Labour’s defence promises

Labour’s defence promises

“Labour to Win ensured the motion topic “Defence” was debated at Labour Conference 23. . In this article, I review the debate and then make some criticisms of the way in which the issues are being handled. The motion states that Labour will continue to support NATO, the need for a nuclear deterrent and that its support the armed forces will be absolute, whatever that means. It also argues that a Labour government will continue to meet the UK’s NATO commitments, 2.0% of GDP and that a Labour Government will invest in the UK’s defence manufacturing capability, continue to support Ukraine, engage in a ‘new’ EU-UK security pact and develop the AUKUS partnership. It also commits to engaging in multilateral disarmament talks.

I look at what the motion doesn’t say, starting with the suggestion that financial targets are not the same as quality. The motion reads as if it’s designed to troll the pacifist and soviet nostalgic left but fails to address the dire state that Cameron’s “Defence Review” left the armed forces in. A defence policy needs to be based on an effective threat analysis, not on the needs of worker’s jobs nor of business profit. A private weapons supply industry doubles the criminality of war. I also look at the reliability of NATO and find it wanting. We need the rest of the EU and the UK contribution to the defence of Europe needs to be within the EU and its “strategic compass”.

There is more detail overleaf; please use the 'Read more' button ...

Control freakery at #lab23

Control freakery at #lab23

Sunday’s conference was not a good day for Labour Party democracy. Amongst all the debates on rule changes, and speeches and a sofa session on winning the coming election and despite a rules based promise to be able to refer back sections of the National Policy Report, Conference was only offered the opportunity to accept the NPF report as a single document.

Labour needs a manifesto that offers hope and change to address the problems that the British people face. The NPF report was finalised in a secret session earlier this year and it is typical of this leadership that the vote to accept it was the first item of conference business and occurred before any debate and vote on the members and affiliates motions. The priority ballot results were announced and nothing challenging was prioritised by the CLPs.

The British people need a Labour government to solve its problems, of the cost of living crisis, infrastructure decay, wealth inequality and corruption. Labour’s leadership needs to unite the party and recognise that its membership have good ideas. The clamour for clarity on Labour’s policy offer is growing, curiously from unexpected sources but the control freakery of the leadership is effectively closing down and ignoring the views of the membership and once again violates the rules based promises of conference sovereignty. …

What’ll be debated at #lab23

What’ll be debated at #lab23

The two leading factions have announced their recommendations for how CLP delegates should vote in the #lab23 conference priorities ballot. Only 12 motion topics are debated, six of which are the result of a ballot of the CLP delegates. The rest of this article looks at the factions' recommendations and laments the likelihood that important contrarian views will not be debated. To read the article in full, use the 2Read More" button ...

Innovation happens elsewhere!

Innovation happens elsewhere!

“The innovators dilemma” is a book by Clayton Christensen, first published in 1997. In it, he explores the paradox that successful companies that do everything right can still fail. The source of this failure, or that observed by the book, is new entrants to markets pushing market disrupting technologies and products, allied to a management inertia avoiding the necessary changes. This article looks at how these threats impact business strategy, its decision-making (particularly investment decisions) and political parties, specifically the Labour Party.

The innovation problem for political parties was brought to my attention in an unfinished white Paper by Emmanuelle Avril of the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle and in the text she quotes the Innovator’s Dilemma. I conclude that, Innovation happens elsewhere and is inexorable.

The complete article is available overleaf …

Brexit/Brejoin is on #lab23 agenda

Brexit/Brejoin is on #lab23 agenda

As a member of the AEIP National Committee, I have been campaigning to reverse Brexit. The personal politics that led me to stand for their NC is based on both an abstract commitment to what the EU could be and a detailed observation of the economic and social advantages of common citizenship, together with the economic advantages to the nation of belong to the European Union. The absence of the EU’s freedom of movement to work and the common citizenship rights do not affect the rich. Overleaf, the full article looks at the arguments to rejoin the single market, and charts the last act of Lewisham Deptford CLP in sending a motion to #lab23 calling to rejoin the single market. It also documents the speech I made.

To see the full article overleaf, use the "Read More" button. ...

More Macro

More Macro

In this article, “Britain’s tax delusion”, the ‘Statesman identifies that the UK is not overtaxed, that taxing non-doms and imposing VAT on school fees will raise trivial amounts of money and that the clawback of child benefit has a disincentive on the supply of effort. It is silent on the clawback of the personal allowance which does the same, and fails to substantiate its arguments on income and wealth equality by not quoting the gini coefficient or any altenrative statistics, or facts as I like to call them.

… creates a system that is not just dysfunctional but profoundly inequitable, in which the average effective tax rate paid by those earning more than £10m a year is lower than that of most nurses. In 1845, Benjamin Disraeli wrote of England’s division into “two nations”: the rich and the poor. Today, the gulf between Asset Britain and Austerity Britain is as wide.

Since both major parties identify growth as the answer, we need to ask how they think it’ll happen, the three sources of growth are investment (private or public), government expenditures (i.e. the deficit), or exports (and we know why they’re fucked).

The challenge for Western democracies is to provide for that spending while encouraging investment and job creation. It is a challenge that Britain is failing. Instead, the UK’s tax system is quietly managing our ­economy towards disaster.

Business taxation does not encourage investment; the UK’s investment rate is low by international comparison.

Growth strategies must only be pursued in the context of combatting climate change. So a new coal mine is not a good idea.

Modern economists argue that investment in human capital is a priority as an incubator of growth. Even those politicians who agree are silent in the face of monetarist orthodoxy which requires continued austerity. After 13 years you’d think they’d have learnt, but it seems not.

Image Credit: from asb.org.uk , cropped. Fair use as it has no economic impact on the original publisher. …