £23bn of cuts if the structural deficit is to be abolished by 2018.
The Resolution Foundation goes one further and predicts £26bn. One of the reasons the current Spending Review has been less tense than usual is that Whitehall is saving some of its arguments for next time, when the street will be awash with bleeding stumps”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23034327
Sadly a true reflection of their thinking
And all based on neoliberal notions, all of them wrong
There are many disaffected Labour M.P’s and members, many disaffected Lib Dem members – the time has come to form a new party. Yes, it would be panned by the tabloids and be in the wilderness but we need a ‘voice in the wilderness’ because many of us need somewhere to turn. The Oligarch ‘FIRE’ economy (as Michael Hudson calls it) is wrecking lives, wrecking the environment, manifestly prolonging world poverty and creating Fritz Lang’s metropolis before our eyes.
Richard,
You might be interested to hear that MMT economist Bill Mitchell also references Caroline’s letter in a recent blog post…
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=24419
I must admit to laughing out loud at the car radio this morning when I tuned in to hear Nick Clegg wittering on about the need for cuts because we can’t afford to hand the debt to our children and grandchildren.
Thus demonstrating a totally clueless understanding of sovereign debt…That leaves the Green Party. I sincerely wish Caroline has heard of and perhaps understands MMT?
Ah Yes the great answer of MMT, an economics policy so wonderful and so obviously the solution that no government in the entire World has enacted its policies, in fact no major political party anywhere in the World has adopted it!
But of course it is the answer to everything, just print away and enable policies that would never get public support if you asked for taxation to pay for it!
It’s always true of new thinking that no one has yet adopted it
That’s because it is new
And politicians are always behind the curve
‘Just printing away’ was what we had from the international banking system.
That created an asset bubble but few or no real new assets. As I read it (and I’m not an expert) MMT would have limits e.g. at full employment more spending creates inflation. There were no limits with the banking system until the crash.
Also MMT govt. would use the money for investment in real assets. It would employ people and plant currently standing idle at great cost in terms of production foregone.
it might be, Richard, you need to read a little more.
I buy all of that – and m completely consistent with it
“MMT, an economics policy…in fact no major political party anywhere in the World has adopted it”
How wrong can you be! Far from being the pie in the sky ‘policy’ you imagine it to be, MMT is a matter of operational fact the world over.
It describes how, apart from the Euro-zone nations, every advanced economy actually works (and moreover has worked since the end of the gold standard era many decades ago). Namely they all employ sovereign government-provided instruments of fiat money and fiat taxation.
Once understood, the foolishness of the deficit/debt hysteria of Very Serious Persons everywhere can be seen for what it is.
“just print away and enable policies that would never get public support if you asked for taxation to pay for it!”
How ironic that you think the government needs to tax to pay for subsequent spending. Although there are other reasons to tax, such as tax justice and to modify behaviors, the primary purpose of (fiat) taxes is to give value to (fiat) money and is nothing to do with funding the government.
Unfortunately for us Cameron, Milliband, Clegg, most of economics and all the media tragically believe the simple-minded story that the UK is ‘like a houshold’.
Utter garbage.
In the last paragraph she should have included a line making clear the UK is not going to invade any more countries. It is criminal how much blood and treasure we have wasted in the stupid dishonest adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Two dumb wars on the credit card, compounded human suffering and the world a more dangerous place.
Good to read this from Caroline Lucas. However, I think The Green’s message on austerity is confused at a local level. For instance, in Sheffield where they have very little influence over the council, they are proposing an increase in council tax, which is the last thing most people here need. See link: http://sheffieldgreenparty.org.uk/2013/02/27/greens-respond-to-sheffield-anti-cuts-alliance/
And they wonder why the general population hold politicians in such contempt.
Labour are frightened to say what they know to be true, disdainful of evidence, triangulating away to advance their political careers at the expense of social justice.
They just don’t get it anymore, it’s not about them, or the party, or their careers, or their reputation.
It’s a battle of ideas which they don’t want to fight, they’re pygmies.
labour is clearly signing it’s own death warrant which will play into the hands of the greasy Tories.
I think the withering away of Labour is a good thing and will eventually allow a party to emerge that is outside the corporate capture system. This will mean an outright victory for the Tories at the next election and a welter of protest movements. Even if a new peoples’ assembly party emerged, without PR it would have no parliamentary voice.
If we are looking for labour intensive jobs how about building reservoirs and converting the UK to dual stream reticulation so that like France we have potable and non-potable water ?
Ground source heat pumps for blocks of flats and a country wide house insulation program .
It’s got to be better to pay someone to do a green job or even a green non-job than paying them to stay at home with the devastating effect this has on whole families .
Let’s be realistic about what renewables can achieve though . There is a limit of the amount of shallow water locations suitable for siting offshore wind turbines and our landscape is beautiful and shouldn’t be blighted by onshore turbines .
A Severn Barrage would change the Severn for ever and have severe effects on salmon , sea trout and eels if it was to generate 5% of the nations electricity but keeping the river migratory fish friendly would make the project unworthwhile .
The potential for solar is limited in the UK .
Even if all UK electricity was generated by renewables , which is many decades off if even possible , electricity generation only accounts for a third of energy usage .
There would still be another third for domestic and industrial heating and another third for transportation .
Like it or not the future in our country of 63 million people is fuels based . That is the reality no matter what we might like to think .
It is dishonest to pretend renewables are an alternative to fuel based solutions rather than complimentary and if fusion does come through will renewables have any future ?