Comments on: Labour’s opposition to austerity began with Ed Miliband – not Jeremy Corbyn

By: Caramella

Caramella — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 12:35:06 +0000

Ed Miliband sought to stop the rot.

Unfortunately he couldn’t deliver on the changes promised, and was undermined from within by certain sections of the Labour Party, as well as the right-wing mainstream media, and even the BeeB at the end of the GE2015 campaign.

Agree much that he was too timid – especially about the “Crash of 2008”, but with all of his faults, I would cautiously support Ed-M’s return to high office if he was a little less polite, more congruent politically and stopped supporting Owen Smith, as the gentleman is clearly not a democrat.

By: Robert Petulengro

Robert Petulengro — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 19:25:54 +0000

First of all I am appalled that two people should unsub because they do not agree. It is vital to go on all sites – especially the ones you disagree with. Ever heard of groupthink? Or conspiracy theories?
Secondly George Osborne increased the national debt to £1.5 trillion. And that is austerity?
I suppose you mean cutting back on all those non-jobs? Like the 40,000 police people. Well I reckon that is a good thing. Non jobs are insulting, expensive and they simply add to the weight of bureaucracy on teachers, nurses, police and doctors.

By: Angus Lindsay

Angus Lindsay — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 19:12:50 +0000

Just read this in an article by Steve Topple [ _ http://www.thecanary.co/2016/08/08/the-left-wing-journalists-attacking-corbyn-need-urgent-reality-check/ _ ] “As The Canary previously reported, most of Ed Balls’ economic policy came from think-tanking with the likes of former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers (a man considered to be one of the Bill Clinton-era policy architects that led to the 2008 financial crash). The ideology which dominated Miliband’s Labour was based around Balls’ and Summers’ conclusions. An overarching ideal called ‘Inclusive Prosperity’.

Simply put, it was the notion that wealth hadn’t been trickling down and that it was time to redress the balance, via various methods. It impacted nearly every other area of Labour’s manifesto. But the nuts and bolts of the mantra weren’t that at all. As I wrote in January 2015, Inclusive Prosperity actually had its roots in a joint project between the management consultants at McKinsey & Company and right-wing think-tank The Henry Jackson Society:

“Inclusive Capitalism” is described as a “long-term” way of “maximizing the extent to which capitalism can heal its own ills”, in the hope that “the capitalist system that has made our societies great will continue to do so”.

Inclusive Capitalism was, in turn, based on the findings of a group called ‘Focusing Capital on the Long-Term’, a think-tank dedicated to ‘value creation’ for investors and markets, whose members included Barclays, AXA, and Unilever. Essentially, what underscored most of Miliband’s policies were the wishes of those sat in corporate boardrooms.

There was, in short, nothing socialist about Miliband’s Labour Party, apart from a cleverly constructed PR operation that talked of equality, ‘predistribution‘, and a One Nation Labour.”

By: Josephine Bacon

Josephine Bacon — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 18:13:30 +0000

Funny how the Tories’ austerity is only aimed at Labour local councils and services for which they hope Labour councils will be blamed. No austerity if you live in Surrey! So much for austerity. The Tories’ austerity agenda is just another of their tricks for grinding the faces of the poor. As for Jeremy Corbyn’s “kinder politics” that is another myth, he will continue to be a leading antisemite and Holocaust denier, as he was before his fan club elected him leader.

By: BigDave

BigDave — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 16:04:44 +0000

Oh come on! Miliband’s Labour (and Harman’s) continued not to oppose the Tories’ austerity measures in Parliament, especially the attacks on benefit claimants. Still, the NHS survives, as this site seems to have become Left Foot Amputated.

By: Mason Dixon, Autistic

Mason Dixon, Autistic — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 13:38:26 +0000

‘Kinder politics’ was an offer, not a promise. It requires the snivelling weasels of Labour’s Right to stop shitting on the carpet.

