URGENT WHAT LABOUR MUST DO NOW

URGENT

Ever since the Blair-Brown takeover, Labour has tried to avoid pain and conform to the prevailing neoliberal orthodoxy in an effort to be respectable and avoid frightening people.

This path to power no longer works in the way it did in 1997 the year of hope. Since then Britain’s economic position has deteriorated, the people have rejected the old orthodoxies in the Brexit vote, and the 2017 election has shown that more radical policies are becoming more acceptable.

Which makes it time to tell the truth to the people. Britain is in a mess. Our economy can neither pay its way in the world nor support the spending the electorate requires. Our country is relegated to decline unless tough measures are taken.

First taxes must increase, particularly on the wealthy and the top five percent who’ve used neoliberal economics to lavish so much wealth on themselves.

Secondly the economy must be boosted by industrial policy, a national development bank and state aid to those sectors which can win a competitive advantage to build national champions in the way China has.

Third the pound must be made  competitive to close the trade gap, tax imports and boost exports and kept that way on a long term basis by changing the inflation requirement on the Bank of England to one on competitiveness and full employment.

Fourth boost business by requiring all profits made in this country to be taxed in this country, changing the imperatives to long term investment and building company strength. Corporate governance reform should  require workers on the boards, make takeovers more difficult, stop the sale of other services to audit clients  and break up  the Big Four auditors to produce competition .

Fifth replace the imperatives of the market by developing the public sector and public services, encouraging mutuals and cooperatives and emphasising community rather than competition by empowering local government, regulating the privatised sectors more effectively, developing general rather than means tested benefits  and restoring worker and union protections to advance the many rather than empower and enrich  the few.

All these are simple verities restoring Labour basics and  weakening the both the exotic spread of identity politics and the desperate desire to win the support of the middle class and London by punishing the poor and the North.

Britain needs a strong, resolute Labour Party not a pale pink meritocracy peddling a diluted version of Thatcherism or a pale pink Liberal Party. Labour needs a strong British economy if it is to deliver to the people ,rather than please the possessing classes.This is a time for boldness not PR peddling.