Labour Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves is to make a speech at the Resolution Foundation today. According to the Guardian:
Reeves will say a Labour government would stick to fiscal rules that would include a promise to only borrow to invest, while committing to reducing the national debt as a share of the economy.
The shadow chancellor will tell an event hosted by the Resolution Foundation thinktank in London: “I've set out the fiscal rules which will bind the next Labour government. Rules which I will stick to with ironclad discipline.”
So, if we had another 2008 Reeves would not save the economy as tax revenues crashed. She'dtrash the public services instead, consigning us to total economic meltdown.
And if we had another Covid she would not supply help to the NHS or businesses and people impacted. She'd let people die and allow the economy to fail instead.
And nor will she try to manage the economy to counter the cyclical failings of the market: she will instead seek to exacerbate them by cutting spending to suit falling revenues.
I am not making this up: that's what her 'ironclad discipline' implies.
This is the pure neoliberal playbook. And it is utterly totally economically illiterate. It is also grossly irresponsible and promises complete neglect of duty to the people of this country whilst offering total service to the City of London.
I know I talk about the fact that people should vote Anything But Conservative to beat fascism, but I am glad that in my case that will mean voting LibDem as it would be very hard to vote for this.
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I’ve left the Labour Party in total despair. The few policies that make it to the public domain are abysmal. Not rejoining the single market was my breaking point and now this! The Lib Dems really need to step up to give the country a real opposition. I fear Labour is beyond redemption.
Agree. How is more austerity focused “iron-clad discipline” going to help public trying to cope with huge energy , fuel and food price rises.
It will not, one iota
Let me just throw this in here.. in response to Graeme’s comment..
An example of a toxic culture, driven by 12 years of feverish neoliberalism-driven austerity :
An account of DWP staff in tears hearing claimants suffering, appealing to other DWP staff for support :
https://www.reddit.com/r/DWPhelp/comments/vvhh7h/dwp_staff_can_anyone_relate/
This is normality on the front line, today.
This should be headline news, not what the Duchess of Cambridge’ dress cost today.
Rachel Reeves: Absolutely bloody clueless about the economy ever since she began her political career (and probably earlier). As in her previous time in the Shadow Cabinet, she apparently feels that the thrashings should continue until morale improves. Why is she even in the Labour Party?
What stands out for me is that she is yet another Oxford PPE-er. What do they teach them there? I suggest a moratorium which disallows anybody who deliberately opts to study PPE at Oxford from entering politics. The country would be in a much better state if this had been the case over the past few decades.
@Mariner I wholeheartedly agree re Oxford PPE. I’d add a moratorium on anyone with an MBA from anywhere at all being allowed to be a senior manager in a company with more than 10 employees too. The only exception would be if they built that company themselves – which given the fees they pay to do these courses at the more prestigious institutions – they all should be able to do as a matter of course.
Sorry, but this is ridiculous
Next you’ll be banning another characteristic
The comment on MBAs (above) is not entirely unreasonable; few of them graduate with any worthwhile skills for an employer. It’s a bit like ‘theatre studies’ courses….fine if you want to be a Tesco manager but not really any use around the stage.
I would go further and say no one who has not had a state education should be allowed to represent voters. You cannot work for the state if you have never had a stake in it and in most cases actively work against it. No public school boys please.
Sorry – I cannot agree to that
That’s a slippery slope
Maybe a bit excessive but privileged people by their very nature have more influence than they deserve. Not only is the House of Commons filled with public school alumni and Oxbridge graduates but they also have an even more beneficial platform provided by the House of Lords which allows those from the upper echelons of society to pick who is allowed to sit in that House. Political Parties all select by school, university and profession. What is needed is a greater say for those that don’t necessarily have those privileges to join in the debate to a greater degree than they are afforded now and not to allow all the control of politics to be in the hands of a very small fee paying educated minority.
Accepted
But banning people really does not help
I agree.
But what do the Lib Dems say?
Probably not much better….
2019 manifesto headed Responsible Economics
A good government should responsibly manage the nation’s finances: taking advantage of opportunities to borrow to invest in key infrastructure while making sure that day-to-day spending does not exceed the amount of money raised in taxes. The Liberal Democrats are the only party who will manage the country’s finances properly.
and
Use the £50 billion Remain Bonus to invest in services and tackle inequality, giving a major boost to schools and combatting in-work poverty.
Ensure that key services are properly funded and responsibly manage their budgets so that they rise year-on-year.
