I have just heard Liz Kendall MP, who is Secretary of State for Work and Pensions saying on the morning media round that Labour believes that everyone should have the chance to be 'earning or learning'.
This is another trite sound bite.
What about those who are caring?
What about those who are sick?
What about those unable to do either of these things in a formal sense?
What about the retired?
What about those for whom there is no work or training they can afford to access, most especially now bus fares are increasing?
These questions are so obvious, what is Labour thinking? The obvious question is does it just not care about those it doesn't see as ‘economic units of production'? My suspicion is that is the case.
This is not a Labour Party as we once knew it.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
Sounds like a Tory politician in a Tory party!!
I remember back when she put herself up for the party leadership in 2015 (she finished in last place, thankfully). Her pitch was that she would out-Tory the Tories which was appalling. When she was brought into the new government by Starmer’s LINO Party I was similarly appalled and it is not a surprise that I was right to be so.
How do people with such beliefs find themselves in a Labour Party? It’s completely incomprehensible to me.
Me, too.
What nobody seems to want to address is why so many people have dropped out of the labour market.
If they started to try and understand that then we might start to get somewhere.
I might also suggest that if we have identified shortages of labour as an ‘impediment to growth’ we might also tackle employers who use labour inefficiently – hand car washes anyone, or dont treat their employees well.
Given also that there is an issue over the rising number of claimants who are ‘unfit for work’ – and I am sure you have better information and advice on this than me but there seem to be a lot of people who are not well enough to work but not deemed so unwell that they get effective treatment. I would suggest that this is something that needs to be addressed, not because they should be herded back into the workforce but because there is clearly a lot of treatable ill health that could and should be addressed.
The government claim is that the data is wrong, and they have not dropped out.
Yes its rather important to find out why people have ill health or have dropped out, then you can come up with solutions!
Aaah yes, the “we don’t like your data” ploy.
DWP used to use that one when I ran a foodbank.
Not only was our data better than the DWP’s (they didnt actually collect or publish data about foodbank usage or referrals, even though Job Centres referred people to us, although mostly by word of mouth so they didn’t have to record it, and refusing to use accountable vouchers so people would turn up without vouchers – hypocrisy when you consider that DWP used to accuse us of giving out free food to people who hadn’t been vetted. Supposedly to exclude the “undeserving” poor, because acc to DWP, foodbanks were for people with “short-term cash flow problems” Grrr!).
Both Trussell and the Independent foodbank network (IFAN) co-operated at a national level, on data recording, giving us a very large and reliable data set. But the DWP approach was to deny our veracity and competence while utterly failing to counter our narrative with any reliable data of their own.
I and many others were thoroughly radicalised by this stupidity and deliberate dishonesy. My heart sank when I saw who was being appointed as DWP Sec of State.
“we have identified shortages of labour as an ‘impediment to growth’”
I can fix this problem in less than 5 minutes.
Compile a list off all trades and certifications needed in the UK. If a person decides to study one of these trades or for one of these certifications then there is no cost (Tuition, cost of Books and Educational fees are waived.). The person accepting this scholarship must work in the field of trade or certification they obtain for seven consecutive years or they have to pay back the FULL cost of their education plus heavy interest.
If this could be done the skilled trades and NHS would have more workers than they need.
@ BayTampaBay
That reminds me of the UK scheme for Armed Forces recruirment, via the medical cadetship. You joined, got a commission, a salary, went to medical school then had to serve as a doctor in the military for set number of years. I had a sibling who did that in 1970s. Its still going – https://recruitment.raf.mod.uk/sponsorship
Now they call it a Bursary.
So the model is already in operation, just needs expanding.
In past decades, back when I started work, many of the groups mentioned by Richard would have looked to the then Labour party as their political home. But now, Labour for some reason no longer wish to acknowledge their needs and wishes. They seem to believe that to even attempt to satisfy those needs, is simply unaffordable. Also they have convinced themselves that, by acknowledging those needs, Labour will make themselves unelectable. To me, they give the impression that they think it would be career limiting / destroying.
So, they choose to blank out the issues raised here. In my view, they need to be challenged long and hard.