By: CJ

CJ — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 11:36:01 +0000

2015 Manifesto
ECONOMY
We will balance the books without extreme spending cuts
• We will cut the deficit every year with a surplus on the current budget and get the national debt falling as soon as possible in the next Parliament.
• We will make fair and sensible spending decisions, including capping social security spending so that it is properly controlled, stopping the payment of the winter fuel allowance to the wealthiest five per cent of pensioners and capping child benefit rises for the next two years.
• There is not a single policy in this manifesto that is funded by additional borrowing. There are tough decisions to be taken and we haven’t made any commitments that we can’t keep.
• We will make sure that any profits made from returning the bailed-out banks to the private sector are used to reduce the national debt.
• We will save money by reforming old government bureaucracies, devolving power and services to our towns and cities, and redesigning public services.
We will create a fairer tax system
• We will reverse the Government’s top-rate tax cut, so that those with incomes over £150,000 contribute a little more to help get the deficit down.
• We will abolish the non-dom rules so that those who live permanently in the UK pay tax in the same way as the rest of us.
• We will close tax loopholes that cost the public billions of pounds a year, and we will bring in tough penalties for those who abuse the tax system. This will include ending unfair tax breaks used by hedge funds, and cracking down on disguised employment. We will make it harder for tax dodgers to hide their identities by making country-by-country reporting information publicly available.
• We will introduce a lower 10p starting tax rate to help those on middle and lower incomes, which will be funded by ending the Conservatives’ Marriage Tax Allowance. We will not increase the basic or higher rates of income tax or national insurance.
• We will not raise VAT, nor extend it to food, children’s clothes, books, newspapers or public transport fares. This is the tax that hits pensioners and the poorest hardest.
We will make sure hard work is fairly rewarded
• We will increase the National Minimum Wage to more than £8 an hour by October 2019 to help ensure that those doing a hard day’s work are rewarded for doing so.
• We will ban exploitative zero-hours contracts so that anyone working regular hours for 12 weeks or more will have the right to a regular contract. This sort of job insecurity creates an unnecessary strain on family life.
• We will promote the Living Wage by giving a tax rebate to companies that sign up to become Living Wage employers in the first year of the next Parliament. We will also require listed companies to report on whether or not they pay the Living Wage and use government procurement to encourage more employers to pay it, following the lead of Labour councils across the country.
We will fix the broken markets that fail the millions of families who rely on them
• We will freeze gas and electricity prices until 2017 and give the regulator the power to cut bills this winter. We will reform the broken energy market so that families and businesses get a fair deal.
• We will introduce a fairer deal for renters, including a ceiling on excessive rent rises, and we will make stable three-year tenancies the rule, not the exception. We will ban rip-off letting fees.
We will back our entrepreneurs and businesses
• We will build a strong economic foundation, cutting the deficit every year with a surplus on the current budget and national debt falling as soon as possible in the next Parliament.
• We will tackle rising business costs, by maintaining the most competitive corporation tax rate in the G7, cutting and then freezing business rates for more than 1.5 million small business properties and freezing their energy bills.
• We will make it easier for firms to get the finance they need to grow and create jobs, by establishing a British Investment Bank with a mission to lend money to small- and medium-sized businesses and support a network of regional banks.
• We will meet Britain’s long-term infrastructure needs by setting up an independent National Infrastructure Commission to plan for those needs and hold government to account.
• We will tackle skills shortages, ensuring all young people study English and maths to 18 and introducing a gold standard vocational route, including a plan to create thousands of new apprenticeships.
• We will support access to international markets by returning Britain to a leadership role in a reformed European Union.
They were only ever going to cap the current budget not the capital budget, seems familiar to what MacDonald keeps saying to me

By: Steve Mizzy

Steve Mizzy — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 08:57:02 +0000

Ed was on the right track during the GE campaign. Problem was he didnt start his pitch a couple of years out and really got stuck into the Govt. Labour should have seriously challenge the Govt on austerity from day one. Letting the Tories get away with the lie that public spending caused the financial crash was negligent.
Ed’s Labour was on the whole far too timid.

By: Paul Watson

Paul Watson — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 08:30:45 +0000

A bit of a nasty little introduction. However Miliband did offer hope of a slow journey to the left eg freeze on energy prices and as such was preferable to other candidates at the time. His big mistake was his (and the rest of the party) non rebuttal to the financial crisis being blamed on previous Labour spending and not the banks.
So in a way the article is partly right but I disagree with the main drift. And now we have JC the real thing.

By: paul ewart

paul ewart — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 08:05:36 +0000

A perfectly reasonable position: sadly not one the electorate shared.