Annaliese Dodds: do you really think you could trust this woman with the economy?
Keir Starmer’s Labour has announced that its new economic policy is to copy the Conservatives. Why not? Starmer’s copying the Tories in everything else!
Starmer, now well on his way to infamy as the worst leader in the more-than-100-year history of the Labour Party, may have turned the announcement over to his shadow chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, but it has his naive pawprints all over it.
Because it’s yet another example of an inexperienced politician, who doesn’t stand for anything apart from grabbing power for himself, blowing in the wind.
The Financial Times gave the game away.
Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds will signal on Wednesday that the Labour party is backing away from the hard-left economic policies of former leader Jeremy Corbyn
Sorry, what? “Hard-left” policies?
Corbyn was never hard-left and the author of the FT piece – Chris Giles, whose criticism of the Tories over the number of people dying due to Covid-19 has been exemplary – should know better. Perhaps he is being led by his ideological nose.
If Corbyn had been hard-left, he would have been demanding the nationalisation of everything and the end of individual property ownership. Hard-left policies require everything to be owned by the state and he never advocated that.
Corbyn’s policies were most similar to those of the Scandinavian countries – and anybody with an eye on international affairs will know that, economically, those nations are much more stable than the UK; their people far more prosperous. The UK would have been better-off under Corbyn’s economic policies.
But Starmer wants to turn his back on them because he is a Conservative at heart.
The trouble is, we already have a Conservative Party in the UK. Returning to the policies that lost Labour two elections (in 2010 and 2015 respectively) will not help a Labour leader who has failed to win a single victory against Boris Johnson’s inept and imbecilic Conservatives.
But that is exactly what Dodd’s is announcing.
In the annual Mais Lecture, she will cloak Labour’s strategy to become the UK’s next government in the latest thinking from international organisations such as the IMF, which recommends waiting until unemployment falls and the recovery is complete before thinking about the sustainability of public finances.
So, it’s back to austerity for Labour. That will be a long wait.
The best way to increase employment is to invest in it – not to leave everything to the market. That is hard-right neoliberalism and Labour should not have anything to do with it. Sadly, Labour members elected a Conservative as their party leader and he is imposing hard-right Conservative policies on them whether they want them or not.
When a party is both socially conservative and fiscally conservative, you have to start asking in which sense it isn't a conservative party, full stop
— David__Osland (@David__Osland) January 13, 2021
The fact that he lied, lied, and lied again to get himself elected only partially excuses them (as it was clear that he was lying).
Strangely, in her speech, Dodds will distance herself from the economic programme Labour put forward in the run-up to the 2019 general election, that offered spending increases of £83 billion – a modest amount in comparison with the hundreds of billions splurged by Boris Johnson in the last year.
Instead, she will align Labour’s economic policy with that of the Tories, while referring to “responsible” policies no fewer than 23 times. There is nothing “responsible” about Conservative economic policy, or about aligning with them.
There’s an easy test for this. Conservative neoliberalism has been the dominant economic policy in the UK since 1979, when Margaret Thatcher was first elected into office.
At that time, a family of four could afford to pay the mortgage on their house together with all household bills including groceries and vehicle running costs, from the wages of just one parent – and still had enough left over for a holiday away from home during the summer.
Is that possible now?
No, it isn’t. Most of us are much worse-off after 41 years of this nonsense – apart from people in positions of extreme power, including MPs like Starmer and Dodds.
So perhaps there is an intention to help in this policy change. Starmer and Dodds are planning to help themselves.
Their predictable lapse into neoliberalism has been greeted with a chorus of derision from everybody who understands what it means:
At the moment it looks like a Starmer government will do the same things as this government, but before Marcus Rashford shames them into it.
— WikiJewSoc🕎🌹 (@JewSoc) January 13, 2021
Oh, 'responsible'. Because socialism isn't 'responsible', is it, and the 40% who voted for socialism in 2017 weren't 'responsible', were they, and the left who promote it aren't 'responsible'. Not like 'responsible' Sir Keir… https://t.co/g9S8VpGIVS via @financialtimes
— simon maginn (@simonmaginn) January 13, 2021
If Labour aren't going to provide the solutions to the challenges we face, we know who will move into that space.
This shift to pro-austerity is a gift to the far right and an abandonment of the very people Labour politicians are elected to represent.
This won't end well.
— Tina McKay (@TinaMcKay_) January 13, 2021
In other words the most transformational policies you'll have ever seen are being binned in favour of beige continuity capitalism.
No thanks Keith. Won't campaign for this. https://t.co/9sfM5sNzOm
— Damo #CashNotClaps (@Cornish_Damo) January 13, 2021
Destroying Labour. That was his job. There's no way back for them now. Labour is finished.
— Andy Very Ex Labour (@bernardsmernard) January 13, 2021
I can’t bear this polite, corrupt, backstabbing, cowardly version of the Labour Party.
— Mel (@melaniekmelvin) January 13, 2021
Who would? The voting public certainly won’t.
Source: Labour signals end of Corbyn era in setting out economic vision | Financial Times
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If only we had him but instead we get these devil’s we had our chance at a better UK but flunked it hands down
Who’s made Labour actually unelectable now?
Now is the time for left-wingers to unite behind the Greens, the only remaining Socialist party!