It seems that everyone with time on their hands and nothing constructive to think about is talking about Rachael Reeves Mais lecture speech to be presented this evening at City, University of London.
Since it would appear that this speech has been almost entirely leaked in time to advance, let me throw in my tuppence worth, meaning that I am restricting my comments to the overall tenor of her proposals rather than to any detail, not least because she herself appears to avoid all detail, as ever.
The entire substance of her speech seems to be encapsulated in this paragraph, which is apparently at the core of the Labour promise to the country:
When we speak of a decade of national renewal, that is what we mean. As we did at the end of the 1970s, we stand at an inflection point, and as in earlier decades, the solution lies in wide-ranging supply-side reform to drive investment, remove the blockages constraining our productive capacity, and fashion a new economic settlement, drawing on evolutions in economic thought.
It takes no reading between the lines to realise that she believes that if only the restrictions on unfettered market capitalism were removed, we would have growth. This removal of regulatory restrictions on business is, after all, exactly what the euphemism "supply side reforms" means. There is no other possible interpretation.
This has always been the 55 Tufton Street agenda. Even the Conservative Party, in more extreme moments, has failed to embrace much of this idea, but now it would seem that Rachael Reeves has. In particular, I can hear her talking about planning reforms in a way that echoes comments made by Mark Littlewood of the Institute of Economic Affairs while sitting beside me in the BBC studios over many years.
I have to admit that I never expected Labour to adopt such an absurd or even depraved policy. What Reeves is, in effect, saying is that businesses should have the right to trample over the interests of anyone else in society in the pursuit of profit, whatever the externalities (or costs) they might impose on others as a consequence, both now and in the future.
If you want a precise description of everything that is wrong with modern capitalism and why it has caused the destruction that is resulting in so many of our current crises, including on climate change, then it is the fact that politicians persistently ignored those externalities or costs that Rachael Reaves is now saying that she will also turn a blind eye towards.
Please forgive me if I cannot be bothered to spend much time on the remainder of what she will say. When you have embraced an idea as hideous as this one, any footnote that you wish to add to try to ameliorate the impact of your proposal has to necessarily be ignored because you have already decided, as a matter of policy, to treat nothing but the pursuit of profit as being of any concern.
How did the Labour Party reach such a low point?
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‘Depraved’.
You must be really angry to say that.
Excellent choice of word.
As far as when such a low point was reached, two words: Blair and Mandelson.
I’m not so sure – that Reeves is depraved. But I don’t think she is either curious, questioning (I guess part of “curious”) or capable of original thought – which is an outcome of the latter two. I find that sad in any person but very dangerous in politicos. It all smacks of a such a desperation for power that all other things are forgotten, you know things like: hmm – what about the people that elect me – what are their concerns? how can I attend to them? Forgive the brief excursion into fantasy – politicos thinking about their electorate.
If I was in her constituency, I’d be campaigning against her. If there are any people visiting the blog that happen to be in Reeves constituency – do feel free to contact me.
I say she is depraved because I have shown the funding for change is available – and she has ruled out accessing any of it.
That is wanton depravity.
Refusing to make lives better when that is possible is unforgivable and that is what she is doing.
The post is somewhat hysterical… Reeves was talking to a room full of bankers and some economists; she was hardly going to threaten them with prison! Let us all stop pretending that she is some sort of modern day Thatcherite. We are not in the 1980’s, before 24 hr News and pre-Internet. None of what Reeves has said is exactly a surprise bearing in mind that she worked at the BoE. She is nowhere near as ‘dry’ as Howe and Lawson and is still way to the left of the current neo-Thatcherites.
Most of the speech has been made up to appease the Vultures, the City of London and the Big Banks.
Quoted from the speech:
“We will guarantee basic rights from day one – protection from unfair dismissal, sick pay, and parental leave. But this will not prevent fair dismissal, and we will ensure that businesses can still operate probationary periods with processes for letting go of new hires.
We will ban exploitative zero hours contracts, by giving all workers the right to a contract that reflects the number of hours they regularly work, based on a twelve-week reference period. But these changes will not stop employers from offering overtime or meeting short-term demand, such as in the build-up to Christmas or seasonal work in agriculture or hospitality.
And on trade union legislation, we will reverse changes since 2010 that have done nothing to prevent the worst period of disruption since the 1980s, but instead have contributed to a conflictual, scorched-earth approach that has stood in the way of productive negotiation. These policies didn’t exist under Blair and Brown when there were fewer strikes and less disruption. We will work with business as we deliver and implement these policies.
And an economy built on contribution of the many means recognising that we don’t just need growth to fund strong public services. We need strong public services to support economic growth, including a serious plan to get the long-term sick – let down by ballooning NHS waiting lists, failing mental health support, an inflexible welfare state, and inadequate employment support – back to work. We will swiftly implement the plans we have already set out for an urgent resource injection into our public services: to cut NHS waiting lists, tackle the crisis in dentistry, transform mental health services, recruit and retain teachers, and provide breakfast clubs in every school. ”
Are we all revolutionary fanatics? Change comes gradually over decades… Do you seriously believe that attacking Labour is helping remove the Tories from government? ♂️ I am no fan of Reeves but the carping and veiled misogyny aimed at her makes me want to go out and start campaigning on her behalf.
First, the misogyny accusation is utterlly misplaced unless I am also misogynistic about Starmer, Streeting and Lammy. Perhaps their incompetence might be a common feature? So, very politely, cut the crap.
Then stop being so stupid that you believe Labour can achieve any change whilst sticking to Tory spending rules.
After that asks whether she even believes in change – or whether she is so steeped in the BoE / Treasury way that all she wants is to perpetuate it. After all, what she actually said was she will delivery stability – of their view.
If you want to impose untold harm on the UK call me anything you like for anting too do better. But people like you are the threat to wellbeing in this country – and you hide behind anonymity.
Kram (or is it Mark?)
There is not one shred of evidence of misogyny in Richard’s post at all. He focussed on what he felt she was lacking as a key player of a political party that is likely to win the next election in a country that is in dire need of courageous answers to its problems and will not – it appears – be providing them.
Your accusation of misogyny is unfounded and disingenuous. In fact you are ripe for the Starmer’s front bench. Have you applied at all?
“How did the Labour Party reach such a low point?” Entryism by right wing Thatcherites who found the Tory Party too extreme.
Reeves right hand man believe Thatcher gave us renewal. https://www.thenational.scot/news/24195289.labours-darren-jones-praises-margaret-thatcher-national-renewal/
How did they come to this? Tony Benn “ She decided to eradicate the power of the unions, undermine local government and privatise assets – and these were the three policies of the labour movement.” To paraphrase the Proclaimers – it’s socialism no more, public ownership no more, Labour no more.
Just heard Mariana Mazzocato on Radio 4 PM.
A lot more sense from her.
Regulations are what should prevent water companies from pouring raw sewage into our rivers.
Regulations are what should prevent water companies from paying £billions in dividends to shareholders, and claiming they don’t have enough money to fix the system.
Regulations are what should have prevented the PPE scandal, where £billions seems to have gone to dubious companies without oversight.
Regulations are what should have given public sector workers the pay rise they deserved, while ensuring that MPs got another pay rise automatically.
Regulations are what should have prevented rail and energy companies from charging the highest prices in Europe.
Regulations are what should prevent MPs from receiving “donations” in return for privatisation.
Thatcher started removing regulations under the guise of “free trade”. Forty-five years later we can the result can be seen.
What’s your favourite regulation, now gone, which you’d like to have back. Imagine you were a regulatory God for an hour, and could pick one.
MPs should be regulated so that they can not receive political “donations”.
Fine, if they are fully funded by the state, including for elections
Rent controls.
I googled supply side economics and discovered an IPPR take on the “modern” and “progressive” version, also apparently known as securonomics, which Rachel Reeves has talked about. IPPR says:
US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has outlined how modern supply-side economics “prioritises labour supply, human capital, public infrastructure, R&D, and investments in a sustainable environment”.
Why “progressives” have to talk in these terms is beyond me – maybe it’s camouflage so they blend in seamlessly with the trickle-down crowd!
https://www.ippr.org/articles/modern-supply-side-economics-a-new-consensus
Securenomics is just marketing as far as I can tell
Probably – a way to sell yourself to the City. I wonder if Reeves believes in the Laffer Curve or if the modern supply siders politely sideline that nonsense. It’s integral to the original version though.
Surely the irony of ‘productivism’ aka supply side “securonomics”, with a key emphasis on a labour flexibility, is that it requires the very opposite of security for workers ?
A flexible workforce actually means more fire and rehire, more zero hours, fewer employment rights.
When will Reeves and Starmer come clean and abandon the proposed New Deal for working People ?
Soon, I expect
I doubt it will make the manifesto
most of this could be covered by calling it a mixed-economy and even Social democracy.
I don’t see the need to try and present it as supply side. I don’t think it adds anything except perhaps, it is a way of saying the private sector needs to be supported as well.
I also think it doubtful that Reeves is panning the same program as Biden when we look at the American investment in climate change.
At least contemplation of this coming horror appears to be bringing about a necessary alignment of the Left. Here’s the Canary’s new man Martin Wright echoing your sentiments https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2024/03/19/rachel-reeves-thatcher/
Can’t help fully agreeing – I tend to switch off whenever she is trailed on R4.
The combination of tin- ear (never engaging with ideas on the economy (‘is there really no money?’) and rigidly parroting her ‘iron clad’ ‘fully funded’ approach to public spending —- which she has largely failed to promote as ‘securonomics’.
Mazzucato and someone from the Resolution Foundation on r4 PM programme more or less agreed she had to show how she would get investment up in public and private sector – which she shows no sign of doing.
