I had a little rant in front of my camera earlier this afternoon and shared it with The National in Scotland:
https://twitter.com/ScotNational/status/1681309598597238785?s=20
The anger is very real.
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So fixed are Labour in this belief the devil in me suggests perhaps key figures (Reeves, Starmer, Cooper and Streeting come to mind here) are in reality secretly in thrall to the private insurance companies and have promised to make state provision increasingly scarce in order to herd the population into the arms of those same private insurance companies.
It’s a theory, no?
… which reminded me, what wasn’t in the news today? Boris and his Whatsapp messages, still to be examined, and his apparent contempt of court going unremarked. We are too easily distracted, I think.
If anything will make the judge get the whatsapps it will be today’s evidence at the covid enquiry. It was from people in the covid bereaved families groups in all four countries. The judge was very sympathetic. She could instead give him two years in prison for contempt of court.
Very good! If she had anything about her she’d challenge you to a debate but Labour under Sir Kid Starver run away from that kind of vulnerability exposure it’s all just shallow sound-bite assertion. Labour now a childishly pathetic party that turns nasty if you prod it to justify its assertions. No grown-ups to be seen or heard!
From what I have read today, the shadow cabinet are not allowed to challenge Starver on his two-child policy.
https://skwawkbox.org/2023/07/18/starmer-mocks-those-who-dont-want-to-starve-children-and-bans-shadcab-debate/
@ Jenw
There’s something seriously wrong with Starmer mentally. Any woman knows that the onus of responsibility for contraception still rests on their shoulders and that it’s easy to forget if the pill is your line of defence to forget to take it particularly if you’re under a period of pressure. This can result in accidental pregnancy. You may already have two children and a another comes along as a result of a mistake. What does Starmer expect a woman to do abort the child or starve it to death when its born? That something seriously wrong with Starmer mentally is a very proscribed view about what other people are feeling and empathy for their fallibility!
@ JenW, I’ve just read your link. What a vile man Starmer is. He’s manoeuvred his cabinet into a position of being totally scared of him. “Big brash” Rayner suddenly as meek as a little kitten or lamb! This is precisely how Hitler behaved! Step out of line and you’d be wondering if you’d end up hanging from a meat hook on the ceiling! The Labour Party is to all intents and purposes dead in regard to its original purpose. Have no truck with it!
Thanks, Schofield. I left a while ago because of the way he treated Corbyn. He’s got much worse since then, particularly towards the members. However, it’s not just him, it’s the general secretary, too. This is an article from someone who wishes to get on the National Costitutional Committee, although I can’t think why.
https://labourhub.org.uk/2023/07/19/the-national-constitutional-committee-and-the-emperors-lack-of-clothes/
They probably do know how things work. The problem is they cant risk saying or doing anything that might risk losing the election.
Safer to stick with what the general public accepts as how things work.
@ davidn. No they don’t understand how things work monetarily. The UK Labour Party has been useless in this respect since the days of Callaghan and Healey. Read Bill Mitchell’s article telling you this:-
https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=60987
It seems to me that there are only 2 possibilities as to why we keep hearing this from our elected politicians who should know better.
1 – They are ignorant of how money is created and works in an economy such as ours, which should preclude them from any public office where this knowledge is mandatory. Or
2 – They know how money is created and how it works and yet pretend not to thus making the “we have no money” argument seem plausible. This should obviously not only preclude them from office but should also lead to severe sanctions of some sort.
Is there any way that we can find out which MPs fall into category 1 and which into category 2 ? I suspect the Positive Money survey results from a few years back still hold and many fall into category 1 but still, the country deserves better and it is time to leave the myths and fairy tales behind. There is too much to do now and we need to get on with it. Finally is there a category 3 with some other innocent explanation?
1 is most likely in most cases
and too frightened to break ranks
After you read the Bill Mitchell article you realise Starmer hasn’t moved forward in his thinking after nearly fifty years he’s still mindlessly spouting the Fiscal Conservatism clap-trap Callaghan and Healey mouthed all those years ago. Want to stand still in time or go backwards then vote Starmer!
