The news that the public sector net debt has now passed the £1 trillion mark isn’t really news since it’s long been on track to reach £1.4 trillion by 2014. What is far more disturbing is that the government, in its obsession to cut the public sector deficit regardless, has completely ignored the impact this […]
Posts Tagged ‘Public Service Cuts’
The real divisions in the Labour Party and what Ed should do about it
Jan 25th, 2012 by Jon Lansman.Most Labour party members are, above all, loyal to their party. They have a strong inclination to back their leaders, even when they disagree with what they’ve said or done. And disagree they did, by and large, when Ed Balls announced that “the starting point….is we’re going to have to keep all these cuts” and accept […]
The real reason the polls are up
Jan 25th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Why are the Tories now standing at their highest polls since the election? This has of course given Ed Miliband’s Blairite enemies, both in the Shadow Cabinet and the PLP, the chance to dump on the leadership which is always the silver lining for them when there’s bad news. They like to claim that, given […]
Welfare Reform Bill: why won’t anybody say it’s wrong in principle?
Jan 23rd, 2012 by David Osler.So many of London’s £1m-plus houses are occupied by workshy immigrant families of ten that whole swathes of Maida Vale have been transformed into vast welfare ghettoes, where Afsoomali has become the dominant spoken language on street after street. That, plus I understand that huge numbers of City Boys have jacked in all that private […]
The postmodern payday lender
Jan 22nd, 2012 by Carl Packman.Recently it was revealed by McKinsey, the consultancy, that the UK debt to GDP ratio stood at 507% in the middle of 2011. Robert Peston reminds us that this is up from 487% of GDP in the second quarter of 2008, and, incredibly, from around 300% in 2003 – before the credit boom. Only Japan is more […]
A call to arms
Jan 19th, 2012 by Owen Jones.For those who stand outside the austerity consensus, reading Len McCluskey’s column on Tuesday was like coming up for air. It is a cause of deep frustration that, as the Tories’ economic policies are shown to fail (in terms of jobs, growth, consumer confidence, economic inactivity and borrowing levels), the Labour leadership has moved to legitimise […]
Don’t count on McCluskey to make the break
Jan 18th, 2012 by David Osler.Leeds United defender Norman Hunter, renowned for his perhaps overly robust approach to defence, famous advised young footballers to ‘get your retaliation in first’. The wisecrack metamorphosed into something of a New Labour catchphrase in the mid 1990s, with the line slightly altered to ‘get your betrayal in first’. Recent statements from both Ed Balls and […]
We need a growth policy to create jobs, not pay cuts
Jan 17th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.There is no doubt this is a defining moment for the Labour Party. No-one questions that Ed Balls cannot, with 3 years or more to go to the next election, promise to reverse this or that particular cut, because nobody can anticipate in this exceptionally fluid and febrile situation what will be the state of […]
Ed Balls’ surrender is a political disaster
Jan 17th, 2012 by Owen Jones.I never expected to become a defender of New Labour’s record, let alone against its own most zealous supporters. At this point, I should clarify that I haven’t been kidnapped by Peter Mandelson and transformed into a Blairite drone. What I mean is that among all the disappointments and betrayals of the New Labour era, […]
What is Balls up to?
Jan 16th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.What is Ed Balls up to? His statement this weekend, at the Fabian conference, that he endorses Osborne’s public sector wage freeze until the end of this Parliament – possibly 3.5 years away – and accepts all the government’s spending cuts finally crosses a red line. At a time when the central economic problem is […]