A blog by Luke Akehurst about politics, elections, and the Labour Party - With subtitles for the Hard of Left. Just for the record: all the views expressed here are entirely personal and do not necessarily represent the positions of any organisations I am a member of.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Clinging to the same old monetarist dogmas

Cameron's speech today is indicating that if they were in power the Tory response to a global recession would be the same as it was when they were in power in the early 1930s, early 1980s and early 1990s. I.e. do not very much and hope it somehow goes away. Or in the case of Cameron's hero Thatcher in the early '80s privately celebrate the downturn and actively try to accelerate it in order to smash the unions, destroy Labour-voting communities, keep inflation down and restructure the economy.

They don't want to borrow, they don't want to spend and I'd be surprised if they want to cut taxes, despite these Keynesian responses having been proven by history to be the only sane way to respond to a crisis of this magnitude.

They'd rather do nothing - in order to stick to the economic orthodoxies of the Victorian era - while productive workers rot on the dole, communities disintegrate and millions of individual tragedies unfold as workers and their families lose their jobs and homes.

This is how they behaved in the '30s and the '80s and the '90s and this is how Cameron and Osborne would behave now if they were in power.

I suppose this is to be expected - look at where Tory constituencies are and it isn't the communities they represent that go to the wall in a recession when there is a laissez faire government - there's not much danger of any of Cameron or Osborne's relatives or friends or neighbours experiencing unemployment and hence it's perhaps unsurprising that they don't want to do anything significant to stop it happening.

7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's possible to cut waste Luke. You guys have run the economy into the ground over the last 12 years by piling on more debt in the good times and failing to save for the bad. 600,000+ more public sector employees (and they're not all doctors, teachers and nurses before you start) hired to try and sure up Labour's electoral base using taxpayers money.

Ironically you think that the Tories did nothing in the recession of the early 1990s - it was their actions then that paved the way for the golden economic legacy you lot inherited in 1997.

Try not be be so blinkered. You do yourself no favours.

11:27 am, November 18, 2008

 
Blogger Mark Still News said...

The early 80's were really bad and the early 90's under the Tories. The Tories would say no pain without gain, millions lost their jobs and they opened our Country up to Rich play boy parasites. All of us were getting screwed, but Yuppies were growing and consuming great amounts for only making money with money. There was a lot of people suffering with depression during the Tory Rule.

11:38 am, November 18, 2008

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"only sane way to respond to a crisis of this magnitude"

Magnitude? An economic loss of what? 1%? After how many quarters of constant growth (as we are well reminded) at at least 2.5%, quarter on quarter?

When a whole year of growth is destroyed, then we can talk about magnitude. In the mean time, let's stick to minitude.

11:44 am, November 18, 2008

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Lets be fair, the only economic problems Caeron & Osbourne have experienced is how to ask Daddy for ore oney !

GW

12:43 pm, November 18, 2008

 
Blogger Mark Still News said...

No attempt should be made to revive the housing market, it's astronomically overpriced and most come down to affordable levels and be kept there with various controls.Buy to lets should be banned and housing costs put into the RPI!

It's appalling that a working person on £20k per year can't purchase a House using the 3.5 times income formula.

If more people were able to own their own homes afford-ably there would be less demand for Social Housing and inflationary demands would ease.

12:51 pm, November 18, 2008

 
Blogger Hughes Views said...

They'd've done the same in the 50s and early 60s had it not been for Churchill and MacMillan (both former members of other parties). No wonder so many Tories regarded the latter as a traitor...

1:14 pm, November 18, 2008

 
Blogger Merseymike said...

Fully agree with you Luke. The Tories haven't really changed.

11:13 pm, November 18, 2008

 

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