I commented on Keir Starmer's ‘vision' speech a number of times yesterday, mainly by reproducing tweets I had posted during and after its delivery. The morning after most events is always a good time for reflection though, and this time there are two speeches to consider (Sunak tried to steal Starmer's thunder the day before) and so let me muse on where we are.
The bottom line is we are in a bad place where the two leading politicians in the UK are both playing to politically ill-informed audiences who will, they think, determine their fates, largely on the basis of prejudice instead of informed opinion.
As a result unfounded fears on migration (Sunak) and the level of government spending (Starmer) were highlighted. The debt card was played heavily by both as if the country as whole really is being burdened by people choosing to save with the government, when that is clearly not the case.
And both made meaningless promises. Sunak promised growth that is not going to happen, and an end to small boat crossings, which is a promise beyond his control. Starmer, ludicrously, offered local control of much of the economy without explain how existing structures that might appear local but which currently deny any such accountability (from NHS Trusts, to academy schools, to privatised train, bus and water companies as well as housing associations) were going to be swept away to make this local control possible, and all without any extra money.
The surreal similarity between the two was more apparent than the differences. Both claimed to know people's priorities. Then they declared what they were without consultation having apparently taken place. After that they selected fantastic (in the literal sense) goals that supposedly reflected those desires that will in all likelihood not be achieved, and would change little if they were, although overall Sunak probably did better on choosing, excepting the fact he can't deliver. Starmer failed because I know of literally no one in England who thinks their life will be made better by more local control of services, and he utterly ignored the issue of independence for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.
The only possible conclusion is that we now have major party leaders who share in common a deep attachment to austerity, because neither is willing to spend any additional government money; who think lowering inflation requires any sacrifice that bankers demand; and who offer promises that are in themselves meaningless that cannot in any meaningful way change the wellbeing of people, on which they refuse to spend more.
Both believe government must be run like households. Neither has the slightest grasp of macroeconomics that any good prime minister must possess. And neither is willing to mention the biggest issues the country faces (what the country is; EU relations; Northern Ireland; inflation matching pay rises to prevent recession; the overwhelming need to address climate change as a priority of greater significance than growth; the unaffordability of housing; crushing inequality; the gross injustice of student debt; electoral reform; the cost of childcare; the social care crisis and so much more).
In summary, we have politicians who lack vision, and offer fantasies instead of real answers. Both remain wedded to political ideas decades out of date (neoliberal fantasies of market supremacy and the importance of choice). Neither acknowledges, let alone addresses, the real issues we face.
Meanwhile, the country is sinking as a result of Tory failure (Starmer had, at least, got that right). Sunak can only offer more of the same. Starmer, not knowing what to do, is seeking to pass the buck from Westminster to whomsoever he can pass it too, proving he truly is one of the cowardly politicians I described in my 2011 book ‘The Courageous State'.
What we can conclude is that at present neither of these political parties has any of the required answers to the problems that we face whilst first past the post, to which they unsurprisingly cling, makes any alternative hard to deliver. And do not doubt the significance of first-past-the-post. Given that it guarantees each will get a turn in the end it removes the need to ever be good, let alone relevant: waiting is enough to eventually win power in this system, and it shows.
I can't see comfortable solutions to this situation. Equally, I cannot see the current status quo as sustainable. The anger is growing. All told, we live in deeply uncomfortable times, knowing that the politics that these two hopeless leaders espouse must pass, but without knowing as yet from where the alternative might come, or how it might be delivered.
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I comes to something when our only hope is that Starmer has taken a leaf out of the Tory playbook and actually plans to do something entirely different once in power to what he currently claims.
We know he’s an accomplished liar (or at least not interested in keeping his promises given his purge of many of the left-wing members of the Labour Party after he’d run for the leadership on an inclusive ticket), but I don’t believe he will do this.
Ultimately, I suspect he’s a bit like Cameron in many ways – wants to be PM but doesn’t really have a real vision as to what he is going to do in the role. Unfortunately, his advisors at the same people who came up with such wizard schemes as using PFI to fund hospital builds and keep the expense off the government books. I would say they thought damn the eventual cost, but suspect there was some backsheesh involved somewhere along the line, probably in well-paid ‘advisory’ roles. Also the same advisors that thought running the 2015 election campaign as being a bit less crap/nasty than the Tories would work out. Intellectual pygmies.
