John Healey holds the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer at this moment, to everyone's surprise, including, I suspect, his own. He was interviewed by Sam Coates of Sky Television yesterday. The Guardian reported these comments:
Healey said fiscal discipline was the “first priority” for any chancellor.
“It's the bedrock for economic stability,” he said. “We simply can't deal with the problems we face as a country by maxing out the country's credit card.”
I despair. We have another Chancellor who thinks that the country is like a household.
That is bad enough, but what is worse is the reference to "the country's credit card.”
First, that is because no such thing exists.
Second, because he does not apparently realise that if it did have a credit card, he controls the bank that issued it and can set the credit limit wherever he likes.
It is quite absurd that we can still have Chancellors who can, without apparent embarrassment, display economic ignorance of this order.
When might we have a Chancellor with any degree of macroeconomic competence?
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Healey resigned as defence minister due to Starmer not pledging to raise military spending to 3% of GDP. Will be now go ahead with this massive increase and does he know the resources are available for this or slash universal credit, disability payments and pensions?
Reports say he is dithering…
Reports should also say that he is well out of his depth.
Is the position Healey finds himself in now not a perfect example of a man being hoist by his own petard though Richard? He resigns decause defence spending is not being increased quickly enough. Becomes chancellor, and promptly buys into the household budget nonsense. And therefore ‘as there’s no money’ he can’t raise defence spending!
Superb, isn’t it? Even though I think we do need to substantially increase defence spending, (although on what I’m not knowledgeable enough to know), I have to laugh at this. As a relief from the madness of this world. I saw some video footage of the horrific floods in Nepal and Tibet, for which climate change is is almost certainly responsible. Jesus Christ, it was terrifying. A wall of black water metres high just engulfing everything in its path. Then the heatwaves here and the rest of Europe with all the consequences for food production, human and animal health, and so on.
So, we need to spend massively on carbon reduction and adaptation. And what do we see with our Majesty’s opposition? The idiot Badenoch making it tory party policy to oppose net zero because ‘we can’t afford it’. As a professor on R4’s Rare Earth put it, she is now flatly contradicting scientific fact by doing so.
Thank you
Science? Who needs its, when fiscal rules demand we ignore it?
A Chancellor with macroeconomic competence would be kryptonite to the economic establishment. There is a quality they value far more – obedience.
Might political promotion be related to conformity to current party and big donor attitudes and in inverse proportion to deep, and so heterodox, knowlege of the (alleged) theory and functions of the appointee’s department?
Well, as they say, that’s that then!
Why would anyone want to catapult themselves into a job with no power to do anything really useful except tinker with things?
The answer can only be Randian can’t it – for personal reasons – power, prestige, money ( not badly paid is he?) survival. Privately educated – though a disability rights campaigner according to Wikipedia (can’t wait to see his budgets on that issue) – studying politics and social science at Cambridge you can sort of tell what sort of trajectory Healey has already been on for some time?
Already Healey will not be a historical political figure; his impact will be all for the benefit of himself and he will be forgotten like so many avatars of Neo-liberalism we have suffered over the years. We are not allowed to have courageous politicians anymore, you see.
Much to agree with.
“When might we have a Chancellor with any degree of macroeconomic competence?”.
I was having a chat with his Satanic majesty recently & I speculated on hell freezing over.
His response was that this was more likely than the Brits getting a finance minister that had even a basic understanding of finance.
I also despair.
Despite having no illusions regarding what to expect from Burnham, I couldn’t believe he’d made this numpty Chancellor.
And let me guess – Mr Coates didn’t challenge him on his credit card remark?
We’re doomed.
Totally despairing.
Thank you, both.
You (anrigaut, and Geof) are in France and may be enjoying Jean-Luc Melenchon and the former head of Lazard, Matthieu Pigasse, challenging the French and EU elite on debt, money and resource constraints.
To quote William Vickrey, a Nobel Prize winner in the field of economics, on the subject of deficits being considered inherently harmful:
“Even the analogy itself is faulty. If General Motors, AT&T, and individual households had been required to balance their budgets in the manner being applied to the federal government, there would be no corporate bonds, no mortgages, no bank loans, and many fewer automobiles, telephones, and houses.”
Full paper here, well worth a read:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.95.3.1340
He was right