I, and others I know, seem to be increasingly engaged with Labour politicians deeply worried that the Labour leadership is so dedicated to fiscal austerity that its £28 billion green programme, which has already been seriously reduced in value by inflation, will soon cease to exist. Rumour reaches me that Labour thinks saving the planet is unaffordable, but if you want to stay in the party you had better not say so.
I rather hope that is an exaggeration. I do not know whether it is. What I do know is that any party that now ignores the climate issues, alongside any party that ignores the water issue, is not fit to take office.
The first, and overwhelming, duty of any government is to protect the people for whom they are responsible from risk. The obligation is to provide freedom from fear.
Climate change is the biggest threat this planet faces.
This country faces a risk of not having clean water available to meet our needs.
It's hard to think of two bigger priorities as a result.
What does, however, seem clear is that Labour is running away from both issues. The green programme is acknowledged to be at risk because we, supposedly, cannot afford it. The water crisis cannot be addressed for the same reason. Meeting the need for clean water supply is not, apparently, worth increasing the national debt for, even when we get new assets of real worth as a result.
Is it really true that Labour is so frightened of the totally false debt narrative?
Is it really the case that it thinks its job in office will be to manage the status quo without ever breaking eggs, which is metaphorically necessary if change is to happen?
And is it really seeking power to stand back and watch everything go wrong, suggesting whilst doing so that it has not got the power to intervene when that is so obviously untrue?
The answer appears to be yes in each case.
A party with so little vision, drive and straightforward courage appears wholly unfit for office, whilst destined for failure if it gets it.
I wish I could say otherwise. Where has Labour's purpose gone?
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I don’t see the need to renationalise the water companies. We just need a regulator with some serious teeth and no sympathy for the bloodsucking leeches. If you can pay your ceo £2 million a year you don’t need to raise your prices.
Sorry – but that model has been tried and clearly does not work
Labour’s porpoise?
I saw it swimming off with Flipper. The purpose of Labour is now to continue crushing the plebs justvlike their heroes now in government and keep peddling the taxpayer money lie
“We just need a regulator with some serious teeth”
Mr Cownie, the water industry has been “regulated” for 33 years. Governments of various political complexions have been & gone during that time. The ability of the regulator to regulate – with or without “serious teeth” is a function of the desires/wishes/inclinations of the political party in power. Mr John Minor, B.Liar, Cam-moron et al appeared to have no appetite/desire/inclination to supply the regulator with “serious teeth”.
Given this impasse, the idea that vile-liebore or vile-tory govs will suddenly recognise the need for “seriously toothful regulation” is close to zero. Likewise, the idea that a for-profit-company is the best structure to deliver a public service has been proven not to work in a range of critical areas. Such companies – given they have a monopoly – exploit it, regulatory capture is a reality (I can supply examples ad nauseum) and thus the system does not work, cannot work and has been proven to be so for 33 years both in the water industry and other sectors. Only ideologues are unable to see this. I am sure that you do not fall into this category.
Nationalise the whole pack of them (including post & telecoms i.e. B useless T).
“Rumour reaches me that Labour thinks saving the planet is unaffordable, but if you want to stay in the party you had better not say so.”
I note that the Guardian has decided to completely ignore these two critical issues; government’s need to create money for tackling climate change and the Witch-Finder General Starmer bearing down on any Labour MP or party member who dares to raise the issue and getting them expelled from the party!
They have very strongly sided with Neal Lawson
Not everything about the Guardian is bad…
Well put Richard. Hard to tell if Starmer and his associates are simply ill-educated children therefore acting like Economic Luddites or it’s all about corruption by big money! Either way it should be very obvious to anybody with reasonable critical thinking skills the country is not going to move forward much in tackling its serious problems under a Starmer administration. This I believe is true with the other parties but a coalition government might provide some stimulus for greater critical thinking, just might!
