It's been a\u00a0fascinating\u00a0few days (in between the continually depressing news) to monitor the language being used about the economy.<\/p>\n
I have an impression for the first time - and I stress, it's an impression and I'm not saying anything more than\u00a0- that \u00a0the narrative used by some business commentators with regard to the economy is changing.<\/p>\n
last night on the BBC News there was a UBS banker saying that we had to now think about the period of inflation (an idea I have expressed for some time, to the almost universal horror on the part of commentators). \u00a0More than that though, he expressed the view that the only criteria for assessment of government economic policy was now whether or not it would create employment.<\/p>\n
The \u00a0on Radio 4 this morning \u00a0a business commentator (and I did not catch his name) \u00a0said that there now had to be a frank recognition that the government's economic policy was inevitably leading towards low or no growth. \u00a0 What he also made implicitly clear was this was a choice, \u00a0which is, of course, true.<\/p>\n
Now, two swallows do not make a summer; \u00a0far from it in fact. \u00a0But, \u00a0these are not narratives that we have heard from these sources before. It \u00a0has been heretical, the preserve of people like me, to make such observation on the radio \u00a0or television \u00a0and yet \u00a0here were two business commentators \u00a0making it clear that the government has opted for low or no growth, that this is a choice, that there are alternatives, and that those alternatives must now be considered.<\/p>\n
To date many on the left have been, \u00a0unsurprisingly, \u00a0perturbed by the difficulty of progressing an alternative narrative on the economy. The cuts narrative has prevailed for eighteen months or more now ( it seems so much longer). \u00a0There is no doubt that it has been successful in persuading people \u00a0of virtue of the government's policies, \u00a0which anyone who opposes them can tell you has been mighty frustrating \u00a0when it was always so glaringly obvious that they would lead to an economic catastrophe.<\/p>\n
Well maybe, just maybe that narrative is changing now and it is\u00a0business\u00a0and bankers realising that the sheer cowardice of\u00a0governments\u00a0that want to simply say they're walking away from the problem, shutting up shop and letting the\u00a0world\u00a0get on with things by\u00a0themselves\u00a0- which is the right wing agenda - is not good enough.<\/p>\n
Government\u00a0is an economic agent.\u00a0Democratic\u00a0governments\u00a0are elected to effect change. And perhaps, just\u00a0perhaps, the realisation that business expects them to deliver that change - albeit for the\u00a0benefit\u00a0of business but incidentally for the\u00a0population\u00a0at large on whom business is\u00a0dependent\u00a0- is beginning to dawn.<\/span><\/p>\n If it does the case is altered - the economic narrative will have changed. It's overdue to happen, as recent events make more than clear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s been a\u00a0fascinating\u00a0few days (in between the continually depressing news) to monitor the language being used about the economy. I have an impression for the
Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}