A Fresh Start for Britain is the most vacuous suicide note in history with its testosterone laden rallying cries of:
cuts will be necessary to deliver any priorities”
“any new spending will be paid for by a specific cut made elsewhere”
“This means we will not increase public spending overall”
and
We will only include policies in our programme for government once we are certain the necessary resources are available.”
Our leadership is drunk on a cocktail of self flagellation (the hair shirted economics of the balanced budget) and political marketing. Both intoxicating ingredients are as much a product of the Westminster micro-climate as the abuse of allowances.
It was this macho economics which had the leadership advocating tax cuts at Bournemouth while those in the world outside Westminster were experiencing the first blasts of an economic blizzard. The leadership appears to have climbed back onto the Keynesian bandwagon but with little conviction or credibility which is why A Fresh Start schizophrenically advocates (frequently in the same paragraph) large scale public works, cuts in public borrowing, safeguarding employment and being uncertain about ‘what Britain can afford’.
The slump continues. Borrowing is not a problem. Borrowing and other means of creating money by governments is still necessary at this time to counter the destruction of money that occurs when other sectors save more than they borrow and when the velocity of money falls. Demand remains the problem. Expansionary monetary and fiscal policy remain the answer.
But we are assured it is alright because these ‘hard choices made by Liberal Democrats will be firmly guided by our values’ – using market speak these are defined, confined and trivialised as: Fairer, Greener, Safer, Stronger .
But are your values summed up by these sanitised slogans?
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