“Hard to tell if Starmer and his associates are simply ill-educated children therefore acting like Economic Luddites or it’s all about corruption by big money! “
I think it is a combination of the two. If you are an economic Luddite, you probably start off thinking your opinions are correct but are perhaps open to listening to other views. Then big money gets involved and this can look like an added bonus. After all, if your opinions are correct then what is the harm in accepting money from people who agree with you? However it does have a psychological effect. Most people find it very difficult to accept something if to do so would make them worse off. This is the way corruption creeps up on people who started out trying to be completely honest.
The press onslaught in 2019 was very powerful. Labour’s spin doctors seem to have taken the message that they must be appeased. So ‘sound money’ and ‘iron financial rules’ is the message. It has to read well in the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph.
They also want to reject the ‘anti-semitism’ image, so no criticism of Israel is allowed.
It also seems to apply to the ‘real socialist’ faction. According to my local Labour contact, many of them have now moved on. ‘Real socialists’ in my experience often feel if the party adopted such an agenda, the population would rejoice. Fairly or unfairly, most people are not excited or put off by the concept. They WILL respond to policies which benefit them and some of those policies are the same.
My own view is that a mixed and well regulated economy produces the best outcome.
I am sure that when it comes to the election the Toxic Tory press will do the same as last time, even if they have to make it up.
Starmer needs to give leadership and explain polices.
I agree your conclusion
I am sure 99% of people do – and will be voting Labour whilst wearing a clothes peg
Thank you for your clarity and sound analysis of current financial issues. I am not an economist, therefore appreciate your explanations and opinion on various economic situations, which the media seem unable to report on intelligently or honestly.
Do please know that the time you take to opine is really appreciated by people like me: not economists. Thank you!
Thank you
Hear, hear Sue. Yes, big thanks to Richard.
It’s a good question to ask although the people whom I think the question should be put to is Stymied’s ‘political advisors’. During Corbyn, everyone knew who Seamus Milne was so are these idiots guiding Sir ‘Keep the Status Quo’?
Ruminating over this gives little reassurance:
Tax acts as the elephant in the room again – if Reeves wants to spend more, she’ll have to tax – look what happened to Truss – markets are wedded (welded) to the concept of taxation funding spending (did they understand 2008 and all that?). Tax bombs are easy to exploit by the Tory press. The untruthful trope about the government running out of money has been upheld previously by stupid Labour man Liam Byrne and his post-it note and exploited ever since, obfuscating the power of central banks to spend to deal with problems.
And Blair talking about the NHS needing private resources? Look what that did for water, the railways. It is so out of date and proven not to work. But he would say that wouldn’t he? He’s rich beyond measure, trading on his past.
What’s the nicest reason Labour are as they are?
When you look at how Miliband and Corbyn were treated, no matter what one might say about Stymied and Laboured – they are up against an enlarged and very proactive even, global cohort of rich people of all colours, cultures and religions who will stop at nothing to keep things exactly where they are and make sure the non-rich people of all colours, cultures and religions are kept in their place.
Labour can take some blame for that by being so relaxed about Thatcher’s get rich quick legacy. The rich they were so relaxed about however are now calling the shots, making progressive politics almost impossible because like all extremists – they always want more. And it was the rich who essentially stabbed the world in the back with its MBS fiasco culminating in 2008 after being trusted to keep on making money.
Maybe the real lesson is that through global capitalism (and BREXIT), American style politics has been imported into the UK now like never before. The rich are now firmly in control of this country and the political system is a glove puppet.
Some here will say its always been like that but now I would argue (and have for some time) that there is now no pretence about it being anything but. We are going to be exploited and subjugated like never before and in full daylight.
And what of hope? Well, hope relies an enough people to realise how bad their situation is I’m afraid before there is a significant kick back. My view is that we are only in the very early days of this yet.
All the people unable to pay off their student loans, for degrees they shouldn’t have needed in the first place ☹️
They’re waking up.
