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I don’t share the optimism above really.
Wouldn't call it optimism, just a bit of realism. Ultimately we're in a bit of a no-mans land when it comes to govt policy and action so all we can do is wait and see. From now until the election it's all just messaging and PR, we have absolutely no idea what labour will actually do until they're in power. What is certain though is that voters will expect change, if they don't get it then Starmer will be crucified.
Wouldn’t call it optimism, just a bit of realism. Ultimately we’re in a bit of a no-mans land when it comes to govt policy and action so all we can do is wait and see
Agreed to a point. I just don't see any indications - and what does Starmer getting crucified look like? We've seen how bad governments/leaders can hang on in there.
I mean, realism has still delivered successively bad Governments.
It's all to play for - but I see no one with a ball.
PR, we have absolutely no idea what labour will actually do until they’re in power
For sure given the amount of lying and making stuff up. But just about everything that comes out of Starmer, Reeves or Streeting's mouth is pretty regressive.
I see no indication of change - and when do governments via left when in power?
The tax changes they’ve earmarked so far are to be welcomed as well, they are basically just closing some huge gaping loopholes only available to the well off.
Think Labour will be more active on this front than many expect, but they won't be shouting it from the rooftops. Aside from their headline grabbing abolition of non-doms, most tax changes affecting the rich will be buried deep in the budget and barely anyone will notice, and that's what will give them the cover to do it.
(And I know there are plenty on here that get MMT but remember we already operate MMT but governments (mostly) pretend/believe that we tax first and spend later.
They mostly try and very loosely balance tax and spend policies, apart from long term investment. They don't pretend that you can't spend what you haven't already raised in tax. Policy announcements nearly always have new spending starting well before any new tax revenue comes in.
Anyway, Labour will spend more. They just state that how much extra they can spend is restricted. I think that it is, but the current announcements are too tight. Dazh is hoping that more will come later. That's what should be pushed for in the coming years, for sure.
Addressing spending and taxation concerns together is just how Labour have to present themselves. There's a strange folk memory that Labour will not spend wisely... despite all the evidence of how the alternative spends so unwisely... and Labour still have to be unbelievably painfully careful if they want to get into government at all, and they also need to avoid overpromising beyond what can be delivered in the first few years if they want to try and stay in government. You may want them to shout from the rooftops that big spending is on the way, that the constraints on government spending are illusory... it is simply not going to happen. It would be a huge mistake. The voters still haven't get their heads around the £20 billion a year extra figure for the energy transition. Sell that, and the increases in NHS and education budgets first. Push for more once those have become normalised and unthreatening to the voter. Show it working... then do more.
and what does Starmer getting crucified look like?
Well ultimately being a one-term PM after being kicked out by the electorate. If he lasts that long. I'm not quite as confident as Ernie that the left will have some sort of resurrection on the back of a weak tory opposition as the PLP will be blind drunk on the elixir of power. But the voters will be expecting to see things changing pretty quickly, and if they don't then they'll switch back to the tories (or Farage) and Starmer will become a lame duck in much the same way Sunak is now.
(And I know there are plenty on here that get MMT but remember we already operate MMT but governments (mostly) pretend/believe that we tax first and spend later. Operationally it’s impossible – simply put – spending has to happen first so the government can collect tax! You can’t collect tax if money is not spent. Therefore spending is not reliant on tax take which is where the lame arguments are being made.)
Surely that point can be made by using just one word........"deficit"?
In the last half a century there has only been 5 years when there has not been a deficit, in the UK.
So for 90% of the time it has been proved that the need for balanced budgets is in fact bollocks. And yet the Tories and Labour still insist that it is necessary. Despite the cold hard facts.
They mostly try and very loosely balance tax and spend policies, apart from long term investment.
Well evidence says governments don't run surpluses the majority of the time. Because it's recession inducing. So not sure what balance you mean.
2nd all Government spending is investment. Good or bad.
They don’t pretend that you can’t spend what you haven’t already raised in tax.
