Keir Starmer

[The Future’s Blue!]

Music to a Tories ears ....

Good to hear him talking like that, and I’m all Labour. Thanks.

 

[Postman Pep]

Trussites too apparently.... proper broad church :)

 

[metalblue]

Music to a Tories ears ....

She will never be the poster child for large parts of the Labour Party, completely understandably. However, my main observation, was she came across as someone fit for office even if you don’t agree with her.

I do hope we see some policies work towards lowering the wealth gap in this country, not through taxation musical chairs (the quick and unsustainable option), but by lifting the real wages of the majority. That generates growth, increases tax take to improve services and makes people better off - for a decade we (the tax payer) have propped up poor pay through benefits and higher tax thresholds. Labour can do this and still stick to the principles she outlined. Will they? Time will tell.

 

[BrianW]

She will never be the poster child for large parts of the Labour Party, completely understandably. However, my main observation, was she came across as someone fit for office even if you don’t agree with her.

I do hope we see some policies work towards lowering the wealth gap in this country, not through taxation musical chairs (the quick and unsustainable option), but by lifting the real wages of the majority. That generates growth, increases tax take to improve services and makes people better off - for a decade we (the tax payer) have propped up poor pay through benefits and higher tax thresholds. Labour can do this and still stick to the principles she outlined. Will they? Time will tell.

In principle, I agree with you, especially as real wages have dropped sharply in recent years.

How you bring about that change without spending money I am less certain about. The underlying problem with the UK is piss poor productivity. The way to solve that is a) more investment in modern machinery and so on and b) greatly improved education and training. Neither comes for free.

 

[Postman Pep]

Potential briefing wars between no 10 and 11 .... like the good old days

 

[Vic]

Gosh, differences between PM and Chancellor? Nothing new from previous governments. The problem was when Truss and Kwarteng were in agreement.

 

[Postman Pep]

Gosh, differences between PM and Chancellor? Nothing new in previous governments. The problem was when Truss and Kwarteng were in agreement.

So no concerns over those 'wedded to an Osbornite fiscal conservatism' ?

Or is it nothing to see here due to the colour of the rosette?

 

[ChicagoBlue]

She will never be the poster child for large parts of the Labour Party, completely understandably. However, my main observation, was she came across as someone fit for office even if you don’t agree with her.

I do hope we see some policies work towards lowering the wealth gap in this country, not through taxation musical chairs (the quick and unsustainable option), but by lifting the real wages of the majority. That generates growth, increases tax take to improve services and makes people better off - for a decade we (the tax payer) have propped up poor pay through benefits and higher tax thresholds. Labour can do this and still stick to the principles she outlined. Will they? Time will tell.

It also increases inflation, because someone has to sell something to pay those wages.

What is needed are sensible policies of interest rates that keep a cap on inflation (which harms the working class more than others), a strong progressive taxation policy coupled with a relaxation of the ridiculous regulatory stranglehold placed on business…including the small businesses that fuel the economy.

The problem was that scarcity produced inflation because demand didn’t match supply. Indeed, in a rational world, as scarcity raised orices, it should have killed demand. Instead, people still spent, with some going deeper into debt, at a time when debt was getting considerably more expensive. Now, they want more wages to help cover their increased costs, but inflation rises quickly and slow to fall, because lowering costs is hard all the way along the supply chain because no-one wants to be left holding the bag again, and everyone hastily trying to recover from, and in some cases recoup, the increased costs of yesterday, and the day before that.

The supply-demand imbalance has been corrected in many sectors and economic areas, but not in others. Sone of those others, such as housing, drive inflation and keep inflationary pressures on the economy…just as higher wages do.

It’s all finely balanced, and making monolithic assumptions can get one into trouble, because the experiences of inflation are not felt equally in different locations or, indeed, economic strata. Therefore, policies designed to help this things have to be very targeted and thus can be unpopular amongst others.

Good luck to us all.

 

[metalblue]

It also increases inflation, because someone has to sell something to pay those wages.

What is needed are sensible policies of interest rates that keep a cap on inflation (which harms the working class more than others), a strong progressive taxation policy coupled with a relaxation of the ridiculous regulatory stranglehold placed on business…including the small businesses that fuel the economy.

The problem was that scarcity produced inflation because demand didn’t match supply. Indeed, in a rational world, as scarcity raised orices, it should have killed demand. Instead, people still spent, with some going deeper into debt, at a time when debt was getting considerably more expensive. Now, they want more wages to help cover their increased costs, but inflation rises quickly and slow to fall, because lowering costs is hard all the way along the supply chain because no-one wants to be left holding the bag again, and everyone hastily trying to recover from, and in some cases recoup, the increased costs of yesterday, and the day before that.

The supply-demand imbalance has been corrected in many sectors and economic areas, but not in others. Sone of those others, such as housing, drive inflation and keep inflationary pressures on the economy…just as higher wages do.

It’s all finely balanced, and making monolithic assumptions can get one into trouble, because the experiences of inflation are not felt equally in different locations or, indeed, economic strata. Therefore, policies designed to help this things have to be very targeted and thus can be unpopular amongst others.

Good luck to us all.

You’ve made two assumptions there.

Firstly, you’re making an assumption that the money is not already in the economy, it is and the workers themselves already receive this money via the government. it would have little to no real world inflationary impacts. Wages would increase without increasing the money supply.

Secondly, you’re making an assumption that companies are barely making ends meet, that is often far from the case and, where it is true, balance sheet realities dictate what a company will pay. A worker at Tesco, once you factor in inflation, has lower wages today than they did in 2010 yet this company returns billions of pounds of profit each year. This is a picture we see repeated across the supermarket sector. Now the workers themselves take home pay has gone up through a significant uplifting of the point we start paying taxes on top of this they are potentially receiving working tax credits (a progressive tax) but ultimately you have a situation where the tax payer is contributing to private companies profits. How you unwind this system and get people off dependency on in work benefits in a controlled manner is a challenge but one we have to achieve.

I’m an advocate of supply and demand mechanics and was strongly opposed to the government support of energy bills for the reasons you allude too.

 

[bluethrunthru]

Then a touch of class from Sir Keir. Unbelievably the members on the benches where he sits shun him