{"id":80412,"date":"2025-02-26T07:42:26","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T07:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=80412"},"modified":"2025-02-26T07:42:26","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T07:42:26","slug":"another-charlatan-lines-up-to-sell-his-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/02\/26\/another-charlatan-lines-up-to-sell-his-soul\/","title":{"rendered":"Another charlatan lines up to sell his soul"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was in the Guardian last night<\/a>. David Lammy becomes the next so-called Labour minister to make a pact with the devil, all for the sake of trying to keep a vile billionaire happy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Lammy, like his colleagues<\/a>, is saying something he must know to be untrue.<\/p>\n

Firstly, there is no need for cuts in anything to fund defence spending. The wealthy could have been taxed more<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Secondly, cutting aid does not solve the problem that if resources are to be diverted to defence, the requirement is not to reallocate just money. The reality is that presuming that the UK is at full employment (which the action of the Chancellor in refusing to borrow more to prevent inflation arising necessarily implies is Labour's presumption) then UK consumption must fall to create physical capacity for defence activity to grow, and clearly cutting overseas aid is just about the worst possible way to do that.<\/p>\n

Third, only the wealthy have the plausible means to cut their consumption for this purpose.\u00a0 Therefore, as part of defence decision-making, they need to be required to do so. The gross inequality that they benefit from demands that actual cuts in their consumption are required if additional work in defence is to happen.<\/p>\n

I have only met Lammy once (for dinner). He struck me then as a person of very limited brain power, and he has done so ever since. His total incapacity to understand economics was apparent during that meeting (the focus of which was economic issues), and his failure to comprehend the necessary integration of finance and actual economic activity is clearly apparent in the ridiculously embarrassing article he has put out.<\/p>\n

Another fool, over-promoted way beyond his ability, has been found out by their desire to suck up to Trump. How many more will follow?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was in the Guardian last night. David Lammy becomes the next so-called Labour minister to make a pact with the devil, all 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":[14,19,35,16,147,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-development","category-economics","category-ethics","category-inequality","category-labour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80412","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=80412"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80420,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80412\/revisions\/80420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}