Of course they do !
That is Reeves' main line of attack. She wants to grow the economy so she can collect in tax to spend on public services!
That is Labour's central fallacy.
So for 90% of the time it has been proved that the need for balanced budgets is in fact bollocks. And yet the Tories and Labour still insist that it is necessary. Despite the cold hard facts.
Totally.
It's groan inducing for me. Money needs to enter the economy to spend. Private individuals can't mint money - only the government and its agents can.
The deficit is badly phrased to make us annoyed we are on the hook for a debt. This whole line has been been driven into society to believe our kids will pay for something one day. It's total horseshit.
Government spending is double entry accounting. The government deficit is the private sector's wealth.
And is removed by taxation. Because taxation is a coercive way to give £££ value. Without taxation there would be no demand to pay what the government is the sole issuer of.
Simply put you need to get £££ to pay your tax bill.
It's dead easy at this level.
if they don’t then they’ll switch back to the tories
It might well be a case of "Tory Party? What Tory Party?"
Okay I exaggerate but it should not be underestimated just how much on its knees the Tories might possibly be after the next general election, making it extremely difficult for them to mount a quick come back.
I am obviously acutely aware that there is no guarantee that the Left will automatically be the beneficiaries of the political vacuum caused by discredited Tories/New Labour (on steroids) the far-right often fill the void left by mainstream parties, Europe certainly shows that.
But luckily the far-right are not in a strong electoral position in the UK unlike in Europe (neither are the Left) So there is everything to fight for, especially if the Labour Party splits under the weight of endless attacks on the Left by the Starmerites, a process which is currently happening on a small scale.
A Left-Green alliance is a realistic possibility. And the Greens are currently polling at a similar level to Reform UK.
In the last half a century there has only been 5 years when there has not been a deficit, in the UK.
For sure. It's hard to avoid this one.
Black and white.
Look what happened when Clinton generated a surplus. (Clinton enjoyed a decent run until he started attempting to pay down the debt.)
Simply put in dead easy terms - surpluses remove money from an economy. Where does that lead?
Doh.
A government can't save money either - as the money is simply taken out of circulation not added to a stock pile anywhere.
The Fed and BoE don't keep reserves from tax collection.
They have to do a sweep at the end of the day to reset the accounts to zero.
That is Reeves’ main line of attack. She wants to grow the economy so she can collect in tax to spend on public services!
That is Labour’s central fallacy.
Or a convenient PR soundbite that plays to the ignorance of the electorate. I don't believe for one second that Rachel Reeves, a former Bank of England economist, really thinks that we need to balance the books or raise taxes to spend. It's all doublespeak. She's grow the economy by boosting spending in the way it's always been done, then she'll claim that the resultant growth has given them more money to spend. I wish it wasn't necessary, but this slight of hand is the only way labour can avoid being labelled as irresponsible spenders of other people's money.
https://twitter.com/IsabelOakeshott/status/1737026413641846881?t=E81lzw5IIcMUzbHJOpPxvw&s=19
When the right lean left economically...
(Interesting - Reform take this sort of view sometimes. Tice being her partner. )
I don’t believe for one second that Rachel Reeves, a former Bank of England economist, really thinks that we need to balance the books or raise taxes to spend. It’s all doublespeak.
Sure, but I don't fully accept your explanation for her parroting the Tory narrative. No doubt there is an element of "she feels it is necessary", although with a Labour lead of 15-20% over the Tories I wouldn't over-emphasis the need.
But I doubt it is because she is some sort of closet socialist with a passion to implement a Robin Hood agenda. In fact I would say the opposite - it is to make clear what her goals are.
Which all the current evidence suggests that it is to maintain the status quo and agenda of the last 40 years and not oversee an irreversible shift in wealth away from billionaires and in favour of ordinary working people.
Why do you believe that her agenda is different to that or of the One Nation Tories?
