This morning's short video has now been published. In it, I argue that Labour still has not disclosed what its plan for government is, and that's either incompetent or very poor politics on its part.
You can view the video here.
The transcript is:
Just tell us what you're going to do.
I am of course talking to Keir Starmer and the Labour Party because this is being recorded only a few days before the general election and I still don't know what Labour is going to do and yet the whole art of politics is about just that. It's about telling people what you plan to do and then delivering it, for which you will win the accolades and reelection.
But Labour somehow seems to think that it can go into this election and win without giving us any idea of what it's about, any idea of what it is going to do, and any idea of how we should appraise them. And as a consequence, we are clueless as to what is going to happen over the next five years.
That's not clever.
It's not going to work.
And we might pay a very high price for the confidence we're putting in Labour right now.
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We know Labour will hold the doors of the NHS “wide open” for privatisation and we know Labour will add more debt onto the NHS, on top of PFI, to get waiting lists down.
We also know that Labour will extend Freeports as part of its Green Plan.
Sounds brilliant
Bloomberg, IIRC, were suggesting Reeves was keen on devising some kind of financial instrument along PFI lines to encourage corporate investment. I don’t like the sound of that at all. I gather that would leave the nation working not for our own benefit but to make select corporations better off than the rest of us. I think this is the original url, the full version is logged with the Wayback Machine but I can’t get it unlocked, don’t know why 🙁
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-27/labour-expects-billions-of-private-investment-after-uk-election
Thanks – I couldn’t unlock that Bloomberg article although I knew I’d seen it. Labour is very definitely intending to enter into a great many “initiatives” with big business, prompting the headline “BlackRock to rebuild Britain”. Labour’s idea is that to get private industry to pay the cost of rebuilding public services, contracts will be signed which mean the Government (ie the country, ie us) will carry the risks. So in return for corporate investment, the tax payer will take the hit if it all goes wrong.
(I don’t know why, but privatised water companies and rivers full of shit come to mind. Oh, and collapsing infrastructure)
Additionally, yesterday on the BBC Pat McFadden admitted that GB Energy won’t be an energy producing company at all – just a vehicle to get private companies to invest in green energy production.
It’s the most dreadful, dishonest set of statements I can remember in a long life. Why? Because it’s disguised as a message of hope,
The duplicity makes me feel physically sick.
GB Energy is an example of Labour’s obsession with preivate equity
It is simply a state-sponsored private equity fund
Labour’s Wealth Fund is another one. Another device for funnelling public money into private ends. In this case, expanding Tory Freeports and making people like Ben Houchen even richer
https://labour.org.uk/updates/stories/labour-will-invest-1-8bn-in-ports-to-reverse-14-years-of-industrial-decline/
Agreed
The UK energy problem is the structure of the domestic energy market. It isn’t a market, it is a regulated pricing structure to protect the high profitability of the real network energy providers at the direct expense of the consumer. Neither the US or China to take quite different comparators, would dream of adopting this approach. Neither sells out it’s own people for something so basic to the their country’s security. The British failure is unforgivable; like so much else. And it is all too difficult for Labour even to address the problem. We are going precisely nowhere with this election.
Daniela Gabor, professor of economics and macrofinance, writes in the Guardian that Labour will get BlackRock to rebuild Britain, a private equity company. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/02/labour-plans-britain-private-finance-blackrock?CMP=share_btn_url
Labour claims this is because the government is cash-strapped. This is neoliberal nonsense, that follows on from Thatchers claim that there is only tax-payers money. How has the approach worked? Witness the last 40 years of Tory policy that demonstrates it is a complete failure.
Prem Sikka, Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield, a Labour member of the House of Lords, notes that “Private equity is part of predatory capitalism that is swallowing everything from accountancy firms and airports to supermarkets and more. [..] It only buys to sell, and has left a long trail destruction which the rest of society has to mop-up.” https://leftfootforward.org/2024/04/private-equity-is-predatory-capitalism-with-a-long-trail-of-destruction.
In 2002, twelve years after Margaret Thatcher left office, she was asked at a dinner what was her greatest achievement. Thatcher replied: “Tony Blair and New Labour.” She would be most pleased with Starmer. https://economicsociology.org/2018/03/19/thatcherisms-greatest-achievement/
@Ian Tresman. If Starmer were a member of Thatcher’s cabinet he would not be on the left of it. He and Reeves are planning to do things that Thatcher would not have dared do.
In the Observer, Will Hutton has come up with (or plagiarised, I don’t know) some scheme or other to raise private sector billions from pensions by scaling up the PPF and loosening the sphincter of Reeves’ ironclad fiscal rule.
I have no idea if there is method in his madness.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/30/labour-needs-billions-to-fund-its-plans-and-i-know-where-it-can-be-found
There isn’t
This makes no sense as far as I can see
If ever there was an article which tells you that none of the UK’s political parties properly engage with reality because they won’t make the effort to understand how the country’s fiat money system works this is it!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/01/housing-how-14-years-of-tory-rule-have-changed-britain-in-charts
Where are you reading relevant manifesto policies to tackle the growing housing crisis?
