Politics Thread!

[pogo]

I don’t think the various bribes that were in the manifestos made much difference: Labour had theirs too, such as the energy price freeze, the rent rise freeze, while the tax cuts are too vague and too far off to have done much. At the same time cuts too are less of an issue as whoever is in power the deficit still needs tackling; Labour would have to make cuts even if they were unwilling to spell them out in as much detail as the Tories. And don’t expect Tory support to erode much after more benefit cuts: there has been broad support for both the principal and the detail of cutting benefits to shrink the deficit.

The main issue in the election in England was economic competence. Some of it came from Labour’s unwillingness to talk about their role in the crisis – they essentially let the Tories paint that picture for voters with disastrous effect. Some of it came from getting the last five years so wrong – their dire predictions about government policies ruining the country proved entirely wrong. And some was due to their vagueness in this campaign. They refused to say when they would eliminate the deficit, refused to say how, except for some tax raising measures which they refused to say how much they would raise (except when Ed Balls admitted they would actually lose money).

This does make Labour’s task easier though, in some ways. If they can come to terms with the deficit – their part in it and the need to tackle and eliminate it – it will deal with most of their economic competence issues. They then need to come up with real policies to deal with it, which will mean making tough decisions on controlling spending, even making cuts if they are still required. But as the Tories have shown you can win elections even with such policies if you explain to voters why they are needed.

[merman]

Sigh.

Labour's manifesto was clear - NO ADDITIONAL BORROWING TO MEET POLICY PLEDGES, CUTTING THE DEFICIT YEAR ON YEAR.

Osborne is about to flog off another £23 billion in Government assets including Eurostar, Lloyds shares (with taxpayers footing the bill to give buyers a discount) and the student loan repayment book (with current estimates that over 75% of student debt will NEVER be paid back, that's a lot of bailiffs and court letters). Oh, and he's selling the UK share of the European nuclear fuel reprocessing business, putting high-tech equipment, jobs and revenue at risk.


Today's attack on immigration is the Nasty Party at their typical worst.
13% of those "immigrants" last year were ENGLISH PEOPLE RETURNING FROM WORKING ABROAD.
And taking money away from exploited and poorly paid immigrants is never going to solve anything - go after the gang masters and criminals exploiting them, the firms employing them illegally.

[pogo]

Labour’s problem was that people didn’t trust or believe them on the deficit. They had pledged something similar last time round. In fact Brown made a big fuss over it, calling it his “golden rule”. It didn’t matter; they started borrowing two years after being elected and kept on borrowing for a decade. They then went on to deny it all, pretending it did not happen, which was particularly stupid given that it’s all recorded in the national statistics.

This time round there were particular reasons to doubt them. The vagueness of the deficit pledge (cutting it, but by how much ? No indication when they would eliminate it), the vagueness of their revenue raising measures, with no precise figure attached and with others (including Ed Balls) suggesting they would raise nothing or even lose money. Their sums just did not add up, and they did not seem bothered by it.

I agree with you on immigration. It’s wrong to label them as the nasty party though, as they are mostly continuing the policies put in place by Labour, which were already tough and unpleasant. The reason they haven’t been able to reduce numbers is Labour have already tried it all. So what of the new policies?

* Clamping down on landlords? Just a massive amount of paperwork for them, if they have to check every tenant’s immigration status.
* Making it illegal to work illegally? What?? I think the omission as people here illegally who are working can just be deported. I don’t know what difference making it also illegal will make; better just to deport them.
* Stopping people from the EU claiming benefits: good luck distracting the rest of the EU for long enough to take this seriously

All stuff that will make no difference, just piss off some people a little. And cost money which they seem reluctant to spend.

[gravy]

Tories outraged by Tory policies!

