An old man in a comic opera uniform was dragged by carthorses in a gilded carriage through the streets of London, then bedecked in diamonds and more gold, all to very little purpose.
That we truly have a uniparty could not be better proven than by a new captain taking over the ship of state, and not moving the tiller one inch, instead merely making minute adjustments to the trim of the sails.
Take the centrepiece Great British Energy company, to be sited in Scotland as a butcher’s apron branded beacon of unionism. GBE will invest in renewable energy with a budget of £8.3 billion over 5 years.
£1.6 billion a year. That sounds impressive until you realise that the turnover of the renewable energy sector is already £80 billion a year. And that the UK has to invest £77 billion a year in renewables, insulation and the grid to meet its carbon reduction obligations – of which it is estimated that £26 billion a year needs to come from the public sector.
£77 billion a year. Of which on these plans 2% is to come from the public sector.
This is what remains of Labour’s Green New Deal plans after being gutted by Starmer.
The other big headline announcement is that Thatcherite staple of deregulation. In particular planning controls on housebuilding are to be relaxed in order to stimulate housebuilding by the private sector.
By reinstating compulsory housing development plans for councils to hit housing targets, New Labour boldly rolls the regulatory regime back to… err back to…[checks notes again]… 2023.
Yes, this great measure reinstates the situation in place under Tory governments until last year, when Michael Gove gave more powers to local councils in England and Wales to protect green belts.
The timidity on public investment in both energy and housing is ludicrous. Nothing is being done to build more public housing. Nothing is being done to address the fundamental problem of the housing market, which is rentier landlordism.
What keeps house prices so high is competition to buy between commercial landlords. Mortgage payments are lower than rent payments, but ordinary people lack the capital formation or income as percentage of property price to secure mortgages at the inflated house prices.
So commercial landlords who have the capital for deposit and security own an ever escalating percentage of domestic property.
Landlords can rent at exorbitant prices to renters who have no choice, and landlords can abuse them by neglecting property maintenance.
Public sector homebuilding, rent controls and restrictions on lending for landlordism are the necessary measures that any government which was not a continuity conservative government would take. Starmer has no interest whatsoever in actually pursuing social justice.
The Labour Party has shackled itself to austerity. Rachel Reeves is to boost the power of the Office for Budget Responsibility, which is the institutional enforcement of Thatcherite economics and the total rejection, not just of modern monetary theory, but even of Keynesian demand management.
This is astonishing for what pretends to be a social democratic government.
Not everything is appalling. Ed Miliband’s support for onshore wind and for autonomous consumer energy production is to be welcomed. The improvement of workers’ rights is also welcome, though it should include a real move to a proper living wage and immediate abolition of age wage bands.
Children are to be sacrificed to maintain Kid Starver’s macho Thatcherite credentials, with the maintenance of the two child benefit cap having been elevated to a symbol of “toughness”.
Only 34% of those who voted, voted for this government. Why anybody would bother to do so I have no idea. We still have a conservative and unionist government.
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“Only 34% of those who voted, voted for this government.”
Indeed; and 1 in 5 voted tactically, significantly to Labour’s benefit.
After non voters and transfer voters have been eliminated, only a quarter of the popuation of the UK has representation by one of the three largest parties, who enjoy 92% of the seats in Parliament. This is, astonishingly, presented to the world as stability.
This unsustainable stitch up is an opportunity to anyone to promote an alternative.
We had one when Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the Labour party. Unfortunately, he was a crappy politician (though a wonderful human being) and made two fatal mistakes: he failed to purge the party of its Blairite rump; and he capitulated to the Zionist lobby.
Not that crappy. And those twin mistakes were largely the same one.
I share the view that he needed to ‘immediately purge the right’, but that is with the benefit of hindsight. His strategy, you will recall, was to delegate member selection to the local constituencies, which in the context of a mass membership party would have shrunk their numbers hugely. Lack of NEC support (and a fair bit of treachery) delayed that past 2017, by which point it was the right who were consolodating their power rather than him.
At present the Left – those that hold a favourable opinion of Corbyn/Abbott – number about 21/22% of the population, and have barely any Parliamentary representation. The notion of a new party of the left, remains, I think, entirely impossible without a news/media machine to compete with Murdoch, Rothermere, and the BBC.
The combination of wall to wall media antagonism, and the FPTP system, and the weakness of external social organisations (e.g. independent trades unions, workers clubs etc) and vigorous Atlanticist security services mean that any leftist political movement – even ‘gradualist’ social democracy – will be either covert or stillborn.
Hindsight? ooh behave, it was obvious then, just as it was that he capitulated a few days after he was elected. After the first surrender, he surrendered himself, his allies and the working class into oblivion, the gutless poltroon.
“…he capitulated a few days after he was elected”.
As they almost all do these days. As Mr Trump did. (Mind you, we have no idea what pressures are brought to bear).
“We know where your kids are”
Or
“You be careful crossing the street”
Which statement is culled from the 1960 gangster flick “Murder Inc”, which tells the story of Lepke Buchalter, leader of crime syndicate “Murder Inc” which operated in the 1930’s in Brooklyn. Interestingly Peter Falk plays a stone-cold killer, Abe Reles, a role in total opposition to the character that Falk is most associated, Detective Colombo. Falk is genuinely menacing as an “ultra baddy”. Lepke is portrayed as a teetotaller who drinks only milk lol
Starmer was directly instrumental in ‘persuading’ Corbyn to fatally change direction over Brexit. Yes, that was corbyn’s fault but maybe he didn’t realise his team was actually run out of the Israeli embassy.
Starmer is now attempting to reverse the brexit vote. Expect more chaos at our expense.
Mike T
Every time I hear that ‘stability’ and ‘continuity’ argument, I think, would that argument not be better deployed in defence of a military dictatorship or absolute monarchy? In other words, ‘stability’ and ‘continuity’ have no inherent good to them: none at all! What if that which is stable and continuous, is bad, and leaves most feeling unrepresented and/or disillusioned?
Watching BBC 2’s TV studio commentary on the state opening of parliament’s silly pomp and circumstance – not as historic as some believe btw. As an interesting aside; the origin of ‘pomp and circumstance’ is Shakespeare’s Othello, “pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war!” And there sits Charles III, in full military uniform, replete with medals, despite never serving in a war. Are such symbols of militarism really the best image for a now very multicultural former colonial power, in 2024?
One female guest on the BBC’s special event programme defended FPTP by comparing the UK’s smooth transition of power to France’s recent inconclusive, close, three-way split National Assembly election outcome. For starters, France doesn’t use a proportionate system for their National Assembly elections, they use a two-round plurality-based system (TRS). In the past this system has allowed Macron and his centrist party to mount a media-backed block of the ‘far-right’ campaign in the week prior to the second round run-off. The powerful arrival of the leftist bloc NFP, scuppered this well-worn Macron strategy. France’s TRS shares much in common with FPTP, in that people are often forced to ‘vote for the lesser evil’ in those runoffs. This undermines the core principle of democracy. Macron promised to introduce PR but never did.
Back to the guest in the studio; her point was doubly idiotic, for there is absolutely nothing to prevent a similar three-way split, or even four-way split, in the UK, under FPTP. Labour, the Tories; Reform and Lib Dems could easily each muster around 120-150 seats each next time, leaving the UK with a messy result.