I’m sure there must be some sort of a saying about judging a leader by their advisors. Doesn’t work out well for Starmer, or the rest of us for that matter.
Don’t get me wrong, I still expect Labour to win the next election, albeit perhaps narrowly whatever the polls might show right now, but I don’t expect more than a marginal improvement in fortunes for the country given what we have heard.
A good decade to be a banker (when isn’t?).
I agree with all of this, but infused with Mattei’s book ‘The Capital Order’ it seems to me that this is the class warfare you too have spoken off – it is yet again our major political parties being used as tools to suppress worker wages and conditions (or a fairer share of output) by capital.
Sunak and Stymied’s speeches were basically the capital order spelt for us by them just playing in the margins with managerialist gobble-de-gook.
Those speeches were a capitulation to the demands of capital on both counts.
Agreed
This is class warfare in the form. of economic civil war
https://leftfootforward.org/2023/01/the-government-has-declared-war-on-workers/
Prem Sikka agrees with you.
Prem and I quite often agree
I too am reading Clara Mattei “Capital Order”.
What we see is Sunak and Starmer reading straight from the resolutions of the International Finance Brussels Conference 1920 which sought to restore laissez-faire capitalism after the first world war.
This is the doctrine that says :
1. Public Sector bad Private sector good.
2. Profits good , wages bad.
3. The only way to get productive investment is to make it possible for capitalists to have enough profits accumulated to be able and willing to invest .
Public sector investment crowds out private sector investment.
4. The only way for interest rates to remain affordable is if public spending is cut
5. the only way to remove the risk of capital flight and the debauching of the currency is to keep interest rates high and the economy conducive for capitalists to want to remain and invest.
6. The country has to be educated that it is poorer than they think it is.
7. Failing that political agreement, coercion will be used.
8. Democracy must be avoided if it cannot accept this with Fascism waiting in the wings if all else fails.
9. Inflation undermines the value of capital and the currency and must be fought at all costs.
Everything that has been said by Sunak and Starmer is as though laissez-faire capitalism was the solution to our problems.
In fact of course :
1. Capitalism has to be managed. It has a role but not an all -encompassing one.
2. Public sector investment can be made to general benefit that would never be contemplated by capitalists.
3. Public corporations have existed over the years in many countries and been so successful they were selected for privatisation /looted for private benefit.
4. Consumption creates its own demand for goods and services and is not helped by austerity. Laissez-faire leads to distorted consumption and the misallocation of resources.
5. Inequality and imperialism are the outcomes of an untrammelled Capitalism. This leads to both immiseration and war .
6. Investment can be financed if future benefits are large enough and are predictable. Only the state can guarantee many investments. And only the state can guarantee political stability by balancing the economy , by regulation and redistribution.
7. There is no good reason the Bank of England should not be brought back into public control and the Treasury mandate be changed.
Thanks
You say that both Starmer and Sunek believe that the country should be run like households. I have for some time thought that they must know this is untrue, but for various reasons prefer to deny it – Starmer because he’s afraid of the “big spender” accusations, and Sunak et al, for ideological reasons, in that it gives the cover for small state austerity.
If, as you say, they still truly the believe the household analogy, then I truly do despair. The only glimmer of hope would appear to be the fact that people like yourself and Stephanie Kelton are widening the debate among reasonable people, and a few people in the media are beginning to challenge the outdated orthodoxy.
Along with FPTP, this creates a a toxic brew, that poisons debate, and leaves the country in the hands of incompetents (and worse).
Thanks
I try
So does Stephanie
And we do swap notes
It seems that UK politicians and governments delight in attempting to fulfill Orwell’s vision of ‘a boot stamping on a human face – for ever’. It seems much easier for them to find ways to do that than to find the courage to make life better for ordinary people. It’s getting to the point that we hardly expect anything else. Hold on, maybe they’re not in it for people and planet – maybe they’re in it for themselves! Hmm, now it all makes sense.
