Jeremy Corbyn took my Green Quantitative Easing and made it People's Quantitative Easing.
Now it looks like Owen Smith has taken the Green New Deal, of which I am a leading exponent and policy group member, and made it into the British New Deal with £200 billion of investment plans and energy and climate change at the heart of it.
This time I hope it might happen.
But that's for others to decide.
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!
Don’t see much Green emphasis in Owen Smith’s version – we should stick to your original title. I am increasingly alarmed at the pace of climate change. Already half the coral north of Carins on the Great Barrier Reef is dead. Meanwhile news coverage is moving from whether global warming is real to discussing the huge budgets now needed to adapt to it. New York alone is spending $6 billion to raise the flood protection around just the southern end of Manhatten, and this spending will have to be repeated many times over around the World. We may currently be concerned about 1-2 million migrants entering the EU, but if life in sub-Saharan Africa becomes impossible due to global warming we could see over 100 million people heading to Europe in the next 10-20 years.
Others may well disagree, but my own view is that implementing a Carbon Tax is the single most urgent challenge facing the human race. Of course the aim must be to make this Global in time, but an interesting interpretation from Canada (CIGI) suggests that it is now allowable under WTO rules to set a national carbon tax and then apply a levy to compensate on imports from countries that do not have one:
https://youtu.be/2GsJWxA8AVI
Getting Britain to lead on this issue would set the pace for the international community, and put the UK at the forefront of new economic models for the 21st century. Ever since the times of Adam Smith our economy has been based essentially on the cost of labour. Even materials are basically priced on the labour required to extract them, plus a small profit for the land owner. This made sense while availability of labour was the main constraint on production, but our technology is rapidly advancing to the point where every country in the World will have surplus labour. What we need is a complete shift in costing and taxation that moves the focus onto non-renewable resources, including fossil fuels.
Business competition led by new high-tech entrepreneurs will then drive the change to a circular economy, with our critical economic focus shifting away from labour productivity and onto the cost of material waste and energy consumption. This is a tall order for any political system, but no country is better placed than Britain to lead this change, and in doing so map out the future direction for the World. That would be a Brexit worth fighting for.
Robert P Bruce – author http://www.TheGlobalRace.net
There is much to what you say on labour costing
Very good response Richard, Owen Smith is certainly not the way forward!!
He may be the best one there is for Labour
Right now I do not see an alternative
The climate/environmental problem is so great that it could justify a command economy and a world Moral War.
Can’t say that Smith impresses me too much in any areas. Why he’s choosing this moment to big up Trident leads me to thing that he’s a captured establishment man who would see billions wasted in a vanity project.
He says he’s taking a Bevanite approach
As a Quaker unsurprisingly I am not pro Trident
Do not get me wrong here. One of the reasons (strong reasons) that I supported Jeremy Corbyn last year was because of his manifesto promise of PQE. It was praised by post Keynesian and Modern Monetary theorists as an excellent policy, and you should be congratulated for it.
But I fear that OS is pitching for leadership, and therefore treading on Corbyn’s ground, he knows that an anti austerity stance is pulling in the punters for Jeremy and therefore it is intelligent to wear his colours.
I am very sensitive to this kind of approach, because I rejoined the Labour Party when Ed Miliband did the same thing- he criticised “trickle down economics” and stated in his hustings that he thought that Camerons big society was really “abandonment.” Of course he was right, and I felt that after all the neoliberal Blair years, here was a real Labour man. But it was not long after his win that he was (either by tendency, or pressure from more right wing MPs), to start promising to cut the deficit, and in the end, limiting profits in the NHS to 5%.
You can see that any Labour MP promising socialism is going to get a rough ride in Labour, and this is the reason why Corbyn is being challenged. According to the Monbiot article in the Guardian, one of the real reasons for his demise with the PLP is a reluctance to take big donations from businesses.
An article here by Craig Murray studies the past of OS, and it does seem to me that he will not be promising anti austerity promises for long.