Labour can’t tell the electorate what it is going to do, because it doesn’t know. It has already given the clear lead that it will not raise taxes, or increase borrowing. As the IFS keeps saying, neither Conservative or Labour will say where the money is coming from, so the likelihood is nothing will be done, nothing material will change; except borrowing, because it always does go up, while achieving nothing; under both Conservative and Labour. The reason nothing will change is that the Labour Party has hamstrung itself, because it has adopted exactly the same neoliberal fallacies about how the economy works. It works for those it works best for; and we can see both the opulent, obvious winners – and the degradation of everything else and everybody else to achieve it. Buth the Labour Party will not. It could, but it refuses.
Not sure how many people are putting their confidence in Labour, as opposed to voting for them as a way to get the Tories out. I see the Tories as just a joke now, but Labour will be dangerous.
“as opposed to voting for them as a way to get the Tories out.”
@Christopher Pipe – I have many mainstream Republican friends (yes there are still many out there hiding in their basements) who are voting Democrat (Biden) for the exact same reason. They cannot stomach Trump.
I suspect I know much of what they are going to do and I don’t like it. If they owned up to it, a lot of other people would not like it either. It wouldn’t stop then winning the election but they would not be able to boast about having the largest ever parliamentary majority, and that wouldn’t do would it?
What really hacks me off (can’t use the coarse RAF expression I’d prefer…) is that Starmer is simply attempting to be a tad better in the Tories’ half of the playing field. Why is it seemingly impossible for Labour to drag the discourse into their half of the field?
Labour will only ever be a pale shadow of the Tories – and a dreadful one too.
Oi. Starmer. For God’s sake, and ours, have the courage to stand in clear ground and make the Tories come to you.
A wasted plea, I know – but one I had to make.
I think the term ‘deaf ears’ is what you will hear in response
I sometimes wonder if Labour is trying to keep up the recent tradition of every prime minister being worse than the previous one.
We have a fairly good idea now what Labour is going to do when they get into office even though they won’t come clean. Does that mean the majority of the population are in favour of what Labour wants to do as they would have voted them into office? Does that mean I’m in the minority as this is a democracy? The voting system desperately need changing. The mantra of voting the Tories out by voting Labour in is so self defeating. The Tories are not shy in telling us what they want whereas Labour pretends they’re not like the Tories but won’t tell us anything. I despair.
I doubt this from the Guardian will be heard, either:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/01/twice-as-many-britons-want-tax-rises-as-want-cuts-survey-finds?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
“Public spending and taxation will be high on the agenda for the incoming government.
*Twice as many Tracker respondents agreed that spending on public services (like the NHS) should be increased even if it meant tax rises for households like theirs (56%)* than agreed that taxes should be reduced for households like theirs, even if it meant less spending on public services (24%).”
Thanks
I tweeted that…
The voters are crying out for improvement to their lives. I suspect Labour has no policies to make improvements. They are funded by wealthy oligarchs , big business and Israel. Those donors will demand their pound of flesh. It appears the Zionist lobby has enormous influence over Starmer and other leaders .When voters see none of their concerns are not met there will be huge civil unrest. Doctors and nurses pay has fallen behind in a big way. The same applies to other professions and groups. Industrial action is inevitable if nothing positive is implemented. Will the Far Right use this to further their aims. We know there are many who are Fascists whose aim is a totalitarian state. If Labour were to do something lunatic like declaring a state of emergency then the country is in real trouble. All over the world the Fascist Right is ascending. In my opinion the USA is already in the grip of Fascists such as the neocons who are actually running the country. They have enormous influence here in the UK. We are in grave danger like never before. At 84 I probably won’t see the outcome. I hope I am wrong.
It looks as though Labour may be intending to sell some of our nation’s assets to BlackRock.
In today’s on-line version of the Guardian, Daniela Gabor, professor of economics and macrofinance at UWE Bristol, writes “Labour is putting its plans for Britain in the hands of private finance. It could end badly. …Handing vital infrastructure to private investment companies will generate windfalls for investors and leave the rest of us worse off. We need a better plan.”
A sideline reference leads to an article by a business correspondent at the Guardian), Alex Lawson. He reported five months ago, “Sale of UK assets to world’s largest money manager means huge payday for bankers”. The subheading is “Global Infrastructure Partners, whose portfolio includes Gatwick, sold to BlackRock in $12.5bn deal”.
The Guardian’s “General Election Live” includes an item at 15.48, “Report reveals how law intended to ban foreign donations to political parties easily bypassed. The Electoral Commission has long complained that the laws in place designed to stop political parties accepting donations from abroad are not strict enough. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) has published a report today showing why these concerns are justified.” ‘Experts said the findings show “deeply concerning” flaws in party donations processes.’
Relevant, I wonder?
I am sure this is planned
The link to the Daniela Gabor article is:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/02/labour-plans-britain-private-finance-blackrock