—————
And I agree in relation to Craig’s observations on rentier capitalism. The only explanation as to why Westminster won’t fix the problem, is because most of them are part of the rentier class, or intend to join it at some point in the future.
Thanks to everyone for your replies; Goose, perhaps needless to say, but I pretty much agree with everything in your post. I suspect the ‘stability’ thing was directed at the brokers and buyers at the stock exchange. The BBC inform me that the ‘surging’ pound vs dollar rate is due to Reeves’ ongoing embrace of austerity, and that’s just the sort of stability Laour voters apparently crave. Either that, or they’re getting their backstabs in early in the hope that they’ll be forgotten in five years time! Best wishes all.
“One female guest on the BBC’s special event programme defended FPTP by comparing the UK’s smooth transition of power to France’s recent inconclusive, close, three-way split National Assembly election outcome”.
Imperial Rome and, later, Byzantium usually had “smooth transitions of power”. The old emperor died – naturally or otherwise – and the new emperor took over within 5 minutes. (Or else he, too, would have died and been replaced by someone more decisive). If anyone had mentioned democracy everyone concerned would have died laughing.
Smoothness can be overrated.
Since Labour are well aware that what got them into power was reciting the mantra Change to voters and otherwise telling them anything they wanted to hear, voters should write to their MPs, reminding them that they are expected to deliver Change, from the Tories – i.e. things that traditional lefties want, and if they don’t, there will be retribution come the next local elections, as well as general elections (in the longer term). I’m saying that having won power, Labour will be afraid of losing it, and if we can’t take anything Starmer says as set in stone, that applies to ‘conservative’ policies and statements as well.
“Like I’ve said on a previous thread the face at the front of the corporate/imperialist machine changes (the person who becomes PM) but the machinery behind the scenes never skips a beat.
Unfortunately, this now looks to be the case for its Great British Energy. For one, as a number of people pointed out on X, it is not actually “publicly owned”:
Starmer’s so-called “Great British Energy” is a typical neoliberal con. It won’t be a publicly-owned energy supplier. It will use public money to build green energy infrastructure that private energy companies will then use to keep ripping us off.
Labour’s Great British Energy is NOT planned to be an energy supplier for consumers.
It will be a fund in which the government and private investors put money into towards promising green technologies.
It’s basically a publicly backed green hedge fund.”
https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2024/05/20/labour-great-british-energy/
Too much government; that’s the underlying problem.
If there were (many) fewer of them, and they had much less money, then it wouldn’t matter very much and we could just politely disagree on greenery and housebuilding. You could spend (or not) your own hard earned to support whatever tickled your fancy and I likewise.
As it is we have to squabble about whether or not they are thieving enough of us and what they should squander it on.
And I doubt that the new lot will be any less keen on micro managing our lives and gaoling folks who disagree with them than the last lot were.
which us.
which we?
“Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for”.
– Will Rogers, quoted in The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations (1998) by Connie Robertson https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Will_Rogers
Yep, not much on the NHS, the tri party post office scandal, or the decades old blood contamonation scandal in which our special relationship US pal earned mega monies.
Sir feels nothing for, and cares even less about, people including children and babies. He’s the guy, after all, who told us that cutting off water, food and medicines to 2m+ Palestinians was a perfectly acceptable response to the terrorist attack of 7 October last year.
People should expect crumbs from Sir Kid Starver and his shady cabinet whilst they fill their boots from private healthcare providers and representatives of foreign powers. That’s what they were doing in opposition. Does anyone really think they will *Change* now they’re in government?
“…the terrorist attack of 7 October last year”.
Do you by any chance mean the desperate breakout from the world’s largest concentration camp?
Thank God. I’m sick and tired of the climate taxes. The on-shore wind farms will have to be connected to the grid. I wonder how much that is going to cost. Joe public doesn’t have much left after all the recent cost increases. Time to wind down the alarmism and all the costs that come with it.
Shame that the science and actual climate change is unlikely to alter just because you are “sick and tired of it”
Are you King Canute or just a total idiot?
The science is not settled. The green lobby persecutes anyone who dares criticise the theory. Big business is now making a killing so skeptics don’t get much coverage if any. I’ve heard and studied both sides of the debate and the alarmist come across as a religious cult much the same as Craig encountered on his recent campaign. It’s only the west that believes it. The developing countries are just playing along for the money and to see us shoot ourselves in the foot. They see us as trying to stop development in their countries. India recently charged a climate activist with subversion.
Yes, the science is settled. You are welcome to discuss it if you think otherwise, and I am sure you will – unless, that is, you are one of those climate change denialists who get all shy:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/climate-change-denialists-who-get-all-shy/
If you are feeling too shy, don’t feel bad – you are in company (if not exactly good or brave company). No fewer than 100% of those denialists have bottled it and failed to stick around for more than five minutes, even if they had the courage to show up at all.
Strange that, when they’re so insistant that they have truth and facts on their side. 🤔
Glenn, the fact that you disagree with someone does not impose any duty on them to engage in argument with you.
There would be no point in doing so, as you are clearly too dogmatic to be persuaded. Don’t waste your time trying to shame me into wasting my time.
“Are you King Canute or just a total idiot?”
No. Unlike you, he seems to be informed. We are continually being told how much cheaper wind and solar are than conventional sources such as coal, oil, gas, and nuclear. In that case, why are British energy prices nearly the highest in the world?
Ofgem. The cost of renewables is irrelevant to the question of the truth of climate change.
We are bombarded with truths and falsehoods on every subject all the time. Is there a shortcut to determining the truth in general? No. You have to do your own research and understand the subject from the basic principles to the argument being made.
Except for one shortcut, scientific subjects. Scientists look at the evidence, form hypotheses and test them against the data. Other scientists criticise the hypothesis and make their own. This process is cyclic and the end result is a better understanding of the phenomena.
Scientists are not special, but the scientific method tests our ideas against nature. There is no other hypothesis which explains the warming of Earth over the last decades, except those put forward by climate scientists, grounded in physics. If a scientist did put forward a theory, backed by data, which explained it without resorting to CO2 emissions they would immediately get millions in funding from companies like oil, mining, cement.
Instead we get the same tired arguments against global warming which I have seen debunked 100 times since 2000.
“There is no other hypothesis which explains the warming of Earth over the last decades, except those put forward by climate scientists, grounded in physics.”
Age of the Planet versus ‘the last decades’, water vapour versus CO2, Ice Ages, Sunspot activities, etc. Plenty of hypothesis and the fact is that scientists know as much about the Climate as they know about the Human Brain – and that’s not much. The trick is not to confuse the climate with the weather.
I’ll say no more, sandbox suzie will get upset.
@Stevie Boy,climate models are limited by the data which is available. Tell me what is the better, more predictive hypothesis?
“Are you King Canute or just a total idiot?”
I’m King Canute, who, if you bothered to look him up, demonstrated to all the total idiots who were telling him that he was so powerful that he could tell the tides whether they could come in or go out, that it is hubris for men to think they can control nature. He sat in a chair on the seashore, commanded the tide not to come in and got his feet wet. Now we once again have a surfeit of people going round claiming that we can control nature, we could do with King Canute to rise up from his coffin in Winchester Cathedral and give everyone a much-needed lesson again.
I enjoyed that, Bayard. A classic example of “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring”.
Just to keep those interested up with the latest news: “This is Why Electricity Costs Twice as Much in Britain as in the USA” https://dailysceptic.org/2024/07/19/this-is-why-electricity-costs-twice-as-much-in-britain-as-in-the-usa/
Worth a read for anyone who lives in the UK. And, I think, relevant to this thread.
“Worth a read”
Not really. It is a load of old cobblers. The reason for high energy prices is that UK buys at market rates, because the tories thought that would be a good idea.
Regards
I worked for a bank some years ago and the absolute abandon with which they would lend to those for ‘buy to let’ shocked me. Meanwhile it was made more difficult for those looking to actually LIVE in the house. It’s unsurprising that we find ourselves in this position now.
Separately, the boom in council house sales, where Local Authorities didn’t even get to keep the small amounts made from selling the very best of their stock, has undoubtedly fuelled the shortage. Now we are well into the era where the original buyers have passed away and their children have disposed of the ex council property to private landlords. Homes that were once in ‘good areas’ that were ‘desirable’ and ‘well kept’ are precisely NONE of those things. We have stepped back 60 years to slum landlords and a shortage of rental properties. It seems that in this, as with everything, we (and I mean politicians here) learn nothing from the past..
“I worked for a bank some years ago and the absolute abandon with which they would lend to those for ‘buy to let’ shocked me. Meanwhile it was made more difficult for those looking to actually LIVE in the house”.
How very different from the much-loved George Bailey…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_a_Wonderful_Life
George Bailey: … Do you know how long it takes a working man to save $5,000? Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about… they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn’t think so. People were human beings to him. But to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they’re cattle. Well in my book, my father died a much richer man than you’ll ever be!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/quotes/?ref_=tt_trv_qu
Yet again, host and commenters lament the dire situation (Starmer’s dogshit, quelle surprise).
It’s a predicament – no one person or group is to blame.
The system itself (a non-human ‘intelligence’) is in control of everything, including the government installation process. It’s engineered things, effectively, to give the voters a choice between neoliberal party A, or neoliberal party B.
People vote, then wonder why nothing changes.
Maybe things will get better after the next GE /s.
Barring a violent revolution – and don’t think that can’t happen in Britain – the only way things can change is if the electorate educates itself. (No one else will; many people are well paid to make sure people can’t think and don’t want to).
“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty”.
— Thomas Jefferson to James Madison (1787)
Alas, people, generally, won’t educate themselves. The system likes them to be dumb, obedient workers and consumers.
They’ll just carry on, wondering why things keep getting worse, until something drastic happens.
There’s a lot of inchoate anger beneath the surface, already. Eg, in Leeds they just tipped over a police car and burned it etc.
My quick reading yesterday of the 40 or so Bills that will inevitably be passed without much ado supports the views in this article. Mostly brown boots and no breakfast from a traditional Labour perspective. Polished in a different tan they would be equally at home in a Tory King’s Speech. Giving more powers to elected tin pot mayoral dictators is pure Tory, so are the proposals to extend the powers of the police. Tories have not been averse to partial rail nationalisation when it get them out of a difficulty and so on, no real change anywhere. Of course this is just the first of things to come, and subsequent King’s Speeches will have the idea of keeping Starmer in power in sight. Not a lot to get hopeful about.
Go on then, I’ll jump into the trap.
“Ed Miliband’s support for onshore wind and for autonomous consumer energy production is to be welcomed.”
Explain your reasoning please.
For completely self evident reasons, obviously.
If you are a climate change denialist – don’t be shy!
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/climate-change-denialists-who-get-all-shy/
Man up, Steve! It’s character building, you know. Your timid mates Tom, Bayard and others are equally welcome to show some backbone (if they possess it, obviously).
The comment is addressed to the organ grinder not the monkeys.
Man up or shut up, Steve.
Or mouth off and run off, like the brave man of his convictions that you obviously aren’t.
No-one has to go play with you in your little sandpit glenn_nl. Tell you what, if you want to debate vaccines with me, come to twitter. I’m @PatrickSquirrel on there.
Yet another comment section derailed repeatedly by your obnoxious-ness Glenn. One could be forgiven for thinking its your intention at this point.
Northern : If someone kept saying that, say, blacks are less intelligent (it’s The Bell Curve, you know) but refused to discuss their nonsense, you’d be fine with that I take it. Responding to it is the derailing, right?
To make it more clear – since you appear to be slightly hard of thinking – raising contentious subjects all the time is the derailing. Not an invitation on such occasions to substantiate the incessant assertions.
Btw, it’s ‘obnoxiousness’ – one word. No need for the hyphen.
Squirrel : This is about the shy climate denialists, an important issue in my view. Especially because none of them have anything beyond a cowardly assertion.
I’m not interested in ‘debating’ every whacked out conspiracy theorist on every subject, Lord knows there are enough of you out there.
Particularly not on that cesspit Twitter. If that’s what you want to do, you carry on there. There are forum threads here for Covid, unless you like grandstanding to your fellow Twitter groupthinkers so much it just wouldn’t be gratifying enough for you.
That’s such a patently false equivalence that it doesn’t even really dignify a response, Glenn. Perhaps the reason people are ‘shy’ to debate you is its abundantly clear you’ve abdicated all objectivity in the discussion and therefore any meaningful debate is not possible. Most people treat the comments section as a public sphere – your hysterical reaction to any passing reference to a topic you don’t like is, at best, extremely arrogant. You know other sites literally have threads lamenting how you destroy every conversation below the line here, right?
N: “That’s such a patently false equivalence…”
That’s an extremely fair equivalence, which is why you won’t address it. Amazing how people get an attack of the vapours instead of making a point, spluttering with indignation instead.
After that duck, the rest of your post is a tiresome ad hominem, unsubstantiated of course. Refer me to these sites that have ‘threads lamenting how [I] destroy every conversation” if they exist.
I can’t say I’ve noticed any contributions from yourself, other than personal attacks on me. Perhaps I bruised your ego in another guise? If so, don’t take it personally, but you’d have to remind me.
Now if you really don’t have anything worthwhile to say, I have more threads to destroy – below the line, of course 😀
It’s quite interesting as to whom exactly is all this fiscal rectitude is aimed at?
Not the electorate (“No mater who they are”) but the blessed Markets.
“Stability” for the Markets – instability for the populous.
The continuity of Austerity in a further and deeper manner is a prerequisite for placating the markets – hence Base rates will not fall in the near future.
And of course “hoping” for growth rather than creating it in a Keynesian way as though The Good Lord may smile upon the UK and deliver it from Evil (Trump or Putin or Farage – take your pick).
Ditto the great NATO meeting where on the face of it the whole thing looks like posturing aimed at Putin and indirectly the Chinese, but behind the scenes they are all privately discussing the question as to what happens if Trump becomes US president and makes good on his “Ya Gotta Pay Your Dues” words.
All Trump reminds me of here is a gangster (all US Presidents remind me of gangsters), and DJ Trump has given the much weaker members of NATO an offer they can’t refuse.
So, the question is: How (if Trump is good on his threat?) can the EU leaders convince the punters in their own countries to pay up at the expense of The Social Post-War State for US protection or their going it alone against Russia.
A week is a long time in world politics and if the Israelis have a crack at Hezbollah and co. in the Lebanon and it escalates upstairs to Iran, then it could lead to a few Iranian ships blocking the Straits of Hormuz and daring anyone to remove them and the Yeminis at the bottom.
