Wednesday 18 March 2020

And Who's Going To Pay For This?

The issuing of currency is an act of the State, which is literally the creator of all money. A sovereign state with its own free floating, fiat currency has as much of that currency as it chooses to issue to itself.

All wars are fought on this understanding, but the principle applies universally. The State also has the fiscal and monetary means to control inflation, means that therefore need to be under democratic political control in both cases.

Last Tuesday, it was controversial to say these things. But today, the only dissent from them is on the part of four of the remaining five Labour MPs, those being the four who do not know what the words mean.

Not only has this Conservative Government formally accepted Modern Monetary Theory, but it is has effectively reversed New Labour's surrender of control over interest rates, it is looking to expand the renationalisation programme on which it had already embarked, it is bringing the trade unions into government, and it is edging towards the introduction of the Universal Basic Income.

The Durham Miners' Gala has been cancelled. Previously, only the two World Wars and two national strikes have managed that since it had started in 1871. But coal mining itself is back, and specifically it is back in County Durham. Here in North West Durham, in fact. In Richard Holden's constituency.

Richard is a strong and articulate supporter of this Government's recognition that the Brexit for which this and the other seats that decided the General Election voted (seats that had voted for Jeremy Corbyn when Corbyn had still been committed to Brexit) provides a double opportunity, both to reorganise the British economy under State direction, and to begin to develop a fully independent British foreign policy, including in relation to the United States.

By the starkest of contrasts, all three candidates to lead the Labour Party have said that the litmus test of their Leadership would be whether or not the Change UK lot, about whom everyone else had forgotten, had "felt able" to re-join the party, presumably less than a year after they had stood against it at the 2019 General Election. And then, what? Is Chris Leslie to return as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, advocating permanent austerity as a matter of principle, even in the midst of the Plague?

Then again, who cares? There are those who bemoan that we have no party. But who needs one? It would only get in the way. Instead of controlling either party, we decide which of them gets to win. That gives us far more power, and we must be entirely unapologetic about using it.

Either Labour or the Conservatives must do and offer more to uphold family and community values by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty.

And either Labour or the Conservatives must do and offer more to the rural working class, and to the industrial and former industrial communities that were either outside the metropolitan areas or peripheral to them, those being the people and places whose votes now determined the outcomes of General Elections and of national referendums.

It is obvious which party is currently passing those tests, both nationally and here at North West Durham. In the absence of a candidate even closer to my views, and such a candidacy is still a possibility, then this veteran of the Postliberal Left will be voting for Richard Holden in 2024.

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