English Labour's Reeves economic 'thinking' informed by mother's kitchen table accounting
Published in The Edinburgh Evening News, March 5th, 2024. In time-honoured fashion, the editors cut out the last sentence: “It’s why we have no choice but to leave if we want to prosper.”
After reading the Telegraph’s most recent paeon to English Labour shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, “My mum showed me how to balance the books at the kitchen table,” anyone left hoping a Labour government will reverse Tory austerity should know better.
The UK is in recession. Trade volumes have suffered a record five-year decline. Austerity policies since 2010 have resulted in 335k excess deaths. The NHS is close to complete collapse but is not as bad in Scotland thanks to mitigation by Holyrood.
What Reeves either doesn’t understand or wilfully ignores is that when a government reduces public spending it triggers a self-sustaining economic contraction. With less money circulating, wages fall, businesses fail, investment declines and the shrinkage accelerates.
American economist Stephanie Kelton compares austerity to a 6-foot tall person crouching in a room with 8-foot ceilings because he's been convinced that if he tries to stand up, he'll suffer a severe head trauma. Austerity stems from irrational fears about government debt and fiscal deficits. The UK is nowhere near the productive capacity or ceiling in the economy. Governments are supposed to run deficits because they, unlike Reeves’ mother, have a central bank and can never go broke.
Increased government spending can’t by itself cure the UK’s ills. Reversing the grotesque levels of inequality and giving workers back their economic power and security requires curbing corporate monopoly power, reforming tax policy and strengthening trade unions.
English Labour and the Tories have lost sight of the purpose of government which is to build an economy and society for the benefit of the people they’re supposed to serve. In this, the UK has utterly failed.
Scots have felt the brunt of this failure most keenly. It’s why we have no choice but to leave if we want to prosper.
Another backward looking nod to Thatcher.
Waiting for the NHS cure to be announced, Hospitals worked fine when we had Matron in charge.
Tory quotes from the past, never thought I'd hear them again from Labour lips. We can tick them off as they are spouted.
Household and housewife budget control.
Young on benefits as a life style.
Wrong type breeding.
Don't breed em if you can't feed em.
Bring back matron.
Undisciplined young, coporal punishment, birch, public floggings. (not made up, a real suggestion)
Ahh, the good old days are here again, when our public leaders and figures can say any old gob shite for a cheap applause from the unhinged and the possibility of career advancement.