My deepest concern though is that by ignoring these needs, voters will swing to the far right for help, little realising where that really ends up.
‘Chance’ should mean that, not coercion. And the opportunity does not exist for many, for the reasons you’ve described. I’ve felt I’m simply an ‘econocow’ most of my life, my worth measured purely in contribution to GDP. My udder qualities are only appreciated in my local herd. Oh no, I’m turning into a batty old woman with an udder fixation! But I think we who feel like cattle are many. Agree with Mr Boxall, healthcare is not there for many and should be. Neighbour, builder all his life, late 50’s, was told he must wait until 65 to ‘qualify’ for knee operation. He’s miserable, he’s in pain. His wife works in NHS as a nurse, they are helpless and angry. It must be excruciating for doctors to have to apply these ‘thresholds’ against their judgement.
Thanks
I’m in a similar position Anne, having to wait until 60 for a knee op. Meanwhile I’ve put on two stone in weight, as I’m simply incapable of being as active as I was. Lose lose situation.
Good luck
It is laughable isn’t it?
I will tell you where the ‘unfitness’ lies in this septic isle.
Unfit managers.
Made unfit by unfit funding and budgets.
Unfit regulation.
Unfit markets.
Unfit morality.
Unfit training.
Unfit government.
Unfit?!!!
It is universal in the UK:
The Unfit Kingdom.
A very good description
“Labour believes that everyone should have the chance to be ‘earning or learning'”
Liz Kendall is saying this because she thinks this is what voters want to hear. Anyone can read anything they want to hear into this statement and interpret it in a way that benefits and reflects their personal beliefs.
The chance to be ‘earning or learning'” is a slogan for a soundbite.
Did Ms. Kendall explain HOW this will be achieved????
Liz Kendall is actually saying NOTHING!
She reminds me of a primary school head who has never learned you don’t talk down to children. She patronises everyone.
Liz Truss and Liz Kendall have no idea what they want to say.
The Lizzies do not understand what they are saying.
When they have finished flapping their jaws, they have no idea what they have said.
Going off track here, just to say thank you to Richard for all the hard work you put into this site and for giving me the opportunity, along with Steve Keen and Anne Pettifore to learn about MMT. It’s been a fascinating journey for me and I still have much to learn.
I was struck by your post a few weeks ago about the importance of getting the message out and the power of stories to help with messaging. To that end and based on everything I have learnt from you and your colleagues so far, I took my first tentative steps and wrote to the letters page of the New Statesman to correct an editorial comment they had made about rising national debt risking a financial crisis in the US. I’m pleased to say the letter was published this week as their letter of the week. I’ve pasted the letter below as unfortunately I don’t have a digital link.
Your editorial (Leader 15 November) astutely summarised the risks of a Trump presidency and the challenges he faces as he takes office. One of the challenges identified was that US national debt of 120% of GDP risks a further financial crisis. In fact both the Great Depression and the financial crash of 2008 were caused by soaring private household debt, not national debt.
Emphasising concerns about national debt risks feeding demands for austerity to reduce that debt. We have seen the impact of this narrative in the UK where rising national debt has been accompanied by rising wealth inequality and inflated asset prices, while austerity was imposed on our welfare and public services. National debt does not make a financial crisis, but the failure of Governments to equitably manage the distribution of wealth could well give rise to the next crisis.
Great work!
The Attlee Labour Government in 1945 implemented full employment. It created the Welfare State. It created the NHS which gave everyone the right to medical treatment regardless off wealth. Bevan referred to it has replacing fear. That produced a healthy society. One of the healthiest in the world. There were decent jobs for all so people went work. There were minute numbers on the dole. No food banks. A good education was there for everyone who wanted it. Working class kids went to university – free. I know because I was born in 1940 and have first hand experience of that era. Thatcher took it away.IN other words she reinstated fear. I remember debates about the future where exactly what is happening today was anticipated. Bad health would follow as night follows day. Especially mental problems. The one thing I have learned in my long life is that people crave security above all else. There is money to return us to those conditions. Richard has spelt out the source of the funding in these blogs. Yet our governments are impervious . They have brains like concrete. I despair.
