Starmer's Make or Break Moment? Rory and Alastair React LIVE

Good to see Trump ignoring Starmer in Egypt putting the weasel in his box so to speak

Alistar has a short term memory. Constantly saying Reform should be challenged on their Policy ideas. Does he not remember Labours strategy in the last parliament. They effectively said naff all, let the Cons mess things up, and waited for people to vote for change. Shock horror they said nothing cuz they have nothing to offer. Reform just need to do the same, except pan Starmer on immigration, and the voters will look for change again.

Neither of you accept Gary Stevenson’s opinion that the wealthy NEED to be taxed properly e.g Prince William & the Duchy of Cornwall, the Duke of Westminster & all the other wealthy people. I expect that you .Rory are pretty wealthy, the way you live & travel all over the world.

If Starmer was executing people in the street, Alastair would defend it.

I never thought I’d see the day the UK government was supporting the massacre of children. It’s a holocaust.

Kier Starmer and Rachel Reeves are continuing with the Conservatives austerity led by mainstream neoclassical equilibrium economics / neoliberal politics.
We need a politics /economics of care, equity and investment with a reinforcement of democracy by implementing proportional representation.

PS Albanese got back in because of the ideological stupidity of the Liberals damming renewables and promoting nuclear when ~40% of Australians have photovoltics on their roof.

Neoliberal economics – market good, small government, libertarian ideology of Mont Pelerin Society, Hayek, Friedman et al, was supposed to deliver growth… well it has not . The the financialisation of western economies, liberalisation of the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate), privatisation, money making money, QE asset price inflation,…) over the last 50 years since Reagan and Thatcher has benefited the wealthy at the expense of the lower and middle classes.

Workers have been ripped off by neoliberal economics/politics for the last fifty years. The vast majority of the population can see that life is worse – real wages stagnant or declining, cost of artificial market based energy up, cost of the supermarket shop up, housing cost or rental up, essential services – water, energy, up, privatised health costs up, education costs up with permanent privatised loans, poor public transport services and suburban sprawl requiring 4 car families to move around.…. i.e. declining standards of living for the vast majority.

This is an inherent feature of a free market system, that over time wealth accumulates with the wealthy unless redistributed. Picketty, the French economist has shown this by analysing empirical data over centuries, Steve Keen can show this in his systems dynamic monetary modelling program Minsky/Ravel, and Michael Hudson ex international balance of payments economist at Chase Manhattan by analysis and logic.

So…
– recognised that the finance sector is a cost of doing business and should not dominate the economy as it now does in most western economies
– off shoring industry has been bad for the vast majority (but corporates did nicely until China is now outcompeting them)
– over time in a market based economy wealth accumulates with the wealthy unless redistributed
– MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) is a fair description of how central banks create money
https://www.bundesbank.de/en/tasks/topics/how-money-is-created-667392
– Private banks create new money when giving a loan by double entry book keeping
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy
– buying bonds are a charade for hiding how central banks create money from thin air (they do serve other purposes as helping to pay for running the bank system)
– bonds are a safe investment that is required by the finance sector, pension funds, etc.
– public investment helps grow the economy and does not crowd out private finance

We do have solutions but the mainstream economics, the advisors to politicians and politicians ignore the advice. Why … they ignore emperical evidence, not trained in difficult maths (equilibrium vrs system dynamics modelling eg Minsky /Ravel), a genuine belief that neoliberalism reaches an anarchists economic nirvana, free markets are best, status quo suits the wealthy and their political minions,

See Richard Werner on how to reverse the neoliberal nightmare….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8M1mDy71QA
– lots of small non profit local banks lending to business,
– direction from Central banks to private banks to lend for the real economy (not financial speculation),
– rebuilding industry and green infrastructure (reduce climate crisis impacts for future generations) and
– putting wealth to work (pension funds to invest in the real economy not financial speculation),…
but also
– Taxing Wealth Report 2024 using existing taxes to redistribute, £90bn possible see https://taxingwealth.uk/
– debt jubilee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQZGv2xL-fw
– reducing house prices without homeowners loosing equity https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-liberals-61077693
– house loans at max 10 times rental income
– housing not financed by new money creation ie. funded by deposits in building societies
– tier the Central Bank Reserves interest rates (a standard practice in the ECB and Bank of Japan, this is not some mad theory), and you can guarantee saving £7Bn minimum https://ercouncil.org/2024/electionomics-interest-on-central-bank-reserve/
– put the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) back into its box.
– use the excess capacity in the economy for the government to invest in the country via its own bank whilst keeping inflation under control
And also protect democracy against authoritarian / fascist moves
– bring in proportional representation vote eg. Single Transferable Vote (STV)
– roll back restrictions on non-violent protest
– proscribe only real terrorists groups

As we can see in the USA disillusionment of a large core of voters has lead to populism creating binary differences and scapegoating with a return of neo-facsism (it fills the political vacuum as the left has moved rightward).

See heterodox economists Steve Keen (The New Economics: A Manifesto), Richard Murphy (Taxing Wealth Report 2024, Green New Deal) , Richard Werner (Princes of the Yen), Michael Hudson (J is for Junk Economics, Suuperimperalism) , Clara E. Mattei (How Economists Invented Austerity & Paved the Way to Fascism) , Abby Innes (Late Soviet Britain), David Graeber (Debt: The First 5000 Years)

VAT rises !

Guess this is where I firmly have to disagree with AC. Starmer/Reeves need to go for the center-left to find a voice to win this existewntial fight for liberal democracy.. I guess it's time for another party to lead (lib-dems/greens) then. Much harder and taking longer time, but the current blairite neo-lib mindset just need to go.

stewart smirks when Campbell ses they will have to revisit welfare cuts. No mention of the odd billion every now and then for ukrainian.

The line to attack Farage with is that he (and his cronies which you could conflate with him) spouts lies. Find some of his Brexit lies and revisit them. “Painting his lies on the side of a bus…” You could surely make an entire PPB with Farage lies…”how did that one work out?”

Thanks

I know T Blair is being suggested as peace envoy and I'm sure he's picking his lips at the prospect. Trump and Blair working together… dream team.

Starmer’s last conference…. Reform uk 🇬🇧