‘Magic money tree’ nonsense echoes Theresa May – and puts Starmer’s Labour well to the right of Boris Johnson’s magic money forest
Labour’s Batley and Spen by-election candidate was unwilling to provide a straight answer when asked if she supported a 15% pay rise for nurses. In that, she’s clearly in line with her party leader, who has persistently refused to name any policies Labour does stand for. But – after also refusing to say she would support the abolition of tuition fees – she went further, claiming that people are ‘sick’ of being told there’s a ‘magic money tree’.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because it is:
Leadbeater appeared to be channelling former Tory leader Theresa May – or at least regurgitating the same economically illiterate nonsense May and the Tories used to spout to mislead the public about the nature of the UK’s ‘fiat’ economy.
But even the Tories have abandoned it for now, because Boris Johnson and his Chancellor have magically found whole magic money forests when it suited them – as they well should, as a country with control of its own money supply need never run short.
Of course, at some point the Tories will flip and make ordinary people pay while the rich get richer – and that’s all part of the ‘Big Lie’. But for now, Starmer’s Labour are well – and pointlessly, spinelessly – to the right of the Tories on public spending.
Instead of making the (easy) argument that paying nurses (and everyone else) properly is not only the right thing to do, it’s good for the economy to do it, on the rare occasions that Starmer breaks cover to say anything, he’s again trying to sell himself to Tories instead of showing how he’d actually change things for the better.
It’s hardly surprising then that Labour’s ’emotional blackmail candidate’ – the sister of the constituency’s murdered former MP – is hacking up the same garbage. But if people want Tories, they’ll go for the full-fat version. It’s a disastrous recipe for an ‘opposition’ – and that disaster continues to play out daily.
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