The dominant media meme in the wake of the pre-budget report continues to be the alleged need for government cuts. This has now taken a shriller tone.
The dominant media meme in the wake of the pre-budget report continues to be the alleged need for government cuts. This has now taken a shriller tone, with allegations of a rift between Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling over how deeply to cut.
Brown is being cast as the bad guy in this; as resisting Darling’s ‘prudent’ desire to come up with real cuts in this pre-Budget Report, rather than delaying the ‘necessary’ cuts until 2011.
However, as Tony Juniper argues in today’s Independent, the hysteria about the ‘need’ for cuts is all wrong. The Green New Deal Group have just published their second report, to discouragingly little fanfare. This important document presents a powerful blueprint for how Britain could stabilise its economy, through a further and thoroughly-green expansion of ‘quantitative easing’.
This could enable us to avoid a repeat of the ‘Roosevelt recession’ – the kind of downturn through premature cuts that occurred in the States in 1936-8, and would occur here too, if the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives got their way and put into place the ‘savage’ cuts they are promising.
Cuts are not needed, certainly not at this time. The beauty of green Keynesian measures is that they pay for themselves, in that they guarantee future savings (lower fuel bills etc) that will repay any elements of the package which do not already pay for themselves through their positive effect on the economy.
The current attacks on Brown, then, are completely misplaced. The government should take more pride in not putting spending cuts into place. This should mark a clear dividing line between Left (Labour and Greens) and Right (Tories and Lib Dems). But at present it does not – because the government has not resisted openly the cuts meme – and because it has not bought into green Keynesianism in any meaningful way.
It is an incredible disappointment that the PBR did not embody substantive moves towards a Green New Deal (except for the boiler scrappage scheme, brilliantly and now-successfully promoted by Mick Williams.
At this time of all times, with Copenhagen in the balance, the need for leadership and for us to think of the future should have been manifested in Darling’s proposals. That, and not the welcome absence of public spending cuts, is the real scandal of yesterday.
To reach hundreds of thousands of new readers and to make the biggest impact we can in the next general election, we need to grow our donor base substantially.
That's why in 2024, we are seeking to generate 150 additional regular donors to support Left Foot Forward's work.
We still need another 124 people to donate to hit the target. You can help. Donate today.
29 Responses to “The cuts won’t work – time for a Green New Deal”
David
PS How is it regressive to have a £10,000 income tax threshold? Along with the education policy for under 7’s, it’s the first step to making the UK a more equal society – it’s stealth redistribution.
me
Rupert, Anon E Mouse seems to have it in for you !
Anon E Mouse
me – Anon E Mouse isn’t keen on people that speak with forked tongue and act in an undemocratic way, not allowing any dissent or debating any opinion that they do not agree with.
I also believe in protecting the weak, poorer and less fortunate members in societies around the world and I don’t like more powerful people taking advantage of them with tax increases to pay for their own lavish lifestyles.
I just do not like the injustice and inequity that Rupert Read and his ilk seek to impose on us, especially as nearly every article written by him involves his self promotion. I just care about people, that’s all and when I see the nonsense he spouts I feel an opposing opinion should be aired.
I’m not alone. Here’s part of his letter to the Guardian newspaper:
Rupert Read states: “By doing interviews like that, that you chose to air this morning, you are materially damaging the chances of an agreement at Copenhagen, an agreement that might just save our civilisation and species from self-destruction.”
The Guardians response: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/nov/13/climate-deniers-today-programme
The Guardian, also agree with me. I am sick of these self appointed “Saviour’s of the Universe” and their silly alarmist talk.
It’s a free country – if the likes of Rupert Read get their way it won’t be and pictures of him grinning from every post he makes will adorn our lamp posts if we’re not careful.
Rupert Read
David: In answer to your rhetorical question: The Green Party of course agrees with savage cuts to Trident, ID cards, etc – and also to fossil fuel subsidies, tax havens, etc. . But Clegg wants to ‘savagely’ (his word – he must be regretting that one very much) cut some public services – and there we part company.
‘Me’: Yes, Anon E Mouse tries to dog me (mouse me?) around the net. I take it as a badge of honour that a fearless (anonymous) troll thinks it worth his time to do this. I think that people mostly judge perfectly well for themselves the quality (sic.) of his interventions, and so reply from me is superfluous. On one specific point, in reply to his latest masterly comment: It wasn’t the _Guardian_’s response, it was Monbiot’s response. Monbiot thinks that it is fine for the BBC etc to provide air-space to climate-deniers, so long as they are firmly dealt with by BBC interviewers, etc. I agree; that would be fine. The reason that I don’t believe that they should be given air-space is a pragmatic one – they are NOT firmly dealt with. So the pathetic miasma of non-existent doubt is allowed to spread. If climate-deniers were destroyed on air as Nick Griffin was on QuestionTime, then fine; but they are treated with kid-gloves by scientifically-illiterate presenters like the dismal Justin Webb. Until such time as that changes, then it is wrong to have them on, just as it would be wrong to have Nick Griffin on if he then got treated so gently that his endless falsehoods on air (such as his manmade-climate-change-denial) were not rebutted. That would not be public service broadcasting.
Rupert Read
The bottomline is this: There’s no room for ‘Skepticism’, no more time for it. Dangerous Climate Change is Here NOW – Urgent Climate Action is what’s Needed. The debate now needs to be about questions such as, how can we get behind the Tuvalu proposals and make them happen. If the debate with loons such as Monckton, Griffin, and Anon E Mouse goes on and on, then they will have won – because their only aim is to keep delaying action. It’s time to get a meaningful agreement at Copenhagen, or to build a movement that can produce such an agreement. Everything else is just a slow betrayal of our children.