Lost amongst yesterday's Northern Ireland deal was Keir Starmer's speech on how he is going to deliver the highest rate of growth in the G7 if elected. He should be pleased that he got so little publicity for something so bad.
I have read the document he published. The critical offering is this:
It really is motherhood and apple pie time down at the Starmer household. For all these comments are worth he might as well have been offering rainbows with pots of gold at the end of them. The phrases Labour has used are almost as meaningless.
That is most especially so when they are unpacked just a little bit, as Labour did. This was said about certainty and stability:
So, there will be no borrowing, and so there will be austerity.
Control will be outsourced to neoliberals at the Office for Budget Responsibility.
And the Treasury view on value for money will prevail through a new Office to reinforce that view. Tough on the poorest in society then, because we know where that has already got them.
And big business will get its say, of course.
As Labour pointed out:
That is what austerity, financialised capitalism, a dedication to neoliberal economic structures and a refusal to tax the wealthy in pursuit of beating inequality does for a country. And nothing Labour said will change any of these things, so the decline will continue.
You cannot create change by keeping the system that delivered failure in place. Until Labout realises that it has no chance of delivering what this country wants. Instead, it is completely dedicated to the economic status quo. We are in really big trouble.
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We ARE in really big trouble.
Are you seeing what I am seeing?
This is government designed by Wealth. This is all they are going to let us have.
Just when we need TLC, we get ‘Tory Lite Continuity’ instead – the preferred government of the Establishment who are firmly in charge as blighty slips beneath the waves of global warming.
Well, I’m not going legitimise it, that’s for sure.
Keir – you are PATHETIC mate.
So Labour wont do what most industrialised nations did and look at – in their case the UK, and then decide what did and did not work then adopt it for themselves?
Interestingly Japan took the UK model lock stock & barrel but by the 1920’s realised its weakness’s and reorganised their economy, why cant we?
Why not start by looking at Germany and how they do things after all most of their important institutions were set up by us afterWW2
I suppose the only way is to engage with and push back on Starmer’s inadequate contributions – even Ed Balls has criticised them.
The idea could be to show that while he correctly points to what the government are doing wrong but doesn’t say he is going to put it right. Many of his diagnosed problems imply their own solution – eg a few scribbled below
‘wealth and power are held by too few people in too few parts of the country‘ TAX WEALTH AND HIGH INCOMES
‘under the Conservatives, Britain is in a cycle of managed decline.’ NO MORE AUSTERITY
‘economic chaos, leading to higher mortgage rates for millions’ REDUCE INTEREST RATES
‘economic growth relies on government taking on a more strategic role’ PUBLIC OWNERSHIP OF MONOPOLIES
‘ will move away from the failed trickle-down ideology’ TAX THE RICH, BOOST MINIMUM WAGE
‘new model, based on building our economy from the bottom up and middle out’ BOOST MINIMUM WAGE
‘We will act as a strategic partner to industry’ PUB;IC PRIVATE INVESTMENT IN GREEN TECHNOLGY
‘ this – government… is too weak to stand up to vested interests’ CONTROL TAX HAVENS
‘Reforming the British Business Bank ..more .. capital ..to new and growing businesses’ GREEN NEW DEAL
‘National Wealth Fund to invest in new industries .. taxpayer owning a share’ GREEN NEW DEAL
‘Helping first-time buyers…building affordable homes.. new protections for renters’ MAKE BUILDERS BUILD INSTEAD OF RATIONING, BOOST SMALLER BUILDERS, AND STATE BUILDER
‘fix the Brexit deal and reset our relationship with the EU’ NEGOTIATE SWISS STYLE DEAL
But the implied policies are not referred to and what is not said always matters, a lot
Well, I do think that “not tolerating widening inequality” and “giving working people skills and opportunities” are necessary and important steps towards regenerating the country. But the others are meaningless as written, and downright unhelpful if the detail is the sort of thing you describe.
Half the problem is Labour trying to out-hype the Tories. The highest rate of growth in the G7 is a meaningless target, it depends on what happens in six other countries when the focus should be on the one country he hopes to have influence over. It is a return to Johnson’s perpetual “world-beating” claims.
Jesus wept. An “Office for Value for Money”? Can they tell us how to measure the “value for money” of additional spending on for example healthcare or education? We can measure the financial inputs easily enough, but what outputs and what returns we you measuring and when? What discount factors are applied? And what value is put on social goods or wellbeing? What other externalities are we failing to take into account?
Will they understand the multiplier?
For some reason I doubt it
Jesus wept, indeed. And the donkey too.
Did anyone else see this article by Will Hutton in the Observer on Sunday?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/26/battered-by-brexit-alarmed-by-poverty-city-finding-new-sense-purpose
He claims that ‘our top insurance companies want to create a £50billion private sector national wealth fund to invest in British business’ with mention of Hi-tech and green technologies..
