Op.Ed.
The Tories are in disarray – in spite of the best efforts of the Labour right and the mainstream media to help them – over their scandalous behaviour toward the Windrush generation, among a host of other embarrassments and demonstrations of incompetence.
But it’s still worth noting that the myth of their supposed economic competence – which has been shored up assiduously over years by the ‘MSM’ but rocked by the emergence of a Labour Party offering a genuine alternative under Jeremy Corbyn – is in even smaller shreds this morning after the latest economic growth figures showed that their supposed ‘healthy economy’ is growing at less than one thirtieth of the predicted rate.
And is in fact in decline by the most important measure, as the BBC’s economics correspondent had to admit this morning:
Economic activity per person has fallen – and the government can’t blame the abysmal performance on the ‘beast from the east’ cold weather periods, because the trend was down throughout the period, not just when the weather was bad.
The Tories crowed last month about their predicted reductions of the UK’s deficit – based on what they said would happen in the future. But the first set of concrete economic figures since Philip Hammond’s ‘Spring Statement’ show that those expectations were inflated by a factor of 33 to 1.
Of course, a healthy economy is based on much more than headline growth figures – but in a Tory Britain of record foodbank use, rampant child poverty, a collapsing NHS and local services and mushrooming job insecurity and poverty pay, the headline figure was about all the Tories had to spin.
And that’s proven disastrous.
Comment:
At the local elections next week, some people will vote for what they think is right and some will vote with their pocket. It’s clear that in both cases, they should be voting Labour.
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Everything’s alright, don’t fret! Spreadshite Phil said he was: ‘feeling positively tiggerish’ about the economy…
With the deficit at an over-exaggerated expectation rate of 33 times greater, it’s no bastard wonder, is it?.
33 times greater. Not 5, not 10, or 20, or even 30, but 33!!!
THIRTY-EFFIN’-THREE!!! Just let that sink in, tories. And then add to that just how much his HS2 costings were out by.
But Diane Abbot’s fair game when she gets her numbers wrong because her blood sugars were low. She’s not allowed to get numbers wrong, only phil is. And she’s not allowed to be diabetic, but theresa may is.
Gobshites.
No investment, no growth.
Economics 101.
Surely this exposes the Tories lies regarding their employment figures also? All this apparent high employment would mean growth in our economy and per person.
Also recent data from the ONS shows the UK’s households’ saving ratio fell to an annual record low of 4.9% in 2017 (since comparable records began in 1963) as growth in households’ spending exceeded the growth of households’ income.
Latest estimates suggest households were net borrowers in 2017 for the first time since records began in 1987; this reflects five consecutive quarters of net borrowing by households.
I am supprised they are not still blaming it on Gordon Brown.
Whats worse is the Red Tory’s who it seems main preocupation is sabotaging the local govenment elections and complaining about their hurt feelings if they are critisised. Hope we can get rid of them before the next GE. They certainly don’t represent my views or I suspect the majority of the membership.
We are MANY they are FEW , the red tories MPS in our party are nothing more than a party within a party .They don’t need to call themselves anything , they can act as a loose group of wreckers intent on ensuring another Tory victory at the GE , just by their Zionist actions and anti-Semitic smears and MUST BE KICKED OUT for the good of the many who are suffering under this Tory shit pile .
It now looks like we have an external body run by and populated at the top level with Tory supporters and Tory donors. It has extraordinary powers of influence over the NCC and is called THE BOD. The BOD certainly don’t represent me or my views nor do I suspect those of the majority of the membership but there you have it the BOD are now calling the shots in Labour , an unelected , unaccountable external body dictating what the Labour membership should think and be allowed to say , Orwell eat your heart out !
Steve I am no longer getting email notifications of your posts, is there a problem?
I have said this consistently now over many years, that we are no longer a trading nation but a net importer of other countries finished goods.
We have trade deficits ranging from £2 – 3 billion each and every month now since the days of Thatcher when she dismantled our manufacturing base.
Until we create new industries and reinvest in our public services further decline is inevitable, yes we will bob up down from time to time, but where we are at present is in the middle of a never ending depression.
That has all been manufactured by Neo-Liberal politicians who just want Britain to be the financial centre of the world, and if May gets her way the next tax haven to beat all other tax havens. Noting that the few are the sole beneficiaries.
Now might be a good time to have a whole raft of economists explain to everyone how the Tories lied to them about “Labour profligacy” having caused the ’08 bank crash.
I worked in a junior position in banking & finance in the days of caution and probity long before the Big Bang. The causes of the Great Depression were discussed endlessly so the inevitable destabilising effects of deregulation were obvious to many – even to me.
It’s true that the crash came a long time after Thatcher & Reagan encouraged the most trustworthy people in society to mutate into the reckless gamblers that went on to crash the world but the logic and timeline is inescapable.
People never see the bubble for the cash when they’re making fortunes and by ’97 it would have been completely impossible for Brown to change direction if he’d tried.
Today it’s bitcoin and tech bonanzas that people are terrified of missing out on.
Ten years of austerity and we’re still paying to keep the 1% in superyachts and mansions while we live on scraps because they’re “too big to fail” – proving even they don’t really believe in their own neo-liberal cant, market forces or democracy.
