Corbyn teaches Marr the hard facts about the crash and austerity
Jeremy Corbyn on the Andrew Marr show: Isn’t it nice to have a political leader who doesn’t need a party-approved soundbite in order to express himself?
At last we have a Labour leader who isn’t afraid to challenge the tired Tory non-truth about the financial crash of 2008.
And Jeremy Corbyn followed it up by telling Andrew Marr exactly how little benefit the UK has gained from six long years of selfish Tory austerity.
The last time we heard these facts, they were coming from Peter Hain on Radio 4’s Any Questions – and he quit as an MP shortly after, if I recall correctly.
Jeremy Corbyn isn’t about to quit. He just won a huge mandate to continue as leader of the Labour Party. And when he appeared on Andrew Marr’s political talk show today (September 25), he had something to say.
They had been discussing Mr Corbyn’s plan to invest £500 billion into the UK economy.
“That’s an eye-watering sum,” said Mr Marr. “Have you any calculation of how much British taxpayers are going to have to pay in interest rates if you do this?”
Mr Corbyn’s response indicated that the interviewer was following the wrong train of thought. He was failing to consider the return that the UK would be receiving on this investment: “It will be an investment that brings in greater tax income, because you grow the economy, you get greater tax income. We’ve had six years, now, of austerity in Britain… that has reduced wages, reduced living standards for many people, cut public services in many places and has not resulted in the economic growth that the government predicted. We’re saying invest in order to grow.”
“This is what Blair and Brown did and then the British people decided they couldn’t be trusted,” press Marr. “They borrowed and then there was the crash.”
Here’s how Mr Corbyn responded:
He continued: “Since then, banking regulation does require them to have sufficient capital assets to protect them against that, and there’s much tougher regulation on the banking system. Maybe it should be even tougher. There’s a good case for that. But: It was not government expenditure that caused the crash.
“We’re saying invest to grow. Invest in housing. We’re spending £9.5 billion every year in subsidising the private housing market, the private rented sector, through housing benefit payments to tenants who have the right to access those benefits. If those people were in social housing – council housing – the cost would be infinitesimal compared to £9.5 billion. And we would have that money to invest in building houses which would in turn create jobs… Isn’t that a virtuous circle?”
Yes it is.
But of course it doesn’t give billions of pounds of public money to Conservative landlords. That’s why it isn’t happening now, although Mr Corbyn stopped short of saying it.
And this is why many Labour policies are poo-poo’d by the Conservative Government; the Tories are on the gravy train and they’ll say anything to keep that train running.
It’s why Boris Johnson said the UK can’t take increased taxation, earlier in the same programme – not because we can’t afford it (as he claimed) but because it would mean the super-rich, like himself, would have less cash to play with.
Their earnings have increased exponentially over the last six years of Tory misrule, while the nation’s finances have nosedived.
What a pleasure to have a political leader who talks sense.
Note: Feel free to share the images as infographics, but please provide a link back to this article if you do.
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Now that message needs to go out to the wider public! We can’t trust the media to be honest! You and your friends in online media should pool resources, more than ever before! Do you have a youtu.be channel mike?
I do. I keep trying to get Mrs Mike to do a video podcast with me, and she keeps refusing because she’s worried the language she uses would have to be bleeped out until there are no actual words left.
What are you suggesting?
I was thinking you could get other bloggers like your friends from the canary and so on to form a news channels something like “the young turks” I feel nows the time to call out propaganda when it happens! This could be a powerful tool for change.
Interesting.
I do feel very strongly that people need to understand money creation, the idea that a sovereign country with it’s own sovereign currency can ever go broke is simply not true. We as a country do not need to borrow our own money. Money that the government itself creates which is issued as debt through the private banks, and the issuer of that currency is the Bank of England.
Henry Ford said after the Wall Street crash, Quote: It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. Henry Ford
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/henryford136294.html
Exactly. One of my degree modules dealt with the reasons for the financial crisis being due to the Banking crisis. It has been frustrating that no Labour politicians have put this straight, at great cost to Labour. Until now,
During the runup to the last general election, every time Tories blamed the financial crisis on New Labour it made me mad. It made me really angry that it wasn’t getting challenged.
I mean, it was almost like Milliband wanted to take the blame.
Paul, I am of the firm opinion that Ed did not want an outright victory at the last election and was treading a careful line in order to be the largest party but without a majority, so that like the Tories he would form a coalition with the liberals.
There were also rumours that there were tentative meetings with that in mind. The Libdems though let him down by losing massively to the Tories. Scuppering him in the bargain.
