Is the loss of Lord Adonis from the Labour side of the Lords really a coup for George Osborne? Not really. A tsunami failed to erupt from the impact point in the cross benches, sweeping away the shiny new works of our equally shiny new leadership. The political damage is limited because he’s not terribly […]
Posts Tagged ‘Austerity’
Escaping “Stockholm syndrom – Stop fessing up to errors Labour didn’t make
Oct 4th, 2015 by Ann Pettifor.Mr Osborne’s most striking political achievement, with the connivance of the economics profession and media, is to reframe the debate about the most severe crisis in living memory away from finance and towards the welfare state – identified as causal of the crisis. In reframing the debate he has succeeded in ‘capturing’ some of his […]
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One of Jez’s first tasks must be to frame his project, and to de-frame Osborne’s
Sep 16th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.If there is one single reason why Labour lost the election, it’s that Osborne realised the critical importance of framing his project in a way that made it acceptable in the eyes of a majority of the electorate. The fact that it was a string of lies didn’t matter as long as people believed it. […]
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It’s about the fundamentals, silly
Sep 6th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.The basic reason that the leadership election has been so disappointing, until Jeremy Corbyn came on the scene, was that it was stuck on issues (insofar as it was stuck on any issues at all) that, while certainly important, did not have the makings of a vision. Even when Corbyn prompted the others to produce […]
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Win or lose, Corbyn has ended the mantra that “there is no alternative” to austerity
Sep 6th, 2015 by Bryan Gould.No one, surely, could begrudge Jeremy Corbyn the odd chuckle or two when he contemplates, in his private moments, the consternation he has caused by his unlikely candidature for the Labour party leadership. It is not just the discomfort of his opponents, though that is sufficient cause no doubt for a little schadenfreude, but the […]
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Labour’s panicky establishment referencing the wrong period in history
Aug 24th, 2015 by Ann Pettifor.“This young country will be proud of its identity and its place in the world, not living in its history, but grasping the opportunities of its future.” Tony Blair: Leader’s speech, Brighton, 1995. Tony Blair and those associated with Blairism embraced globalisation and studiously ignored Labour Party history – except to denounce and disown “Old Labour”. […]
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Too left wing? Corbyn concedes too much on public spending – trade deficit matters more
Aug 14th, 2015 by Bryan Gould.How Left wing is Jeremy Corbyn? If anything, argues Bryan Gould, Corbyn’s economic platform concedes too much on the government deficit – it is the balance of payments deficit which should be our main focus As the warnings about a Corbyn leadership become more and more hysterical, we need to ask – just how left-wing is Jeremy […]
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Cruddas didn’t investigate why people think what they think nor how we win them back
Aug 8th, 2015 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.It’s been picked over already, but there are a couple of points that need picking up on re: the Jon Cruddas inquiry into why Labour lost. For him, the findings confirm that anti-austerity politics is spurned by the majority of those asked – the subtext being, of course, that Jeremy Corbyn’s course will sail the […]
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Could Corbynomics fix our economy?
Jul 31st, 2015 by Michael Burke.The debate surrounding Labour’s leadership contest is being marred by name-calling and red-baiting. Perhaps this is inevitable but it is regrettable. Britain remains in an economic crisis, which has now entered its eighth year. A more productive course would be to discuss how to end it. A marker of that crisis is that per capita […]
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We need to stop using the word ‘progressive’
Jul 31st, 2015 by Max Leak.The vocabulary of the Labour moderniser is narrow and confusing. To start with there’s the word “moderniser” itself, denoting members of a kind of desperate tribute band to the original mid-nineties New Labour gaggle. “Reform” is another favourite – it’s a polite word for “destruction”, or at the very least wholesale privatisation. Welfare “reform”; public […]