They much prefer to control the information and buy the politicians that guarantee their continued hegemony.
BBC news today says that the BoE wants to teach schoolkids economic basics – what a joke – telling the truth to the country about Tory maladministration is the one thing that would restore BoE’s own reputation.
David, I am not an economist (just a left wing democratic socialist) but when for whatever reasons the weak (in my opinion) Miliband Leadership wouldn’t counter the Tory Narrative in 2010 that it was Labour that crashed the banks I kept posting on the BBC comments page drawing from the Business Pages (which we should all read).
These reported on all of the multi-billion dollar US fines on banks for their role in sub-prime lending which crashed the economy.
EVIDENCE but ‘Professional’ Labour wouldn’t use it; arrogantly I think these ‘Great Men and Women of History’ thought they knew better; Labour lost and working people suffered.
But at least it enabled 3 sets of stars to emerge, our progressive leaders at the top, a mass radicalised membership, and a hopeful 13m citizens!
Solidarity!
Still, I guess this is what happens when you force unsuited people into unsuitable ZHC and NMW jobs, along with self-employment delivering yellow pages and ‘Avon’ ladies. Or ‘apprenticeships’ in shelf-stacking F absolute FS
Oh, and throwing money at private parasitical corporations to force people into these ‘jobs’ instead of investing in training for quality, higher-skilled & future-proofed positions.
But nevermind…You’ll be saved the job of paying a living, breathing taxi driver soon when spreadshite phil foists them driverless cars on all of us – that’s if you’ll be able to afford the fare, of course.
Idiotic, anaemic gobshite that he is.
It took 20 years for Neo-Liberalism to capture the Tories (Thatcher had to be sat in a room by Keith Joseph and others to be taught it and whilst Norway used their oil for the benefit of its citizens – they now have a Wealth Fund of a trillion plus – Thatcher used our North Sea oil politically to smash trade unions and to bring in the fundamental drive for cheap labour – which is now coming for the middle class professions like university lecturers too, and to herald in the age of finance capital).
Then the bonus prize for Neo-Liberalism was New Labour, Scottish Labour, then the EC (In the US it was Reaganism).
But Neo-Liberalism has perhaps painted itself into a corner, its drive for cheap labour has restricted the purchase of commodities by working people and perhaps the economy is being sustained by unsustainable levels of personal debt (the old credit card) and as Wolfgang Streekt argued with quantitative easing “The rich and powerful haven’t a clue what to do.”
But we do, state-led public investment (feeds the private sector supply chain), democratic public ownership (if bottom up, and democratic, more efficient), building the homes needed etc. but we also need more dynamic business – that thinks critically, listens to and involves staff and pays them well and allows trade unions, draws on research, listens to customers and that is there to serve working people and not vice versa.
Neo-Liberalism’s weakness also is that it knows the price of everything (like Wembley Stadium) AND THE VALUE OF NOTHING!
But the greatest victory of Neo-Liberalism was not its marketisation of everything, deregulation, outsourcing, privatisation, zero hours etc. it was to stop the Left from dreaming.
Brothers and Sisters, IT’S TIME TO START DREAMING AGAIN!
Solidarity!
As a Socialist and owner of a small business, investment is key to growth.
We small businesses are being hammered by the for ever increasing taxes and a banking system that treats us like dirt.
My business is certainly down on last year despite our prices not changing, the quality of work improving and taking on a employee.
The Tories bleat about SME being the growth engine for the economy but we struggle to raise capital from the banks at reasonable rates, whilst they let their chums in the corporations and oligarchs off from paying taxes and ignore their law breaking and mistreatment of employees.
The Tories know Jeremy Corbyn has the answers and he has busted their lies on the economy time and time again, that’s why they”re smearing him with everything.
Tories can’t switch from austerity to investment without the biggest lie Britain has ever been told becoming obvious to everyone.
They’d dearly love to be able to buy some goodwill but nobody will believe our suffocating economy supports that without sustained evidence of economic recovery.
Which ain’t coming any time soon.
If ten years ago we’d invested in manufacturing, research and home grown tech rather than propping up the broken wet dreams of neoliberalism we’d be back in the black or nearly so.
As it is we’re balanced on a tightrope of house prices, shopping and interest rates and a hiccough could have us in traction for another decade.
Yes and this Austerity stuff was never meant for the rich and powerful.
One of the first things the Tories did (initially with the Lib Dimwits) was to give tax cuts to millionaires, corporations, private landlords with multiple properties (they saw private renting as their ideological housing market solution), and gave Hedge Funds £145m of tax cuts (and Hedge Funds gave the Tories £50m) so don’t worry rich and powerful it was never meant for you, it was and is just for working people.
Just read a really good review of ‘The City’ in the excellent New Left Review and the reviewer (Geoffrey Incham) argues capitalism needs debt, if all debt was paid off it would collapse.
And back to the brilliant Wolgang Streekt, he argues quantitative easing is just giving the rich and powerful time “because they haven’t a clue what to do.”
But Labour (as an example to other countries) under Jeremy does and perhaps this is why they are attacking JC and us so much.
A JC victory could possibly be more exciting than 1945!
Solidarity!
You need to base economic growth on a highly paid,highly skiiled workforce.
Not too much to ask after years of austerity.