The second link I give quotes a person who was told by him that Labour needed to maintain credibility on welfare to get elected.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/07/entirely-fake-owen-smith/
https://samedifference1.com/2016/07/12/message-to-disabled-people-regarding-owen-smith-mps-leadership-bid/
Jeremy Corbyn will never ever deliver PaqE or anything else
I know Owen Smith, a bit
Yes, I like him, more than many MPs. Is he a saint? No? Flawed? I suspect so. But I do see someone who has always been by conviction on the left of Labour and never a Blairite by any means
I am not suggesting he is perfect
But at least he has a chance and this country needs an opposition that has that
Richard,
Not sure if you have heard of or read this information, but I found this bit of economic theory and felt it was interesting. Sounds reasonable and does explain some things. I have included the links below, if you feel it is garbage just delete.
http://atom.singularity2050.com/1-prologue.html
http://classicalvalues.com/2016/07/a-different-view-of-economics/
I will post but have not had time to read
Looking at the Guardian article & Smiths “pitch” (below) – I was struck by two things. First: building stuff is fine – but the jobs aspect tends to be short term. The Blair/Brown gov’ used PFI – a con trick to make Brown look good. I wonder if Smith is going to go that route (I assume not: but he does not say it explicity).
“…£200bn investment fund to spend on colleges, hospitals, roads, rail………. re-instate the Department for Energy and Climate Change”
My other observation is that DECC is 50% staffed by the “big-six” and has a nuclear focus. Given its policies one could think of it as an extension of the French state. I wonder if Smith understands this? If the UK wants to benefit from the move to a low-carbon society it needs to develop a UK industrial base – which in turn needs a long-term industrial policy. I have yet to hear anything on this subject from anybody in Labour – apart from sound bites. But I do notice that ARM was sold on Friday to a Japanese company. Very clever (not).
The Labour Party, always a broad church, has become an unsustainable spectrum. Policy Network has been running an Anti-Corbyn campaign since before he was elected. They have been ably supported by Progress. At the other end of the spectrum covert subversion is creeping in to the Momentum camp. The views held by these extremes cannot be reconciled within one party.
As a left winger I accept my views are out of kilter with many who voted Labour during the Blair years. I hold to my views because recent history demonstrates that my thinking about Blair, Mandelson et al was correct. Their tenure left me severely out of pocket due to their cosy relationship with the neolib puppet masters and at greater risk of terrorism due to their inept bungling in middle east politics.
I would possibly consider Owen Smith as a compromise choice were it not for Trident. In that matter I am with Corbyn. Trident is obsolete. It is a policy that offers choice of, at best, stalemate or disaster. Read just a little about the developments of UUV weapon systems to see why. When you do read those terrifying prospects remember that the cutting edge of research is way out in front of anything cleared for publication. UUV’s are being developed by the US and it is a reasonable wager they are not alone. The military justification for Trident, if it was ever valid, has gone. The cost of an upgrade is not justified. It would be like upgrading from matchlock to flintlock muskets when the enemy holds Martini-Henry rifles.
http://dronecenter.bard.edu/underwater-drones/
For me I think the time has come to consider campaigning for a coalition party with a manifesto based on principle and policies designed to meet the very real dangers facing us with a pragmatic recognition of our limitations as a nation. That requires thinking beyond pure economics and its zero sum product. That means the environment, sustainable agriculture, research into energy production, housing policy that works, creation of real jobs without the abuse of zero hours and ‘deductions’ from minimum wage. I could go on but for me to vote for any of the candidates they would have to come out from their bunkers, drop the wordsmith crafted PR bull**** and show policy that is inclusive, planet friendly and cognisant of our duty to others.
I think coalition may be needed come what may
But Labour needs to be an opposition – and my concern is as a democrat wanting policies that promote the needs of real people, not party issues
Owen Smith is a lobbyist for private healthcare and thoroughly untrustworthy.
Was…
Past tense
Which a lobbyist or untrustworthy?
He was a lobbyist
He did his company’s bidding
You’ve never disagreed with your employer?
I am a tax lawyer. If I subsequently become an MP, and if my entire mission is to fix what I can see very clearly (with the benefit of all that professional experience) is a flawed and inequitable system, does that mean I’d never be trustworthy either?
