“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”. […]
Posts Tagged ‘Recession’
Labour’s panicky establishment referencing the wrong period in history
Aug 24th, 2015 by Ann Pettifor.
Global economic crisis: has Labour dodged a bullet?
May 18th, 2015 by Ann Pettifor.While Labour and LibDem activists mourn, and political opportunists seize the moment, is the loss of the election such a bad thing? Might this be a good time to lose an election? I think so. The reasons can be found in both domestic and global financial imbalances, in the advance of de-globalisation trends that are […]
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Fake US & British recoveries are damaging the global economy
Feb 16th, 2015 by Michael Burke.Official economic opinion from the IMF is that the US and the British are the only industrialised economies that are growing strongly and that their growth model should be reproduced generally. The reality is very different. Both recoveries are the weakest on record and are fuelled by an unsustainable (debt-fuelled) rise in consumption. The international effects […]
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The light dawns … on the failure of austerity to overcome recession
Jan 19th, 2015 by Bryan Gould.A complete understanding of great events will often have to wait until well after the shouting and the tumult die away and a longer perspective permits a more objective assessment of what really happened. Even then, though, greater elucidation proceeds at a glacial pace. Today, we may well find ourselves again at the beginning of […]
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Labour will inherit a crisis, not a recovery
Jun 27th, 2014 by Michael Burke.At a certain point in the next few months the recession in Britain will officially be over as the real level of GDP will finally exceed its previous peak in the 1st quarter of 2008. The media coverage will be generally very favourable, in the hope that this will boost the Tory vote and vindicate the […]
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When is a recovery not a recovery?
Dec 15th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.No recovery worth its name is unsustainable. There are basically four elements which provide both the necessary and sufficient conditions for economic sustainability: business investment, wages, productivity, and exports. On all four counts the current evidence is decidedly negative. Business investment still remains 6.3% below its 2012 level. Wages growth at 0.8% still lags behind […]
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The 2008 crash was no blip, but a complete change in trajectory for the British economy
Oct 31st, 2013 by Jon Lansman.Richard Murphy this morning draws attention to a quite startling graph comes from an academic paper by Prof Richard Jones of Sheffield University on the need to invest in innovation As Richard says, “what the graph shows is something anyone interested in political economy needs to understand: 2008 was not a blip; it was a complete change […]
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What this Labour conference should be about
Sep 21st, 2013 by Michael Meacher.The prime issue at Conference this year won’t be the union link, which may well be resolved by negotiation, but rather what is Labour’s core message. It has got to be setting out the alternative to prolonged austerity which will promote real and sustainable growth (not the shallow and over-hyped version currently on offer), cut […]
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Did austerity lead to recovery? No, GDP was increased by government spending
Sep 10th, 2013 by Michael Burke.The government and its supporters have been quick to claim that the most recent GDP data have. George Osborne says the argument in favour of austerity has been won some more excitable commentators have even talked of a boom. Usually, we would provide analysis of the GDP data after the publication of the national accounts, the third release in […]
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Britain can increase investment by slashing military spending
Sep 2nd, 2013 by Michael Burke.The momentous decision by parliament on 29 August not to participate in a military attack on Syria raises important points both for the trends in British politics and for economic policy. The Socialist Economic Bulletin has repeatedly argued that there is no prospect of a Tory election victory in 2015. After the failure of Cameron’s military agenda the […]
