This is from the Guardian this morning. I am a member of the Green New Deal group:
Memo to Lord Adonis in his new role as adviser on infrastructure projects: read Zoe Williams' article on the use of quantitative easing for green and social investment (It's fine to print money, so long as it's not for the people, 5 October). As the dark, deflationary clouds from China and elsewhere gather, and as unemployment and underemployment are still to be found in great swaths of the country, Adonis could propose an infrastructure programme that can help deal with these threats. This would involve using QE to fund increased economic activity that protects the environment through a programme to make all the UK's 30m homes, offices and factories energy efficient.
This decades-long energy infrastructure project would create new jobs in a vast range of skills in every part of the country. The work and business opportunities generated in every constituency will provide huge tax revenues and so calm even the most ardent deficit botherers. In short, it would be QE not just for the people, but also for the planet.
Colin Hines
Convenor, Green New Deal group
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I wouldn’t hold your breath on this one Lord ‘Venus and Adonis’ has clearly left Labour because of Corbyn.
I agree, he has resigned the Labour whip because Labour is now really Labour.
If Redcar is anything to go by, it does not seem that this government will be bailing out industry and jobs anytime soon. So I would be surprised to see PQE from the Tories.
I enjoyed Adonis’ book ‘5 Days in May’ – his analysis of the neo-lib Lib-Dems was very interesting and I think he nailed what it is they ultimately stand for and why we should not vote for them.
However, as a political operator I find him to be typical New Labour – totally bland, value-less in terms of human/social values – he is a living, walking wipe board who will reflect what the Tories want to write as long as he gets paid (he did much the same for Blair).
I fear he will do it their way without question and then claim that he is beyond ideology and is only interested in ‘what works’.
I say this in the profound hope that he will prove me wrong. So go on Andrew – knock yourself out.
The extent to which George Osborne has pinched (and mangled for his own political advantage) key economic policy proposals (e.g., a living wage, a measure of local authority fiscal devolution, an infrastructure commission, etc.) that Labour campaigned on in the general election is remarkable, but not surprising. Even though Labour lost seats these comprise key elements of the policy programme on which Labour MPs were elected. This programme has now been superceded by the policy proposals advanced by Jeremy Corbyn and, presumably, it will require considerable internal party debate before a comprehensive policy programme will be developed – assuming this proves possible. However, in the interim, it appears that the party membership, affiliates and supporters (who gave Jeremy Corbyn his stonking majority) are prepared to disown the policy proposals George Osborne has pinched – and to excoriate anyone (in particular Andrew Adonis) who seeks to assist and influence the implementation of these proposals.
So instead of claiming the policy victories that George Osborne’s pinching of these policy proposals reveals – and arguing the case within and without parliament for their effective implementation, Labour is increasingly presenting itself as an extra-parliamentary protest movement.
The amount of vitriol Andrew Adonis attracted, the visceral hatred of all Tories that is being expressed and the not-so-veiled hints about de-selecting some MPs are depressing and will prevent the emergence of a rejuvenated, effective parliamentary opposition as a government-in-waiting. It is totally futile seeking to craft and advance innovative, and badly needed, policy proposals in these circumstances.
I disagree
This is the creation of a wholly new economic policy entirely distinct from what has gone before
That’s not extra parliamentary: it is post neoliberal
And that will take time but also shows that what was Labour could so easily have been Tory
I don’t disagree with your assertion that a wholly new economic policy is required, but shifting the terms of the economic policy debate can only ever be incremental because those advancing the new policies that will emerge from this process must secure the support of a plurality of voters – and, under FPTP and, perhaps, even more importantly, the consent of a majority of voters to be governed in such a manner.
This involves re-defining the so-called “common ground” the Tories believe they are capturing so effortlessly. And it’s not enough to do so in way that satisfies the self-selecting selectorate of Labour party members, TU affiliates and £3 supporters; it must do so in away that convinces those who elected Labour MPs and those who previously voted for Labour, but have deserted Labour for a whole spectrum of offerings – or, even worse, failed to vote.
I’m not accusing you of it, but there is an excessive readiness by the Corbyn-supporting selectorate to demonise the Tories and those who support them. There is also among many an unflinching adherence to the labour theory of value and to advancing and protecting selected, and often privileged, producer interests at the expense of the vast majority of citizens. And, while neo-liberalism is a convenient pejorative term that separates its evil supporters from the virtuous, it is necessary, even if it is far more difficult, to explain to ordinary voters the realities of the excessively financialised, rentier economy subject to managment by the capitalist elites which have suborned governing policticians, policy-makers and regulators. In addition, it needs new language to emphasis the collective underpinnings of a a successfully fucntioning economy. And then a credible and convincing alternative can be advanced.
I wonder, do you understand the labour theory of value?
I am not disputing the need to persuade
I certainly wonder whether you are are of the issues on which persuasion is needed if you use such misleading reference points in ways that make little sense
How I HATED Blair’s mantra about being anti-ideology, and interested only in “what works”, first, for its profound lack of self-reflection, not recognising that “what works” is ITSELF an ideology, for what is ideology other than a theory as to how things work, and a means of making sense of the chaos of information by which we are daily bombarded.
Secondly, of course, I hated the “what works” ideology, because it was an example, par excellence, of Marx’s critique of ideology, as being only the superstructure imposed on society, to mask the real economic structures and relationships – in a word “what works” has usually been code for “Right Wing Conservative” – for, as I have observed here before, Right Wing political theory rests on the “argument from nature”, in which Conservative ideas are “natural” as honouring “human nature”, and ALL other political ideas and theories unnatural, and hence deviant.
Finally, I REALLY disliked Blair’s contempt for “ideology”, as being mere “theology”, akin to counting the number of angels that can stand on the head of a pin, when, as I say above, it is our frame of reference for making sense of what occurs around us – so long as you ALWAYS test your ideology against the evidence, it remains a useful tool.
The last straw for me, after Blair criticised arguments about ideology as being “mere theology”, with the implication that such arguments were unimportant, was his being received into the Roman Catholic Church, after leaving office, having been an Anglican. So THEIR ideology was OK, and arguments over fine points of belief were OK. Frankly, to be consistent, he should have said such arguments over faith were equally otiose, and that “what matters is what works”, and should have remained the Anglican he was brought up as.
(NB, I speak as an Anglican, but that is not the substance of my complaint here. Instead, my point is that Blair SHOULD have accepted that ideology matters, and become a Roman Catholic while PM, if that is what he believed, for there is nothing in our constitution that prevents a Roman Catholic from being PM)
I think that was heartfelt
‘….so long as you ALWAYS test your ideology against the evidence, it remains a useful tool’.
Bless you Andrew Dickie – very insightful and upon reflection also a sound methodology as I was wrestling with the difference between useful ideology and that which is harmful and also with the knowledge that I too subscribe to certain ideologies.
Great stuff! Thanks.
Blair is not an idiot. He Knows that however evil you have been, however many innocent deaths you have caused, you can still get to paradise if you genuinely repent. It’s a no brainier .
that’s quite definitely a man made religious opinion
Not related but can I give some advice to Tory conference speakers?
Try and do it without the autocue directly ahead of you. You are sending your audience to sleep and the snapback every 3 seconds to focus on the thing completely distracts everyone from whatever message it is you are trying to deliver to us.