Sunak and Starmer both subscribe to the same neoliberal claptrap

Which is why Scotland must leave the failing UK

Recently, Rishi Sunak vowed to cut taxes by curbing benefits. There’s so much wrong with this.

First, Sunak displays his contempt for society’s poor, sick and disabled. His party’s austerity policies and strangulation of the NHS have resulted in over 300k excess deaths and more people with long-term and chronic illnesses. The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities found the UK has systematically violated the human rights of the disabled due to austerity since 2010.

Second, Sunak perpetuates the neoliberal myth that taxes fund government spending. This pernicious lie has spawned tremendous suffering, needlessly. The reality is that the government owns a bank. It instructs its bank to make money, issue it and make more of it as required without incurring deficits or debt. Government is the only entity that can legally create money so it can’t run out of the stuff nor can it be indebted to itself. 

But when it comes to satisfying people’s basic needs, the deficit myth rears its ugly head and politicians opine that ‘there’s no money unless we cut taxes or public spending.’ Funny that there’s always plenty for wars, bank bailouts or during pandemics. Does any journalist ever ask why?

Third, cutting benefits, apart from its obvious cruelty, harms the economy. Providing modest regular payments to the unemployed, sick and disabled means they will spend the money into the economy for necessities. The multiplier effect means the money spent at the butcher becomes the butcher’s income, etc. The money cycles repeatedly through the economy and has a larger impact than the initial spend. If that money is taken away as Sunak proposes, economic activity falls.  

Starmer’s English Labour subscribes to the same neoliberal claptrap which won’t help Scotland. That’s why Scotland must leave the failing UK.