If it does, my plans to help out Labour in future are in trouble already.
Tom
As a tax accountant I cam to what I do having made many mistakes
I’d even done some things I’d now call avoidance
People threw it at me – from the r4ight wing
Now no doubt they’d willingly do it from the left
But unless I’d been there, seen it and done it I could not have even started the process of suggesting change
It appears many have no clue that this is the only way change really happens
Best
Richard
Richard
You really have to be a bad boy before you can be a good boy?
No
But it doesn’t prevent you being one
£200bn over the life of a Parliament is roughly half what John McDonnells’ Fiscal Credibility Rule would permit (depending on assumptions on the level of inherited debt and expected NGDP growth). Why are you enthusiastic about this lowering of Labour’s commitment to public investment?
I have not seen a number of £400 billion
Where?
Do the arithmetic. NGDP is currently £1.9bn; with 4% NGDP growth this would rise to around £2.2bn by 2020 and to £2.7bn by 2025. Public debt is today 84% of GDP; post-Brexit this is likely to rise, so let’s assume 90% or around £2bn by 2020. McDonnell’s FCR aims to balance current spending, but with investment additional to that, provided public debt as a proportion of GDP falls during a Parliament. Debt of £2.4bn by 2025 would achieve that, so allowing £400bn of public investment, i.e. double Owen Smiths’ promise.
4%?
In the real world?
Come on….
Since the low point of 2009 UK NGDP growth has averaged 3.4% even under austerity, so 4% is on the low side of what could be expected from a government committed to stimulating growth.
That’s not inflation adjusted
And that’s not meaningful as a result
No one discusses non inflation adjusted GDP
When considering debt to GDP ratios, nominal figures are precisely what should be used. Debt is a fixed nominal quantity so inflation reduces its real value, as occurred in the UK in the generation following the second world war. For a target of reducing debt-GDP over a Parliament, nominal quantities must be used.
But for investment that is not useful
Does anyone know where Smith gets his numbers from? £200bn happens to be CND’s estimate of how much Trident will cost. So Corbyn could fund this new deal just by cancelling it but Smith prefers to spend it on WMD.
You ignore the fact that the timescales are staggeringly different
But please don’t worry about details
I understand that the timescales differ but the coincidence is still striking. On details, surely that is a question for Smith who has given nothing on that for the BND? Nor,as I noted earlier, did we get any policy out of him in nine months at Work and Pensions. But no doubt you see that as Corbyn’s fault.
Except actually that what successes there were in this period were largely on benefits and who got them?
I had high hopes that this blog was about the Tories taking PQE on board and then I saw ‘Owen’ and then ‘Smith’ in the text and my heart sank.
I’m not impressed with him. Labour party politicians need to remember that there is already a Tory party and that we don’t need two of them.
And Trident is a joke – jobs or no jobs.
We are a small island trying to punch above our weight whilst the gap between rich and poor continues to widen.
It’s about time we grew up and stopped living off past glories.
I thought Ken Livingstone called for quantative easing under that simple two-word title to build houses and re-stoke social provision when it was done for the banking mess and repeated his calling for it in subsequent years but unsurprisingly not highlighted in the press.
You’ve said that twice now
In conjunction with comment I listed on PQE article, here is one Livingstone mention of ‘QE for infrastructure’, this one from New Statesman April 2014.
‘ “It’s quite easy for Labour to construct an entire five-year programme without an additional penny of borrowing. The Bank of England has created £375bn to prop up the financial system, and it was right to do so . . . So, equally, you could create £375bn for infrastructure.”
Livingstone suggests that another round of QE could fund a mass housebuilding programme, HS2, Crossrail 2 and the expansion of broadband. “You’d create well over a million jobs, put people back to work, get the benefits bill down; and there wouldn’t be a penny of debt because all assets are held by the Bank.” He warns, however, that “Labour would need to win the election with a clear commitment, because my guess would be that the Bank of England, while quite happy to create billions to save the financial system, wouldn’t be so interested in building homes for rent.” ‘
So?
And what has happened since?
Before this morning?