I agree with your suggestion of increased Labour spending on the NHS though. But only because it makes supreme political sense, and Rishi Sunak is currently being urged by pollsters and more sensible Tories to drop the Rwanda bollocks and instead focus on the NHS and the cost of living.
Why do you believe that her agenda is different to that or of the One Nation Tories?
I don't, at the very best she's bang in the middle, somewhere similar to where Nick Clegg is. Starmer I don't know, it's impossible to know because he's proven he'll say whatever his advisors tell him. I certainly don't think they're on a secret Robin Hood mission either, but I do think they're motivated to improve core services because of nothing more than electoral calculus and the will to hang on to power.
parroting the Tory narrative
If you want Labour to spend the next six months trying to educate the British public on your favoured economic theories, rather than listening to them and reassuring them using ideas and terms they understand... that's fine. But we can all see why they're not doing that. And so can you.
I don’t believe for one second that Rachel Reeves, a former Bank of England economist, really thinks that we need to balance the books or raise taxes to spend. It’s all doublespeak.
I do.
It's typical neoclassical thinking.
If you want Labour to spend the next six months trying to educate the British public on economics, rather than reassuring them using ideas they understand… that’s fine. But we can all see why they’re not doing that. And so can you.
No - there's a large gap between 'the country is broke (bullshit) and we are going to do something great here.'
No one is asking anyone to educate people on economics - just stop Tory framing of finances.
And using you're own words there is no reassurance at all currently. Just excuses.
But we can all see why they’re not doing that. And so can you.
Absolutely. Throughout my entire life Labour has always been on the defensive from Tory attacks. Certainly since the collapse of the post-war consensus.
And Labour's main means of defense has been not to challenge the Tory narrative, that is difficult, but to fundamentally agree with it and simply offer what they would claim is a better and more acceptable way to achieve the same objectives.
A classic example of this was the 2010 general election in which the Tories (with a little help from the LibDems who turned up late to the neoliberal party after the tragic death of Charles Kennedy) made clearing the deficit, caused by the failure of the banks and neoliberalism, absolutely central.
Instead of fighting back Labour agreed with the Tories and the LibDems that clearing the deficit was the priority, Miliband simply said, after pretty much accepting that it was Labour's fault, that a Labour government would do it in double the timescale.
So the voters hear all three parties say exactly the same thing - the economic priority is to clear the deficit, do they vote for a party which claims that they will do it over one parliament, or one that wants to drag its feet and resolve this crucially important economic priority over the course of two parliaments?
The 2010 general election result wasn't totally surprising, was it?
The 2010 general election result wasn’t totally surprising, was it?
Brown never had a chance in 2010 whatever he said. All he had to shout about was rescuing the banks, hardly a good slogan for a labour PM to campaign on. Bigot-gate was fun though.
Miliband simply said, after pretty much accepting that it was Labour’s fault, that a Labour government would do it in double the timescale.
Apologies that should have said Brown.
Brown never had a chance in 2010 whatever he said.
Well the Tories failed to win a majority and had a rely on the LibDems to come to their rescue. Although admittedly Gordon Brown did worse in 2010 than Jeremy Corbyn did in 2019, in terms of both total Labour votes and percentage share of the vote.
Labour did a dreadful job at not fighting their corner back then.
They rolled over and accepted the criticisms of too much spending and appeared to land themselves in trouble over the GFC, despite it having not a whole lot to do with them.
Not enough push-back.
It's probably hard to do battle with the excesses of a capitalist economy when you claim you need it to work for you too.
However that's only because Labour refuse to make good arguments.
I don’t, at the very best she’s bang in the middle, somewhere similar to where Nick Clegg is.
So pretty hard right economically?
Fun fact is that Paul Marshall who funded Clegg and his fellow orange book lib dems after their project hit the rails switched to the tories. Currently one of the funders for GB news amongst other tory associates.
Another U-turn on its way: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/22/keir-starmer-considers-scaling-back-labour-28bn-pounds-green-plans
Beat me to it Ransos!
There will be nothing left to remove soon.
