{"id":11999,"date":"2011-09-22T12:26:16","date_gmt":"2011-09-22T11:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=11999"},"modified":"2011-09-22T12:27:06","modified_gmt":"2011-09-22T11:27:06","slug":"only-a-hard-core-neoliberal-could-have-said-what-nick-clegg-did","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2011\/09\/22\/only-a-hard-core-neoliberal-could-have-said-what-nick-clegg-did\/","title":{"rendered":"Only a hard core neoliberal could have said what Nick Clegg did about the role of politicians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I've finally had a chance to have a quick look at what <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/politics\/liberaldemocrats\/8778863\/Lib-Dem-conference-2011-Nick-Cleggs-speech-in-full.html\" target=\"_blank\">Nick Clegg said yesterday<\/a>. This jumped out, when he was Labour bashing (which seemed his main purpose):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Because let me tell you this: You don\u2019t play politics at a time of national crisis. You don\u2019t play politics with the economy. And you never, ever play politics with people\u2019s jobs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hang on a minute. Look what Clegg's saying:<\/p>\n<p>- When markets fail\u00a0politicians\u00a0should not intervene<\/p>\n<p>- In a crisis politicians should shut up<\/p>\n<p>-\u00a0Government\u00a0has no role in the\u00a0economy<\/p>\n<p>- The level of employment is not the\u00a0government's\u00a0responsibility.<\/p>\n<p>That's what this means. And it's pure neoliberalism.<\/p>\n<p>It's also one of the founding hypotheses of my book - The\u00a0Courageous State. In it I argue that neoliberalism has bred\u00a0politicians\u00a0who think that nothing they can do will beat the market so they'd best leave it alone. That's what Clegg was saying - that\u00a0markets\u00a0should be left to sort out crises.<\/p>\n<p>Neoliberal\u00a0theory\u00a0is wrong of course. It creates the crises we're\u00a0having. And it has no solution to them. But none the less Clegg wants to walk away from his responsibility to exercise judgement, to correct market failure, to ensure we have full employment - the very things politicians are meant to do.<\/p>\n<p>No wonder he's unfit for his office and his party is consigned to the history books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve finally had a chance to have a quick look at what Nick Clegg said yesterday. This jumped out, when he was Labour bashing (which<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2011\/09\/22\/only-a-hard-core-neoliberal-could-have-said-what-nick-clegg-did\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/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":[124,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-condems","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11999","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=11999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}