They seek him here, they seek him there. Those lobby hacks seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven or is he in hell? That damned elusive … Chancellor of the Exchequer. Okay, so my reworked rhyme lifted from the Scarlet Pimpernel doesn’t work. But neither do Osborne’s sums, so all is balanced in the world. Well, what a torrid few days for the Tories – and not in a good way. To be sure, when Nicky Morgan was wheeled out on Thursday to announce on Question Time that the planned cut to Personal Independence Payments wasn’t happening, it was obvious the government was in deep trouble. It’s not everyday a government rows back on a key budget pledge announced by the Chancellor in the House. But then the real damage was wrought after the odious IDS carpet bombed Downing Street before his deserved departure for the back benches. Continue reading
Posted in Public Spending
Good riddance IDS: long may this internal warfare continue
When you’re the head of a department that has meted out cruel and inhumane treatment to disabled people, when you’ve sat in the Commons and nodded through cut after sanction regime after tightened eligibility criteria, at what point do you say enough and call time over your complicity in these proceedings? Does one draw a veil over the old ministerial career by claiming principle and love for the charges you’ve spent six years abusing, or stick the boot in to cause maximum political damage?
Iain Duncan Smith, the so-called quiet man who’s done catastrophic harm to the position of disabled people in this country, has elected to do both. Uncharacteristically, an attempt to fund tax cuts for the well off by taking monies from payments to disabled people has gone down like a cup of cold sick. Which is interesting, considering their previous attacks have gone by with nary a murmur from outside the ranks of disability campaigners, the left, and the labour movement. Continue reading
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The boom, not the slump, is the time for austerity
The following is a letter by Professor John Weeks and Ann Pettifor, published today, 15th March 2016 in The Guardian.
Andrew Harrop’s article on John McDonnell’s public borrowing for investment points out its improvement on the chancellor’s deficit obsession (John McDonnell’s new fiscal rule is strong, but it’s no election winner, The Guardian, 11 March). Of particular concern is George Osborne’s determination to “balance the books” by cutting current spending on the disabled. To McDonnell’s widely accepted principle of borrowing to invest so as to expand the nation’s income at a time of private sector weakness, we add a complementary guideline for macroeconomic stability: adjust current expenditure for demand management. If as is now the case, interest rates are low, exports contract and demand remains weak, responsibility falls on the public budget to prevent recession by expanding income. Once started, investment expenditures are relatively inflexible to adjust, making current (day-to-day) expenditure the rational choice for demand expansion. Come that happy day when the economy starts to overheat, current spend should be reduced.
As Keynes argued: the boom, not the slump, is the time for austerity. It is that simple.
Ann Pettifor Prime Economics
John Weeks SOAS, University of London
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John McDonnell’s very political economics
What have they been putting in John McDonnell’s coffee? According to some, John’s embrace of fiscal responsibility, tight spending, and deficit reduction is a surrender to “the capitalist parasites“. And proving you cannot please some people no matter what you say, there have been criticisms from the right of the party arguing that his economics are the same kind that were rejected last year and in 2010.
I don’t know if the memory-loss associated with politics is a recent thing brought by social media churn, or is something deeply structural. But there wasn’t a great deal John said in his speech on Friday that hadn’t already been trailed previously. A good deal of this was mentioned in his first conference address as shadow chancellor. As the Tories have successfully managed to identify economic competency with the project of deficit reduction in the minds of a plurality of the electorate, John’s speech then – and now – signals his willingness to fight them on their own turf. In this he’s aided by the self-described “political genius” George Osborne’s inability to meet his own targets, and absurd, dogmatic desire to pull public spending out of the economy, which will only thwart his ambition in the long run. Continue reading
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Labour right-wing still in the austerity dead end
Rachel Reeves, a former Labour shadow secretary for work and pensions, has produced a short note for Progress which has been hailed in the right wing media, and by the Labour right, as ‘an alternative Budget’. The New Statesman was perhaps the most excitable, describing Reeves as the shadow chancellor in waiting. All of this is entirely incorrect as the article offers no alternative to the Osborne’s resumed austerity, which he is certain to recommence in the next Budget.
Reeves has declined to join the current shadow cabinet under Jeremy Corbyn and her intervention is clearly posed primarily as an alternative to the economic policy framework outlined by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, not to George Osborne. It confirms once more that the Labour right is disloyally more interested in attacking the Labour Party leadership than in attacking the Tories. Continue reading