Then all the austerity calculations and the gaining of money for the EU to tool up militarily will disappear in a massive bout of inflation and turmoil.
Unless Sir Kier can get Great British Energy Company up and running by next Tuesday? (The Green solution for the Centrists?)
Loads of hot air.
So far, so good. Charles is aware that the sharks are circling. The aristocracy is looking to be sacrificed at the stroke of a pen. The hard working peers who have been educated to meticulously craft our laws are to be replaced with greedy, sleazy donors and lobbyists, and voting rights are to be curtailed. Pomp and ceremony is to be despised and strictly utilitarian dullness must prevail. Ed Miliband is a good guy and he has not been idle. King Charles is a good guy and he strives for a country that serves all its citizens.
The ousted villains are across the pond courting Trump and his racist running mate. Starmer is bowing to Biden’s demands and honouring the support for genocide which his predecessor promised.
Early days. A decent start. Time will tell
If Charles and Milliband are the good guys, God help us, we’re all doomed.
The phrase ‘poverty of ambition’ was attributed to Aneurin Bevan as I recall. He felt that the working class did not aspire to anything more than economic security (which he himself fought for) whereas it had the potential to do so much more.
I cannot criticise Keir Starmer on these grounds. His ambition is to retain the aristocracy as the landowners, the bourgeoisie as the holders of capital, and the workers as the drawers of water and hewers of wood. As a political vision it is pre Marxist, but it is an astonishing ambition in the face of reality that is facing the country. Idiotic? Yes. Incoherent? Undoubtedly. But not lacking in ambition anymore than England’s forlorn attempt to win something at football.
Alyson
Starmer is has invited Zelensky, who’s here in the UK, to attend Friday’s cabinet. Apparently, Russia are operating a ‘shadow fleet’ of tankers, to skirt around imposed imposed oil sanctions. And Starmer is promising to use anything up to and including direct confrontation (boarding?) to stop this.
His ‘gung-ho’ behaviour is in the Blair mould; he even talked, at the NATO summit, of standing “shoulder to shoulder with the US” as Blair himself once did. Already he’s made a naive attempt (without consulting NATO allies) to unilaterally give Ukraine permission to use Storm Shadow missiles on targets inside Russia. Then his promised £3bn a year to Ukraine, indefinitely. Interestingly, ending the two-child benefit cap would cost an estimated £3.5bn per year! Does charity not begin at home?
His behaviour to date, fits perfectly with the theory this guy is some sort of career stooge/servant of the establishment, intel agencies.
Let us remember who Zelensky is, this man who has been invited to a cabinet meeting by our recently elected PM. First of all, he is no longer a President, since his term of office expired some time ago. He is a pretender to office at best. Secondly, were a free and fair election to be held in Ukraine tomorrow (or what remains of it) he would have as much chance of re-election as Joe Biden, Scholz or Macron. Thirdly, under advice from Boris Johnson, he scuppered a peace deal in Istanbul which would have saved around half a million lives and granted (in the limited terms of legal decree) an independent Ukraine (with devolution for the Donbas) on condition it remained NATO free. Instead he went for broke – NATO would help him destroy the Putin regime – and instead his country has been broken. He’s in good company this morning. A plenary session of the idiocracy.
Holding a presidential election while the country is fighting for its life would be quite remarkable.
Britain for example didn’t have a GE between 1935 and 1945.
A link was posted here recently to the Ukrainian constitution which makes provision for emergency situations.
You say “(or what remains of it)” in respect of Ukraine.
Yes Ukraine has been terribly hurt. But by whom?
That would be President for Life and Kleptocrat in Chief Putin.
Ukraine isn’t “fighting for its life”. It’s fighting to control 3 relatively small territories in the southeast whose inhabitants mostly don’t want to be part of Ukraine.
Absolutely agree, Townsman.
That was the point of long diplomatic process known as the Minsk Agreement, namely, to give some autonomy to Donbass and Lughansk. (Crimea, as a Republic, is a separate entity, quite legally could vote for its independence or joining the historical motherland. Looks like they had little choice then, as ultra-nationalists tried to destroy them.)
People who argue otherwise claim that Kiev has right to shell them all for disobedience, nontheless, the arguers don’t want to be in the place of these Crimeans or Donbassians. Even they would be horrified and disgusted, if walked in Crimean shoes, I guess.
I personally hesitate on how to understand such an attitude. Is it hipocrisy, or is it racism, like ‘those Russians in Eastern Ukraine have no right to decide their own fate. Obey or die.”
JK redux
You know full well if Zelensky thought he’d get 80%+ they’d have an election for the propaganda value alone of defying Russia. Plus proving support for the continuation of the war. There is, however, plenty of evidence that Ukrainians think dying in a pointless attempt to wrestle back control of an East they didn’t control before the invasion, is both futile and a waste of young Ukrainian life. Crimea doubly so.
As an analogy : If, in the future, Scots voted massively for independence in an unauthorised referendum (no Westminster enabling legislation : a Section 30), would you think it proper sending British troops to fight separatists who, as confirmed by the referendum result, had the overwhelming support of the Scottish people?
Just because someone in Kyiv, or in the analogy, London, says it’s OUR territory, doesn’t make it so. Not without the consent of the people who actually live there.
I don’t see what it’s got to do with the EU, US or UK. Another example; imagine if the US ever has secessionists close to victory – do you think the Federal Govt would welcome Chinese or Russian input? Or tell them to mind their own f*cking business?
Thank you, Goose. It will be interesting to see how shoulder to shoulder Starmer will stand with Trump. Zelensky is an actor. His handler is the dual national Israeli Ukrainian, Kolnoyski, who funds the bio weapons labs which Hunter Biden’s hard drive exposed. He also produced the television series about a fictional president of Ukraine played by Zelensky. The battle in Ukraine and Gaza is for the monopoly on gas supply to Europe, blowing up Nordstream and killing all the Palestinians in Gaza, to own the gas for Europe. It is a battle to defend the mighty dollar, and Saudi is our oil supplier who I suspect of involvement in October 7th events, re Daesh etc.
Trump knows that Putin has acted according to international law and that escalation of hostilities will be to our detriment. Biden and Bush laid out the plans for global dominance of oil and gas everywhere. Biden wants to see it through.
Starmer is on board with dollar hegemony. For us though he has enough Labour MPs for a broadly national interest to attempt to prevail over the hedge fund dominance of public services. Black Rock is set to get the funds earmarked for rebuilding Ukraine’s infrastructure. If Starmer can get the greed out of privatised utilities, and bring them back in house, he will have achieved a great deal. Protecting pension funds will be key to ousting the leeches from our national insurance outsourcing,
There are better ways to integrate aristocratic land holdings than throwing out peers with the skills and experience to carry out the duties of a second House. The Lords defended us from the worst of the Tory meannesses. Rebuilding a community focussed Britain will take time. Let’s hope we have that time to achieve it.
IMO. The fact is that for the UK to move forward into the 21st century it needs to cast off the historical leeches that have been sucking the life out of our country. Get rid of the monarchy and democrasize or destroy the Lords. Redistribute the massive land holdings of the ‘aristocracy’ to the people.
While the mindless worship of the titled inbreds continue there is no real hope for the country.
“Redistribute the massive land holdings of the ‘aristocracy’ to the people”.
As a matter of interest, what do you imagine “the people” would do with land if they were given it?
Oh, I know – sell it! So it would all end up in the hands of huge corporations instead of harmless, conservative aristocrats.
“Redistribute the massive land holdings of the ‘aristocracy’ to the people.”
The idea that the aristocracy have “massive land holdings” is mainly based on two things, the Duke of Westminster’s estate in London and the fact that all surveys on who owns what in Britain categorise landholding by area, not value. So yes, aristocrats own a huge percentage of the land area of the UK, but not a huge percentage of the land value. One square foot of land in central London is worth more than one acre of Scottish moorland. The land area of England is approximately 37.3 million acres. The population of England is estimated to be approximately 56.5 million people in 2021. Thus, if all the land was equally divided, everyone would get about 2/3 of an acre, which would be very handy if it was farmland right next to your existing house, but damn all use if it was moorland many miles away from where you live, with neither access road nor water.
Land has an intrinsic value. One square foot of land in central London will be worthless in the event of eg a currency collapse or some other, massive, system fail.
In fact, most land in cities will be virtually useless – covered in tarmac and concrete, as it is. Can’t grow much on that…
However, land away from cities will become valuable, in real terms, regardless of money.
“Land has an intrinsic value.”
Land has no intrinsic value, only the value which human efforts give to it. Even to produce food, the land has to be cultivated. Land in London has value because of all the human efforts that have gone into making London what it is and to continue being that thing. Should all that be destroyed, it will lose that value because of the destruction of the human effort and no other cause. It will not regain that value because too much effort will be required to make it useful again, whereas land in the countryside, where the historic cumulative effort has not been destroyed and requires little ongoing effort to make it useful, will retain its value.
The monarchy is the last bastion of national sovereignty and Charles was keen to redistribute profits from North Sea gas and oil back to consumers. Keeping national control of the seabeds, the coastlines where everyone can roam, the national parks like the New Forest, means we keep an old man who wears a 200 year old cloak, sits in an uncomfortable gold carriage and lives in draughty old palaces, to sign all our democratic law making processes into legislation. I would rather have trusty old Charles checking the homework of our elected politicians, and the dedicated lords who ensure new laws are compatible with existing legislation, than lose any of these gatekeepers who keep out greedy billionaires who would rob the country of its tied Crown assets.
Alyson, this is what a good guy looks like at a time when the UK is participating in the genocide of women and children.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/24028582.former-scottish-police-chief-returns-mbe-uks-stance-gaza/
Compare with your King Charles and HoL peers.
According to The Racket covering RNC day#4 one source claims that a speech is prepared for Biden to not run again and subsequently hold Primaries with KH and 3, 4 other “candidates”.
I am still in for HC v. DT!
“Landlords can rent at exorbitant prices to renters who have no choice, and landlords can abuse them by neglecting property maintenance.”
yes, and Craig Murray can take a house brick and batter old Ladies, but he doesn’t. Both such actions are illegal, both undoubtedly happen, but neither are in any way representative of contemporary social mores
Craig undoubtedly needs money to fund his many laudable initiatives; people in retirement need money to fund their final years in the absence of a meaningful State pension. But just as Craig doesn’t revert to mugging Grannies in order to optimise his income, nor do I exploit my Tenants.
What’s the alternative? Shall I sell up, and then they will either have nowhere to live, or have Blackrock as their Landlord?
Yes. Try investing in something a bit more useful and less exploitive.
What is more useful than providing someone with somewhere to live?
The fundamental problem of the housing market is that there aren’t enough houses where people want to live.
What keeps house prices so high is the balance between supply and demand. If there were more supply (houses in an area), prices would fall.
Rubbish. Most of the massive housing developments in the south outstrip the actual needs of the areas, and this is based upon ONS figures and local council reports. These developments are totally out of the financial reach of the local, indigenous populations and are bought up by private landlords and even investment funds to be rented back at crippling rents that ensure the renters can never save enough to buy a home. More houses do not equate to lower house prices, no evidence of that at all, it’s capitalist BS. The housing market is corrupt and TPTB like it that way.
Rubbish yourself. “ONS figures and local council reports” show nothing of the sort.
“These developments are totally out of the financial reach of the local, indigenous populations and are bought up by private landlords and even investment funds to be rented back at crippling rents that ensure the renters can never save enough to buy a home. ”
If it’s cheaper to rent money and buy property than to rent property, why do people not rent the money and buy the property? If it’s more expensive, then why do it?
“If it’s cheaper to rent money and buy property than to rent property, why do people not rent the money and buy the property?”
Because ‘renting money’ is not an option available to your average wage slave stuck in rented property.
Those least in need of a bank loan find it easiest to secure one. The same goes for any other financial ‘product’.
“Because ‘renting money’ is not an option available to your average wage slave stuck in rented property.”
Then how do you afford the rent on the property, which, we are assured, is more than the rent on the money needed to buy the property?
Because landlords will accept money for rent, but banks won’t give a mortgage.
‘Renting money’ is easy for people who don’t need it. Like I said.
“What keeps house prices so high is the balance between supply and demand. If there were more supply (houses in an area), prices would fall.”
Yes, but only in that area. Increasing the supply of houses in town A will do nothing about the cost of housing in town B. In any case, who is going to build all these houses that will saturate the market and bring the prices down? Certainly not the people who had to pay the going rate for their building land. They are not going to sell at a loss. In cases where there has been a surplus of property on the market, the effect has not been to bring prices down, but to put up the number of unsold properties, as could be amply seen in Ireland at the time of the “Celtic Tiger”.
The price of houses is determined by how much people can afford to spend, which, in turn is determined by how much they can afford to borrow, which is governed by the interest rate. When interest rates are low, as they have been for decades, people can afford to borrow more and so prices go up. Rising prices stimulate demand and demand stimulates supply. All periods of a boom in housebuilding in the UK have been accompanied by rising prices.
Yes, all very well and good – but what is to be done?
Problems require solutions – otherwise we end up on the sidelines moaning like the Polly Toynbees of this world. Don’t get me wrong, moaning is easy and does ease some frustrations
Craig: I applaud your getting stuck in at Bradford though I do have reservations about a single issue campaign and tying ones coattails to George. I don’t think the Workers Party is a solution – and I say that as an IS cadre personally trained by Tony Cliff.
Far too often we are guilty of telling a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
We all (those supporting you and reading this site) know what the problems are and, in terms of policies, we probably know what the solutions are.
How to we get from analysis to change?
The bad news is that we can’t – at least we can’t in a first past the post system.
Our only hope has been the Labour Party and those of us who joined when there was hope have probably left by now.
I (and many others) said in the 1970s that the Labour Party was beyond reform – because of internal tensions, external pressure and lack of specific policies. Nothing has changed except that in the 1970s the big TU leaders were part of the external conservative pressure! The Labour Party has never been a socialist party – that would be like expecting the Guardian to be a radical newspaper!
The only solution is a new party and unfortunately that is not The Worker’s Party: wrong language, wrong policies, wrong leadership. I don’t have the energy for it these days and I think you risk burning yourself out if you are not careful.
I have run my own software/electronics company for over 40 years (I am still inventing and exporting stuff!) and anyone who comes to me with a problem had better also come with a suggestion for a solution.
