Posted in Ideology

Will the UK wake up in 2015 to how disastrous right-wing ideology has been?

Thatcher Blair and CameronThe end of 2014 has certainly brought home some hard economic truths. Osborne told us he had a long-term economic plan and it was working because the UK had the fastest-growing economy in the G7. Well, it isn’t: the UK economy is now growing at only half the rate of the US economy, and even Australia is now growing faster than the UK.

Worse, the UK economy is slowing, David Kern, chief economist at the British Chambers of Commerce, comments that “the stark revision (downward) in annual growth confirms that the pace of recovery is slowing.” The budget deficit, which according to Osborne’s long-term economic plan, was supposed now to be £40bn is actually £100bn. Worse, the deficit is now beginning to rise, not fall at all. The re-balancing of the economy, another key part of the government’s long-term economic plan, hasn’t materialised and in fact has got much worse. Kern again: “the current balance of payments deficit has risen to an unsustainably high level….owing to the fall in net investment”. Business investors clearly don’t believe Osborne either. Continue reading →

Why won’t Labour tell the truth?

'Gideon' OsborneWhy does Labour, when the Tories lie and lie and lie, keep on turning the other cheek? Hardly out of an excess of Christian charity, more because of cowardice in failing to confront the British people with the truth. Osborne, a snake oil salesman if ever there was one, began his time in office in 2010 by repeating over and over again that all the problems in the economy were all the fault of the previous Labour Government. So why didn’t Labour make the obvious riposte that it was actually the bankers, whom Osborne for some reason had somehow forgotten to mention? Why, even more worrying, has Labour failed to make even a bleep to counter these Tory lies over the whole of the last 4 years? It would have been so easy. The biggest budget deficit in Labour’s 11 years before the crash in 2008 was 3.3% of GDP whereas the Thatcher-Major governments racked up deficits bigger than this in 10 of their 18 years. Continue reading →

Seasonal reading: not much peace and plenty of ill-will

The Best of BennMark Perryman of Philosophy Football offers his top ten books to buy to make somebody’s Christmas.

Bah! Humbug? Well, not exactly but in a world of not much peace and plenty of ill-will what do you buy for those in your life clinging on to the ideal that the point is to change it? Here’s my top ten, not guaranteed to cheer them up mind.

Danny Dorling’s  Inequality and the 1% reveals in graphic prose the modern day wealth of the super-rich, the ‘1%’ who shape levels of inequality today straight out of a Dickensian novel of Christmas past.

The Best of Benn is the perfect book to end the year in which we lost one of the towering political figures of the last three decades, Tony Benn. Along with his foe, Thatcher, Benn acquired an ‘ism’  and this posthumous collection brilliantly shows just why he was of such enduring significance, held in great affection by many while being hated and pilloried by the establishment including the leadership of his own party, Labour. Continue reading →

Is Thatcherite ideology working?

thatcher-flagIn a general election a great number of things will be said, but only a few or even one really matters and that will determine who wins. This 2015 election is in effect a referendum on Thatcherite ideology. Here is what Labour should be saying, but isn’t.

Point 1: For 35 years since 1980 the Thatcherites, which includes for this purpose Brown and Blair, have been pursuing major cuts in corporation tax on the grounds that that would stimulate the economy, produce a surge of investment, unleash higher wage jobs, and thus increase government tax revenues to pay down the deficit. The opposite has happened: corporation tax has been cut from 52% in 1980 to 21% today, and the proportion of government revenues generated by corporation tax has almost halved to just over 5%. But none of the benefits promised have materialised, so why do we not reverse this failed policy? Continue reading →

Osborne decimating the State will finally trigger the resistance

Osborne no cuts collage by CounterfireOsborne’s central objective, he would have you believe, is to cut the deficit. He has failed: the deficit he predicted would be £40bn this year turns out to be £100bn and, worse still, it is actually now rising because of the fall in the government’s income (tax receipts) brought about by his own policy of squeezing wages. His other key concern is holding down and reducing taxes. In this he’s succeeded: such reduction in the deficit as there has been is almost exclusively the result of cutting public expenditure and benefits, the only exception being the rise in VAT which hits the poor far harder than the rich. In Osborne’s parallel universe the State is the residual item: it has to make do with what the first two principles leave over. Indeed I would argue that the shrinkage of the State as a result of the first two strictures is not just an unfortunate side-effect, but the real latent objective of the whole exercise. Continue reading →