ABOUR'S strategy to ounter two years of Tory slump is seemingly based on boosting Britain'snational output of rhetoric.
Last week's policy statement Labour's Campaign for Recovery explicitly referred to itself as 'new-Keynesian'. Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown even heralded it as 'a British New Deal for the 1990s'.
But a massive programme of works this was certainly not. If John Maynard Keynes or Franklin D. Roosevelt were alive today, they'd be well advised to sue.
Rehash
Labour's Campaign for Recovery is moderately Deered up renasn or Labour s post-Kinnock economic thinkins. It makes the 1900 manues to read like the transitional programme.
Forget silly ideas about Taking back anything from the beneficiaries of Thatcher's massive tax cuts. Even April's general election commitments to raise the top rate of income tax and the upper limit on NaLamont slashes NHS AS THIS year's NHS cuts and dosures bring the new phenomenon of nursing jobs being made redundant", Norman Lamont's Autumn Statement heralds more brutal cuts to come next year.
Behind the bravado of a mini-budget for 'growth, the grim reality is hat next year's NHS budget is to be cut by 5700 milion from its previous Labour's David Blunkett has pointed out that the allocation to be reduced by a massive £1.7 bilion.
To make matters worso, the Tories are basing their cash limits on the ludicrous assumption that inflation will run at only 2.75 percent next tional Insurance contributions have now been dropped. Denis Healey can now be appreciated for the dangerous radical he really was.
Funding
This 'New Deal' is apparently to be funded by stamp duty on share transaction, a one off levy on the rip-off profits made by privatised water and electric companies in the recession, and whatever the private sector may be willing to put projects.
Several of policies outlined Labour's Campaign for Recovery actually formed part Chancellor Lamont's Autumn Statement when it was unveiled three days later.
Interest rates were duly cut, public-private rastructural couraged, and councils were given the opportunity to use capital receipts for new housing projects, at least for a limited period.
Michael Hese tine. TOO stressed his commitment to the new partnersm? government and industry spoke at the Confederation of ear. Every one percent of additona Mation would axe 2300 millor spending power from health authoritios Caught in this squeeze are next aprits community care reforms: it is or that nether health authoribes nor local councis (wres ang wist she council tax wil have the funds nooded to provide a comprehensive service for some of the most vulnorablo patients.
Adding insult to injury, Virginia Bottomley has nabonal NHS budget will be siphoned off next year to pay for the redundan. des and other costs of imclementna the Tominson plan for massive hospi tal closures in London. British Industry conference.
Of the policies the Tories are not ready to enact immeatately, Labour is calling for the implementation on a scale substantially bigger than originally planned - - Or Ine ЮD creation plans which were drawn up by the Department of Employment in the expectation of a labour victory!
No mention here of real jobs at trade union pay rates -labour movement orthodoxy not ten years ago. These 'schemes'" and 'programmes' would amount to little more than dead-end workfare. Even Brown conceaca iney would not ensure full employment.
The document's philosophy 'The difference between dispute about the importance recognition that government also has clear responsibilities to act, internationally and nationally This stance substantially concurs with two recent articles - an editorial in The Economist and a piece by Sir Loon Brittan's brother Samuel in The Financial Times - both Baffled covert to Labour's line? Heseltine stressing the benefit of limited economic interventionism.
ruline classes of America and Japan have beenwilling to SO further than Labour, with major reflationpackages in Prospect m both countries next year.
Growth
Marxists have never accepted the formulations of key theoreticians of British Labourism, from Anthony Crosland in the 1950s to Stuart Holland in the 1970s, who have argued that government action could generate permanent economic growth as the basis for continuous expansion of the welfare state.
Ultimately, the only way to avoid slumps recurring again and again is to replace the very and Lamont with conscious democratic economic pianning, based on production for use and not profit.
But in the interim, even a serious Kevnesian package now could boost employment - and With it. working class confidence and combativity. It would undermine the ideology of the market that dominated ponacs wrougnous the tast decade.
That's why socialists should press the case for Keynes. What the hell is the Labour Party doing lagging behind hind kicki like Bill Clinton Miyazawa anyhow?