I too despair.
That’s why I talk about it all.
I remember being aghast when Thatcher was elected in 1979. “Don’t people realise she will destroy the consensus supporting the Welfare State?” I thought (and said). Then I thought, as unemployment mounted and cuts accelerated, “People will realise now, surely, and vote her out.” But they didn’t and now a creature like Liz Kendall is a Labour Secretary of State at the DWP.
I tend to think that the Attlee government is the most significant in terms of serving the people of the country in my lifetime (born 1940).
And, yet, the British public booted them out of power at pretty much the first opportunity! With the help of FPTP, of course.
Says all you need to know about the electorate, I’m afraid!
Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others…
I am beyond giving this (and previous) governments the benefit of the doubt. I don’t believe they are mistaken, naive, inexperienced or even stupid. I believe they are corrupt. They know exactly what they’re doing, who they are benefiting, who will suffer and they really don’t care. These are dark times indeed.
Nothing more than a marketing slogan – the selling of a perception. I can accept ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ from Audi but not ‘earning or learning’ from a politician who is clearly just trying to sell herself
Liz Kendall, Rachel Reeves. Darren Jones, Keir Starmer… …”Earning but NOT learning”
Just came across this petition on Gov website
Call a General Election
I would like there to be another General Election.
I believe the current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/700143
already over a million signatures. Goes up by the 100s every 10 seconds
It’s a petition which is being heavily pushed on right-wing social media, by people trying to stir up trouble – perhaps an astroturf group as it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if Tufton Street had their grubby hands all over it. On a football forum which I frequent, the very right-wing posters (crypto-fascists at the moment, though they’ll follow Farage all the way across there), are pushing this petition vigorously, no doubt because they’ve read some reactionary guff on facebook or twitter.
The current Labour government are a bunch of useless turds (if you’ll forgive my terminology), but there is pretty much no way they could be worse than a Tory/Reform coalition which would be heading towards Trump level of terrible. I’m hoping that Labour will ultimately realise they have no choice but to change tack in a few years time, so something can be salvaged before the (much more) right-wingers get back into power and resume their wrecking.
This is obviously a stupid petition because it simply ignores the way our governments are elected. It’s a bullshit propaganda move designed to stoke further division and should be recognised as such.
From even before the general election all Labour talked about was being for “working people”. Very clear that everyone else must either fit in that category or they were not worth bothering about and were there to be punished or excluded. Hence the policies from a dishonest chancellor and the rest of the rabble in the cabinet.
The most depressing thing that people voted in hope that they might get some positive changes. That hope didn’t last long. Now facing a one term Labour government followed by who knows what the Tories will turn into.
Labour told people what they were well before the general election. Yet a frightening number of people, including some contributors to this site, insisted that what they said was just a ploy to get them elected, and after election they would change. Yeah, right.
I can’t remember whether it was in the 2012 or 2013 documents following the World Economic Forum meetings about Health in Davos, where Simon Stevens was working with McKinsey on the plans to dismantle the Bevan model of the NHS in the UK, that I saw Liz Kendall’s name in the list of attendees.
Thank you, Chris.
He was also a lobbyist for the US giant United Health.
His wife is a Zionist and has links to spook tech from that country and the US.
The current Labour Government (LINO) is callous, heartless and cruel. They are targeting the old, the sick and the disabled, but can’t resist a sideswipe at children by not removing the two-child benefit cap. They have also chosen to use the lowest figure for inflation they could find (just over 1% I think) to update benefits for the coming year. They know that the policy of cutting Winter Fuel Payment will kill people, yet are going ahead anyway. They won’t introduce free school meals for all children, despite knowing that many children in this country are hungry and cold. After the initial shock of seeing their policies, I have learned not be surprised at anything they do. I can’t think of anything more despicable than to get hold of the levers of power and then to fail to use them to benefit the most vulnerable in society. They have shown themselves to be greedy, narcissistic psychopaths. I am sure many will be delighting in the fact that the petition on the Government website is growing at 1000 every minute. It will be a blow to Starmer’s amour-propre even if it doesn’t result in a fresh election.
