Tagged with The state

Dear Liz Kendall, about the differences between socialism and liberalism…

Liz KendallDear Liz,

Re: Leadership of the Labour Party

I noted the other day that leadership contests are that rare occasion when MPs and ordinary members are frank about the personalities and policies at the top of the party. Some also over egg the pudding and go for outright abuse. I’m thinking mainly, this time around, about the people who are mostly Andy Burnham identifiers and think attacking you as the Conservative Party candidate for Labour leadership is a smart way for their man to win. It isn’t, it’s unfair, and it’s clear from an brief with your material that a Tory you’re most definitely not.

That doesn’t mean I think you’re well suited to lead the Labour Party. Continue reading →

Do we want predatory capitalism or an economy geared to the common good?

Vulture feedingDespite the predictable whines of some FTSE-100 bosses reported yesterday about a post-election Labour-SNP pact, Ed M should flesh out more about his vision to replace ‘predatory capitalism’ both because that is what a majority of people want and also to put paid to the ignorant mantra that self-interested executives like to propagate that anyone who says business practices could be improved is somehow ‘anti-business’. The real truth is that theself-interested executives are anti-public interest.

Britain has some world-class industries and many thrusting, innovative small businesses, but our economic performance is still marred in places by exploitation (the energy sector), failure to meet need (house-building), lack of investment (utilities), short-termism (City of London), profit-driven misconduct (Big 4 banks), as well as by dysfunctional structure (lack of stakeholder commitment) and perverse ideology (the market über alles). So what should be done? Continue reading →

The Tories won’t win because they’re barking up the wrong tree

Minority VerdictGeorge Eaton in the New Statesman has done us a service by revisiting the informative audit of the 2010 election by the Tory pollster Lord Ashcroft, entitled Minority Verdict, which throws new relevant light on the likely outcome of the present election campaign. In 2010, despite Labour polling the second lowest total of electors since 1918 and Gordon Brown being the most unpopular prime minister in modern times, the Tories still failed to win, ending up with 305 seats, 21 seats short of an outright majority. The question of course is why in such auspicious circumstances (for them), they still dramatically failed. Their assumption was that they had been cheated of victory by all the leader’s newfangled modernisation stuff like Cameron’s bobsleighing in the Arctic or hugging a hoodie. But Ashcroft’s survey tells a very different tale. Continue reading →

How the austerity con works

London Review of Books cover 3704‘The Austerity Con’ is the title of a recent article in the London Review of Books. It is written by a leading Keynesian economist Professor Simon-Wren Lewis, who is also a fellow of Merton College, Oxford. It deserves to be widely read because it contains two important arguments against austerity.

The first argument nails the lie that austerity was necessary because of an immediate crisis of government funding. The second argument exposes the myth that austerity has been responsible for an improvement in government finances. Both of these arguments will be familiar to regular readers of SEB and Prof. Wren-Lewis will give them a far wider airing. Given that averting the crisis in government finances is offered by the supporters of austerity as its main justification, the title of his piece is fully justified. Continue reading →

The economy, the state and my crisis of faith

11858987_sLast week I had a crisis of faith in Labour. Looking at the Scottish polling, it looks as if Labour’s journey back to government may be longer and harder than we thought. Yet that is not what caused my questions to synchronise into a cacophony of doubt.

My worries are for what happens if we do get into government in May 2015.

It’s not just about policy, it’s about attitude too. On Thursday I was watching Question Time with Tristram Hunt and Caroline Lucas. Hunt fudged all his answers, limited by the narrow set of opinions permitted by Labour’s current policy set. Lucas, free to say what she thinks, answered convincingly and honestly. Continue reading →