Technically I didn't think it was that ambitious anyway (as the Guardian calls it.) Still it's a bigger spend than risible £3 bn for the NHS.
Either way, simply more bad news and waste of everyone's time.
I was at a conference in the summer where Ed Miliband was speaking. He described the plan as "the biggest no brainer in public policy".
He's right.
There's a lot of no brainers going around. All ways around.
Yep, why would you choose to scale back on this? £28 billion is nothing so not the money so is he after votes of people who "hate all this climate change shit" or words to that effect?
God knows.
I like how pretending to 'save money' (Government never saves money - there is no account at the BoE for that purpose) or play to outrage-ists is better than trying to fix the planet.
Why when Labour's polling gets better does Starmer allude to even more terrible politics?
465 people in Uxbridge have a lot to answer for. Still, it’s always wise to have low expectations from Lab on environmental matters.
U-turning on this is also going to do nothing to stop people moving from Lab to the Greens.
Maybe the opposition have more information on the state of the nation and the finances behind it than people on an internet forum?
Is the best argument that Starmers supporters can now bring that we should just blindly follow without questioning whatever path he decides to take us down. Maybe given that the government have more information than the opposition, the logical conclusion of your dismissive statement is that we should all doff our caps to the wisdom of our "leaders" and vote tory.
Personally I suspect it is more about ideology than information.
Maybe the opposition have more information on the state of the nation and the finances behind it than people on an internet forum?
Sorry that's just poor quality deflection.
How much did Governments spend after WW2 - from a pretty broken place? (Compared to GDP ) Yeah look it up.
How much did they spend on COVID (public records) - circa 400billion - from the exact same shitty Tory finances. There was more or less zero growth back in 2019/20 - just before COVID and the government - the Tory government spent 400billion over the next two years with little economic activity.
How has the BoE transferred huge sums of cash via interest income to private banks with rubbish state finances in the last 2 years?
Centrist thinking is often oddly lacking in pragmatism, and no matter how appalling Starmer has behaved there's always an invisible technocratic reason they can't do something. (see Lammy registering a 'sustainable' cease-fire after 20,000 have been killed.)
You seem to look everywhere apart from what's in front of your nose.
Government finances are a matter of public record. Very little is hidden - it's all enshrined in various acts and balance sheets. The only thing that's complex is how they jump through hoops to convince people they need to pull money from the private sector sector when they have their own damn Bank that issues the pound every time they spend.
If you want to keep making tepid excuses for a poor quality future in the UK because you accept Neoliberal mythology - crack on.
They rolled over and accepted the criticisms of too much spending and appeared to land themselves in trouble over the GFC, despite it having not a whole lot to do with them
Agreed, like public spending caused it. But what they need to do now is gain power with an operating majority from the bottom of a deep hole. It's not a foregone conclusion this will happen. I can't say I'm over keen on the "responsible" messaging and expectation management of the electorate. But it would be risky to do anything very different and, given the importance of putting the Tories out in the cold for a long long time, you can see why they're doing it. And will just have to cope with a bit of dismay from folks who say they're never going to vote for them anyway.
Is the best argument that Starmers supporters can now bring that we should just blindly follow without questioning whatever path he decides to take us down. Maybe given that the government have more information than the opposition, the logical conclusion of your dismissive statement is that we should all doff our caps to the wisdom of our “leaders” and vote tory.
So you'd rather have politicians and political parties promising jam tomorrow and spending the next 5 years seeing them roll back on promises they could never keep?
Please don't feed the troll.
So you’d rather have politicians and political parties promising jam tomorrow and spending the next 5 years seeing them roll back on promises they could never keep?
Austerity has failed all but a few, I would prefer politicians not to continue repeating the same mistake.
Besides if there is one thing we can be sure about Starmer, it is that he has continuously rowed back on the promises he has made. It as a rather curious defence of him to raise his most significant and persistent character flaw.
Maybe the opposition have more information on the state of the nation and the finances behind it than people on an internet forum?