In this case I don’t have one – which is depressing.
So, like you, and probably others, I have vented my frustration by writing – as the Fairness and Justice Party (which is a fiction).
http://bitbarn.co.uk/fjp/
Does anyone have a solution or do we continue to cry into our beer?
One solution would be for planning departments to demand that any housing development over 50 houses to be built, MUST include an apartment complex for those who as yet cannot afford housing, a proper ladder.
They could be 1 ‘2 and 3 bedroom apartments with the ground level prioritising those who are elderly or infirm. this obsession with ‘must have’ a house is completely ludicrous and not affordably for most young working couples.
Further, self build housing using sustainable materials, currently shunned by many planning departments, should be allowed if prior examples are adhered to. To get mortgages for such a development is like entering a battle, even when it can be proven taht housingfo such kind has been existed for over 100 years and that its longivity is better than your average single brick high energy house build on a 6″ concrete pad, with cracks appearing within the first 5 years. The majority of housing is not designed or built to last.
I think you may have misunderstood me. You are proposing a wish, a policy, not a solution as to how we bring about change. As I said, I think we have no shortage of wishes/policies but they are useless without a plan to get them implemented .
I certainly hope that you have a plan to create that plan.
“They could be 1 ‘2 and 3 bedroom apartments with the ground level prioritising those who are elderly or infirm. this obsession with ‘must have’ a house is completely ludicrous and not affordably for most young working couples.”
The obsession with home ownership is ludicrous, full stop. It has arisen because of the changes introduced by the post-war Labour government, which aimed to remove the private rented sector altogether and replace it with the state as the only landlord. Up to then, all levels of society rented, and did so out of choice, not necessity. With the sever contraction of the private rented sector, renting became something that only the poorer section of society did, and so it attracted a stigma. Another result of this housing policy was that house prices were kept low, but when the Thatcher government dismantled the policy, prices started to rocket upwards and it was quickly seen that vast fortunes could be made in what was, essentially, land speculation. If I still owned the first house I ever bought and sold it today, it would bring me in more money that I have earned in my entire working life. People who are renting see that and, not unnaturally, are unhappy that their landlord, not they, are benefiting from this bonanza. We have become a nation of land speculators and wannabe land speculators.
“The majority of housing is not designed or built to last.”
The majority of housing has never been designed or built to last. We think it was because we see old buildings that have lasted centuries, but we don’t see all the ones that have fallen down or been demolished because they are not there any more.
We have another conservative government.
Conservatives get in, we have another labour government.
WAKE UP! We have one group, no matter who gets in it will be those pulling the strings that decide what goes on. Never has it been more clear.
UNIPARTY! We will just circle the drain for as long as the controllers want. There is no electoral route.
“Not everything is appalling. Ed Miliband’s support for onshore wind and for autonomous consumer energy production is to be welcomed”…..and you wonder why you didn’t get elected.
The madness of NetZero, Decarbonisation and stopping the use of fossil fuels will not only impoverish ‘skint little people’, it will turn the lights off and shut down the workplaces…_
“[Net Zero] will turn the lights off and shut down the workplaces”
Some say that’s the idea – that the PTB realise the game’s up, re depletion of FFand resources causing energy costs to only increase (and hence kill their sacred cow, economic growth).
I personally think that view gives them to much credit, and they actually believe the bullshit about Net Zero etc. that they spout.
“…they actually believe the bullshit about Net Zero” ….James.
As the wise old sage once said ‘to get others to believe you aren’t talking nonsense, you must first convince yourself that you are speaking wisely’…_
Continuing the use of fossil fuels, which more and more have to be imported and inevitably become more and more expensive as they run out, will bankrupt us. Individually and as a country. Who do you think paid for the glittering skyscrapers of Dubai? You did.
Do you seriously believe modern civilization could be run on ‘renewables’?
Do some maths.
Do you seriously believe that fossil fuels will never run out? If so, do some geometry. The volume of a sphere is 4/3 pi r cubed. If not, then you’re saying you’d rather modern civilisation ends than we move on to something sustainable. If you’re proposing nuclear, do some research on the cost and time overruns and the lack of any definitive answer to storing the waste. What we still don’t have is a fully developed way to store large amounts of renewable energy but we know a number of potential routes and no technology, including coal, oil and gas, ever all appeared at once.
Of course FF will run out, as I said in another answer, further down the page (actually, the ‘dregs’ will be left in the ground, being too energetically costly to extract).
It’s not a question of what I’d prefer – modern civilization is not sustainable, whether you or I like it or not, full stop.
So no, I’m not proposing nuclear either.
The best course of action may be to continue using FF, while winding down the system, but the ‘leaders’, whose only concern is remaining in power, will never do that (or admit the predicament).
For further information, may I recommend these two articles:
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/09/can-modernity-last/
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/04/distilled-disintegration/
James: it boils down to what’s meant by “modern civilisation” I suppose. That evolves all the time, partly in response to changes in circumstances. Not being able to stick a pipe in the ground and have millions of years worth of buried sunshine gush out is certainly a change but we can adapt and the ways are starting to become evident. Unless of course “modern civilisation” means no more than non-stop flights to Sydney, which likely will stop. What the math can certainly tell us is that an 18th Century civilisation isn’t going to support our current global population.
‘Modern civilization’ aka modernity aka the thing we’ve all been born and raised in. Consumer products, supermarkets, phones, power tools, tourism, roads, cars, planes, courts, hospitals, medicines, universities… all institutions… electricity… etc… it’s a long list, but you get the picture.
Saying that it’s unsustainable is not a political statement. It means, literally, it is not possible to sustain it.
Not having FF will bring it to an end. .
Not sure there’d be much left to ‘adapt’ to…
Could someone please provide a coherent account of Modern Monetary Theory.
Okay – modern monetary theory is probably best explained in the number one Netflix documentary called Finding the Money. It has played to full houses in Australia and New Zealand and can be purchased in America on Netflix but not in the UK as our hedge fund overlords will prefer we did not comprehend how a government with a sovereign currency can decide how much currency should be in circulation, relative to skills, resources, infrastructure and balance of trade.
I once tried to explain it using the metaphor of a tree…..
The roots are the resources, such as raw materials, skills to develop them, population health, and the in-house funding of utilities such as water, green energy, and surplus coal, oil or gas. The trunk is the government which coordinates resources and money, ensuring that essentials get to where they are needed by putting money where it ensures the nation will thrive and produce a surplus to sell. The priority is health, education, skills, clean air, water and food.
All money in circulation is called Deficit (I owe the bearer etc etc) and surplus comes from trade. Historically the Tories leave a larger Deficit and Labour reduces it by increasing productivity.
Giving billions to your mates for duff PPE etc is called helicopter money. It increases the Deficit and fattens bank balances with little or no national benefit. The ‘fruits’ of the Magic Money Tree ( a funky acronym) can be distributed widely or narrowly and some are needed to replenish the roots. A government decides where to distribute assets and productivity, what to fund for the needs of the nation,
Insurance is a way of redistributing financial assets, and hedge funds are a bit like gambling as some win while many lose. Playing with pension funds is a bit of a lottery.
Subsidising house building risks housing assets devaluing so Tories prefer a shortage to a glut as it keeps prices high, as long as profit is sustainable. Tricks like ground rent for leasehold properties have been used to take more money from mortgage holders.
