Where The Money Comes From

I am the first to welcome additional investment in the NHS, and I know exactly where Boris Johnson is going to find the money.

A state with its own free-floating fiat currency has as much money as it chooses to issue to itself. Monetary and fiscal policy then exist to control inflation to the politically chosen extent while encouraging the forms of behaviour that there has been a political choice to encourage, and while discouraging the forms of behaviour that there has been a political choice to discourage. All of the wars of the last 20 years have been funded exactly like this.

There is no such thing as "taxpayers' money", nor do private companies "create" money, and a state with a free-floating fiat currency can write off its own debt as a stroke simply by issuing itself with enough of that currency for the purpose. It need never borrow another penny after that. Public borrowing is nothing more than a politically useful device to make voters think that certain policies would be "unaffordable", in the way that tax can be a way of making them feel directly involved.

All of this is blindingly obvious to anyone who has not been trained out of seeing it or, over the last 40 years, trained out of saying it. Boris Johnson has never been so trained. Nor has Jeremy Corbyn. If you want people who have been, or who are at least prepared to pretend that they have been, then you now need the Liberal Democrats. Good luck to you with them, and good luck to them with you.

By the way, the Conservative Party's answer to anyone who does not want a Lib Dem MP, or who doe  not want the Lib Dems back in Government (although the Conservatives did perfectly well out that last time), is two words: "Vote Tory." Pacts and what have you are simply not serious propositions.

Another hung Parliament is coming, therefore, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.