End the continual erosion of local government funding and commit to a real increase in local government funding throughout the Parliament.
Ensure overall national debt continues to decline as a share of national income.
Protect the independence of the Bank of England and keep the inflation target of two per cent.”
Oh dear!
We didn’t remain but if we re-joined the single market, there would be benefits. The Irish problem would disappear, fishermen could sell to the Continent again, farmers and other could recruit labour, Musicians could tour again, people could find work abroad more easily, there would be less need for businesses to re-locate, exports to Europe could pick up, helping the pound. Oil is priced in dollars so there would be some gain there.
Thanks, Ian. A question one can ask after reading your summary is this: Is there any political party that isn’t fanatically neoliberal today? This virus has really taken hold and seemingly infected a good may in the political class.
Richard, are you able to pinpoint any difference between this and George Osborne 10 years ago?
Or indeed point to anything Labour have been saying of late that could be described as social democratic?
I’ve not seen it reported elsewhere, but I see from Twitter that Labour Lords were whipped last night to abstain last night on a modest amendment which would have extended free school meals.
Please tell me the PLP aren’t completely beyond redemption.
This is exactly what Osborne did
IF
Sunak is next PM
THEN
Hung parliament at next election
THEN
Lib Dems agree coalition with Labour on proviso of PR without a referendum
THEN
Over a decade or 2, grown up, multi-party democracy and an end to the insane neoliberal economic consensus.
It’s a long, long shot, but it’s the only semi-realistic trajectory that could get us out of this death spiral.
IF
‘If’ indeed. I fear Labour will not adopt democratic reform as the price of support from the lib dems – just like Cameron they might buy them off with a promise of a choice of something just as bad, but Labour simply does not like democracy.
More or less the only path out of the wilderness isn’t it.
I notice the bookies have Sunk as 13/8 favourite. (He might be a favourite with Tory MPs, I’m not so sure about the British public.)
Will he do the honourable thing and go back to the public for a mandate? In normal times I’d expect a GE in this situation.
Late 2022.. 2024 whenever… If it’s a hung parliament the incumbent still get first dibs at forming a coalition or running a minority government.
If only Labour could say or do something remotely positive! I’ve just revisited the website and it’s back to vacuous platitudes and slogans of New Labour. So that’s what I’m expecting from Labour. More neoliberalism. Toryism, slightly less feral.
Say what you will about Labour under Corbyn – policies were announced regularly in plain sight – and for the most part gave ordinary people hope.
I don’t see how a multi-party democracy would get rid of the neoliberal consensus – they’re all on the same neoliberal page.
What we need is an exemplar country to deficit spend on sensible policy options – but without issuing bonds in the pretence that they have to ‘borrow’ to balance the books!
Strangely, if I understand this correctly, the pandemic spending in the UK did just that. The Treasury spent on furlough etc and issued gilts to an amount which would have approximately matched the ensuing deficit. BUT the Bank of England (which is in effect owned by the Treasury) bought gilts to approximately the same value from the secondary market – so the net government position on gilts was approximately zero. Hence the UK government spent without pretending that ‘borrowing’ filled the hole.
I understand there’s an expectation in some quarters that QE has to be unwound. Why do they think that?
If they do post-hoc unwinding, it doesn’t seem to me to alter the fact that a large amount of deficit spending occurred without being ‘balanced’ by ‘borrowing’.
Your brief summary is essentially right
George, what about an exemplar contry from the past? This piece, from the USA, takes a useful look at Rooseveldt’s America in WWII, amongst other things. https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/inflation-reindustrialization-manufacturing/
Sadly, for me, ABC will mean voting Labour. It certainly won’t be because their policies are worth voting for.
Craig
PSR, you are sounding like the early Roosevelt. Not a bad thing.
The Labour Party – ‘Fiscal Fools’ to a man and woman.
There’s only one fiscal rule for Government in my view: to intervene on behalf of the people who vote for them so that they may live long and happy lives free from fear and want.
Last night Starmer whipped Labour peers to ABSTAIN on move to give free school meals to all Universal Credit families.
Much as the Conservative party is now the UKIP party, Labour is now the Tory party. The only hope is the Greens, but with the present voting system I recognise that is totally unrealistic and I doubt that at present they would they have enough people of the relevant quality / experience to form a Government anyway.
I despair.
AliB, since its obvious that the current tory party, and judging from the above, thre labour party, don’t have enough people to form a government either, you may just as well vote Green.