MMT simply means governments can decide where to put currency. Subsidising industry is a political choice as is funding infrastructure. Taxation is the method for government to manage and limit distribution. Taxation is cancelled money. It can be balanced with government spending but it does not have to be. All money is national Deficit and the wealthy hold more of it. Most people want enough to meet their needs within a community of similar wealth and available resources. Most people don’t want or haven’t the time for billionaire yachts, but a few enable the funding of new technologies, so a range of varied incomes is fine. Any political model of financial distribution and national or hierarchical expenditure is compatible with modern monetary theory. It is just a model which allows political choice to determine where the Deficit should be distributed.
I wouldn’t trust Netflix. Consciously or not, it’s designed to support the Wetiko system.
As for the tree metaphor, it’s unnecessarily complicated. The economy is based entirely on energy and resources. Human ingenuity is a big fat myth – all inventions, ‘tech’ etc. are simply means to harness energy. Take away the energy / resources, and – no more inventions or ‘tech’.
Insurance, pensions etc… it’s all bollocks – protection rackets and Ponzi schemes. ‘Tech’ and computers have just enabled the system to consolidate its control over Man and Nature.
What’s real is the physical: Earth, food, shelter. People have been conditioned by the system into giving up responsibilty for their own survival.
The mass hallucination has been so powerful that now it’s virtually impossible to live freely outside the system. 99% of people would be in big trouble if the trucks stopped supplying the supermarkets.
But, whatever Starmer and the rest say, infinite economic growth is not possible on a finite planet.
That’s physics, not politics.
When will people stop believing in the big lie of infinite economic growth? As long as the truth (about finite resources, depletion etc.) is omitted from the mainstream, the illusion will be maintained – until TSreallyHTF.
As far as I can see, no mixed economy where activity is mostly in the private sector works anything like your tree. The government does not coordinate resources. As for money, the central bank attempts to manage the quantity of the stuff to keep inflation on target – and that quantity depends on the real economy and the banks and on the target the government sets. Central planning may approximate what you describe.
Simply and crudely put, but basically correctly, MMT asserts that a government can simply print as much money as it wants or deems necessary and can use other tools to control inflation.
According to MMT, Theresa May was lying when she said “there is no magic money tree”. There is.
From Wikipedia:
“Modern monetary theory or modern money theory (MMT) is a heterodox macroeconomic theory that describes currency as a public monopoly and unemployment as evidence that a currency monopolist is overly restricting the supply of the financial assets needed to pay taxes and satisfy savings desires. According to MMT, governments do not need to worry about accumulating debt since they can pay interest by printing money. MMT argues that the primary risk once the economy reaches full employment is inflation, which acts as the only constraint on spending. MMT also argues that inflation can be controlled by increasing taxes on everyone, to reduce the spending capacity of the private sector.
MMT is opposed to the mainstream understanding of macroeconomic theory and has been criticized heavily by many mainstream economists. MMT is also strongly opposed by members of the Austrian school of economics, with Murray Rothbard stating that MMT practices are equivalent to “counterfeiting” and that government control of the money supply will inevitably lead to hyperinflation.”
Obviously, a lot of complicated issues and debates then arise from that, but that is for a later post.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_monetary_theory
Inflation is essentially a monetary phenomenon: allow excess money supply relative to real transactions, or real demand for money, and prices will rise. What other tools will control inflation? The central bank is the issuer of currency. The bulk of money in circulation is not currency. When the economy is working at capacity, further growth in the money supply does indeed cause inflation. This is not MMT but orthodox economics. Creditors tend to stop extending credit when they think the government will just print money to repay in devalued currency. Raising taxes to curb private sector growth transfers economic activity from the private sector to the public – this is good how?
Ewan
No expert myself but it seems to involve the Treasury printing money. Not physical notes but allowing private banks to add rows of coconuts (noughts) to their lending balance sheets.
I hear The Fed receives 6% of a dollar for each dollar printed (luvvly jubbly).
No, but if you or I tried that one with our own personal printing presses we’d be locked up straightaway as soon as we passed our clean crisp copy to our local Co-op worker for a bottle of milk.
The mystery of why a Treasury of any country doesn’t do this themselves instead of the private banks has perturbed editors of The Sun for years (only joking – they don’t bother with that stuff – just poverty stricken benefits claimants getting an extra £10 a week for “doing nothing”), as why pay more money on top of what is actually required?
I think that this put very roughly is what MMT’rs are all about – a sort of DIY because, if it’s our money being thrown about then we had better have a say in who does it and who it goes to.
From memory the idea of printing money is a good idea in a slump or downturn (Keynes’ method) but in the UK the productive forces are not available to meet the demand once that money is put into the economy.
Then if these products are not available domestically and demand is high you can import inflation. Meaning higher prices.
There are loads of MMT’rs on Youtube – Steve Keene – Stephanie(??) and Michael Hudson (always worth a watch) and are very informative and thought-provoking. I don’t agree with everything they say but at least they are thinking where as the NATO Summit of yesterday may as well have been carried out by AI Avatars. Ignore them and watch the above three – at least you’ll find out something(s) you didn’t know.
Good luck.
My understanding of MMT is that it simply observes that a government that issues its own money doesn’t need to tax people to fund its spending. It only needs to tax to limit demand to what the economy can provide at the time and thus control inflation. As such, it’s a simpler model than Keynesian handwaving gives us but its prescriptions in reality aren’t much different. I think its biggest oversight is regarding what I’ve seen called “propensity to import”, maybe because most of the theory comes from the USA which is potentially far more self-sufficient than the UK. When people and businesses have money in their hands, some of it goes on foreign goods and services. More money in circulation means more imports and if there isn’t a corresponding demand for our exports, the Pound will slide and imported inflation arise. In the days when Keynes was in vogue, countries coordinated their policies to maintain a reasonable balance of imports and exports but that’s probably not even possible now with China in the picture. My expectation is that the BoE will give us one excuse after another for high interest rates where the true reason is to attract more and more hot money to fund our imports and that sooner or later that’s going to come unstuck.
To say that government need not tax to spend, it need only print to spend and then tax to ensure its spending doesn’t cause inflation, is just a convoluted and (to me) obfuscating way of saying government spending depends on its ability to tax (and, of course, to borrow).
The point is that if the printed money expands the economy sufficiently, it can satisfy at least part of the demand stemming from the extra money in circulation without the need to claw it back permanently with taxes or temporarily with borrowing. If and sufficiently and all that, never mind how long an economy can expand on a finite planet. I’m far from convinced by MMT as a magic bullet but it’s a less convoluted model than most and, like Keynes, shoots down the picture of a national budget being like a household one. Remember that the now-departed postwar prosperity was based on Keynesian policies which included the judicious printing of money.
Your first sentence here sounds like lifting yourself up by your bootlaces. If there is slack in the economy, an increase in the money supply may well boost activity. So, in those circumstances, the central bank will ease its monetary policy ie cut the cost of money to the banking sector, making it profitable for banks to expand their balance sheet by lending to the private sector, and, in exceptional cases, if the private sector is too depressed (investment opportunities don’t look attractive even at lower interest rates), to the government (quantitative easing), thus increasing the money supply.
