UK’s triple-A rating in trouble thanks to cuts
Moody’s Investors Service said on Tuesday the top AAA ratings of the United States, Great Britain, France and Germany are well positioned, Reuters reported last week (not today as originally stated).
But the credit ratings agency also says there was increased possibility of a downgrade due to “new challenges”.
The challenges that Moody’s highlighted include the need to revive growth at a time when fiscal stimuli are effectively no longer available; regaining or preserving access to affordable funding through credible medium-term fiscal adjustment programs; and the limited amount of time that governments have to confront problems such as aging populations.
So in other words – the lack of fiscal stimulus – which makes growth less likely – makes it more likely our credit rating will fall.
The agency adds that the “distance to downgrade” for the four countries had been reduced – meaning “their credit quality within that top category is declining”.
Can’t wait to the Coalition to try and blame this on Labour too.
(via Paul Cotterill).
Watch: Coalition cuts get Taiwanese treatment
Yup, it’s those guys again. But this time with something that is actually close to the bone.
It’s a shame they don’t mention that a goat got more followers on Facebook than the official Spending Challenge FB group.
hat-tip @BeatriceJBray
Using Seph Brown to smear Ed Miliband
Recently, virulently right-wing blogs and magazines have been aflutter over a purported ‘aide’ to Ed Miliband, one Seph Brown, who they claim holds extreme views. The evidence to support their claims is spurious in each case. What we are also seeing here is a vicious attack on Ed Miliband through the callous exploitation of a young man and his future.
The discredited allegations relate to his time at university when he supposedly made remarks about having “shot down [a] Zionist” in a debate.
continue reading… »
Ed Miliband: damn right he’s not a Bennite
Hilary Benn famously fought the Leeds Central by-election campaign that gave him a seat in parliament on the slogan ‘a Benn but not a Bennite’.
Given that even Tony Benn’s offspring feels the need to emphasise repudiation of his old man’s politics, it’s safe to pronounce that particular 30 year old brand of leftism completely dead, with the stake driven through its heart and the reburial ceremony at the crossroads duly completed.
But in a fit of maliciously motivated playground name calling, there are some who seem determined to stick the label Labour leadership contender Ed Miliband, who is like his brother David the son of the prominent Marxist academic Ralph Miliband.
Can the eventual Labour leader deal with Coalition ‘bombardment’?
What line of attack will the eventual Labour leader use on the Coalition government once they’re elected?
What will be the key policies that define their agenda and set them apart from the opposition once Britain’s eyes are on them?
I’m not sure I’ve heard a proper answer to these questions yet from the candidates. And this is important because the Conservatives are planning a massive onslaught come late September.
continue reading… »
Jeremy Corbyn: Labour paved the way for…this
The Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn attacked the former Chancellor Alistair Darling in an interview this week, saying he was “proposing very large cuts himself” – making any comeback to the Coalition’s cuts very difficult.
In an interview with online station, Reality Radio, Corbyn told the CND’s Kate Hudson that:
As ever, the Labour Party leadership is constrained by the fact that before the election Alistair Darling was proposing very large cuts himself, and in proposing those very large cuts himself, he was paving the way for this government, in exactly the same way that the administration of so many public services was always done under the threat of privatisation… And so, Labour have paved the way for a lot of this.
But he also attacked the Coalition’s agenda, saying:
What we now have is a government that is going to pay off this huge debt very quickly even though it is considerably smaller than the debt that the country survived on for the previous century and particularly after the Second World War, and at the same time privatise the banks and a lot of public services. So we end up with a smaller, less adequate, less capable, public function, and a break up of a lot of what we’ve come to know as the welfare state.
Interesting, he also said there was a huge groundswell of anger against the Coalition building up too.
I think they’ve created in that an incredible alliance against themselves in a way that Thatcher didn’t have an alliance against her until she’d been in office for 7 or 8 years – they’ve done it in 3 months.