Nope, what they probably have is focus groups telling them two things. First is that voters have a general (and erroneous) view that the government/country doesn't have any money. The second is that voters aren't hugely keen on the changes to their lifestyles that net-zero will require, especially when those changes aren't going to be applied to the top few percent of rich people who will carry on with their carbon-intensive lifestyles unaffected.
Starmer and Reeves have clearly decided that there's nothing they can do to change public opinion about how much money the country has to spend - they may even believe it themselves although I doubt that - and that trying to change that opinion risks losing them more votes in key areas (the red wall, small-c conservative constituencies) than it will lose them in more traditional labour areas. Remember Starmer said he doesn't want the tories to be talking about any labour party policies on the doorstep, this is just another example of that.
What we don't know of course is whether Labour will still spend 28bn on green industrial policies when they're in power. Along with many other things we're just going to have to wait until they're in power. Until then everything they say is just PR.
is he after votes of people who “hate all this climate change shit” or words to that effect?
To be fair thats a large proportion of traditional Labour voters so makes sense if he wants the red wall seats back. A few middle class lefties might defect to the Greens but I expect most are already there and the Greens are not a credible force at the moment.
It does make me laugh though, with all the Starmer hate from the more intelligent left wing voters here, you're not his target audience, he needs to win back the rump of ignorant, inward looking and self centered voters the Tories hoovered up last time with their successful, racist and hate filled othering of anyone vaguely funny looking. I would wager he knows exactly what hes doing, the fact you all dont like it is pretty irrelevant and doesnt make his approach to getting elected wrong. Proof of whther his strategy is any good will come in the next GE.
Proof of whther his strategy is any good will come in the next GE.
Beating a 90 year old cripple at football isn't proof that I am a balon d'or candidate.
And he doesn't need to be aping tory narratives and tactics to win over red wall voters, he just has to have policies to improve their lives, to actually give them some hope instead of the same political indifference that they received all their life.
If Starmer gets elected next time round, and I sincerely hope he does, it won't be as a result of his strategy or substituting austerity with 'fiscal rules' it will be due to the Tories' failures and corruption. His hand will have to be forced by people fighting their corner. Sadly a lot of these red wall areas are places with historically low TU membership, low wages and poor educational achievement as a result. People will only get what they fight for, to think otherwise is naive in the extreme. The only group of workers who get nice things and largesse whilst sitting on their arses are MPs.
Maybe the opposition have more information on the state of the nation and the finances behind it than people on an internet forum?
LOL! I absolutely love this...... the idea that Starmer and those around him know better than the general population just how bad the nation's finances are, but want to keep schtum about the Tories's dirty little secret! I bet Rishi Sunak is grateful😂
Argee is basically recycling his previous argument that Starmer won't support a ceasefire in Palestine because he probably has access to top secret intelligence which he can't talk about, and which bizarrely justifies slaughtering innocent civilians.
It is certainly a novel argument....."so and so politician must be correct because he probably knows stuff which he can't divulge". I mean who can argue against that?!?
No Ernie, our politicians have no knowledge of the countries finances, how government works or access to the departments they work with or who support parliamentary questions, it's all a bit secret that's only known by 3 civil servants who meet every Wednesday.
I would wager he knows exactly what hes doing, the fact you all dont like it is pretty irrelevant and doesnt make his approach to getting elected wrong. Proof of whther his strategy is any good will come in the next GE.
I agree and have always said that. He has a good strategy to get elected, the problem is he will be elected on something that turns out very similar to tory party so he is in for 5 years isn't he as people will ask what difference he has made and go back to voting for the tories again (forgetting they made it worse and also didn't make any positive difference). I don't know why they do this but it seems to always happen.
it’s all a bit secret that’s only known by 3 civil servants who meet every Wednesday.
And don't forget Starmer! They keep him informed, he knows loads of damning stuff about how the Tories have screwed the economy, far beyond what us mere mortals know, but he just can't tell us! 😆