He then suggests that Reeves and Starmer have proposed such a fund (is he talking about the £28 billion for green development?) and that it should match the £50 billion from the City.and work in partnership with them.
I found it surprising and possibly encouraging, though I can’t help wondering what’s in it for the City, which Hutton claims is showing concern about the social consequences of our poor economy. Is this just a pipe dream on Hutton’s part?
I’d be interested to know if people think this is a viable proposal or just an attempt to make the City look cuddly.
I am happy about this – but it should be invested in the binds of a national investment bank, IMO
“binds of a national investment bank?’
Funds?
Bonds
Sorry
The question Stymied needs to answer is simple:
‘Who are you scared of?’.
Or maybe;
‘Who’s yer daddy that means that you’ve come out with this twaddle?’.
Whoever his political advisors are – they are playing to a very small crowd.
Large numbers of reasons not to vote for Liebore. Indeed, there are plenty of candidates standing in any given constituency v- ote for one of them (though obvs not the Tories).
One party – two wings – tory-nutters and tory-liebore. Some choice.
I predict a tory-wipe out, a Liebore gov incapable of doing anything and the rise of a capstan-full-strength right winger that can articulate simplicities that resonate with UK serfs.
Tory-Liebore – fascism’s little helper.
And exactly how will all this be done if they are not prepared to increase spending?
He’s obviously believes in the mantra ‘if you can’t blind ’em with science, baffle ’em with bullshit’ because there is plenty of it there.
Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the wee bloody donkey!!
Craig
When I heard about the “Office for Value for Money” originally, I thought at first that this would be a good, MMT-aligned idea, on the grounds that, done well, it would allow the goverment to know how to best maximise resource utilization while minimizing the money spent in order to control inflation.
Reading Andrew’s comments, I realize that “done well” does a lot of heavy lifting in the above sentence, but I just wanted to confirm, is the fact that we don’t have a good system to measure the “budget spilllover*” effects from government spending the only reason why an “Office for Value for Money” is a bad idea in this situation, or would this idea still be unviable even if it were possible in the future to work out the “budget spillover” effects of government spending?
* “Budget Spillover” is a term I suggested in a comment many blogs ago, by which I mean the equivalent of Richard’s Tax Spillover analysis but applied to government budgets and spending, which in my view would encompass all the questions and points raised by Andrew’s comments above.
Thanks
And noted, again….
Vague and meaningless cliches beloved by corporate consultants seem the order of the day with Starmer. Considering the dire state of UK society and the distress and fear that so many are living with thanks to a failed economic and social model, it’s hard to fathom why a Labour leader can’t articulate these realities, can’t even reference them! It’s increasingly clear that Starmer and the current Labour shadow cabinet have little in the way of new ideas, they’ll tinker at the edges but the status-quo will remain untouched.
I find it shocking that a Party that proclaims to stand up for the many can be so tone deaf in these troubled times, the consequences of decades of failed economic orthodoxy are all around us, yet, we have a Labour leader offering inane sound bites about the G7. When are journalists and the media going to push him to explain in more detail just what he stands for and how these policies will impact society? So far he’s getting far to easy a ride for my liking.
This from the Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-tories-starmer-sunak-poll-b2290995.html
Most people don’t want the tories but neither do they want Liebore. Extract:
“Three-quarters of people (75 per cent) said they thought the UK was heading in the wrong direction – a record figure since the survey started in 2001.
And 61 per cent agreed that the UK “needs a completely new type of political party to compete with the Conservatives and Labour for power”.
Just 23 per cent of people said they felt close to the Tories, down four points since 2022, compared with 29 per cent saying the same about Labour, an increase of six points.
However, the Trust Barometer also found widespread “disdain” for politicians, with trust in government at its lowest level since 2016 at just 27 per cent.”
Summarising, both parties are crap, both parties don’t have any relevant policies. Time for the unions to form a party that represents people and is fit for purpose.
May be a blog in the morning
It seems to me that labour are focussing on the usual undecided voters in constiuencies that have marginal tory majorities. Using ‘focus groups’ they can determine what are the most likely policies to give a swing to labour. Probably the exact same process used by the tories and labour to win elections for the last 40 years. Possibly ok for winning the next election but what is the goal? Getting more labour members of parliament does not solve any of the countries (many) problems unless the policies followed are worthy of the task. The approach may (or may not) give an overall majority but will not give what the country deserves. I’m presently reading Aneurin Bevans ‘In Place of Fear’ and in comparison how little the present labour policies attempt to address the issues we now face.
Worth reading
New tag line for the Party:
Labour. A bit less shit than the Tories since 1997.
What’s needed is perspicacity, but most people can’t even spell it.
Can it be taught? If so, by who(m)?
Interesting question
I suspect it can be encouraged
I am not sure it can be taught