This seems to be Keir Starmer’s new economic strategy: Everybody get out and push!
Together with Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, he has written to the UK’s main business regulators – including Ofgem, Ofwat, the Environment Agency, the Financial Conduct Authority and health regulators – asking for their ideas on how to boost economic growth.
This seems to be an admission that his own ideas have failed, after figures suggested that the UK’s economy flatlined between July and September, with changes announced by Reeves in her October 30 Budget predicted to make matters worse.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
But what’s the point of asking our useless regulators? Ofwat is absolutely supine before the privatised water companies, having failed to fine them for persistently leaking huge volumes of sewage into our waterways, and then giving them the bill rises they wanted – and more besides.
Ofgem has similarly failed to represent the interests of gas and electricity users who have been battered by price rises, even when the government subsidised our bills to help us weather massive price inflation at the start of the current decade.
It seems to This Writer that Starmer knows what he needs to do: tax the super-rich so they’ll have to give back some of the national assets they’ve acquired from the government over the last 40 years or so, and they can be put back into use generating cash for the public and providing investment opportunities for the Treasury.
He just doesn’t want to do it.
I hear the economist Richard Murphy produced The Taxing Wealth Report in April, discussing how to change the tax system to redistribute income and wealth in ways that could raise £100bn in tax revenue for any government, and reallocate £100 billion in investment funds as well.
Give him his due: he knows his business and could probably advise Starmer in much better ways than the regulators.
So we see our neoliberal fake-Labour prime minister going up another economic cul-de-sac. Will he ever learn that the best thing to do with wrong ideas is ditch them?
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Starmer’s new economic strategy: Everybody get out and push!
This seems to be Keir Starmer’s new economic strategy: Everybody get out and push!
Together with Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, he has written to the UK’s main business regulators – including Ofgem, Ofwat, the Environment Agency, the Financial Conduct Authority and health regulators – asking for their ideas on how to boost economic growth.
This seems to be an admission that his own ideas have failed, after figures suggested that the UK’s economy flatlined between July and September, with changes announced by Reeves in her October 30 Budget predicted to make matters worse.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
But what’s the point of asking our useless regulators? Ofwat is absolutely supine before the privatised water companies, having failed to fine them for persistently leaking huge volumes of sewage into our waterways, and then giving them the bill rises they wanted – and more besides.
Ofgem has similarly failed to represent the interests of gas and electricity users who have been battered by price rises, even when the government subsidised our bills to help us weather massive price inflation at the start of the current decade.
It seems to This Writer that Starmer knows what he needs to do: tax the super-rich so they’ll have to give back some of the national assets they’ve acquired from the government over the last 40 years or so, and they can be put back into use generating cash for the public and providing investment opportunities for the Treasury.
He just doesn’t want to do it.
I hear the economist Richard Murphy produced The Taxing Wealth Report in April, discussing how to change the tax system to redistribute income and wealth in ways that could raise £100bn in tax revenue for any government, and reallocate £100 billion in investment funds as well.
Give him his due: he knows his business and could probably advise Starmer in much better ways than the regulators.
So we see our neoliberal fake-Labour prime minister going up another economic cul-de-sac. Will he ever learn that the best thing to do with wrong ideas is ditch them?
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Follow Vox Political writer Mike Sivier on BlueSky
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
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