Monday 6 September 2021

Money Talks

The Triple Lock is going to be broken. National Insurance is going to be put up. Universal Credit is going to be downrated. And Labour is still going to be 10 or so points behind.

Just as there would have been no General Election in 2019 if Jeremy Corbyn had not capitulated to Keir Starmer over Brexit, so the Government would not have been daring to pursue any of these measures if there had still been a Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and, so to speak, a Shadow First Lord of the Treasury who understood that a sovereign state with its own free floating, fiat currency had as much of that currency as it chose to issue to itself, with readily available fiscal and monetary means of controlling any inflationary effect. Those means therefore needed to be under democratic political control.

Taxation is not "where the Government's money comes from". It is a politically chosen way of controlling inflation to a politically chosen extent while encouraging certain politically chosen forms of behaviour and discouraging others. If there were still an Opposition that understood this, or if there had ever been one of which that had been true of most of its MPs, then the Triple Lock would not be about to be broken, National Insurance would not be about to go up, and Universal Credit would not be about to be downrated.

2 comments:

  1. Corbyn and McDonnell gave too much ground to their enemies and the rest is history.

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    Replies
    1. But history is not over, even if their role in it pretty much is.

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