I post this from Twitter (X) knowing that not everyone here can or wants to view that sire, but if you do, this is worth watching:
The economic orthodoxy of the last 15 years has comprehensively failed.
A change of direction is still possible. pic.twitter.com/vB4HQoWIci
— Clive Lewis MP (@labourlewis) February 8, 2024
Clive Lewis is a colleague of mine in the Green New Deal Group. We work on a non-party basis. It's good to see his continuing commitment and willingness to embrace ideas that the Labour leadership appears unwilling to talk about.
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I thin everyone should support this, organised by Compass. They have also linked up with Green New Deal, New Deal Rising and Greenpeace.
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/a-green-new-deal-is-not-an-ambition/?link_id=9&can_id=962c5cf69805aecd90fd0401d70a07f5&source=email-28-billion-later&email_referrer=email_2198739&email_subject=tell-rachel-reeves-action-isnt-optional
Done.
Good for him and finger crossed.
We could argue that economics from Thatcher onwards, neoliberalism, has failed. The evidence is strong, and all around us. Are the few happy to exploit the rest of society, and why is the rest of society so docile about it?
The more influence he can have the better.
He has a fund raising appeal right now
This is the direct link to his appeal.
https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/clive-lewis-fighting-fund?source=direct_link&
Thank you, Richard.
Just one quibble with Clive, which may have to do with his youth. That orthodoxy did not begin 15 years ago. It started with Denis Healey and Jim Callaghan, but was turbo charged by the grocer and not reversed by that smooth lawyer.
I was just revelling in the thought that you considered me to be young… until I realised – wrong Clive.
I don’t disagree with your point about “orthodoxy” being much older…. but I think the “15 years” is a fair number as it represents the post GFC period where things have clearly got so much worse with very little disagreement from anyone. To challenge earlier policy means a descent into a futile debate about Thatcherism, Blairism etc.. which, to many folk, is ancient history. My children are as far removed from Blair as I am from Wilson…. which is a rather sobering thought.
Indeed….
But they also have literally no recall of Labour being the supposed party of fiscal irresponsibility
Only Westminster thinks that
Thank you, Clive P, Richard, Tony and Mike.
I don’t disagree with Clive P and Richard.
Possibly due to my origins from overseas and often working overseas, I do find that lack of historical awareness in much of the west odd.
@ Mike: Mum’s big sister lives in the French Pyrenees and reports similar from there and well into Spanish Catalonia. It’s the same in parts of northern Italy.
Surely the birth od the new orthodoxy can be traced back to the Labour party abandoning Keynesianism in Callaghan’s 1976 Labour Party Conference speech. ?
Colonel
you are correct but the Grocer was Ted Heath who preceded Healey.
Thatcher was the Grocer’s daughter-literally I believe.
Alas, I can remember voting for the grocer-my first election. I have repented since.
You are forgiven. We all make youthful mistakes.
Thank you, Ian.
I had forgotten about Ted.
I know what you mean.
It’s fun to point out to chicken hawk Thatcherites that their heroine, unlike Princess Elizabeth, refused to join a service or become a land girl, but preferred to help her father* run the shop, and how many of my family and their friends left Mauritius to fight for God, King and Country. *Bit of a, ahem, character…
The ‘Grocer” would be left of current Labour.
Thus far have we shifted to the right.
Or do I mean to the wrong?
She thought her legacy was Blair.
Now it’s Starmer.
And the corruption of university economic teaching in the USA in the 1920s financed by wealthy benefactors ( classical to neoclassical). Änd even before via choosing labour and not energy/natural resources as the base for economics… see Steve Keen’s recent discussion “On the Origins of Energy Blindness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrMWSkzrMYg
Can’t help but feel with Richard’s emphasis on “just” taxation a “Just For All” party is required.
