Today Compass formally launches Plan B to kickstart the economy. Typically, however, it has already been fully leaked in yesterday’s Observer. It has some helpful (though not particularly original) ideas. It wants to stop the cuts, start a new round of quantitative easing but giving the money direct to businesses, raise benefits to ease poverty and increase demand, make tax more progressive through a financial transactions tax and a multi-tiered income tax as well as a land value tax, establish a national investment bank to make loans and lever in private investment, and green the economy by decarbonising buildings and investing in green transport and infrastructure as well as achieving a better work-life balance. All warm words from the Centre-Left perspective. But it avoids the hard issues: How is it to be paid for? How is the economy to be rebalanced from finance to industry? And how is manufacturing to be revived? Continue reading →