In the past, Richard, you have noted that the main Tory interest is political power – that is all they are interested in. Its positive use is largely irrelevant. Liebore under Starmer seems to be the same, the thirst for power is palpable. Given they are close to political power they say nothing that will upset the managed transfer (with the English meeja acting as the circus master making sure everybody plays their role correctly).
1997 gives some clues on a Starmer administration. Blair had little in the way of policies when his rabble were elected, the same ultra-tight management of MPs. The same now, Starmer the emperor in waiting has (deliberately) no policy clothes. Which begs the question: so Blair fixed the NHS a bit and did some things for education, twiddled with the HoL and that was about that. Network Rail was only nationalised in reaction to it becoming Network Death. Brown is/was an imbecile with respect to bank regulation and PFI (if you wanted to imagine what ENRON would look like in human form – think Brown) – again, only acting after the event. Liebore then – a few eye-catching twiddles to pacify UK serfs, Starmer/Liebore now exactly the same – they even have the same players e.g. Mandletw.t and others.
The tragedy is that both “leaders” totally ignore the two major problems facing the UK and all countries which are impending climate disaster and growing out of control inequality where the rich are accelerating their riches and the poor are getting even poorer as a result.
I suspect that to some extent they calculate on a much less abstract level. Happy people don’t give a hoot for “leaders” as long as they leave them alone. OTOH the everyday practice of austerity – exercising the power to deprive – builds their status and enhances the value of patronage, pork barrell and pre-election ‘give away’.
Really really interesting to note that Starmer was a member of the Trilateral Commission
“Membership in the Trilateral Commission is highly selective and by invitation only; as of 2021, there were roughly 400 members, including leading figures in politics, business, media, and academia. Each country within the three regions is assigned a quota of members reflecting its relative political and economic strength. The organization represents influential commercial and political interests that share a commitment to private enterprise and trade, multilateralism, and global governance;”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateral_Commission
Did he leave because it would be politically embarrassing to be seen to be a member as leader of the Labour Party? it seems very unlikely that he left because he didn’t agree with their beliefs or why join in the first place. It looks like there is absolutely no hope of any positive change with Starmer in Government.
“Really really interesting to note that Starmer was a member of the Trilateral Commission ”
Also worth noting that Starmer has attended British-American Project (BAP) meetings. The Guardian has written that the BAP was the “brainchild” of US President Ronald Reagan. https://declassifieduk.org/the-secretive-us-embassy-backed-group-cultivating-the-british-left/
I am not criticising you AliB but I am wary about thinking membership of these elite organisations really proves anything-especially something sinister.
In the 1970s I came across people on the Right who saw the Bilderbergers as an international conspiracy to diminish the nation state/ establish American hegemony . In the 1980s the Left saw them as furthering the interests of the capitalist class and where elected politicians went to get their instructions. Denis Healey denied it robustly (as we say today). The Trilateral Commission was seen as doing the same thing.
Recently I see the World Economic Forum WEF occupies a similar role on social media. I have seen Zelensky being described as its ‘tool’.
It makes sense that leading people in politics, banking and trade have a place to discuss away from the media . Contacts, especially in times of crisis, are important. They do have a formal commitment to international free market economics so there may be some truth in the accusation -but that is not the same as it controlling its members.
I have a friend who believes what she reads on the web about people who claim to tell us ‘what is going on behind the scenes and they don’t want you to know’. She is one of those who see the pandemic as a hoax. I look up the source she supplies to me, summarises the argument and suggest how it can be checked. It is often easily de-bunked or an outlier opinion. It rarely changes her opinion and we agree to disagree. On other matters she is quite happy to accept real evidence.
The idea that a small group-the Illuminati or the Rothschilds -can run the world or the western world-in not very credible. But it has the advantage of being simple and emotionally satisfying to know what others don’t and be able to divide the world into the good and bad.
The elite people who belong to these groups are ambitious, possibly ego driven and not likely to passively take orders. Membership is always changing.
OTOH as Chomsky said to a younger Andrew Marr, ‘if you didn’t think that way, you wouldn’t be here.’ But people often have opinions which are not politic to mention when the press/media are around. And as Stedman-Jones lays out in his book ‘Masters of the Universe’ , neo-liberal ideas were spread by think tanks well funded by rich men. However, to have an effect in the real world , something has to be done. In that there are conspiracies , they soon stop being secret when enacted.
The Commission is top heavy with finance people. But decisions are made by national leaders-European council , NATO council and the financial elite in the IMF, I imagine. I would argue that we need to rebalance elite influence with more democracy. However, I think a Leader of the Opposition who could become Prime Minister should find it useful to meet other world leaders.
You are having to contend with a paradigm, its framework is not questioned. I don’t think that most politicians on both sides are aware of a bigger picture. Today, I finished reading the book The Death of the Left (Winlow and Hall, 2022) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Death-Left-Begin-Beginning-Again/dp/144735415X/
Until today, I had no idea of the influence of the so-called Austrian School of Economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School as being a possible instigator of neoliberal and neoclassical economics, and I bet neither have most economists.
Paradigms can hold back other subjects too. I have no doubt that health sciences will transform in the next 20 years as it is “discovered” that major food companies put money before health. I know of many who think that the Big Bang theory will be replaced in the next decade.
How do you overcome the existing paradigm? As Max Planck said “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it”
I would target education unions, climate change organisations, to see whether they would publish articles on MMT as they further their aims.
I admit to being familiar with Austrian economics
There are still many of them about, literally believing in destruction
“I admit to being familiar with Austrian economics”
I’d expect you to know as a professor! I was at the stage of “I don’t know what I don’t know”, and am slowly getting to the stage where “I know what I don’t know”, and see there is a lot more to discover. It would have been nice to do a “functional economics” lesson or two at school, but would it be accurate?
Probably not
Ha Joon Chang does a good intro to many of the schools of economics by the way
… and I see that you have already mentioned Ha Joon Change’s video series on economics.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2019/12/12/economics-for-people-with-ha-joon-chang/
I wasn’t implying a conspiracy , but members are fairly obviously supportive of big business / corporations / unfettered free trade – a mindset/outlook that is unlikely to be supportive of policies of the left. Chomsky is very unimpressed with them. The Trilateral Commission did a report called the Crisis of Democracy- and the crisis they saw was that there was too much democracy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzxv9q5GzIQ
“Both believe government must be run like households”.
Nonsense of course but, sadly, a hard paradigm to shift.
However it seems unlikely that the money created by pandemic QE. Has yet been taxed out of existence. This money is floating as assets of the elite. It is doing nothing productive.
A wealth tax could extracted to
“pay” for public expenditure.
Although a false narrative, wealth taxes are needed to reduce inequalities.
To those who say the rich would flee and that this matters, the government could adopt the US approach of taxing on world wide assets and income if you hold a UK passport.
After all this must be good capitalist policy if it is done by the US.
The difference between Sunak and Starmer is that one is currently in government and the other not. When Sunak says he wants to grow the economy, control inflation, and ensure the health system works properly one has to ask whether those aren’t the job of any government and why all those things aren’t being done already after his party have been in power for 12 years; when Starmer says something rather similar he is saying he understands what the public expect from any competent government and he will try to actually do it.
However I have little patience for the posturing on immigration (Sunak) or the ignorance and lack of responsibility about running the economy (both).
In a perfect world (i.e. completely unlikely) devolution would mean that comparable powers to the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would be similarly be devolved on a regional basis in England. That would transform the Westminster parliament which would then only be dealing with matters that are properly decided on a whole-country basis, very obviously defence but including quite a few others at strategic level.
I sympathise with your attribution of the non-statements to FPTP, but to be fair to Starmer he has to work with the system that is there if he is to get power to do anything at all. I would like to think that Labour’s constitutional ambitions once in power would go beyond reform of the Lords to look at the system of electing MPs, but I am not holding my breath.
In a perfect world we’d not have a United Kingdom but four separate nations
I would be interested to hear why you think that, in a future blog. Obviously it would be possible for the constituent parts of the UK to be separate nations … plus the different States of the USA, the different Departments of France, the different Lande of Germany and so on. But I can’t see why it would constitute a perfect world, it sounds more like recreating mediaeval baronies to me.
