Former UK Labour minister and leadership candidate Bryan Gould has a long-distance view of the Labour leadership contest from the other side of the world, living in New Zealand For New Zealand students of current affairs, the contest for the leadership of the UK Labour Party involves four names that will mean little – and, in […]
Posts Tagged ‘Keynesianism’
A slow-burning revolution is starting to overturn neo-classical economic orthodoxy
Feb 22nd, 2015 by Bryan Gould.As the world struggles to deal with threatening outbreaks of violence – most dangerously, in the Middle East and the Ukraine – another less dramatic and slower-burning revolution is getting under way. This revolution does not threaten violence – but it does promise change, and almost certainly change for the better. The revolution that is […]
Deficit rise this year destroys any purported case for austerity
Oct 24th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.The latest ONS Quarterly National Accounts tell a very significant story. For the media it was immediately a matter of Osborne likely not being able to provide a pre-election giveaway in a big new tax break to be announced in his Autumn Statement on 3 December. But that isn’t the real point at all. A […]
Why trust Labour to implement austerity when Tories do it with more conviction?
Sep 25th, 2014 by Bryan Gould.Labour leaders have often been eloquent in articulating a vision of the kind of society they want; it is explaining how that vision is to be realised that seems to be the problem. We have seen a further demonstration of this sad truth at this year’s Labour conference. Ed Miliband had good things to say […]
The economic contradictions of Mr Miliband
Jul 23rd, 2014 by Ann Pettifor and Jeremy Smith.There is much to welcome in Ed Miliband’s address last Saturday to the Labour Party’s national policy forum. For example, his argument that Britain suffers from a low-pay economy. While the number of those in employment has grown, real pay has fallen dramatically over the lifetime of the present government. At PRIME, we calculated the fall in real […]
The ‘socialism’ of Vince Cable: what’s changed?
May 12th, 2013 by David Osler.Such is the magnitude of the event that the definitive account of the financial collapse of September 2008 and its consequences has surely yet to be written. I do not mean by stating that to deride numerous worthwhile attempts at a first draft of history. Journalistic efforts such as Paul Mason’s Meltdown, Elliott and Atkinson’s The Gods […]
When will Labour force a crisis vote on the economy in the Commons?
Jan 28th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.It seems almost unbelievable that the UK economy is still 3.5% below its level 5 years after the financial crisis began, when the US, Germany, France and almost all other major countries are now well above their pre-recession level, and that the UK economy has now contracted in 4 of the last 5 quarters and […]
The temporary popularity of Euroausterity
Nov 22nd, 2011 by David Osler.Just months ago, Spain was convulsed by the M-15 mass movement, which mobilised hundreds of thousands of protestors against the appalling privations facing the nation’s youth. Last weekend, it returned a centre-right government. That’s not the whole story. The hard left alliance Izquierda Unida doubled its vote to poll 7%, although that is still well […]
Don’t let the Labour Right tell fairy stories about the 1980s
Jun 2nd, 2011 by Andy Newman.There is a remarkable article on Labour Uncut by Kevin Meagher that perfectly illustrates a mythology which has for some time infected parts of the Labour Party. Kevin writes: