Tax cuts for the better off, isn’t that the kind of thing associated with the Conservatives? Blair-era Labour? Not of the present radicalparty leadership, surely. What with their desire to nationalise afternoon tea and issue pig iron production edicts. And yet, in 2016’s tradition of politics taking unexpected turns, that is exactly what’s happened. Has the party […]
Posts Tagged ‘John McDonnell’
John McDonnell goes home to Liverpool (video)
Nov 4th, 2016 by John McDonnell.John McDonnell returns to where he was born and grew up in Liverpool – some of the “worst slum conditions in the country… but we just called it home”, he says. He talks about what it was like, moving into their first council house, free education and why a Labour government can give hope to people again:
John McDonnell speaks out against antisemitism
Apr 3rd, 2016 by Jon Lansman.Interviewed by Andrew Marr this morning, shadow chancellor spoke out in the strongest possible terms about antisemitism within the Labour Party. As soon as Jewish people start telling us that there is antiSemitism in our party we’ve got to sit up and listen. That’s why I said last week, if there are people who’ve expressed […]
Labour, John McDonnell and the New Economics
Mar 13th, 2016 by David Pavett.Once the surprise and the shock of Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader had sunk in, many (including me) became impatient for policy initiatives and membership involvement in policy formation to come to the fore. Clearly cutting through media hostility is a major task but I find it difficult to see that more could not […]
The crisis remains an investment crisis
Mar 8th, 2016 by Michael Burke.Prior to the recent G20 meeting leading international economic bodies such as the IMF and the OECD made tentative calls for increased investment, although this was often confused with increased spending. This is a belated or partial recognition of the real source of the crisis in the advanced industrialised countries. In terms of actual changes […]
Let’s hear it for the “right to own”
Jan 22nd, 2016 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.This is more like it. From the BBC: “The Tories have offered a Right to Buy, Labour would seek to better this. We’d be creating a new Right to Own,” he [John McDonnell] said in a speech in Manchester. He said the “biggest hurdle” facing co-ops and other small businesses was getting initial funding from high […]
iPads + superfast broadband = socialism (or maybe just a kinder, fairer capitalism)
Nov 22nd, 2015 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Socialism is Jeremy Corbyn in Number 10 plus superfast broadband! Okay, not as pithy as Lenin’s definition involving soviet power and electrification, but John McDonnell’s speech on Wednesday is a continuation of a fine tradition in left and centre left politics: the close alignment of our policy agenda with technological dynamism. Though, of course, it’s […]
Labour’s media strategy should be unspun but not unravelled
Oct 19th, 2015 by Luke Barratt.Labour has had a difficult week, politically. Though Corbynites will obviously want to support the leadership as far as possible, it is difficult to deny that John McDonnell fell right into the clumsy Osborne trap that was the Fiscal Charter. The Shadow Chancellor’s naïvety on this issue speaks to one criticism that has been levelled […]
Putting the Political back into Political Economy
Oct 7th, 2015 by Ewan Gibbs and Nathaniel Blondel.The reaction to John McDonnell’s announcement that he would aim for a balanced current account, whilst maintaining borrowing for capital investment, revealed a recurrent fault line within left-wing economic thought. At its most banal McDonnell was accused of signing up to George Osborne’s ‘austerity charter’, whilst more sophisticated critics argued such policies would weaken demand […]
How Labour should deal with the Fiscal Responsibility Act
Oct 5th, 2015 by Michael Burke.Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell are frequently in advance of many of their supporters on economic matters, including their supporters in academia and economic commentators. They are correct to argue against permanent budget deficits and in favour of the central role of public investment as the path out of the crisis, identify People’s Quantitative Easing […]