URGENT
Ever since the Blair-Brown takeover,
Labour has tried to avoid pain and conform to the prevailing neoliberal
orthodoxy in an effort to be respectable and avoid frightening people.
This path to power no longer works in
the way it did in 1997 the year of hope. Since then Britain’s economic position
has deteriorated, the people have rejected the old orthodoxies in the Brexit
vote, and the 2017 election has shown that more radical policies are becoming
more acceptable.
Which makes it time to tell the truth to
the people. Britain is in a mess. Our economy can neither pay its way in the
world nor support the spending the electorate requires. Our country is
relegated to decline unless tough measures are taken.
First taxes must increase, particularly
on the wealthy and the top five percent who’ve used neoliberal economics to
lavish so much wealth on themselves.
Secondly the economy must be boosted by
industrial policy, a national development bank and state aid to those sectors
which can win a competitive advantage to build national champions in the way
China has.
Third the pound must be made competitive to close the trade gap, tax
imports and boost exports and kept that way on a long term basis by changing
the inflation requirement on the Bank of England to one on competitiveness and
full employment.
Fourth boost business by requiring all
profits made in this country to be taxed in this country, changing the
imperatives to long term investment and building company strength. Corporate
governance reform should require workers
on the boards, make takeovers more difficult, stop the sale of other services
to audit clients and break up the Big Four auditors to produce competition
.
Fifth replace the imperatives of the
market by developing the public sector and public services, encouraging mutuals
and cooperatives and emphasising community rather than competition by
empowering local government, regulating the privatised sectors more
effectively, developing general rather than means tested benefits and restoring worker and union protections to
advance the many rather than empower and enrich
the few.
All these are simple verities restoring
Labour basics and weakening the both the
exotic spread of identity politics and the desperate desire to win the support
of the middle class and London by punishing the poor and the North.
Britain
needs a strong, resolute Labour Party not a pale pink meritocracy peddling a
diluted version of Thatcherism or a pale pink Liberal Party. Labour needs a
strong British economy if it is to deliver to the people ,rather than please
the possessing classes.This is a time for boldness not PR peddling.