Much to agree with ref Lewis & his comments (& agree with Col Smithers – 45++ years ago). My concern is that the politicos, in any country, fail to see the big picture & even if they do, think that a bit of “deckchair rearranging” will sort things. This is certainly the case in the UK, and e.g. … Spain. I’m in Andalucia at the moment (Atlantic coast). There is an existential crisis with respect to water, dams are empty (+/- @ 10% capacity) – I have seen this with my own eyes. The political response is: a little bit here (some de-salination and drill a few more boreholes) and, tanker (ship) water from Murcia to Malaga. At the same time, in a region suffering a water crisis – they are… building more holiday apartments. Thus do commercial (the market!) short term interests trump everything, including an existential crisis. The complete failure as a society to see this – will be our epitaph unless something changes – fast.
It seems to me that Lewis was making his point by focusing on the debt-to-GDP ratio fiscal rule; which I am trying to raise on another thread. It seems to me that because of where we are; not least the because of the centrality of the fiscal rules (which are now being treated as either a law of physics, or a law of God; for Conservative and Labour, a law of both, I think) and the debt/GDP ratio obsession, everyone can see – whether it is fifteen years in the making, or forty – it has produced the mess we are in, with too many people in poverty, the economy stagnating (but actually in decline with no prospect of a real recovery); the infrastructure disintegrating, our institutions badly led and untrustworthy: all as a result of the fiscal rules, and atrocious execution of Government executive management.
And the promise both Conservative and Labor are making is that the fiscal rules and their confidence in the failed planning is so strong, there is no alternative to continuing it.
Continue with the standard model, in the face of its collapse? What new Hell is this?
I received an email from Clive Lewis (I must have clicked myself onto some list…) with the tweet/video and a donation button. I sympathise with the way GND champions in Labour have been sidelined and denied funding for assistance/researchers (contrast with the apparatchiks who get funds, bankers’ donations and seconded staff). However I think they’re likely to be similarly shackled in any LiNO government.
My limited resources will be directed elsewhere…
There are no doubt ‘tactical’ situations in some constituencies, as regards local votes and campaign support. Here in Sheffield, 5/6 seats are Labour (and M. Cates’ Red Wall seat quite likely to revert). One Labour is a GND champion, Olivia Blake, MP for Hallam with a slim majority vs LibDems. So a small swing to them would contribute to the possibility of a hung parliament, losing a (shackled) GND MP. LD candidate leads LDs on the council, but is the sort who’s economical with truth, sadly… ‘pro business’ and all blablabla on green issues. O tempora, o mores!
Ed Milliband is now explaining the dropping of the green commitments as caused by “changed circumstances”. What are the changed circumstances?
The Debt to GDP Ratio%, the determinant statistic of debt, was 105.6% in 2021, Q4, when the commitment was made; 101.2% in 2023, Q2 (Source, ONS, with Q2, 2023 the latest ONS comparative stat. I can find). There is nothing material in the difference in two years.
Indeed the comic absurdity of the politics is worse. In 2010 Labour declared there was no money. The Conservatives agreed, and applied fourteen years of austerity that has smashed the fabric of both the economy, and society. The debt-to-GDP% was under 80% (Statista; the ONS stats. pre-2015 hve been transferred to The National Archive, and awkward to compare). The quantum was just under £1Trn. It is now £2.6Trn (150%+ increase). We were able to raise the money; we just didn’t spend it well, and then faced Covid and inflation. They never do what they say. They do the opposite of what they claim. When they sy they are ficing the debt; they aren’t. They do not know how to grow the economy. all they can do is cut investment; but they waste more than they ever save: much more.
Politicians are gullible, easily led; and frankly do not know what they are doing. They have wrecked the economy, and are too frightened to stop making the same appalling mistakes, following policies tht do not work.
Thanks
Ed Miliband advertised his feet of clay when he was standing as Labour leader.
I have no time for the man.
Richard your National Debt paper – which I just read for a second time – is a key to challenging the economic orthodoxy!
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/National-debt-an-explanation-published.pdf
Thanks
I wonder how long Clive will survive in the Labour party. He seems far too principled and outspoken for the current party. He would however make a great Green MP.