Sometimes I have to agree with Martin Wolf at the FT. This afternoon he has written this:
As Nicholas Stern has noted in the FT, the UK needs higher public and private investment. It also needs to spend more on defence. That does not allow for tax cuts. Beyond this, the country needs a radical decentralisation of spending and taxation to subordinate levels of government, tax simplification and reform, pension reform, liberalisation of planning controls, active support for innovation and acceleration of the energy transition. Andy Haldane is right that this will also require a break up of the Treasury. The country, in sum, needs not a smaller state, but a more active and more focused one, along with substantial reforms often in contentious areas. Business as usual has just not worked. Radical change is now urgently needed.
I agree with much of that. I wrote my book, The Courageous State, saying so, in 2011. That included a plan to address these issues, as did my next book, The Joy of Tax in 2015. I might have to do it again.
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If Wolf is saying that, then the idea that the Tories have just gone too far seems to be percolating more through our political economy.
Basically, the private sector has not stepped in (laying waste to the idea that the state was pushing it out of the economy in the first place).
And where it has become more active, the private sector has made a pig’s ear of it – look at the state of our water and sewage system or how it picked off the profit making parcel delivery services from the post office only, leaving the perfectly good ordinary delivery service we’ve enjoyed for hundreds of years in a mess.
But then again, I’m reminded just how much Labour are not in this feedback loop and how it all seems to be more of the ‘insane’ (sic).
“Business as usual has just not worked.”
Rephrasing: 40 years of neoliberalism has been a disaster
&
“Radical change is now urgently needed.”
Rephrasing: The UK is now such a basket case it is becoming a nasty place to live in – we must do something fast.
Well, who would have thought it. Martin “St Paul” Wolf on the road to Damascus.
Better late than never? We shall see.
I question the capacity of the ruling elites to make the changes needed, due to self interest (they might lose) and do they know enough/have the understandimg of the problems tjhe Uk faces?
– ref comments by Colonel Smithers on Camoron, Osborne etc and this blog ad nauseam on LINO, like the tories unfit to run a whelk stall.
To paraphrase Einstein, “you can’t fix a problem with the same thinking that created the problem in the first place”.
After a 40+ year experiment the results are in…… and it does not look good for neoliberalism. I think the penny is dropping quite quickly now.
Just picked up a (Telegraph reading) friend at the airport who was bemoaning the delays finding a stand to park the plane and delays in baggage. “why don’t they have enough staff” he railed……”Why would they bother to bring more staff? More profitable to make you wait”, I responded.
He acknowledged my point… (finally after 40 years!). He won’t Tory again…. although will probably not vote at all.
I think positive abstention (as opposed to not bothering) is going to be a massive issue in this election.
Well, abstention is where I am at.
After suffering for nearly 15 years of Tory rule, seeing me lose 25% of my income, being in constant fear of losing my job and not being able to care and invest in my children. Indeed, my view is that the Tories have simply marred my time as a parent and made everything harder and impossible for others.
And it is not just about me. It is about the others too. I cannot remember a time when adult suicide and child cruelty and neglect has been so prevalent. And the way in which sick and worried people have waited in the NHS hospitals I have had to wait in as well as those who have died from being treated so slowly.
I am after change (although I never voted for the Tories ever).
And none is on offer.
So I will decline to take part, and hope that that message is sent and received loud and clear.
I am not going validate the cowardly and the corrupt.
Sorry………..
I think this could be the case.
Positive abstention is what I did for many years, mainly because the constituency that I live in (for the last 13 years or so) was a FPTP Tory stronghold. My vote was a “wasted vote” and I reached a stage where I was no longer prepared to vote and just add to the numbers. I knew that FPTP supporters would say that the fact that people were still voting suggests there is nothing wrong with the current voting system. I refused to give credibility to that, so I didn’t vote.
Now, the constuency has changed with the latest boundary changes, and the Tory no longer has a safe seat. Tactical voting suggests that Lab could win it. So, I will vote next time for whoever has a chance to beat the Tory. If it were the LibDems or Green, I would vote for them, but recent local election results suggest it is Lab.
I do not vote with any conviction about Labour on what they will do when they get power, but my priority now is as follows.
1) I want to see the Tory Party wiped out at the next election. So, whatever it takes.
2) Once Lab get power, I do expect them to be Tory lite. The key for me is what goes on in the Labour party and how they respond to the inevitable crises that will emerge. I also feel that at some point Starmer will need to address the issue of PR as it does now have wide support within the party. If at that point Starmer takes it off the agenda and anounces that Lab has no intention of changing FPTP, then I am finished with them. I will never vote Lab again.
