A Prologue
One or two of us have noticed that you appear to be lacking in clues when it comes to putting some Blue Labour Red Socialist water between you and the Camerlot Coalition for the forthcoming 2015 bunfight. And being an even-handed chap on the side of decency, I have reached the conclusion that your indecency quotient is a good 25% lower than that of the perfectly appalling Tory Sheister tendency. Although you are of course almost entirely useless, these days life is more about the lesser of evils than the best alternative. So you’ll just have to do.
Of course, I freely acknowledge that this is largely an academic exercise, as you will have to chuck a great deal of revisionist Harmanballs out of the Ed Miller Band in order to make this winning strategy work…and clearly, you lack the spine to either do that, or indeed display any evidence of cojones on many other dimensions. Just think of this piece as a classic case of “Let the record show”.
First up and most important, you do not have to sell out on any principles – or sell any loyal Labour voters down the river – in order to win in 2015. Nor is there any need at all for any luvvie-fluffy drivel at all, given that your core audience rejects all that bollocks anyway. No: the sole requirement is for you to stop attending Geordie mining galas and feminist cross-dressing action committees. Instead, simply shut yourself in a room with nothing more than a sense of the empirical to guide you…and this article.
Second, the main requirement in terms of content is to relax, and take on board the reality here: that the people on the other side of the nonexistent Westminster political divide are selling a Ponzi scheme wrapped in the turd-stained bogpaper of fanatical rubbish, and then dipped in the pixie-dust of 77 virgins in Islamic Heaven.
This, Ed, is your golden opportunity to finally marry off the Socialist bride to the Realist groom – without any reference at all to Wat Tyler, Karl Marx, J M Keynes, Milt Friedman, or any other economic-theorist plonkers. For what I’m talking about is the obvious solution to the current impasse.
The Now situation for Dummies
It is as follows: neoliberal fundamentalism has met its Waterlunacy.
The idea of making 5% very rich to ensure human survival has resulted in a 30% depression of the spending power of the 95%.
Given we have a consumption-based economic model of choice, if you take away the disposable spending power of the 95%, then you will be staring down the barrel of diminishing levels of consumption, alongside high unemployment.
In a culture where values of honesty have turned to diarrhea, the Devil finds things for unemployed hands to do. These include voting for Nazis, drinking, causing social damage, voting UKIP, voting Monster Raving Looney, voting for endless welfare, but chiefly not voting at all. And in a culture where the stats aren’t bent, importantly it involves a complete inability to kick-start the economy….followed by QE, which stands for Quantum Effluent.
In the UK and the US (and the EU that Mario Draghi wants) what we’re being asked to believe in is a model that states: fire people, pay the poor f**kers still in work less, and borrow more.
But but but but but….the result (which we are now beginning to see across the West) is deflation. It is a form of flation that strikes terror into the hearts of all those not still stuck in 1923, aka, the entire German Establishment.
This is what we need
1. The antidote to deflation: inflation.
2. The antidote to unemployment: employing more folks….and paying them a decent wage.
3. Borrowing a shedload less.
Employing more folks who earn more produces inflation.
Giving idle hands better-paid things to do increases output, while reducing crime and welfare costs.
More exports, less crime, and shorter dole queues mean less borrowing.
The bottom line
Give people more disposable income and a steady job, and the demand for credit will fall.
This produces two further things: less reliance on reptilian banks for the consumer, thus less demand for credit, and thus lower interest rates, which reduce our Sovereign cost of borrowing.
In turn, that will mean more consumer money left over with which to save…and thus higher demand for good savings rates….larger deposits on house mortgages, and thus far less chance of citizens in negative equity….and again, thus more personal disposable income.
Higher savings rates + lower credit rates = the insolvency of all sh*tridden plc banks, and the renaissance of mutualised institutions wherein long-term credit rates are reasonable, as indeed are savings rates. Frontal-lobe misbehaviour comes to an end, mutual credit gains share at the expense of wide-boy driven Bourses, and we all live happily ever after. As indeed we used to live before the lunatics took over the asylum thirty years ago.
The final questions
Well Ed, are you up for economic truth?
Would you rather speak common sense than talk collaborationist nonsense?
Will you dump Mr Balls, who is full of technocratic sh*t a la Brown?
Do you have the chutzpah to tackle the liars head-on, and offer a feasible alternative?
Do you have what it takes to look Newscorp in the eye and say “F**k you?”
The offer to the electorate would be this: how would you like more jobs, a lower fiscal deficit, better wages, fairer taxes on the super-rich multinationals and their bankers, and the revival of banks for the People rather than the pricks, privileged and paedophiles?
Even better, how would you like the British Government to look the IMF in the eye and say, “OK punk, show me the logical flaw in this?”
You know Ed, I’m not really convinced you have this in you. I mean mate, we are talking about not just taking on the bastards, but also dumping the starry-eyed pillock camp followers who act as a millstone for every truly radical and realistic idea on the planet. Even worse chum, it means leaving behind this naive belief your Party has in the controlling, unelected EU superstate.
But if you don’t Ed, then all I can say is “God help us all”.
The Slog 