THREAD: There is an emergent left programme on #COVID_19uk - the obvious elements are: 1/ Universal Sick Pay and/or immediate helicopter payments to sustain demand and facilitate taking sick leave...
2/ Workers rights to safe working conditions, including for NHS/Social Care staff; 3/ Massive fiscal stimulus with redistribution at its core...
4/ Massive state-directed emergency investment in testing, intensive care beds and social care; and state-directed/globally co-ordinated vaccine research programme aimed at massive generic roll-out...
5/ Democratic scrutiny over government/medical technocrat decisions on travel restrictions, event bans, testing etc: act early, act from below, act on the basis of evidence not Boris Johnson's "weirdos and misfits"
6/ End the nudge strategy: produce clear public information or we, civil society, via unions, devolved administrations and social movements will produce it from below...
7/ My own addition: when this is over, every Health Secretary and Chancellor since 2010 should face a public inquiry with special powers to prosecute for negligence. We're facing this with a depleted health service because politicians made choices...
8/ Once we mitigate the virus, and the economic meltdown, there will be a legitimate case to reshape our economy so that never again do we face exogenous shocks with depleted and impoverished public services... oh, and...
9/ "Herd immunity" may, or may not, be the best strategy but the social quid pro quo is that, economically, *everybody is in the herd* - no more private hospital wings - and sick pay for all.
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One of the joys of not being economics editor of Newsnight anymore is... being able to state when the Institute for Fiscal Studies is talking out of its derriere. Today they've had a go at Labour's plan to offer statutory sick pay to the lowest-paid workers 1/... ifs.org.uk/articles/labou…
2/ At present there's a lower limit on SSP: you have to be earning more than £123 a week to get it. That leaves 1.1 million workers without access, two thirds of them women...plus you don't get SSP for the first three days of absence... .tuc.org.uk/blogs/scrappin…
3/ Labour wants to scrap the lower limit and start SSP from day one. But, says the IFS, that will likely be passed through into lower wages. According to models based on American data, all attempts to raise the statutory benefits of workers lead to wage cuts... labour.org.uk/wp-content/upl…
In June 2021 the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Defender sailed past Russian-occupied Crimea, triggering the Russian navy to fire shots over its bow. Does Nigel Farage think our Navy "provoked this war"? 1/ I ask because he wants to be prime minister...🧵
2/ He says NATO and the EU "provoked this war" by expanding Eastwards... that's a pure repetition of the lie peddled by pro-Trump fascists and pro-Putin tankies... but let's explore the reality: before 2022 NATO ruled out Ukrainian membership...
3/ So Farage can only mean - as the tankies do - that we were wrong to allow Poland, the Baltics, Romania etc into NATO. Now who else argues that? Vladimir Putin, in his infamous December 2021 Draft Treaty, demanding demilitarisation and neutrality for Eastern Europe...
Sunak's strategy was to squeeze Reform by pandering to racism. It's ended up with crossover: Reform emerging as a protest vote option for some conservative voters who could never vote Lab/Libdem ... and like Brexit it's driven by loathing of immigration 1/... Big consequences ...
2/ Reform surge could, if the Sunak fails to stop it, reduce Tories to double figures while putting a handful of Reform MPs in Parliament - a voice for outright Islamophobia and pro-Putin foreign policy... And then the fun begins: a multi-year project to elect a far right govt in Britain...
3/ There is a strong case for tactical voting in Clacton... and in all seats identified by @hopenothate as potential wins for Reform: in most cases, inc Clacton, that means voting Labour... but ...
What does Labour's spending plan tell us? That the conditions where social-democracy could achieve change through fiscal expansion have vanished (for now). 1/ However redistribution can happen thru many channels - and this is a highly redistributive manifesto ...
2/ Each of Labour's Five Missions is redistributional... growth, thru higher real wages (boosted by the New Deal) ... Net Zero thru energy security and local control... crime and education thru enhancing individual opportunity ... and the NHS is an engine of social justice
3/ This is a manifesto aimed precisely at the problem Starmer's left critics ignore: we're in an era of strategic conflict. It's fundamentally an answer to that: external threat, radicalisation and democratic decay... NB this 👇🏽 is the most significant spending commitment
Why is Sunak's campaign imploding and how bad could it get? I think we could - but not inevitably - be witnessing the end of the post-1945 Tory formation. A 🧵... 1/ They have achieved nothing in 14 years except Brexit...
2/ ... and since the 2019 election the swing voters who delivered Johnson's majority (@LabourTogether voter segments)...have begun to desert them because Brexit has failed, both materially and morally...
@LabourTogether 3/ ... not only is the economy stagnating, but the UK has self-isolated from two giant, divergent economic powerhouses: the USA and EU... and every crisis of the past 5 years is driven by that...