3) I may well go back to positive abstention at that point and encourage every one else to do so as the only way to reject FPTP. The fact is that at most General Elections now, around 30-40% of people do not vote. It’s remarkable that the number of people that don’t vote is about equal to the number that actually votes for the FPTP Government. It’s a farce! Some can’t be bothered, many are disillusioned by the failure of the current system. Many will choose not to vote, like me, because they have had enough of what FPTP produces.
I actually think that it would be a good idea to have an option on the ballot paper for General Elections of “None of the Above”. I would vote for it at elections under FPTP. I suspect at the next one, millions probably would. I think it would show what people really think about those that rule over us. It would be such a powerful democratic choice that there is no chance of it ever happening.
I have to say I think you are being wildly optimistic about Starmer
It has taken too long. It is an aspiration. It is not even policy in any Party likely to win an election.
What Wolf’s toothless meanderings of the imagination amount to, beyond the rhetorical flourishes, is a statement of failure: a very British, indeed a very feeble recitation of what we might do if we were not what, quite obviously, we have become; confused, lost, trapped in ideological amber, and reduced to meaningless babble about possibilities we already know is never going to happen.
Tomorrow, the circus will go on; just like yesterday, just like always. This is Britain. The retreat to nowhere will never end.
“possibilities we already know are never going to happen.”
Even our sentences collapse.
Which is why the Union is over…a shock that seismic is required to break this
Yet all this was talked about over 80 years ago by John Maynard Keynes. The British pretend to be proud about their history but won’t make the effort to investigate it in any detail. They are fundamentally a lazy people with a few exceptions:-
https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=61537
Good comments by Mr Warren. In fairness artists got there 40 years earlier (ref his final sentence)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQiOA7euaYA
(Talking Heads – Road to Nowhere).
Prophetic? Certainly.
The truly sad thing is, the intelligent people on this blog, could for the most part make a better fist of things of running things, but are powerless to even influence the course of gov/polioticos. Voting when there is no choice? why bother? (as PSR observed).
Join a political party ha! The tories decrepit mad crusties, LINO increasinly organised a la the Communist party of the USSR circa 1948.
Increasingly the future points to somebody that is articulate with simple messages – you can work out the rest for yourselves.
Read the comments on the recent Martin Rowson cartoon about Starmer and it’s very obvious the widespread ignorance about how the country’s monetary system works is the biggest factor holding back this country. Martin Wolf is completely wasting his time and everybody else’s until he acknowledges this!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2024/feb/02/martin-rowson-labour-business-conference-binned-green-investment-plan-cartoon#comments
If you think that is bad – and I’ve seen it – look at this:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/feb/05/uk-state-pension-age-will-soon-need-to-rise-to-71-say-experts
Yet more State money creation denial – a denial of sovereignty to the State in a state that assigns sovereignty to an unelected and very rich member if the aristocracy!!
What a bullshit state Britain is.
Now addressed in a blog post
And it’s not possible to comment on it either – surprise!
The authors of this report appear to be oblivious to the huge increases in productivity being made through automation and use of digital technology! They are also oblivious to climate change effects where there is a clear need to scale down private consumption especially amongst the well-off.
I recall Adam Smith bemoaned country people’s ability to make their own stuff. Shoes took half a day whereas they should work 1 1/2 to earn money to pay for them. When development gets to the point that working does not give you what you need you have to consider new forms of society. Brits are pragmatic and socialable, should be able to do it if they haven’t been too conditioned to be cubicle broilers.
In some cnstituencies there are other voting options – Green, Plaid, TUSC (Trade Union and Socialist Alliance) or you can write something on the ballot paper such as “save the planet”, “Cease Fire in Gaza” “save the NHS” or whatever issue you feel strongly about. Green is the most positive vote, no vote is wasted, even if seats are not one it is still sending out a message. Don’t forget the tremendous struggle that the Chartists and suffragettes went to achieve full adult franchise. Don’t be fooled by the “wasted vote argument” we need an active and critical electorate to save democracy and the planet for that matter.
It comes to something when the FT, Wolf, Haldane etc are far to ‘the left’ of the Labour Party by even mentioning the possibility that a more active state may be needed to undertake the massive transformation from fossil fuel to clean energy and to rebuild health and other public services.
The docility of the suffering public waiting years for health treatment and/or for affordable accomodation seems to be the key factor why Tory and Labour think they dont have to bother about any of this.
Obviously this means the ultimate catastrophy will be worse ….