I don’t know who needs to hear this but Socialists should not “cost” their policies. It gives the Right an excuse to divert attention away from the issues those policies are meant to address and towards dead-end discussions about ‘unaffordability’.
It is predicated on an acceptance of the enforced scarcity generated by austerity. And it forces activists into framing working class gains as an inevitable loss to someone else. As good as Corbyn’s manifesto was, costing it was its weakness, it was unorthodox & unnecessary.
There are some who find the manufactured scarcity instrumental in making a case for taxing the rich. But that is short sighted and unimaginative. There are plenty of ways of arguing against inequality without staking the whole progressive agenda. Fight the two battles separately.
(At risk of making this thread too long) Now that ppl are organising outside of Labour I would hope they focus their narratives on *real* outcomes (e.g. No unemployment, no poverty, more equality, democracy etc.) and not on £ figures. Perhaps now they are more free to do so.
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