I am bored by being patronised by those telling me ‘don’t you know Remain is dead?, closely followed by ‘Move on.’ I can tell you, I have. That’s why I want to Return. To Europe, for sure. But to something much more than that.
More from Richard Murphy
There is a growing and numbing realisation of just how bad Sunak's budget really was. Worse, he’s even now saying that there is nothing he can do about poverty. This is a long thread to explain why he’s failing and what we can do about it if we want to change our politics.
For those who don’t want to read a long Twitter thread there is a blog version here. https://t.co/AuTdAr1f1n if you want a summary of the whole thread it’s this: the neoliberal thinking that all our main political parties subscribe to is now bankrupt. We need something new now.
Sunak faced a challenge this week. A winning Chancellor has to decide how to secure the support their party needs to win elections. In that case there will always be winners and losers in a budget. So Sunak had to make decisions.
However, it’s fair to say that decisions are always constrained. No budget has, I suspect, ever delivered precisely the policies any Chancellor has really wanted. That’s because all politicians are fantasists and reality has to be addressed as well in any budget.
The overwhelming realities that Sunak needed to address yesterday were really not hard to spot. First, there was the real economic chaos created by shortages in the economy. These are the result of Covid, Brexit and now war, but which heavily pre-dated the last.
For those who don’t want to read a long Twitter thread there is a blog version here. https://t.co/AuTdAr1f1n if you want a summary of the whole thread it’s this: the neoliberal thinking that all our main political parties subscribe to is now bankrupt. We need something new now.
Sunak faced a challenge this week. A winning Chancellor has to decide how to secure the support their party needs to win elections. In that case there will always be winners and losers in a budget. So Sunak had to make decisions.
However, it’s fair to say that decisions are always constrained. No budget has, I suspect, ever delivered precisely the policies any Chancellor has really wanted. That’s because all politicians are fantasists and reality has to be addressed as well in any budget.
The overwhelming realities that Sunak needed to address yesterday were really not hard to spot. First, there was the real economic chaos created by shortages in the economy. These are the result of Covid, Brexit and now war, but which heavily pre-dated the last.
More from Economy
1) Well, also there is this:
For 400 years inflation has NOT been in a "mountain range" of up and down, but rather stair-stepped in giant increases, always associated with major transformations in economic arrangements.
For 400 years inflation has NOT been in a "mountain range" of up and down, but rather stair-stepped in giant increases, always associated with major transformations in economic arrangements.
The only way that debt comes down is if rest of world flips to trade deficit status w/US (I.e., trades accumulates $USD from prior trade surpluses w/US for actual goods & services). Not likely anytime soon. $USD as global reserve currency requires massive public debt.
— David "Most Vicious Dogs & Ominous Weapons" Herr (@davidcherr) January 15, 2021