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/m ... -colleague

Good on Javid though

[(o)(o)]

The British are so numb right now, outrageous stuff like this passes us by...

http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/20 ... -immunity/

Amazing.. like a dystopian day dream.. and today George Osbourne is out with the thumbscrews looking to legally bind future governments to permanent budget surpluses. The government will take your money - instead of spending it on public services or investing to stimulate growth they will sit on it or give tax cuts to the rich.

Neoliberal lunacy. The Dickensian masturbatory fantasy continues, literally rekindling a Victorian commissioning body that hasn't met since 1860.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33074500

[pogo]

You know the reason why they want a balanced budget rule? To stop what happened under the last Labour government happening again. To stop a government wrecking the finances by spending far more than revenues and borrowing the difference, as they now admit (at least Ed Balls does, as do most of the leadership candidates).

You might say this should be left to voters but that doesn’t allow for deceptive politicians. Labour didn’t tell voters what they were doing. Gordon Brown instead deliberately and cynically mislead voters by saying borrowing would balance over the economic cycle. Those who were paying attention knew what was going on but it was hard for most voters to see through the lies.

The recession found them out, as the scale of their deception was exposed by the crisis. It probably cost them the last two elections, especially as they continued to deny all responsibility up until polling day this year, so voters did have their say. But only long after the damage had been done, damage we’re still living with the consequences of.

It’s nothing to do with tax cuts. Governments would be unable to borrow for spending or tax giveaways; no more last minute unfunded bribes before an election, for all parties. Tax cuts would have to paid for by spending cuts, and so justified to voters.

[gravy]

You know the reason why they want a balanced budget rule? To stop what happened under the last Labour government happening again. To stop a government wrecking the finances by spending far more than revenues and borrowing the difference, as they now admit (at least Ed Balls does, as do most of the leadership candidates).

You might say this should be left to voters but that doesn’t allow for deceptive politicians. Labour didn’t tell voters what they were doing. Gordon Brown instead deliberately and cynically mislead voters by saying borrowing would balance over the economic cycle. Those who were paying attention knew what was going on but it was hard for most voters to see through the lies.

The recession found them out, as the scale of their deception was exposed by the crisis. It probably cost them the last two elections, especially as they continued to deny all responsibility up until polling day this year, so voters did have their say. But only long after the damage had been done, damage we’re still living with the consequences of.

It’s nothing to do with tax cuts. Governments would be unable to borrow for spending or tax giveaways; no more last minute unfunded bribes before an election, for all parties. Tax cuts would have to paid for by spending cuts, and so justified to voters.

Yeah that's bollocks.

The idea that an enterprise can't take on short term debt to invest for a better future is utterly ludicrous and one of the ramifications of a policy like this.

It's an argument for never improving or changing your situation.

And to be really clear Spain is a sterling example that this isn't the key issue; they were running a healthy surfeit before the crash and are more fucked than us.

I'm not arguing against a long term balance budget just that a demand for to be at certain point at an arbitary 12 month measure point is laughable.

IMHO the real reason is this would be used as a vector to offload state services into private enterprise for the benefit of business during a conservative government ("We'd be breaking the law so we've no choice but to privatise some more of the NHS!") and would be repealed by any other party.

[venusian]

Ha ha. Do you really believe that? Yeah, I expect you probably do.

[edit: addressed to Pogo, not gravy]

This government is running an ideological campaign to unwind all the "socialist" actions of the previous century. All the publicly owned institutions are being gradually, and not so gradually, returned to private ownership not because it's better for users but because it's How Things Should Be. The common thread between NHS privatisation, housing sell-offs, academies, faith schools and the snooper's charter is not improvement but reduction of the state and centralisation of power in Westminster with the increasingly indistinguishable political and religious classes.

What they're doing with this law is not making it impossible to enact Keynesian stimulus (clearly a future government could simply pass another law) but to normalise smaller government and reduce social ownership of assets so that it becomes harder a party is a different agenda to get elected.

IMHO.

