Retired Professor of Political Economy
(Lancaster University, UK - retired 2021)
(also #ProfDJ across the Lune Valley)
Contributor: North West Bylines #NoBridge
To be clear: I don't have any sympathy for the Tories...
but the key problem they have (like any government after a decade & a half in power), is when, for instance they say they are going to clamp down on tax avoidance, its not unreasonable to ask, well if you are going to do it now why haven't you done it sometime in the previous fifteen years.....
And, its pretty difficult to campaign on a dreadful recent record, while saying well, now we can rectify this often noted problem.
Keir Starmer appears to think this is a get out of jail free card, on accusations of backtracking on previous promises:
'with the damage that’s been done to the economy, particularly by Liz Truss, it is not possible to do that'!
While he may well be right that things have been made so much worse in the last three years that earlier promises have been undermined.... for many, its a series of shifts that have suggested he wasn't serious in the first place.
Zoe Williams (Guardian) thinks Rishi Sunak might actually be trying to lose the election & that sort of makes sense;
The Tories have so wrecked the country that their best bet is to walk away, leave Labour the almost impossible task of clearing up the mess & then in five years time (with the collusion of a supine right wing press) claim Labour have had their chance & the Tories can now save us from the wreckage (without acknowledging its Tory policies that did it)!
Someone needs to sit the Guardian editorial team down & explain to them:
Rising house prices are not 'growth' - this is asset price inflation driven by financial instruments & constrained supply... read my lips: IT IS INFLATION!
(just because its excluded from RPI/CPI measure doesn't make it growth!)
And most inflationary areas are not 'best performing' - they are areas of housing crisis!!!!
Revealing the direction of Tory policy, while (finally) Rishi Sunak has explicitly recognised the tax-raising impact of fiscal drag (the freezing of personal tax allowances, while prices & wages rise)... he only proposes unfreezing the personal allowance for pensioners.
Its a pity (if unsurprising) that he has not previously 'recognised' the impact of fiscal drag on the rest of the population... or more accurately its all too clear that until now he was happy to raise taxes on workers.
Its funny how in the face of losing an election, he started 'realising' all sorts of things - its almost like he was being wilfully 'ignorant' of this stuff....
maybe... but its a bit early to say; the key will be firstly what Labour actually do in government & secondly what emerges from the Tory fractionalism that will follow a major election loss
Yes, it may be a period of inflection (driven in part by the climate crisis).... If I was still lecturing on this stuff I'd be re-writing some of my lectures as we speak 😀
Yes the idea of regulatory capitalism has been alive for some time as a normative position among critical political economists with a political normative mission - see the work of Peter Drahos & John Braithwaite for instance... and indeed its a potion that I was broadly supportive of when I was a functioning professor (before retiring)
In academia there's a clear group of scholars (I guess among which I would have found myself) who do not merely analyse the political economy (critically) but also advocate for structural changes - so when I say 'politically normative' I mean word that doesn't merely say what is happening but takes a position on what ought to happen...
Unsurprisingly, given the problems for merchant shipping at the southern end of the Suez Canal, more ships are passing round the Cape of Good Hope... leading to longer journeys & container transfers at the west of the Mediterranean for shipment going to Italy, Greece etc.
Both add costs to shipments & as noted in a post yesterday, this will be another external driver of continued inflation.
You might disagree with Michael Hesletine on many things but I'm guessing many of us will agree with him on this:
'The state of our economy, defence & environment, the need to level up our society, control immigration & restore Britain’s standing in the world. None of these issues can be honestly addressed in isolation from our relationship with Europe. Yet Europe is the no-go area'!
Ignoring brexit & its consequences marks this as (likely) a pretty dishonest election!
So the good news is that the bill to exonerate the SubPostmasters gained Royal Assent last night, freeing up the fixed compensation scheme for those whose convictions are now quashed (or allowing them to apply to have their individual case assessed).
The, perhaps, not so good news, as much legal commentary has been focusing on is the (potential) precedent it sets for governments to reverse the decisions of Courts.
In this case it would seem pretty just, but in the future?
as @RichardJMurphy argues this morning the Starmerist Labour Party seems to have contempt for those on the left.
What is interesting about this to me (as a once functioning politics academic) is I'm reminded of the talk of a politics beyond left & right in the 80s/90s led by people like Anthony Giddens.
We now seem to have got beyond left & right not by virtue of ideological progression but rather by the continued movement (and narrowing) of the 'Overton Window' of what is seen as acceptable,
One of the mantras of modern education has been the benefits of (need for) 'lifetime learning'; the utility of adults retiring to education when their skills need updating or they wish to acquire knowledge to change (or develop) their career(s).
That funding cuts since 2010 have nearly halved the numbers of adults (re)entering various levels of education is both depressing & another instance of austerity & Tory cuts constraining people's life choices (chances).
Before Brexit you'll recall the easy journeys to Europe & how this has become more difficult since... well sadly, you ain't seen nothing yet.
The EU's new border regime (which of course we are now outside; more outside than we were from Schengen), will require prior registration (like the US system) and biometric uploads on entry to the EU.
From 6th October the cost in time & inconvenience we have visited on ourselves (or was visited on us by Leave voters) is going to get a while lot worse!
So the Environmental Agency, is embarrassed to reveal the true state of our environment...
They find it difficult to answer prescient questions from NGOs with significant expertise (the implications being, better informed that the EA staff) & (it would seem) would like the NGO's Q.s to be more simply put to help EA staff offer better answers?
If you wanted a picture of a failing regulatory agency this would be it....
The number of chefs coming into the UK on skilled worker visas has been rising quickly.... the bad news for the hospitality sector is once the new threshold for wage levels for visa applicants kicks in, the average wage of chefs means they will earn too little to get a visa...
Perhaps more interestingly if we compare chefs with software developers, we might suggest that the UK's strategy of more IT training seems to have worked... even if we seem unable to train chefs?
In the battle for the youth vote we now seem to have some clear blue water between the parties;
Labour is (at least at the moment) offering to lower the voting age to 16 - perhaps hoping that 18 year olds will see this as a positive move for their younger siblings?
Meanwhile the Tories are offering mandatory 'national service' at 18 to build character & experience....
Hmmm... while actually, I'm not sure the Tories idea is nuts, I can't see many 18 year olds going for it.
For me the purpose of the national social service would be to build community solidarity & cross-class empathy/interaction, towards seeing society not as factions competing for resources, but rather more as a collective endeavour. Clearly this would not be achieved just by this policy, but handled rightly it could create a real social good.... certainly it might not have instrumental worth, but the general social benefits would be great IMHO
The key thing about the compulsive element (and this would need to be class blind - no buying your way out) is that people from diverse backgrounds would physically/socially interact - I'm not convinced that this is achieved online (but then again I'm over 60 & am sceptical about many of the claimed benefits off online 'community')
I'd agree that works for those who want to go to university, although even then it can become quite tribal - but having worked in universities for a quarter of century, it is not what everyone one wants nor is universally beneficial - but I've always been interested in a pre-university (or other route) period when young people could work together in different situations but also across social classes/groups....