Even the FT has an article about a hopeless upcoming election, though I don’t agree with its analysis or conclusions. I read an article recently debunking the idea of efficiency, which hinged on the question of the interests at stake – one person’s efficiency is not necessarily another’s. There’s something of this in all govt pronouncements – who they’re speaking on behalf of is erased, instead they divert to justifications, reasons and excuses, instead of honesty (i.e. we’re not funding this because it’s not a priority for those who are paying us). Affordability is always a great excuse, as are appeals to spending “tax-payers'” money wisely (then come the mantras of efficiency, productivity, value for money, and so on). This all amounts to govt as business managers of UK Plc (yuck), rather than what govt could be, which is the director of resources to underpin and support everyone’s welfare. I note a number of recent publications, including one from the Prince’s Trust highlighting the fear, misery and hopelessness of staggering numbers of young people in the face of the plights we face but are individually incapable of resolving. My sense is that there’s a complex of never-addressed issues, from ecocide, climate change, reverence for work above all else, an economic model that depends on destruction of the living world for people to warn money, and an ideological landscape that offers no way to address this (including silencing dissenting voices), or allow people to step away and live differently (look what happens to indigenous people the world over, their enforced absorption into the calculous of capitalism). Recycling, low energy lightbulbs, greenwash, and reusable coffee cups just aren’t going to make a dent – unfortunately, the material properties of the universe aren’t susceptible to glossy marketing and empty political rhetoric. A liveable planet can’t be achieved via a televisual montage of happy green consumers.
Stephen Mitchell (below) in his concise historic overview and yourself David point out – to me at least – what is a basically a story of continuous AUSTERITY. Having been sensitised to this tool of social control by Clara Mattei (The Capital Order, 2022), all I see is a continuous thread from WW1 to today. My view is that there has never been a year without some form of austerity somewhere in our society.
Accepting that governments have the sovereign capacity to invest in society, and seeing this investment retarded in favour of the interests of capital, what else could you call it but the ‘A’ word?
And get this: you don’t have to wait for the politicians to mention austerity or tell us it is being done us. I argue its always being done us whether they tell us or not.
I’m talking here about money-power OK. The ability to do things with cash. Austerity is a killer of ‘doing things’. From providing as decent health service, climate change policies and – key here – enabling labour to organise and defend its position.
Austerity is about denying certain interest groups of the financial means to organise – kicking their legs from beneath them.
And now look where we are heading. We’ve been getting strikes and anti-carbon protests and in response, more legal restraint. This streak of authoritarianism has always been there because we see that being ‘liberal’ only applies to get rich quick, rent seeking, environmentally ruinous behaviours. Liberalism these days is an entitlement of capital – for itself – not for us.
They want to close ticket offices on the railways; the Royal Mail – filling is investors mouths with cash – can’t recruit postmen and some cities are going without a postal service and business is licking its lips at the prospect of AI without out an ounce of, it seems, of thought about the consequences for society. If you get caught up in this maelstrom (like many indebted students) you’ll just be considered to be unlucky or the eugenicists will just blame you.
What I’m saying is that we have been here before, but now I think it’s a more dangerous – there is a tipping point in favour of capital once again for huge industrial and societal change and austerity will be used to say we can’t do this and that to leverage us into doing the wrong things for society and the planet but the best things for capital.
To my mind that is where we are right now. And most our politicians I feel will enable this to happen rather than mediate it – which includes Stymied and Laboured. And that leaves us where exactly? Only time will tell.
With the following going on it’s absolutely critical that Britain’s political parties make the effort to have a coherent and rational understanding of how the country’s monetary system works and what affects its use:-
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/07/canada-wildfires-summer-weather-temps
To put it more simply Britain exists on this planet not another one!
So if they can’t say they will do things to save the planet, what’s the point of them?
Are they just going to wait until all the small islands in the Pacific have become inundated and the populations have to move somewhere else and then panic?
I presume they will take in none of the countries that are part of the commonwealth, although they should be obliged to.
From the point of view of this pleb here, labour increasingly look like ‘Tory-lite’.
As I dislike the Tories, at least their current crop, I also dislike the Tory-lite’ party, just to a lesser degree.
As I am in a Labour safe seat it appears I will be voting for the LibDems, hopefully they will push for STV as that system seems to be the least bad option out there.
I will not however be holding my breath.