I mean independent nations, whichb8s what is going to happen whether England likes it or not
Reply to Ian Stevenson (it won’t let me do so via reply!)
I wasn’t implying a conspiracy , but members are fairly obviously supportive of big business / corporations / unfettered free trade – a mindset/outlook that is unlikely to be supportive of policies of the left. Chomsky is very unimpressed with them. The Trilateral Commission did a report called the Crisis of Democracy- and the crisis they saw was that there was too much democracy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzxv9q5GzIQ
Right on the money: “we have politicians who lack vision, and offer fantasies instead of real answers. Both remain wedded to political ideas decades out of date (neoliberal fantasies of market supremacy and the importance of choice). Neither acknowledges, let alone addresses, the real issues we face.”
These comments apply equally well to both Australia (with a new “fiscally conservative” Labor government as equally beholden to the fossil fuel industry and big business as its predecessors) and to NZ, when the current Labour government is soon to lose an election because it let its hands be tied by the Fiscal Responsibility Act so it could not spend to fix the social and environmental problems (among them child poverty) that it was elected to solve. Thanks to the RBNZ raising interest rates to supposedly fight inflation, house prices are falling, thus throwing the (multiple) property owning middle classes back into the arms of the National Party.
The common disease is neoliberalism, propped up by nonsense economic theories, which, cursedly, just so happen to handsomely benefit the rich.
Dear AliB
I didn’t think you were but I wanted to make a more general point about a lot of thinking that is current on social media. The ‘covid is a hoax’ theory was very widespread.
These organisations are, and here I agree with you, supporters of the status quo and do exert influence. However, paradigms can shift and morph and these people will be part of that if only because they so influential. The Trilateral Commission included Nelson Mandela and there can be others with vision. Membership is constantly changing and some some of them may well reflect wider change. As so often, we come back to hope. And there are reasons to hope.
Young people take climate change seriously. Unions are asserting themselves again. Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro were all defeated at the polls. Knowledge of MMT is apparent in readers comments in some newspapers, whereas it wasn’t ten years ago. Brexit has been exposed.
And as Thomas Kuhn told us 60 years ago-paradigms change when the Old Guard retire or die. The march of time can’t be stopped.
It looks like both parties are relying on the boom – bust cycle for their eventual economic growth. If I understand it correctly. Austerity will cause the economy to shrink, so growth will be inevitable when the economy recovers. But it won’t necessarily grow beyond expectations before another bust occurs.
There seem to be parallels with King Cnut and the waves. Every time the tide starts to come in, Cnut thinks he is all powerful, but he can never stop the tide, until it is too late. If only he looked to the water flowing in a river for a more reliable source of power.
We have a couple of Cnuts as party leaders.
I have been persuaded, despite my complete academic ignorance of data and effect, to support Proportional Representation, believing that the Conservatives have often goverened with minority support. What is the truth? I asked Google and was offered “UK Election Statistics: 1918-2021: A century of elections.” from the Commons Library. In that there is a graph and raw data too. (Can’t attach it.) Suddenly my persuasion seems less justifiable.
Richard said “The bottom line is we are in a bad place where the two leading politicians in the UK are both playing to politically ill-informed audiences who will, they think, determine their fates, largely on the basis of prejudice instead of informed opinion.” How true – me too! The electorate is to blame! How would I do as Prime Minister? Am I so less qualified than some we have had? I would look to the Civil Service for advice backed by in-depth analysis in the various departments – do they? NO!
What sort of chaos would follow PR? A wider range of prejudice electing MPs? Would it really result in nice compromised policies suiting left and right? Would anything get done?
If Starmer put PR on Labours manifesto it might well bring out thoughtful Conservative voters in droves, fearful that the party with the “Right to Rule”, might never have it again – if that was what would actually happen.
Is prevention of gerrymandering and voter interference just as important?
So you think elections representing voter preferences are bad? Why?
They do not solve incompetence, of course, but by totally changing the terms of reference we should get better politicians, I think
I’d rather have PR than have this happen.
https://leftfootforward.org/2023/01/knives-out-will-boris-be-back-in-2023/
Caroline Lucas might have some company, too. One prospective labour candidate for the next election was banned from the party because he once liked one of her tweets.
