It is a truism of today’s political analysis that, over the three or four decades since the onset of the so-called “free-market” revolution that swept across the western world, the centre of political gravity has moved substantially rightwards. Most of those of middle age or younger will have grown up, after all, in a world […]
Posts Tagged ‘Markets’
Labour is at a crossroads – socialism or austerity?
May 27th, 2015 by Peter Rowlands.Labour must understand why it did so badly in the election, as it is unlikely to be able to mount a successful campaign in the future if it doesn’t. Much has been written already, although we await a full analysis in terms of voting patterns and movement by age, class, gender etc., but from what […]
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The Tories won’t win because they’re barking up the wrong tree
Mar 1st, 2015 by Michael Meacher.George Eaton in the New Statesman has done us a service by revisiting the informative audit of the 2010 election by the Tory pollster Lord Ashcroft, entitled Minority Verdict, which throws new relevant light on the likely outcome of the present election campaign. In 2010, despite Labour polling the second lowest total of electors since […]
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Osborne learns to his cost that private markets don’t oblige
Jan 15th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.It’s really rich that Osborne has tweeted: “Vital this (drop in the oil price) is passed on to families at petrol pumps, through utility bills and air fares”. He’s spent the last 5 years lambasting Labour in support of the Tory free market mantra that the State should get out of the way and leave […]
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Market socialism: oxymoron or just plain moronic?
Dec 11th, 2014 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.These days the ‘99%‘ and ‘Another World is Possible‘ are slogans fluttering atop many a radical social movement. Yet on those occasions activists’ deliberations turn to what a post-capitalist future might look like, there will be a lot of talk about participatory democracy, community networks, the decentralisation of power and so on. The state might […]
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Making it another 1945
Jul 28th, 2014 by Bryan Gould.Steve Richards (David Cameron will lose the battle of ideas if he keeps firing 1979’s bullets) is right to say in The Guardian (and Ed Miliband obviously agrees with him) that next year’s election will not, and should not, be decided by personality politics. So what is it that will determine the voters’ preferences? It would […]
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The political class won’t “reconnect” until markets are drastically reformed
Jun 19th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.‘Reconnecting’ is the buzz word for the political class. They all agree it’s necessary, but very few have any serious ideas about how it might be achieved, and through force of inertia they easily slip back into the old ways. What they don’t realise is that it’s more about their constituents feeling able to reconnect as […]
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State ownership of rail is only the start
May 6th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.As the 31 Labour parliamentary candidates are demanding in their letter to Miliband, the case for returning rail to the public sector after the botched privatisation of 1996 is overwhelming. Private ownership has produced for the UK the highest fares in Europe, extensive overcrowding on commuter lines because of giving priority to dividends for shareholders over […]
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The Banking Reform Act is rearranging the deck chairs on the neoliberal Titanic
Mar 6th, 2014 by Prem Sikka.Some six years after the banking crash, the UK has wheeled out its answer – the Banking Reform Act. Some deckchairs have been rearranged, but little attention has been paid to the key drivers of the crisis. The biggest financial crisis has coincided with the rise of neoliberalism, which emphasised faith in free markets and light-touch […]
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When will Labour tackle market failure and revive the role of the State?
Dec 3rd, 2013 by Michael Meacher.The roll call of shame and disgrace about the record of the private banks, privatised utilities and outsourcing companies has now reached such a pitch that surely Labour must now challenge the whole culture of ‘the market knows best’ and in the extreme form of the neoliberal ideology that ‘government should get out of the […]