A year ago in a paper she did say her ‘supply side’ action would include an ‘active state’
https://labour.org.uk/updates/press-releases/rachel-reeves-securonomics/
but almost all her current quotes about ‘impossible choices’ suggests she is not going to confront the need to rebuild services and infrastructure as Labour did after WWII
Anne McElvoy has a piece entitled “How Thatcherite is Rachel Reeves?Enough to spook the left at https://link.news.inews.co.uk/view/64e3ad846d173b903f0217bdkomor.12k5/46c5b4b3
I would agree with you entirely. Rachel Reeves has taken on board the absurd ‘ideas’ promoted by right wing think tanks. The adoption of many of their ideas is one of the reasons for the situation the country now finds it in. A good example is housing where more houses have been built (despite the myths peddled by such think tanks), than required, yet we have more second homes/holiday lets/buy to let/luxury properties – not houses which people can live in. Cornwall is a price example of the idiocy of the free market where 35,000 out of 285,000 dwellings are not actually used for housing people
“Unfettered market capitalism” code for continuing politician corruption, more austerity for the poor and third rate public services for the rest of us! Reeves wouldn’t get a job as as a used car sales person in the real world with this out-of-touch pitch! What an intellectual mess the supposedly moral science of economics is in this country!
Are we surprised ? no.
Anybody paying attention has been hearing much the same for a long time.
Does anyone think its going to work? no.
The issue then is whether there is a plan B and whether there is the basis for moving to it. Again I do not see it.
Is there an internal debate about any of this ? No .
Ralph Miliband had it right.
https://newleftreview.org/issues/i12/articles/eric-hobsbawm-parliamentary-cretinism
Can someone let us in to how all this is rationalised?
I’ve just stumbled across this article whilst browsing Mastodon.
https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/03/12/nobel-laureate-economist-angus-deaton-capitalism-power/
A died in the wool neoliberal economist belatedly seeing the light.
I suppose it’s better late than never.
Very good
“What’s extraordinary is that a Nobel Laureate economist has only achieved this realisation so late in his career. Anyone with practical experience of policymaking, or with training as a historian, or even someone who has worked as a lobbyist or consultant, has a grasp of what Deaton has only belatedly realised: modern capitalism, particularly in its neoliberal form that disempowers governments and rivals like trade unions, is about the use of power by corporations to “change the rules of the game”, to increase certainty for themselves and reduce it for competitors, workers and consumers. It speaks volumes about how sheltered many mainstream academic economists really are.”
And about time too!
And this: “today large corporations have too much power over working conditions, wages, and decisions in Washington, where unions currently have little say compared with corporate lobbyists. Unions once raised wages for members and nonmembers, they were an important part of social capital in many places, and they brought political power to working people in the workplace and in local, state, and federal governments. Their decline is contributing to the falling wage share, to the widening gap between executives and workers, to community destruction, and to rising populism.”
Who would have thought that unions could be a force for good?
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/03/Symposium-Rethinking-Economics-Angus-Deaton
He got there in the end
Labour’s election slogan, here in Scotland, tries to convince us that Labour is “the change Scotland needs”.
God help us.
The Labour party are economic poltroons.
In 2012 Philip Pilkington set the record straight how disastrous Thatcher was for the UK:-
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/07/philip-pilkington-the-new-monetarism-part-i-the-british-experience.html
Thatcher was an inveterate liar not only did she lie the government has no money creating powers of its own when everything went downhill in the UK economy she denied she had ever been a Monetarist!
You would have hoped that Ms Reeves had learned the very obvious lesson that the respite care for this country offered by New Labour Mk1 was not enough, but plainly she hasn’t.
Instead we get New Labour Mk2.
It would almost be excusable, if like Blair/Brown before her it was simply an election ploy to get elected in a world where the current election system has been totally stitched up by the far-right, but tragically like her predecessors she actually seems to believe what she is saying.
Rachel Reeves very likely to be next UK Chancellor thinks that Adopting failed tory policy of last 40 years is the way forward
Labour are so dumb so in thrall to right wing neoliberalism they will achieve nothing
In fact they are laying roots of their own failure
She says.
“…and fashion a new economic settlement, drawing on evolutions in economic thought.”
Evolutions? What evolution? I’m tempted to say that MMT is an evolution, what she is saying is regression to something that has already failed, or am I missing something?
I think you are spot on
I had much the same thought
I think a big part of her ‘reforms’ will be delivered through the horrific Freeport and SEZ free for all.
The Welsh government (of most hues) has embraced SEZs. There is no hope. Ach a fi.
The Tories have very much been in charge in the rural areas while Labour was more in charge in urban areas. Labour is no longer the party to help people but are the urban Tory party only out to help the wealthy and not people in need who are now the vast majority of British people.
A word search of the Mais lecture does not throw up the word “equality.” Not even in the equivocal form “equality of opportunity.” It has several general condemnations of inequality but I could find no specific commitment or policy to reduce it in any form, except as an incidental benefit of growth. The word “equality” is also absent from all of Keir Starmer’s five missions, even in their extended form, including the one labelled Opportunity. On this negative evidence, the next Labour government has not formally committed itself to a more even distribution of income and wealth in our country and does not intend to judge itself, or be judged, against this objective.
The entire lecture, and all five missions, would become nugatory if Donald Trump wins a second term.