I’m convinced now that Labour believe that the Torie’s economic policies are correct, its just that the execution/management of them has been incompetent.
How can they think them correct when staring them in the face is an over fifty years old house price bubble that clearly links money and real resources together? They’re just dense!
So in a nutshell Keir Starmer wants to starve kids and let the planet fry because he can’t be bothered to make the effort to understand how money works in an economy. There’s the “tough choice” he won’t face up to!
Free school meals for children? Just “one of those things…” chirps Reeves, airily dismissing the idea, reminding me oddly of the Walrus and the Carpenter both https://twitter.com/i/status/1681644880844537858
Great twitter commentary.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall when Stymied is listening/taking instruction from his ‘political advisors’.
Sorry for the late comments but I only just had a chance to see the video.
I am grateful for your continued attempts to get a proper understanding of money across in the media. You are right they are not fit to govern but who is?
I don’t think Labour ever expected to be in the position they are in now but the Johnson/Truss debacle has provided a real opportunity for power which they do not want to mess up. By saying that there is no money left they are echoing what the Tories were saying in 2010 but in an attempt to highlight the Tories economic failures since. I think they want to keep hammering home how incompetent the Tories are and that only Labour can be trusted, even though it was Liam Byrne that first made the comment in his letter to the incoming Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
Saying that there is no money left is an attack on the Tories that people will buy into. Starmer also seems to want give an image of how hard he is going to be on spending.
They don’t want to give any hint that they will increase taxes, even though the top percentile must have a few billions they could spare.
I can only think of one serving MP who might have a proper understanding of money and I won’t mention his name in case he gets deselected. I think the vast majority of people would have trouble changing their engrained views of money etc. which have been hammered home by the Tories since Thatcher, reenforced by a largely ignorant and brainwashed media. I personally only started to get a proper understanding when I read Ann Pettifor’s The Production of Money, followed by Stephanie Kelton’s book, then Alt and Keene and now of course you own excellent work. I also think that most people are unwilling to invest the time and mental resources to researching economics no matter how important it is, and this holds true for politicians as much as anyone else.
Point of order: it was not Liam Byrne who “first” left the note, it is a longstanding tradition for outgoing Chief Secretaries to leave. From the MMT understanding it is also factually correct- as currency issuer from the government perspective there is no money (hence the in joke).
Blame the humourless expenses fiddler Laws for leaking the note and the arrogant Cameron for adding the word “left” which was not in the original note
Sorry – from an MMT perspective there is money
Hi Richard, for clarity what I meant is as currency issuer the government does not have a stock of £ in the bank – I.e no money. When it spends it creates £, when it taxes it deletes £. So it doesn’t have £ of its own but the economy (and especially the population) relies on the £ it creates to keep everything going. Which is why austerity, essentially the government starving the real economy of £, is so stupid and destructive.
It’s a bit obtuse but explains the no money note perfectly
But there are untaxed pounbds out there so I still do not agree with you. Sorry.
Allegedly Reggie Maudling started the ‘no money’ note ‘tradition’. Laws and Cameron knew full well.
Prem Sikka on nottheandrewmarrshow on Sunday morning, to tell us what’s wrong with labour thinking again. Unfortunately only about 500 people will see him.
Marvellous. It is my strong belief that Reeves and the Labour finance team have a pretty good, albeit hazy understanding of this. However, it’s an article of faith to them that to get elected you have to adopt the Household budget analogy. Morons! It just goes to show what contempt they have for the intelligence of the British public. We all know that money can be created when needed. I also suspect the great unwashed don’t believe the BBC-promoted b/s that inflation is now coming down due to the pain inflicted on us by the Bank of England. Maybe I’m an idealist, but I like to think that a 3rd party that speaks the truth and which is media savvy could upset the two-party applecart. A little like Clegg did in 2010, but with conviction.
@ MattR. It’s gotten to such a stupid polarised situation that the Household Budget Analogy is regarded almost as a shield against that other bogey-man Marxism!
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/lobbying-labour-alice-perry-election-conference-arrangements-committee/
This is what labour are doing this weekend to make sure they are electable in the next general election. Not very socialist.
That’s ridiculous