I've worked with Geoff Tily, the chief economist at the TUC, over many years, including in his role as an ad hoc members of the Green New Deal Group and as co-members of the Progressive Economy Forum. We don't always agree, but he's on form on the TUC blog with his budget reaction:
This is not the time for feel good initiatives but for real action.
The TUC set out a plan for how investment in infrastructure and public services could deliver millions of new jobs. Research for the TUC shows that an £85bn investment in green infrastructure could help create 1.24 million jobs in the next two years. There are over 100,000 vacancies in social care, and 100,000 more in the NHS. There have been 100,000 redundancies in the past decade in local government. But public services got nothing from today's statement.
The TUC have calculated that to match Roosevelt's New Deal would mean a total of £450 billion spending over the next five years. In spite of all the fanfare, the chancellor announced just £3billion for greening homes and public buildings on top of the prime minister's so called ‘new deal' package of only £5bn.
I added the emphasis in the second paragraph. Here is a government that is saying it is going to create jobs and yet it is refusing to partake in the process. The already shattered and down private sector has, apparently, to do all the heavy lifting on this issue when the jobs that are required - in care, on the environment, in education, and so much else - are very largely public sector roles.
This can only be ideological. The idea that the state must be shrunk survives in this government even as the economy is falling apart all around it.
When we see local authorities, health care trusts, universities, schools and others given the funding to create the jobs that people really want then we will know that the government is serious about its goals. But right now there is not a hint of that.
And that is why Sunak's plan will fail.
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John Glen, of Sunak’s Treasury team has told BBC Radio Scotland GMS that the reason the British Government can borrow is not proof austerity did not work, but was only possible because austerity gave the government the capacity to borrow now. Yhis is the new ‘spin’. It is guff; a canard that must be throttled. The Conservatives in 2008 leapt on the ignorant idiocy that the Government had run out of money; then proceeded to introduce both austerity; and still doubled the debt anf failed to eliminate the deficit. They were catastrophically wrong when the said it in 2008; and they have doubled down on ignorant stupidity now, when it is obvious that the facts show they were totally wrong then, and still totally wrong now.
Thet have actually proved they were wrong; they gave us both austerity, and with it stagnation; and failed to fix the supposed problem they claimed they were going to fix. They show only that they can’t even learn from experience.
This idiocy has to be attacked, with ferocity. The guff has to stop.
We might have different priorities but we can all (and I really do mean ALL) agree that there are things that need doing that are not currently being done. We can also agree that there is a vast untapped pool of people not doing anything (and won’t be for quite a while).
Why is it that Rishi Sunak (and others) can’t put two and two together?
I am not against his bonus for re-employing furloughed workers as long as it does not preclude other action. My problem is that ‘other action’ is largely absent. What a lack of vision.
I think the focus from Geoff Tily on care/NHS jobs is entirely correct. Everyone in this land knows someone needing care or health treatment. Everyone in the land knows that what currently is delivered could be better if more people were employed. Surely this call for Government to employ more care/NHS workers will resonate widely.
Of course, there are huge issues – skills/training, perhaps, being the largest – but there is NO attempt to even think about these issues.
PS I also want a Green Deal, too – but I think health/care issues will resonate with the public during a health crisis.
I think they go together
Over 4 decades of shrinking the state, privatisation, increasing precariousness, increasing (but hidden) unemployment, stagnating incomes, rentierism, financialisation and so on, and people blame immigration, or whichever scapegoat du jour. When their lives are immiserated by the government’s response to Covid-19 and then brexit, who will be blamed? I can’t see Sunak or Johnson et al being asked to take even an ounce of responsibility. The false money narrative will see people gladly and gratefully being shafted by Austerity 2.0.
With the IFS now in full “this debt needs paying off” mode (seemingly the only think tank that anyone quotes) and most of the media and government in full “who’s going to pay for this?” mode, what possible hope is there? It seems that most people unquestioningly believe a fantasy about money that will continue to ruin millions of lives and kill hundreds of thousands in the UK in the coming years. The question, “where does this stuff called money come from?” seems never to occur to people, as though all the money there ever can be already exists, and was just somehow there, and the problem is how do we get it to move around. The incoherence of mainstream narratives about money is staggering yet seemingly invisible to most, especially those involved in creating those narratives. I’m not sure that the “government’s are like households” line will be supplanted quickly enough by “governments can create and spend all the money we need – up to full employment – to pay for all the work that needs doing so that we can have the things we collectively decide we need and want, with taxes to ensure that there isn’t such a glut of money that it becomes increasingly worthless.”
I wish there was a way to make anyone who says, “how will it be paid for?” appear like the fools that they are. It’d be great if people howled with derisive laughter at such questions instead of the earnest nodding we get now. The response to this question should be, “er, did you just say what I think you said?” rather than, “hmm, you’re so wise.”
Exactly – the ideology has been demonstrated throughout COVID with contracts being handed out left right and centre to private sector firms with no qualifications – unless having mates in the Tory party is a qualification. Those with real qualifications be they in local government, academia or the NHS have been ignored rather than supported and fully funded. They could have built capacity for the future, which we know we will need.
When they have such a deep distrust of the state, local and national, and ignorance of how it works it has not surprising that they are incapable of making good use of its resources.