Starmer says:

First we will be financially responsible.
Second, we will be distinctively British.
Third, we will work in partnership with business.
Fourth, we will re energise communities and spread economic power.
Fifth, we will refocus our investment on boosting productivity.
OK. So how does this:

1) Build houses?
2) Green the economy?
3) Transform energy and transport?
4) Deliver health and social care?
5) Actually create a job?

Warm words, nationalism and committees are not a plan
And for the record, and speaking as an accountant, finance should always cone last in such a list because we can afford anything that we, as an economy, can deliver. So the questions ‘what can we do?’ and ‘what do we want to do?’ should be first. This list has the wrong priority.

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More from @RichardJMurphy

Jul 25
I have been asked on here if I have ever looked at the benefits of freeports. The honest answer is no, but that is because I have never been able to find any such benefits. I have, however, looked at the massive downsides to this idea that both Sunak and Truss support. A thread..
It is important to note that there is no one definition of a freeport. Sunak and Truss are already arguing about what they mean by the term, with Truss being the more extreme of the two. There are, however, some common features to note.
First of all, a freeport need not be a port. It needn’t be an airport either. It’s just a location - from a single warehouse to a whole geographic region - that a government declares to be outside the scope of normal regulation.
Read 33 tweets
Jul 17
Tory leadership candidates are all vying to shrink the state. Their assumption is a private secret job is always better than a state sector job and must deliver more value for society. But that’s not true….a short thread.
The vast majority of state sector jobs have high value added for society. There are the classics, like nurses, teachers, police officers (by and large), and rubbish collectors. The less obvious include the essential health and safety officials and tax inspectors.
Johnson and Sunak want 20% fewer public sector staff. My guess is that they think public servants would add more value in the private sector. All the leadership candidates seem to think the same way, Badenoch most of all.
Read 28 tweets
Jul 15
Every Tory candidate is being asked how they would tackle the cost of living crisis and without exception they are floundering because they all believe it better for households to go into debt, and literally fail, than for governments to create more money to deal with the crisis.
We had crises in 2008 and 2020 and people only survived because the government ran deficits. But they can be inflationary because the rich overly benefit from any stimulus. So deficits have to be matched by significant tax rises on the wealthy.
This is an economic prescription that recognises that 20% or so of people in this country are very well off whilst most of the rest struggle to get by, and that struggle is going to get worse for many of them. There is no room for one policy in that case. There must be two.
Read 5 tweets
Jul 11
There is a real problem amongst the hopeful Tory party leaders. Not one of them seems to understand the role that government has in the national economy. It’s not the black hole they seem to think it is. It’s essential to our national well-being. A thread to explain…..
I try to avoid maths when explaining economics because even the most basic formula seems to make people recoil in shock. But I am going to have to explain one formula to make sense of my arguments in this thread. But, it only involves addition so it’s not hard.
The formula is this:

Y = C + G + I + (X - M)

Y is national income, or gross domestic product (GDP) as it’s called. C is what we consume. G is government consumption to provide goods and services. I is investment in the economy. X is exports, and M imports.
Read 39 tweets
Jul 10
Tax cuts are in the news as Tory party leadership candidates are talking about them as if tax was going out of fashion. It is very apparent that none of them know much about tax, so a thread to discuss some of the issues.
First, because all government spending is, as a matter of fact, funded by government money creation via the Bank of England, which was proved in the quantitative easing eras, the proper role of tax in the economy needs to be understood by these politicians.
That proper role of tax in the macroeconomy - which is what they’re going to be responsible for - is to reduce inflation. Tax cancels government money creation. It takes government-created money resulting from government spending out of circulation.
Read 30 tweets
Jul 9
Questions for Tory Party candidates. A thread to tease out what they really think:

1.Why did you support Boris Johnson?

2. If you criticise Johnson now why didn’t you when in office?
3. Where do you think the Northern Ireland border should be? What do you suggest the UK should do to protect the rights of the EU to maintain a single market which the UK has agreed to uphold in the Good Friday and Brexit agreements?
4. Do you support the deportation of migrants to Rwanda?

5. Do you support the imposition of limitations on the human rights of people in the UK?

6. Do you believe it is wrong to be woke? If so, what is it about racial and other equality that you think wrong?
Read 25 tweets

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