Which only goes to show, a faint heart never won a fair lady.
.
lets hope haas he grows from strengh to strengh
Thank you for this excellent article. Is it possible please for you to change the red writing on the infographics as it does not show up with enough contrast for me to read it, and I would very much like to share them and link to this article.
It’s always tricky getting the colours right. If I have time, I’ll see what I can manage.
Same old crap from Marr, sorry but getting fed up of the crap from these people thinking where idiots and don’t know what/who caused the crash, bankers being greedy selling mortgages that people could not or would not be able to pay off and would end up defaulting. But hey lets blame Corbyn and Labour, even though after 6 years of Tory miss rule and £1.7 trillion pounds of debt from so called austerity, The tories are just as much to blame as Labour was at the time and the Tories even agreed to lending the banks billions. so both Labour and the Conservatives was to blame in a way but it was the US banks that started it and the other banks followed suite, seeing a quick buck to be made and it all back fired and the tax payer was left to bail them out, instead of jailing them for fraud.
What a change to have the truth told from a politician, than 10 minutes of waffle about nothing and still none the wiser what was said by that politician. Seems like people don’t like the truth anymore, Marr really needs to stop with the utter crap hes coming out with and start being a proper journalist and interviewer or is that not the case anymore, and its what the BBC as become now just another hack mouth piece for the Tory Government.
When brown proposed to deregulate the banks the tory party back him and all vote for it! George Osborne was quoted as saying he felt it didn’t go far enough!!!
Marr will be more careful next time he wants a take on Labour’s policies and invite a *moderate” MP. Otherwise the BBC’s DG will get a verbal spanking from Mother Theresa!
Very good precis of what was said
Andrew Marr occasionally presents documentaries on the BBC. These all depend on historical accuracy. Now, in response to Jeremy Corbyn saying: “…..We’re saying invest in order to grow.” Andrew Marr replies “This is what Blair and Brown did and then the British people decided they couldn’t be trusted,” and then goes on to say. “They borrowed and then there was the crash.”
I now wonder how historically accurate his documentaries are (most of which cover events decades ago) when he gets something completely wrong that happened just eight years ago.
Brilliantly said Kenneth. I fear the real problem is they know they are lying Kuensberg was complicit with the staged coup.
I really despair that such people seem to lack a sense of decency.
The Government can’t create growth, businesses create growth. By all means direct more public spending toward education at the expense of other things, but this idea that by building homes you create wealth is sixth form economics. It’s frankly laughable.
I can’t believe even you believe what you have written. Wealth is created by people not business. 6 people in Mondragon created over 100,000 jobs and was undergoing exponential growth until the Bankers crashed the world economy.
I’d never thought about building homes primarily as wealth creation. It certainly provides very useful work but surely the main purpose is to provide homes at affordable prices and rents for people to live in? No sixth form economics there, just a desire to improve the lives of people.
Obviously there will be welcome benefits to the economy but that isn’t the driving force.
Absolutely. All wealth is created by human labour – something known not only to Karl Marx but also to Adam Smith on whose work Marx based his ideas. The sum total of wealth created by Richard Branson, James Dyson and other ‘entrepreneurs’ , by all the ‘dragons’ and ‘apprentices’ in all the countries in which the shows are broadcast is £0.00. The workers employed by them create wealth, the ‘entrepreneurs’ don’t.
I can still recall as though it was yesterday something that happened in one of those debates before the General Election. Someone in the audience asked Ed Miliband how people could trust Labour with our money after it had mismanaged the economy so badly that it had caused the last financial crash. Instead of rejecting the accusation out-of-hand he seemed to be completely unsure what to say and finally said nothing, apparently accepting it as true. Obviously following instructions I suppose?
Finally we have a leadership which will not allow these false accusations to become accepted as the truth.
I sent Ed Milliband an e mail before the last election begging him to tell it how it was about the crash as I was fed up with labour politicians not saying a word when accused of causing the crash,especially on programmes like question time.I never got any reply directly,all I got was endless requests from,I assume,automated systems asking me to donate to the labour party.Therefore the general public believed it was labour’s fault
One of the most pathetic aspects of the Blair, Brown and Miliband leaderships and their followers in the PLP is their total capitulation to the Tory narrative on the causes of the crash. Instead of pointing out that the crash started in Iceland before spreading to the U.S. they have gone along with the lie that Labour was responsible for the crash because of over spending.
Now, every time a Tory repeats this totally false claim Labour should denounce them for the liars they are – obviously respecting Parliamentary tradition that requires your to call even the most cynical of liars (i.e. Tory MPs) ‘honourable member’.