On the structure of the Labour Party
“A lot of the practices in the Labour Party are supremely undemocratic, and it has got to change. If it doesn’t change, then all those new people that have come into the Party are either going to get very angry or go away. Personally, I hope they stay and become active, and force these changes through – this whole issue about democracy and accountability of the Party leadership.”
“I’m often told in Parliament that I’m very disloyal to the Party because I voted a few times against the last government, and I would counter that by saying I am actually extremely loyal to the Party and the labour movement, and attempt to carry that out in Parliament, and I don’t see why the Parliamentary Caucus should impose those rules on me or anybody else; those rules should be imposed by the Party as a whole.”
On Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ vision
“I don’t think he [Cameron] understands what the voluntary sector is about…it’s highly professional people, locally around here where our offices are for CND, working for publicly funded psychiatric services for people that have suffered domestic violence, violent crime, or asylum seekers who have suffered crimes of war in other parts of the world, they are highly professional people…What he’s proposing is simply daft. He doesn’t seem to understand the importance of the social wage in people’s lives, which comes from the health service, it comes from social services, it comes from support from voluntary organisations, it comes from police and everything else.”
“I just think that we’re going to end up with a more divided society – the example of this is education, where the academies bill allows any head teacher and school governors to get together, irrespective of what the teachers, or parents, or local authority or community think, set up an academy, take the money away from the local authority, and run it in their own image. Well these academies are going to be ghettos for the articulate and well-off, at the expense of the inarticulate and the mass, largely the poor.”
—
Reality Radio is a new podcast (and soon to be) internet radio station that brings you news and political analysis, “informed by the values of peace and justice”. Kate Hudson, Chair of CND, is currently acting as presenter.
Tensions rise in Greece as ‘austerity’ backfires
The austerity measures that were supposed to fix Greece’s problems are dragging down the country’s economy. Stores are closing, tax revenues are falling and unemployment has hit an unbelievable 70 percent in some places. Frustrated workers are threatening to strike back.
…
This dire prognosis comes even despite Athens’ massive efforts to sort out the country’s finances. The government’s draconian austerity measures have managed to reduce the country’s budget deficit by an almost unbelievable 39.7 percent, after previous governments had squandered tax money and falsified statistics for years. The measures have reduced government spending by a total of 10 percent, 4.5 percent more than the EU and International Monetary Fund (IMF) had required.
The problem is that the austerity measures have in the meantime affected every aspect of the country’s economy. Purchasing power is dropping, consumption is taking a nosedive and the number of bankruptcies and unemployed are on the rise. The country’s gross domestic product shrank by 1.5 percent in the second quarter of this year. Tax revenue, desperately needed in order to consolidate the national finances, has dropped off. A mixture of fear, hopelessness and anger is brewing in Greek society.
…more at Spiegel International
Also worth watching – this video by @HannahNicklin
Exposed: how Tories run the ‘No-2-AV’ campaign
It was revealed yesterday that the founder and Chief Executive of TaxPayers’ Alliance, Matthew Elliott, had stepped down from day-to-day running to lead the ‘No’ campaign in advance of May referendum on the ‘Alternative Vote’ system.
The press release says that Elliott “has accepted an invitation to lead the ‘No’ campaign in next year’s referendum”.
So we called the ‘No 2 AV’ campaign up to find out more.
continue reading… »
Why FPTP voting is dead across the world
The Australian election is the final nail in the coffin of the Westminster based First-Past-the-Post system of voting, says research by the LSE Politics and Policy blog.
Every key ‘Westminster model’ country now has a hung Parliament, following Australia’s ‘dead heat’ election – says Patrick Dunleavy.
The Australian general election held under the Alternative Vote has produced an evenly divided Parliament where a handful of independent MPs from the outback now hold the balance. As a result there are now no large ‘Westminster model’ countries left in the world with single party majority governments.