Oh hang on, the unfair totally outdated FPTP system left in place by TB, and which Starmer seems uninterested in changing, means the Greens haven’t got a hope. Well done labour!
Inside or outside the LP ‘we’ must try to get a critical mass of the public commentariat behind the ‘anything we can do we can afford’ – approach into the public domain so effectively as to force Labour, lib dems to respond.
Staring them in the face is the billions spent on pandemic support which they cant show as ‘borrowing’ to ‘land on the shoulders’ of our children grand children.
Doesnt need to framed as MMT – just the facts about the last three years.
Would it be possible to set up a few public questions to put to Reeves, Starmer, and co over the names of sufficiently heavyweight people – Richard, Will Hutton, Wren Lewis, Mazzucato etc.
eg. ‘to whom are QE billions owed’ ? ‘what did Keynes mean by ‘we can afford….etc. etc’
I will discuss it
George wrote: “What we need is an exemplar country to deficit spend on sensible policy options”. How about Japan? I haven’t checked on the duration of their deficit spend or its impact on the yen’s value or Japan’s inflation over the duration but I’ll add it tomorrow’s “to do” list.
Good night all!
“It’s a long, long shot, but it’s the only semi-realistic trajectory that could get us out of this death spiral.” Tony Rooney, you may just be right. If it takes a decade or two, i’m not likely to be around to see it, but my children will. And benefit from it.
I can appreciate you won’t be wanting to vote Tory! If Rachel Reeves ends up being the likely Chancellor I can also appreciate you won’t be wanting to vote Labour. If the Lib Dem manifesto is as bad as their last, will you really be wanting to vote for them? Didn’t you call it the most neoliberal of the major parties in 2019?
Maybe we need an MMT party?
The whole system needs to be swept away
People want PR and positive choices
Surely its time for a new political party.
Starmer is most definitely in my opinion positioning himself as ‘acceptable opposition’ for the Establishment – ensuring that he does not threaten their ambitions for private healthcare and rentiered public sector services/public services.
This ‘Establishment’ btw is international, especially trans Atlantic.
The thing is what to do as a voter? You want to send a message to the Tories and vote ABC. The Tories have blighted my life for 12+ years. But what else? I don’t support the current Labour party at all. I’d like to vote Green in my Tory dominated area but I perceive them to be rather weak in other areas of policy and orthodox about money. I know the local Green councillor in my area and he is genuine, but I have no idea if the books I bought him have had any impact (The Deficit Myth & Money for Nothing).
We are in the grip of some force, some grim orthodoxy that is intent on having its way with us and the planet.
I was talking to one of my staff who lives in the area of Robert Jenrick MP. She loathes the Tories and still thinks that Corbyn was the man for her (the dirty tricks orchestrated against Corbyn are bound to be revealed sooner or later – at a Radiohead concert in 2017, a large section of the crowd broke out into the ‘Oooh Jeremy Corbyn’ song and the band struck up and palyed along. I’ve never heard that happen at a gig about a politician EVER – and I’v e been to many a gig. She has even stopped reading the Guardian, denouncing the media as a nothing but theatre. She went along to one of his surgeries to talk about social value for the post grad study we funded for her. She said that Jenrick was nothing like he was on the telly. He was engaging and knew all about social value and she enjoyed his company and his input. She had turned up expecting to come away having had her prejudices confirmed but at the end it was anything but. She could not reconcile the person with the politics she had seen.
I thought about this and about how evil and nasty the Tory party had been since 2010 – how much they had relished tearing our society and the only conclusion I could come to was about Hannah Arendt’s observation about the ‘banality of evil’ – just how ordinary our oppressors are and much like us on the surface? And just how connive-able they can be.
What does it say about our modern politics – this Janus-like quality – pretending to be empathetic with one face whilst doffing your cap to vested interests with the other (who’s your Daddy?). And that the opposition party you want to vote for seems to be exactly the same?
It’s not much of a choice is it on the face of it? And Labour – who did much with the Liberals to found a social security system just seem to want to walk away from that history and that achievement.
The Tories have been a disaster, but what about Labour as just a default party because the Tories have ran out of road? A Labour party predicated on the same foundations it now seems as the Tories? My only only hope is that Labour are lying about these positions in order to get into. But I doubt it. I find it hard to actually want to vote. There’s nothing for me at all. Zilch.
PR is a possible answer because it makes politicians work together and compromise which is what I thought that politics was all about. Apparently not – not when you’ve got well-heeled back seat drivers it isn’t.
It’s sad state of affairs.