[pogo]

Spain’s problem though is they are in the euro. Not only did that cause their crash, as German money flooded in to fuel their property bubble, but it has tied their hands trying to escape recession. If we were in the euro we would had no devaluation of the pound, no BoE quantitive easing, instead highly conditional bailouts. Instead of our measured financial adjustments austerity would have been externally enforced and much tougher, requiring a balanced budget much sooner. We would have been fucked, at least as badly as Spain.

Repealing NHS privatisation? That will never happen. It started under Major but really took off under Blair and Brown, and they are still responsible for more of it than any other government. So I doubt Labour will end up undoing what was a signature policy of theirs.

And it’s not about locking in a permanently smaller state. If a government wants a larger state they can have one. They just have to pay for it with taxes, and so explain to voters why it’s needed. No more doing it on the sly and leaving the bill for future taxpayers, as happened before 2010.

[venusian]

Repealing NHS privatisation? That will never happen. It started under Major but really took off under Blair and Brown, and they are still responsible for more of it than any other government. So I doubt Labour will end up undoing what was a signature policy of theirs.

This, or rather the underlying mechanism, is exactly what this new borrowing law is about.

B&B moved the Labour party towards the centre, so that a privatising government is now "normal" rather than a right-wing/Tory thing. It's very hard for a government to get elected in a small-c conservative country when it's any distance from normal which is one of the reasons Labour did so badly in the election.

This law is an attempt to make a socially smaller government the new normal.

The accepted center is being moved.

[gravy]

Spain’s problem though is they are in the euro. Not only did that cause their crash, as German money flooded in to fuel their property bubble, but it has tied their hands trying to escape recession. If we were in the euro we would had no devaluation of the pound, no BoE quantitive easing, instead highly conditional bailouts. Instead of our measured financial adjustments austerity would have been externally enforced and much tougher, requiring a balanced budget much sooner. We would have been fucked, at least as badly as Spain.

Repealing NHS privatisation? That will never happen. It started under Major but really took off under Blair and Brown, and they are still responsible for more of it than any other government. So I doubt Labour will end up undoing what was a signature policy of theirs.

It's weird, you keep forgetting that over last 5 years the government has massively increased public debt and runs a huge deficit that could never have been covered by saving during the boom years of Labour.

There's some excuse there in that you can't reverse government spending on the head of a pin and it needs doing over time.

But they've had time. The IT WUZ LABOURS FAULT argument doesn't work.

If Osborne really goes this route then he should also outlaw any failure in his LONG TERM ECONOMIC PLAN and sling himself in jail if he can't deliver on what he's promising rather than try and criminalize future chancellors who've inhertitted his mess.

[pogo]

The accepted center is being moved.

It’s 50 years since Labour won a majority at a general election without Tony as leader.

I.e. it’s not the centre that has to move it’s the Labour party to get elected. It’s a fantasy that the British electorate will elect a socialist government, they only need to be shown the way.

[pogo]

It's weird, you keep forgetting that over last 5 years the government has massively increased public debt and runs a huge deficit that could never have been covered by saving during the boom years of Labour.

Labour were running a deficit of 3% before 2008. Instead they should have been running a surplus, at least according to Brown’s golden rule, of a similar size. The difference of 6% would have accounted for most of the deficit. The rest would have come from automatic adjustments and growth. I.e. the deficit would have fallen and been eliminated cyclically, there would have been little or no need for austerity.

[gravy]

Where did you get the 3% from? And who's done that in the past?

I'm pretty sure Thatcher managed no where near that during her glory days and the only government that had a sustained surfeit was Blair's

[pogo]

If the budget balances then the surplus run in boom years should match the deficit run in slowdowns – that’s the point of counter-cyclical policy. And they were running a 3% deficit, so the expected surplus is based on that. It’s a guess but a reasonable one I think.

Yes, before Blair/Brown governments routinely ignored such constraints. But Blair and Brown changed that. They made the BoE independent, so governments could no longer use interest rates to engineer booms, and introduced the “Golden Rule” (which they then went on to ignore).