Difficult for Clive Lewis then…..we are all members of the Green New Deal Group together
On the subject of conspiracy theories………………
I think that the word ‘conspiracy’ is the problem.
There no doubt there is a certain amount of mobilisation in the sick ideas that rule us – if you’ve read Mirowski & Plehwe (The Road from Mont Pelerin, 2015). Or Mirowski (Never let etc.,etc 2013), right up to Mattei then one can learn a great deal about how things work?
I think that Kelton (& Murphy) helped me more than anyone to realise that it was true that currency was state-sovereign. But if that were the case then, why are so many governments stymied and timid? The answer can only be some sort of countervailing response at work. And this response has to have a source of power and organisation.
Look at BREXIT and how that came about – watch ‘The Great Hack’ on Netflix and see what you think. You should know about Cambridge Analytica by now, as well as Carole Cadwaladr’s brave work.
So if it’s not a conspiracy, then what is it? What do these things have in common?
Well, I would say ‘money-power’. Because rather than a conspiracy, what we have is a very long running war. Consider this by an Italian who waged war quite often:
“To carry on war, three things are necessary: money, money, and yet more money.”
— Gian Giacomo Trivulzio
It’s true I tell you.
This war is with the rich basically and and it’s an old tale, whether in Europe or the U.S. Why is it old? Because the rich are ‘path dependent’ on the way in which they need to maintain their lifestyles and position in societies. They can’t change. Since quite a few just came along and grabbed natural resources or whatever in the first place and claimed them for themselves, they basically depend on the unevenness in laws and governance (and wealth!) to get and maintain an advantage over others.
This is why Neo-liberalism and libertarianism appeals to the rich and why they have continuously financially supported it since its conception.
This is why and how BREXIT was won. This is how the Tories who were unfit even in 2010 got into power can maintain that position as they got worse! This is how Russia has undermined European politics.
So, ‘conspiracy’? Not on your nellie. This is war in plain sight. It’s a very subtle war, sometimes it can get very violent although as Mattei says (p. 16) – one of the few economics writers I’ve ever seen talk about the violence I’ve always seen in modern economics:
‘..the structural violence of macroeconomic policy (in England) could do the same as the physical damage of Fascist militias (in Italy and elsewhere) – my brackets just to contextualise the quote.
So my advice is to lose the conspiracy angle and look at this struggle as a war. A very dirty one. If we free ourselves of thoughts about conspiracy, and realise the aspects of the subtlety and funding of this war, we’ll find perhaps more winnable battlefields? More exposed points that we can attack?
And the aim is not to pummel capital and markets into the ground is it? It’s about a better and fairer balance, to a reorientation of outcomes. We are creating in other words the right conditions for the REAL politics of compromise in this war, a win/win for everyone and the planet. The rich though have to learn that they CAN have enough.
It also helps to treat the issue as real (aka ‘a war’) so that we can stop debating that point and look at the quality of the fight we take to money-power.
Just a thought.
“What sort of chaos would follow PR?”
I think that if we were considering replacing PR with FPTP, we might make the same comment. The difference is that we can actually witness the chaos. But whether PR or FPTP would make any difference to the economical outcome, PR does seem to be fairer to the many, rather than the few.
You said it Richard “……….on the basis of prejudice instead of informed opinion”. In the Leave EU referendum the majority were just plain wrong, and possibly wickedly driven by false news and the likes of Johnson and Farage bigotry. The recent successes of both Johnson and Trump do indicate that large numbers of an electorate can become “misinformed” thus affecting true democratic policies – those which are best for most people. The necessary trick is to get all voters educated well enough to be properly informed. That is not easily done for the likes of Brexit – nor for that matter about many other subjects such as education and economics. There does not seem to be any doubt that FPTP is bad but can we be sure of a better system? A bit like the royalty question – who would want a Trump for UK President? Perfection is so difficult!
All the evidence points to Starmer being a deeply untrustworthy individual. The idea of a massive Labour majority is almost as terrifying as another four years of Tory rule. Surely the best thing for the country is a hung parliament with Labour having to govern in coalition with a junior partner.
That would be my preference