It has long been clear that the leadership of the Labour Party are committed to furthering the interests of financial capitalists and their enablers among business leadership. If there are members of the Labour Party who are not happy with this situation, they have a duty to remove the leadership in favour of individuals who will put the UK and all it’s people first, not just a few bankers and other wealthy people.
Just my imagination, perhaps, but their purpose seems to be their own personal aggrandisement and enrichment, along with that of their donors. So Labour are now offering more of the same and no hope for replenishing our natural world or even cleaning our tap water!
To what planet do they think they’ll escape when their lack of ideas plunges us into the abyss should they become another redundant and damaging Government?
Let’s not even dare to think they’ll tackle housing, care, the NHS, poverty, inequality, transport, education because investing in people for us all is “too expensive”. Is it unrealistically pessimistic of me to feel that in a field of greed grabbing monopolies our political leaders are the biggest monopolised waste of money available to us right now?
And if the Green’s attachment to ridiculous economics that you recently posted remains unchanged, what choice do any of us have?
The least worst option
I don’t think the average Green Party member is knowledgable enough to be attached to any sort of economics. I do, however, know a Green councillor who is an economist and works at the Bof E, or, at least, did at one time. I will have to ask his opinion of the Party’s economic policy.
To SOME extent, I’m reading what you say with a more open mind and have responded on Mastodon to that effect.
I would like a Labour Government to partner with the Green Party on environmental issues and indeed to other non-Tory parties where common ground can be agreed. For example, it is more likely that even the LibDems have that where it became clear during the Cameron/Clegg coalition, that it was an illusion that both party leaders ignored for their own ambitious reasons.
I’m not yet with you all the way, but your arguments are always worth my while to read. “Tiresome” is no longer a descriptor I will use! Tiring maybe.
You might like the idea of Labour partnering others – but Labour expels people who suggest it
I am addressing the current reality fo what Labour is
Where has Labour’s stupidity and economic illiteracy come from? I don’t remember them being this dim.
@ larry.
“Where has Labour’s stupidity and economic illiteracy come from? I don’t remember them being this dim. ”
In a word “Sado-Monetarism” pushed by Milton Friedman but rejected by him in his old age as stupid!
https://newrepublic.com/article/162623/milton-friedman-legacy-biden-government-spending
The current crew in vile-liebore, don’t look very bright and seem wedded to narratives defined by a combo of the vile-tories & meeja imbeciles. Stir into this, a lack of courage and a failure to recognise that Thatchers privatisation saga of +/- 34 years has failed utterly – and one has to conclude that as is, the Uk is a one party state – with two wings squabbling over who runs the gov. There is no diff between vile-Libore and vile-tory, and I pity the poor people of Selby, if Monster Raving is standing, vote for them – it wouldnot be worse than vile-libore or the lying-dems. The Greens (ref previous blogs) seem to struggle with economics – but maybe they will change. Maybe a green vote is better than a vote for vile-tory-bore – the new all purpose, nothing ever changes party – with MPs that are, almost interchangable as well.
They reckon there are a million at the Durham Gala today, none of whom believe in Starmer. That’s twice the membership at its highest when Corbyn inspired them to join.
The same thing has happened before. The second Labour government followed almost exactly the same path . When unemployment rose to over 15% it refused to raise unemployment benefit. Its decision not to was exactly the same as today. Word for word. Financial prudence. No public spending. Mcdonald and Snowden set up a committee chaired by Lord May ,retired head of the Prudential Assurance Co. Three bankers and two timid trades unionists. It recommended cutting unemployment benefit. A bill was passed and thousands of unemployed men had their benefits cut.. It became known as the “bankers ramp”. For opposing this measure Labour MPs like Stafford Cripps and Bevan were threatened with expulsion. Then Mcdonald resigned and took the position of a National Coalition totally dominated by the Tories. Right up to the outbreak of WW2 the Left were hounded by the Right. The leadership gave lukewarm support to the Hunger Marches. Labour MPs who stood on platforms with the Communists and other left groups opposing Tory policies were actually expelled. The Party stopped supporting the Republican cause in Spain. Said nothing about Chamberlain signing a treaty with Mussolini. In the 1950s the party under Gaitskell moved to the Right again. Bevan resigned when prescription charges were imposed. It wasn’t the charges that led him to resign it was the proposed astronomic spending on defence. Gaitskell too was a “sound finance man” . Fortunately he died before he could become PM. I won’t go on and describe the failings of Blair/ Brown who could have returned to social democracy having a huge majority. Instead they maintained Thatcherism with a little amelioration. That allowed the Tories back with a vengeance. Blair was contemptuous of socialism. He boasted he would never go to the country on a left platform even if he knew he would win. Starmer has the same contempt. The leadership has eschewed socialism. The Labour Government after WW2 transformed the lives of millions in our country yet the country was exhausted when they took office. There were shortages of all raw materials, skilled labour . Debt to GDP was well over 200%. The economic miracle that they performed surely can be repeated if we could elect a government with the guts to do it.
