Another Angry Voice is right and this is why Rachel Reeves is lying about austerity.
She’s going around telling anyone who will listen that there will be “no return to austerity” under Labour, but this is a shocking lie – for one simple reason:
Austerity never ended.
Reeves tries to pretend that austerity is an abandoned policy that only existed between 2010 and 2015, but this is entirely inaccurate because government departments, public sector wages, and social security provisions have continued to suffer countless real-terms cuts since Cameron and Osborne left office in the wake of their Brexit referendum shambles.
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Furthermore, if austerity were over, surely the worst of the massive departmental budget cuts should have been reversed, rather than being kept in place?
If Labour wanted to really put an end to austerity, they’d need to reverse the 14 years of budget cuts and restore public spending, especially in areas that are known to generate large positive returns on investment in the long-term (education, quality public services, social housing, public health, infrastructure investment, and transport modernisation).
But Reeves isn’t promising anything of the sort, is she?
The Angry Yorkshireman focuses on just one aspect of Tory austerity: local government.
He points out that councils all over the country are on the brink of bankruptcy, local services are massively over-stretched and under-funded, and local councils are being forced to sell millions of pounds worth of public property to greedy speculators in desperate – and wrong-headed – attempts to “balance the books and fill the giant austerity-sized black holes in their budgets”.
This is doomed to failure because selling public assets to private speculators means they can then charge the public authority for their use – meaning even more debt for local government.
Another Angry Voice points out that if Reeves wanted to distance herself from Tory austerity, she would have to restore local government spending to where it was in 2010 (I would say to where it should be by now, taking inflation into account), with incentives to councils that invest the cash in areas that are known to generate economic activity and deliver positive returns on investment.
I like the analogies author Tom Clark uses:
If you told people that you were “not going to return to driving dangerously slowly on the motorway” people would assume that you’d be increasing your speed, rather than keeping things the same and sticking at 25 miles per hour.
If you told people you were “not going to return to crash dieting” they’d expect you to increase your daily calorie intake back to a healthy 2,000 or so, rather than keeping things the same and staying at below 500 calories per day.
Instead, “Reeves is sticking to Tory spending plans, keeping the austerity cuts in place, and fixating on the same myopic self-defeating penny-pinching ideology that resulted in the lost decade and a half of austerity stagnation.”
You can be absolutely sure the mass media will not challenge Reeves on any of this; they fully support the continuation of the Tory asset-stripping policies of the last 14 years.
But you can. There will be hustings across the UK, providing us with access to Labour candidates who will have to answer if you ask them why Labour is lying about austerity. Will you?
Source: Rachel Reeves is lying through her teeth about austerity
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This is why Rachel Reeves is lying about austerity
Another Angry Voice is right and this is why Rachel Reeves is lying about austerity.
She’s going around telling anyone who will listen that there will be “no return to austerity” under Labour, but this is a shocking lie – for one simple reason:
Austerity never ended.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
But Reeves isn’t promising anything of the sort, is she?
The Angry Yorkshireman focuses on just one aspect of Tory austerity: local government.
He points out that councils all over the country are on the brink of bankruptcy, local services are massively over-stretched and under-funded, and local councils are being forced to sell millions of pounds worth of public property to greedy speculators in desperate – and wrong-headed – attempts to “balance the books and fill the giant austerity-sized black holes in their budgets”.
This is doomed to failure because selling public assets to private speculators means they can then charge the public authority for their use – meaning even more debt for local government.
Another Angry Voice points out that if Reeves wanted to distance herself from Tory austerity, she would have to restore local government spending to where it was in 2010 (I would say to where it should be by now, taking inflation into account), with incentives to councils that invest the cash in areas that are known to generate economic activity and deliver positive returns on investment.
I like the analogies author Tom Clark uses:
Instead, “Reeves is sticking to Tory spending plans, keeping the austerity cuts in place, and fixating on the same myopic self-defeating penny-pinching ideology that resulted in the lost decade and a half of austerity stagnation.”
You can be absolutely sure the mass media will not challenge Reeves on any of this; they fully support the continuation of the Tory asset-stripping policies of the last 14 years.
But you can. There will be hustings across the UK, providing us with access to Labour candidates who will have to answer if you ask them why Labour is lying about austerity. Will you?
Source: Rachel Reeves is lying through her teeth about austerity
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’ (in the right margin). 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) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
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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