They cite evidence from India, Canada, New Zealand and Australia to point out that all these countries – thanks to political fragmentation – are heading to a permanent state of coalition politics.
| Country (and population) | Current Parliamentary and government situation | Electoral reform position |
|---|---|---|
| India (1,187 million people) |
-Hung parliament including a large number of parties (perhaps 45, depending how you count them). -The government is an 18 party coalition, headed by Congress; the rival BJP bloc also includes many parties. |
-Political movements for the Dalit people (“untouchables”) are campaigning for proportional representation, and reform is backed by the Indian Communist Party. However, electoral reform debates are still at an early stage. |
| United Kingdom (62 million people) |
-Hung Parliament -A Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government is in power. |
-A referendum on adopting the Alternative Vote electoral system will be held in May 2011. -The coalition government will announce plans for a wholly or mainly elected upper house, reforming the House of Lords, in January 2011. -PR elections are already in place for Scotland, Wales, London and electing Euro MEPs. |
| Canada (34 million people) |
-Hung Parliament across three general elections -A Conservative minority government is in power. |
-There have been significant efforts to change from FPTP elections to PR elections in several provinces, so far unsuccessful |
| Australia (22 million people) |
-Hung Parliament and two top parties neck and neck – whoever forms the government will depend on the votes of Independent MPs | -The Alternative Vote is used for the lower house, and STV for upper house elections. |
| New Zealand (4.4 million people) |
-A coalition government is in power, and no party has had a majority in balanced Parliaments since the voting system reform in 1996. | -New Zealand adopted an Additional Member system of PR in 1996, following two referendums for reform. |
The LSE blog adds:
For the first time in history, the Australian outcome means that every key ‘Westminster model’ country in the world now has a hung Parliament. These are the former British empire countries that according to decades of political science orthodoxy are supposed to produce strong, single party government.
Following Duverger’s Law their allegedly ‘majoritarian’ electoral systems (first past the post and AV) will typically produce reinforced majorities for one of the top two parties.
New support for Robin Hood Tax from Coalition
In a discussion with voters today Nick Clegg said that the government was looking at introducing a financial transaction tax to raise more money.
Criticising bankers for their “shocking irresponsibility” which led to the credit crunch, Mr Clegg was also quick to lay the country’s economic woes at Labour’s front door. Quoting that Britain had spent £1 trillion bailing out the banks so far, Mr Clegg refuted Labour claims that the coalition was not doing enough saying: “You guys were in charge.
“You let them get away with blue murder because you were so bewitched by this goose in the City of London that was laying these golden eggs.”
via Owen Tudor
Last week there was support from charities too, as Oxfam called for a bank tax to save poorer countries from financial disaster.
The charity is worried that much of the focus during and after the credit crunch has been on the fate of richer countries such as Greece, the US and Britain, while continued growth in emerging markets such as Brazil and India has been largely been taken as a sign the crisis was restricted to developed nations.
But its study of the budgets of 56 low-income countries, many of them in Africa, concludes that they too propped up their economies by borrowing in the earlier part of the crisis, and have now been left with gaping budget deficits.
The TUC, which has spearheaded the introduction of a ‘Robin Hood tax’, urged ministers last week to reconsider the “swingeing” cuts to public spending and focus instead on other ways to reduce the deficit, such as a transactions tax.
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» Revealed: govt to restrict abortion counselling despite Nadine Dorries vote
» Would raising the tax threshold actually help the poorest?
» To win London, Ken Livingstone has to step outside his comfort zone
» This trade agreement with India will destroy thousands of lives
» UK debt hasn’t hit £1 trillion – mostly because of QE
» The benefits of being a “burden” on society
» Today’s economic figures will simply confirm UK’s “lost decade”
» Have Labour realised the election is more than three years away?
» Violence in the office
» Want a more responsible capitalism? Reform how pensions work
» The world is entering the third phase of the crisis, warns ILO
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