Thanks
@ Stephen Mitchell. Well said. No way am I going to perpetuate the corrupt and rotten system in place for another five years by voting for Starmer. I’m not a sado-masochist! The rot will have to continue until the voters come to their senses how else will they learn the consequences of their actions?.
“said nothing about Chamberlain signing a treaty with Mussolini.”
No. Atlee opposed it. He visited the Republicans in Spain and a company was named after him.
When it was obvious Chamberlain was going leave office, Atlee and Morrison backed Churchill against Halifax who was favoured by many Conservatives. Bevin, in 1935, opposed Lansbury’s pacifist stance- ‘hawking his conscience asking he should do with it.
If you read Michael Foots’ biography of Bevan you will see Bevan and Stafford Cripps were expelled for supporting the Popular Front a few months prior to WW2 starting. The NEC was notoriously Right Wing and wanted nothing to do with socialism. Ernest Bevin was one of them .So was Morrison.
Thanks Stephen, well said. The point about ‘new labour’ doing nothing to role back Thatcherism despite the huge electoral majority handed to them by FPTP working for them (for once) is depressingly true.
And their failure to replace said FPTP by PR was disastrous. As you say, their spinelessness and political expediency led directly to the disastrous last 13, soon to be 14, years of right wing government.
I hadn’t seen anything of the Durham Gala so I went to the web and read , in the Northern Echo, a letter Starmer sent to them ( as he wouldn’t be there ). A lot of talk about the working class.
The children of the old manual working class are now graduates or other qualified people and middle class people. Too many are in low paid, insecure jobs. But both in my book are ‘working people’.
This is how he ends
“Because make no mistake, Labour is the party of working people. It is our past, our present and our future. It’s in every fibre of our being.
We’ll drive change with the same spirit that the Durham Miners showed all those years ago. The spirit of graft, community and togetherness.
Everything my Labour Party does has working people at the forefront of its mind. It’s time to come together and make that change a reality under a Labour government.”
I get a similar feeling as when every Government minister who was interviewed on the box, had a union flag behind them. Boris would have two.
Might just be me, of course.
You are not alone
I continue to be affronted – actually deeply pissed off – by vile SKS’s cobstabt reference to “MY Labour Party”.
It’s NOT his. Or if it is, it’s NOT the Labour Party, but his diseased Faux-Labour Party – a consumptive wreck trying to kid us it can run a Marathon, when it will collapse before it’s done half a mile.
Utterly vile.
Best place to find out about the Durham Gala is on Facebook, the People’s Assembly Against Austerity.
Corbyn was there with Jamie Driscoll.
Rayner was there, but don’t know if she spoke. Zarah Sultana gave a speech.
Lots of other good speeches and videos.
Someone asked where’s Starmer. I said he was copying Blair, who never went to a single Meeting even though he was an MP for a Durham constituency and had a house there.
Gordon Brown never attended either it would seem.
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/history/132nd-durham-miners-gala-short-11581504
Doesn’t surprise me he prefers hanging out with the rich according to Rupert Murdoch:-
https://bylinetimes.com/2022/06/22/behind-closed-doors-murdoch-parties-like-hacking-never-happened/
Is it me, or is the era of governments being able to act within financial constraints – rather than wider concepts of problems and solutions – over, globally? It seems to me that this IS the critical tipping point, we’ve passed it but nobody has noticed and there is a dearth of conceptual thinking to deal with what comes next.
