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8
October, Abi writes:
I agree, an alternative is necessary and should
be provided by any political party worth its salt. So why is the future
only 'Conservative'? There is another party out there that needs to get
some attention - the Liberal Democrats. They have just released their idea
of an Economic Recovery plan which includes: Putting more money in people's
pockets - tax cuts for people on low and middle incomes · Stop unnecessary
home repossessions and provide more affordable housing · Make energy companies
reinvest their windfall profits in cutting bills, and · Deliver extra help
for people in debt or who lose their jobs.
Here is an alternative, maybe we should reconsider the future?
13 October, Michael Prior writes:
David Lammy's cheek in suggesting that 'the Labour party
has a tradition and intellectual framework to draw upon: that markets have
clear limits and should be governed in the public interest' is, frankly,
breathtaking. As George Osborne rightly pointed out in a recent interview,
although it was the Conservatives who began deregulation of the financial
sector, it was Gordon Brown who fashioned in detail the current, broken
regulatory system; the laughable FSA and independent Bank of England mandated
to fixate on inflation and nothing but inflation and to give up what was
once its main focus, the regulation of banks. It was Brown who refused to
countenance any critique of the financial sector on the grounds that it
was the wealth-bringer. The current mess over Icelandic banks derives from
the fact that it was London (plus its offshore fiefdoms of the Isle of Man
and Guernsey)chosen by a few smart Icelanders to develop their banking interests
precisely because it was and remains the least regulated in the world outside
of the Virgin Islands.
It has been Brown who has insisted on the privatisation of anything that moves, has moved or might conceivably move in the future. Who overruled Livingstone over the modernisation of London Transport and insisted on market structures that cost the tax-payer £455 million in set-up fees and £2 billion and rising in debt right-offs. Do I have to go on?
It seems likely that Brown does not even begin to see the error of all this. In his recent meetings with bank leaders it was reported that he was accompanied by three ministers; two unelected peers with a banking background and one protege from the Treasury. Little sign of the alleged 'intellectual framework' there.
That Lammy should have the nerve to propose such nonsense is depressing but then one has got used to the massive hubris of Labour leaders and and we will just have to wait for their nemesis.
Even more depressing is this: that Lammy could feel able to present this in front of an audience composed, in principle, of the cream of London centre-left intellectuals and feel, probably rightly, that he would escape without being laughed off the platform. Lord, help us.
30
November Richard Clifford writes
Jeremy Seabrook - that name drew me in. I remember his stunning writing
for Marxism Today and the Guardian and other 80s publications. This is fresh
writing. Not so sure why Soundings bothers to engage with any member of
the PLP. There is no broad church there, just the centre right and a group
of powerless old lefties who have no voice whatsoever. 1997 - 2008 has been
a disaster. That includes the complacent, arrogant, Mayoralty of Ken Livingstone
- who throughly deserved to be defeated this year.
New Labour deemed it appropriate for society as a whole that the most important purchase ordinary people made - a roof over their heads - can rise to a cost of 8 x average salaries. Not only did the current government let this happen, it encouraged it and boasted about it. This is, by any definition, a total failure of any values regarded as centre-left values focused on the society as a whole. A plague on New Labour and a plague on the causes of New Labour.
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