Ewan: very nice for the banks to have the monopoly on creating money. Could that be why Keynes and MMT aren’t allowed any traction? Of course, as with any private business, they’re going to do what’s best for them. Create money to boost the economy? Keep it scarce to boost interest rate margins? Hmm? Which is better for my bonus?
The banking system is an important part of the efficient matching of borrowing and lending, investment and saving. A small base of currency (a central bank and a money market) supporting a large supply of broad money. The obvious problem is that it is too important to fail. So bankers take risks in return for profits knowing the central bank/government will bail them out if they fail. This is not a reason to abolish the banking system but to work for more effective regulation and ensure the regulator isn’t “captured”. The banking system is an integral part of Keynes’s economics.
“What keeps house prices so high is competition to buy between commercial landlords.”
If that is the case, why has it not always been like that? There has always been competition between commercial landlords and between landlords and aspiring owner-occupiers, so what has changed?
“Mortgage payments are lower than rent payments, but ordinary people lack the capital formation or income as percentage of property price to secure mortgages at the inflated house prices.”
That is a function of the deposit requirements, not a function of the prices. House prices are governed by what people can afford to buy, which, in turn is governed by what they can afford to borrow, which is governed by the prevailing interest rate. However, deposit rules are not. As far as I recall, banks were told by the government to demand higher percentage deposits to stop “reckless lending”. The fact that this favoured existing property owners at the expense of first-time buyers should come as no surprise. You actually got it right the first time: “Nothing is being done to address the fundamental problem of the housing market, which is rentier landlordism”. When you look into it, most government policy ends up enrichening landowners at the expense of non-landowners. Land is one of the most lightly taxed assets in the economy whereas labour, with its four separate taxes on it, is the most heavily taxed. That is one of the main reasons why land is so expensive. If you tax things, they become cheaper, if you subsidise things they become more expensive. Apart from a brief period after WWII, the government of this country has always been supported by and drawn from landowners, with the large rural landowners in the form of the aristocracy and the squirearchy changing to smaller urban landlords, changing to owner-occupiers under Thatcher. The answer to all this is a land tax, which, in the form of Schedule A income tax, was charged in the post-war period, but soon abolished, as on would expect. Land tax, however, has always been electoral poison: it is an iron rule of politics that a government that presides over a fall in house prices will be voted out at the next election, unless they can win a war in the meantime. With another crash likely in the next two years, is it any wonder that Starmer is sounding belligerent?
Political choice in 14 years of Tory rule, has been to extract wealth from the poor and siphon it to the wealthy, rentier, class who have money to spare for buy to let, stock market investment, new technology. A poor trade balance needs to limit availability of expensive goodies which are imported. Subsidising British steel at a loss is essential for kick starting all the industries which use it. Clean energy will fall to monopolies to extract wealth if it is not planned at the outset, when it is almost free to provide once the infrastructure is in place. Ed will support local energy hubs and shared mixed source distribution.
Subsidising essentials is fine. The total sum of the nation’s wealth includes a lot of wealth circulating elsewhere.
Professor Stephanie Kelton was Bernie’s economic adviser. Steve Keene (LSE) predicted the 2008 crash. Steven Hail started the first MMT university program in Torrance University, Melbourne, and you can study online.
Money is the life blood of nations and managing supply and distribution of resources is government.
When Liz Truss stated ‘ I have a budget of billions. I can’t be expected to decide where it goes, so I give it to people who can’ her audience gasped.
We have not been well served. Too much valuable infrastructure has been outsourced to China and American hedge funds. They are locked in to our monetary system. Rebuilding from the roots up will take time.
“Clean energy […] it is almost free to provide once the infrastructure is in place.”
No, it isn’t. ‘Renewable’ energy (RE) is a false hope. It’s expensive (without large subsidies) and not remotely sustainable. But its biggest drawback is its miserable energy density, compared to FF. That means much, much more land and materials are required per MW, for RE than for FF.
“Subsidising essentials is fine. The total sum of the nation’s wealth includes a lot of wealth circulating elsewhere.”
Most of the milli/billionaires’ wealth is only ‘on paper’. Ie, in shares, investments etc., and if all that wealth was taken from them, it would not be possible to secure resources (oil, gas, minerals) with it – because they aren’t there.
The financial economy is vastly bigger than the real economy (of goods and services). It’s a bubble. When a realignment occurs, there will be a crash.
Please read, and absorb, this article: https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/2025-a-civilizational-tipping-point
From it:
“oil is still the master resource, making all other energy and mineral resources available. Mining, agriculture, construction, long distance transport, plastics, all hopelessly depend on petroleum. Hydro, nuclear and “renewables” are also made possible by using diesel and gasoline burning vehicles to bring people, raw materials and equipment on site. Should the availability of oil decline, it would eventually bring all other resources and energy production down with it.”
Should the availability decline? Surely that’s “When the availability declines” because it’s always been obvious there’s only a finite amount of the stuff. Even leaving climate issues aside, it isn’t a question of whether we should move away from dependence on oil. It’s just a question of the best way to do it and the sooner we start the less fraught it will be. We have in the past moved away from other things such as horses and slaves.
Yes, it is ‘when’, not ‘if’.
The system (‘civilization’) has been built using FF since their discovery (for ~200 years), and is totally dependent on them. The current paradigm (modernity) can only be powered by FF.
That’s the predicament: because of their extremely high energy density, no other energy source can replace them.
Moving away from horses and slaves was voluntary.
Moving away from FF won’t be. It’s going to happen (unavoidable), but it will be fraught.
“Subsidising British steel at a loss is essential for kick starting all the industries which use it.”
The purpose of the post-war nationalisation programme was that the profits made by the nationalised industries should accrue to the state, not that there should be no profits and the state should subsidise the industries. Why should steel be subsidised and not the timber trade? Far more people would benefit from cheaper timber than they would from cheaper steel. Indeed, why stop at one industry? Why not subsidise everyone? That would give a massive kick to the economy.
One aspect of public ownership is that Government can take a broader view of profit and loss than a private company would. For example, adding up the lost tax revenue and the benefits that would be payable to the newly unemployed should a works close and concluding that it’s cheaper to keep it open even at a loss. In the case of steel, we’ll need lots of it for the green transition which means lots of hard currency if we don’t produce it ourselves. But it’s a bit of a slippery slope since you can always find an accountant who’ll add up the numbers the way that gives you the answer that’s politically expedient.
Oh no, Steve! The Green Transition will be using wood, not steel.
According to Michael Hudson, what keeps house prices so high is simply the banks’ willingness to lend huge sums. The more they lend, the more interest they collect. And the greater the likelihood of the house buyer going broke, in which case the bank can foreclose and sell the house – or keep it and rent it.
If (to take an extreme case) banks never lent money for mortgages, house prices would be far lower. No one could afford to buy a house without having most of the price as cash. As banks have steadily increased the amounts they were willing to lend, house prices climbed as a result.
This is awfully depressing but needs saying. Many of my friends and family celebrated Starmer’s election and made me feel very curmudgeonly with my gripes about the Labour Party. But I think they will soon be very unpopular but who will replace them? There’s no real choice.
BTW wind power is doomed to failure and is an expensive waste of money at best and a scam at worst.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-146833592?r=16wdm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Yes it is high time that they do away with royalty. It serves no purpose in a democracy.
Better to bury history honourably than disgrace it in tabloids.