Britain’s Broken economy – and how we fix it
“Britain’s broken economy – and how to fix it”, an ebook, is published today by Soundings. With a foreword from the Guardian’s Larry Elliot and an afterword from Jon Cruddas MP, this ebook aims to set out an alternative political economy for the British centre left.
It was written collaboratively by a diverse group, myself included, united through the New Political Economy Network (Npen).
Npen was set up in the Autumn of 2009 by Jonathan Rutherford and Jon Cruddas to bring together experts from economics and other disciplines with the aim of developing a coherent political economy for the centre left.
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Why Clegg’s argument on the deficit doesn’t make economic sense
During Nick Clegg’s LibDem conference speech, he said:
We could have decided to go more slowly but it would have worsened not eased the pain. Because every day you ignore a deficit, it gets harder to fix. The debts mount up and you have to pay interest on them. Already we are spending £44bn a year on interest alone.
Under Labour’s plans, that would have risen to nearly £70bn. A criminal waste of money that shouldn’t be lining the pockets of bond traders. It should be paying for police, care workers, hospitals and schools.
The man really should not be let near his own pension, let alone the state’s finances because if he knew anything at all he’d know that most of UK gilts are owned in this country.
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How Obama tried to get out of Afghanistan
President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.
Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page “terms sheet” that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in “Obama’s Wars,” to be released on Monday.
According to Woodward’s meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives.
“This needs to be a plan about how we’re going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan,” Obama is quoted as telling White House aides as he laid out his reasons for adding 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation. “Everything we’re doing has to be focused on how we’re going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It’s in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room.”
Polls: Attacking cuts has swayed public opinion
YouGov’s Peter Kellner has published this commentary on the government’s polling today:
The government’s ratings on both issues were healthy at first, reaching their peak immediately after Osborne’s emergency Budget on June 22. In a poll conducted that evening and the following day, we found that 53% thought the Government’s spending plans good for the economy, while only 28% thought they were bad.
In our latest survey, the proportion saying ‘good’ is down to 40%, while the proportion saying ‘bad’ is up to 43%. A net score (‘good’ minus ‘bad’) of plus 25 three months ago has slumped to minus three this week.
As for fairness, a net score of plus 11 on June 22-23 (fair 45%, unfair 34%) has now slipped to minus 21 (fair 30%, unfair 21%). As few Labour voters thought the plans fair in the first place, we should not be surprised that disenchantment has grown most among Conservatives and the diminishing number of Liberal Democrat supporters. Among Tories, the net score has declined from plus 80 to plus 47; among Lib Dems, it’s down from plus 21 to minus three.
Kellner goes on to admit that Ed Balls “has undoubtedly landed some blows on both the Government’s economic strategy”.
In other words, since Labour has adopted a stridently anti-cuts position following the election, the Coalition has lost a lot of support. It’s economic argument is rapidly disintegrating.
Contrast that with before the election, when Alistair Darling’s mixed-messages on the economy ensured that Labour rapidly lost the argument.
It’s clear that Labour can win the economic argument if it takes a more confrontational approach on the cuts, rather than sending out mixed messages about to what extent the Tories are right about the need for cuts.
Clegg insults Libdems: ‘they don’t get policy’
Nick Clegg today says that Libdem members ‘misunderstood’ the government’s ‘free schools’ plans, and that’s why they voted against them.
In an interview with Channel 4 he said:
As I tried to explain in my speech yesterday, some of the misgivings expressed in the conference hall I genuinely think slightly misunderstand what the government policy is going to do.
I think there is a misunderstanding bluntly between what the free schools proposal is alleged to be trying to do and what it will actually do. It won’t be taking resources and people and attention away from other schools …… and crucially, as I stressed in my speech yesterday, it won’t do what would be genuinely divisive.
It won’t be introducing selection through the back door, which I’m staunchly opposed to.”
Watch
Nick Clegg also took another shot at the IFS analysis of the budget, saying, “it makes a number of assumptions, it’s very partial”, rejecting any advice by Dr Even Harris that he should not seek to pick a fight with the IFS.
Spain joins call for Robin Hood tax
contribution by Owen Tudor
Spain’s Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is the latest world leader to join the campaign for a Robin Hood Tax.
Speaking at the UN Millennium Development Goals summit today, he backed the call made by French President Sarkozy on Monday for a financial transactions tax.
With a further discussion on a possible EU FTT at the end of the month, that means that the governments of Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece and Spain are firmly committed to an FTT.
Zapatero’s remarks (read them in Spanish) in New York saw him saying:
If we want effective global governance, if we want shared responsibility in the face of global challenges like the battle against poverty, then we also need a system of global incomes.
In this regard, I express support for the establishment of a tax on financial transactions, the revenue potential of which depends more on its coverage than on its intensity – a tax to be adopted with extensive international backing and be integrated into the global framework of reforms of the financial system promoted by the G20.
Website for the Robin Hood tax campaign.
A short history of the ‘Big Society’, and how to respond to it
Every time I read a well meaning Labour activist argue that “Labour needs to move beyond the belief that the state can do everything and develop a response to the Big Society”, it makes me sad.
Here is a quick history of events which contributed to the development of the Big Society:
In the 1970s and 1980s, radical/loony lefties set up a wide range of communuity groups to empower people and deliver a wide range of innovative services. The Tories and their Right Wing allies denounced them in the most vicious terms.
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The Cuts won’t work, and why we have to fight them
In 1910, 100 years ago this year, people demanded a basic state pension so that no one had to be terrified of poverty in old age. The Tories said we couldn’t afford a basic state pension. They fought tooth and nail against it.
But our great grandparents disagreed. The people of this country came together, and finally, they beat the Tories.
They forced through the people’s budget, and laid the foundations of the welfare state. They showed that the Tories were wrong.
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Jon Trickett hosting anti-cuts event at conf.
Labour MP Jon Trickett is hosting a fringe event at Labour party conference to challenge the government’s consensus on cuts.
The title of the meeting is: “Challenging the cuts consensus – advancing progressive economic alternatives”.
It will take place on Monday 27 September at 12.30-2pm in Bar 38.
Other speakers include Frances O’ Grady, Deputy General Secretary TUC and Ken Livingstone.
Why the London Mayor race might be harder for Ken than expected
In the end, I spent more time deliberating over the Labour London Mayoral vote than the leadership ballot, to my own surprise. Eventually, I voted for Ken Livingstone.
But a few thoughts keep niggling at me, and I fear that the Mayoral race will be harder for Labour to win than many on the left think or expect.
First, I think Oona King has been quite unfairly tagged by some as a ‘New Labour clone‘. She never was.
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