{"id":77994,"date":"2024-10-01T07:33:12","date_gmt":"2024-10-01T06:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=77994"},"modified":"2024-10-01T07:33:12","modified_gmt":"2024-10-01T06:33:12","slug":"with-faiza-shaheen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2024\/10\/01\/with-faiza-shaheen\/","title":{"rendered":"With Faiza Shaheen"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was in North East London last night at the invitation of\u00a0Faiza Shaheen<\/a>, who was scandalously sacked as the Labour candidate for her local constituency by the Labour Party in the weeks before the general election, having been previously supported in that role by Keir Starmer, in person.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Faiza and I have known each other for well over a decade, and she invited me to speak at the first of her new events in the constituency as part of her ongoing campaign to represent it in parliament. I was delighted to do so. Faiza stood as an independent in July, being just beaten into third place by the Labour candidate, but with the split vote allowing the Tory, Iain Duncan-Smith, to retain the seat.<\/p>\n

The theme of the evening was austerity. We started with Faiza asking me questions, and then the audience did.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I think it fair to say three themes emerged.<\/p>\n

The first was that people are already very angry with and disillusioned by Labour. There is obvious massive disquiet with the way in which Labour is managing itself, and the announcements it has already made about the economy and those within it, which reveal an obvious bias to those with wealth.<\/p>\n

The second is that there is real confusion about the stories that Labour tells: people do not believe that nothing can be done to improve their locality and that there is no money left to do so. It took very little time to get many to appreciate that repairing a local bridge that has been closed would not be pouring money into a black hole but would instead be a dual benefit, not only restoring the bridge but also providing local employment that would, in turn, provide a local economic stimulus that would, then, in turn, result in tax paid to recover the cost of preparing the bridge. The need for such narratives is obvious. I will have to think about these.<\/p>\n

Third, there was anger over economic issues, from the domicile rule to student loans, the two-child benefit cap, and more.<\/p>\n

On a personal level, there was much feedback in the discussion afterwards, including a lot of appreciation for the YouTube work. This has clearly been the right thing to do and is where I am now cutting through. My thanks to those who commented if you happen to read this.<\/p>\n

The event was recorded by Faiza's team. I hope to share some or all of that video in due course.<\/p>\n

Was it worth doing? Yes, but very tiring when I am heavily orientated towards early morning starts to my day. It makes me think a tour would be very hard work.<\/p>\n

I am wondering whether live-stream events might be a better way to manage that idea right now. I will have to give this more thought, but on that theme, Steve Keen and I are doing a joint live stream on his channel on 19 October at 6 pm.<\/p>\n

My thanks to Faiza for this invitation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was in North East London last night at the invitation of\u00a0Faiza Shaheen, who was scandalously sacked as the Labour candidate for her local constituency
 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":[25,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77994","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=77994"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77999,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77994\/revisions\/77999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}