Keir Starmer is a barrister. Barristers think sequentially, and build their cases watertight from the bottom up. This is what I see Starmer doing. Whether he has the imagination to step into the void having won his case, I do not know. But if he doesn’t, I suspect he will simply not be able to solve any of the problems facing us and the electorate will be tempted to fall for the fairy tales of the far right next time around. I pray not. But it seems that it might take another large scale crisis ….
Lawyers and conceptual systems thinking rarely mix
Today was the 137th Durham Miners Gala. It’s still going strong. An annual commemoration of the labour movement’s historic struggles. Europe’s biggest such occassion. Last year an estimated 200,000 attended, 60 banners paraded and 50 band took part. Until recently you might expect hear a speeches from the Labour Party Leader or senior party members. This yearp? The only Labour MP scheduled to speak was the left leaning Zarah Sultana MP.
Staggering…..
John Dunn doing the nottheandrewmarrshow newspaper review from Durham.
He says the Gala is getting capitalist, beer prices up, hotel room prices up for the weekend.
https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/solidarity-durham-miners-gala-labour-070000730.html
Indeed contrast the two worlds:-
https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/solidarity-durham-miners-gala-labour-070000730.html
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/09/rupert-murdoch-keir-starmer-labour-party-power-no-10
Rupert Murdoch consistently the king-maker of those who represent no danger to the interests of his class!
I’m sure, and saddened by the fact that your analysis is correct. Why is there no word for the irrational fear of paying Tax. And the irrational fear of raising Tax?
Hi Richard
As someone who sometimes shares your posts on Facebook it would be helpful if half of the Fund the Future logo wasn’t missing.
Regards
Sorry – can you mail me to show the problem?
Not an economic question, but something I have never under. Why do Labour engage with the Tory press at all when it always blows up in their faces.
Because they are Tories now, as was Blair?
Any progressive government worth it’s salt would make attacking the right wing press one of it’s first priorities.
Doing as other countries do and preventing ownership of the press by non nationals would be a start. Standing up for real British institutions like the BBC and NHS when they’re attacked by the sewer press would be nice. Passing Levers on part 2 would be another.
Fat chance. Instead of any of this Blair grovelled to Murdoch, as Starmer is doing now. And Reeves joins in Tory attacks on the BBC over the latest ‘scandal’ being orchestrated by the Sun.
A question; if the Sun and the family in question have evidence of a criminal offence being committed by an individual for soliciting sexual images from someone under 18 (as the girl in question was) why haven’t they taken this to the police?
I thought the Labour Party was supposed to believe that it was OK to borrow to invest?
And surely it’s Green Programme plus rebuilding our health and schools and colleges and investment in transport, water supply, and sewage treatment services is the realest of real investment for the future?
Apparently they don’t get that….
Indeed they appear not to even understand their own fiscal discipline rules! How on earth anyone can even bother thinking about voting for this Starmer led shower defeats me!
Does it make any economic sense in MMT terms to separate govmt spending “for investment” from “day to day spending” ? Can these terms even be defined adequately?
Yes, but it is an interesting question that is high on my agenda
All this is scaring me: perhaps it’s meant to and other leftish Labour Party members. If there are grains of truth in these analyses, we will either get another Tory government (the national majority favourite) or a Faux Tory government (the Corbynista view and red wall favourite presumably), despite the lack of common ground between those two factions.
Having said that, it is factionism that is destroying this country (this England): factionist politics create diametrically opposed thinking which leaves no room for collaboration in its positive sense.
Either way, I wish I was young enough to emigrate. Problem is, where the hell would I go? From a knowledge viewpoint it could be the Isle of Man (so many holidays there it would almost feel like home) or virtually anywhere in Wales with similar awareness and to some extent, its politics. Those two choices could still be possible and welcome alternatives to England. Although I love Scotland for the same reasons, its current politics exclude it.
As Columbus apparently said: where am I going? Where am I now? Where have I been?