As noted elsewhere, this is anti-left. The only winners would be the right at present. The left has nothing ready.
You may well be correct, but the spread of signers seems to be 3.5 to 4% across all English constituencies, an apparent consistency which would include the portion of the left who feel with justification that they have been appallingly lied to by Starmer. His current approval rating is below abysmal. The only hope is that this, and future input from constituencies, forces him to take more notice of the state of the country, and less of Morgan McSweeney, Luke Akehurst and probably Asif Kaplan .But as his only motto is Mission Accomplished, and the tape has erased itself, he`ll just ignore everything as usual. The Left has nothing ready, but the Right is in ruins.
I am not sure how you know it is the Left.
I cannot prove it is the Right. All I know is that they are promoting it.
The map showed the highest concentration of petition signatures initially from Tory constituencies so I didn’t read that as anti Left.
As we all know, social media can run riot, pretty quickly.
The GE petition that’s got 417k signatures is fake.
As in, bots.
It got 300k signatures over night.
And the activity graph is incredibly uniform.
This is a manipulation, and I’ll be interesting what the parliamentary petitions committee investigation will be like.
The election petition is a prime example of using bots in a disinformation campaign. So called “signees” from 141 countries. “Wow” says Musk – because people believe the bullshit? So little of what you see online is real or organic. The “patriot” accounts are all based offshore.
This level of foreign interference in UK democracy is unparalleled
Thanks
Thank you, Pat.
We can only talk about one source, though.
Around the time of the Brexit referendum, it was interesting to observe a few investment firms hire Brexiteer loudmouths as policy and strategy experts. From time to time such experts kicked up a fuss. The impact on sterling, share prices etc. could be exploited.
Richard – I assume you are giving the petition short shrift because it really doesn’t deserve much attention – see article in Spectator (of all places).
Keep on highlighting the flaws, mistakes, incompetence of Labour and focus on the real life issues which have to be addressed very quickly by the government and continue to unravel and unmask the policies and huge threat coming from the vicious right-wing and neoliberal brigrade.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/those-signing-the-general-election-petition-should-know-better/
Thank you, Paul, above.
Kaplan is, to use the spook term, Starmer’s handler. Literally and metaphorically.
For more background on ex-IDF Unit 8200 operative Assaf Kaplan (that’s the spelling that gets results in search engines), working now for Starmer, see here:
https://labourheartlands.com/the-labour-party-hire-ex-israeli-spy-in-a-new-role-social-listening-and-organising-manager/
&
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/labour-ex-israel-military-intelligence-officer-role-anger-grows
& about his ?former? unit, Unit 8200
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200#cite_note-31
Note that Labour job description, “social listening & organising manager”!
He had/has a key role in the purge of the Corbyn supporting membership, and vetting new members & candidates for party office and local/national elections.
He absolutely fits the profile of the sort of skill set and networking links that Starmer would need for his internal party coup.
Don’t forget Pegasus spyware while doing your research
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
& as the Sgt used to say on Hill St. Blues, “be careful out there”.
How the hell can Starmer and Co pinch the title of ‘Labour’ when they’re just a (slightly) less corrupt version of what we got rid of. The right-wing press did a wonderful job of terrifying the populace of what Corbyn stood for. Even the LibDumbs seem to be right of sensibility. I despair!
I keep reading calls for a return to Corbynism without Corbyn. It’s too purist. The Republicans backed Trump to get Trumpism, the Tories backed Johnson to get Boosterism but the centre left aided and abetted the destruction of the popular left champion and then complain they don’t get the popular vote or necessary policies. Corbyn and his team were not perfect but they were much better than what is currently on offer. The same thing happened in the US with Bernie Sanders. We always let perfection stand in the way of progress we need to be much more politically astute.
The eternal complaint about the Left is that they cannot unite their various grouplets. Small wonder, if they have all been infiltrated by state agencies, as is signalled by the current inquiry. Some plants seem even to have acted as agents provocateurs in criminal activity. And now it seems that the PM himself is nursing a viper in his bosom. (Thank you, Colonel Smithers.)
Corbyn obviously frightened the pants off them.