Social and Economic Policy

Local authorities are currently putting the final touches to budgets for 2017-18, which will herald another round of swingeing cuts across the UK. These cuts follow £20 billion cuts to the core government grant made between 2010 and 2015, a 40% real-terms reduction. A new system of funding based on the retention of Business Rates (NNDR), the tax levied on the basis of the value of business premises, is set to completely replace the block grant. A trial of the scheme involving several councils in the North West and Midlands is set to begin from April. According to the treasurer of the Greater...

Jeremy Corbyn’s recent call for a maximum wage is a good move, even though he has now faded it out. Around midday on Wednesday 4 January, after just two and a half days of the new work year, Britain’s top bosses passed the UK average salary of £28,200. They had passed workers on the minimum wage, and others like the present writer, after a single day or so. A few days later Oxfam reported that just eight individuals own as much wealth as the poorer 50% of the world’s population added together. It is hard for most of us to understand why millionaires are not content, and strive so hard to...

“One of the most outstanding features of Bolshevism has been its severe, exacting, even quarrelsome attitude towards the question of doctrine.” — Leon Trotsky According to the common sense, the far left is a place where rows over obscure points of dogma lead to endless arguments, fractures and splits. How else to explain the dozens of tiny grouplets claiming to hold the holy grail of revolutionary wisdom? But seen from close quarters, the opposite is the case. Generally the different organisations on the left keep to themselves. When they do meet they rarely argue about politics. They might...

On 23 January 2015, several days after being named as the Finance Minister of the new Greek government, Yanis Varoufakis answered questions from Channel Four. His first objective, he explained, was to take emergency steps to reduce the social effects of the crisis, and the third was to re-negotiate the debt. Between these two, and before even getting to the question of the debt, Varoufakis named as his target the system of oligarchy: “We are going to destroy the Greek oligarchy system”. These intentions were not followed through with, but Varoufakis clearly understood that a double rupture was...

Four Tory Councils are set to take legal action against the expansion of Heathrow Airport. Hillingdon, Richmond, Wandsworth and Windsor and Maidenhead will be joined by Greenpeace in seeking a judicial review of the decision to go ahead with a third runway. Court action is likely to delay any final decision actually being implemented. For the residents of the area and those who will be most directly affected the words of David Cameron, “No ifs, No buts. No third runway” now ring very hollow. The anger felt by local people as Heathrow Ltd throw their weight around has not dimmed in the years of...

Our recently published book Can Socialism Make Sense? takes on the arguments against socialism. In this abridged excerpt a critic of socialism (B) is answered by a socialist (A) on the question of human nature. B: You can’t change human nature. Humanity remains an animal. Human nature — competition, individualism, selfishness, predatoriness — produces, protects, and preserves capitalism. A. If that were true, then why did we not have capitalism all back through history? We have had slave societies, feudal societies, “oriental-despotic” societies (ancient India and China, Inca Peru). The idea...

“For questions about the survival of big European banks to be swirling almost ten years after the financial crisis started is utterly damning”, writes the big business magazine The Economist. Questions are indeed swirling. On 26 October, the Bank of England asked British banks to say how much they are owed by Germany’s huge Deutsche Bank and Italy’s oldest bank, MPS, in case those banks prove unable to pay. Deutsche Bank’s share price has fallen by over 50% this year. The stock markets value this giant of international banking at less than Snapchat, a social-media business with a few hundred...

On 25 October, the Tory government announced that it would back the building of a third runway at Heathrow. Tory MP Zac Goldsmith signalled that he would resign and fight a by-election as an independent candidate, and other Tories objected. In a bid to reduce the disruption in the Tory party, prime minister Theresa May has said that the decisive parliamentary vote will not be taken until the winter of 2017-8. Construction is due to start in 2020 or 2021. The CBI and the TUC backed the Heathrow expansion plan. The Lib-Dems and the Greens opposed it. Labour approved Heathrow expansion while in...

Philip Green is the multibillionaire chairman of the fashion retail Arcadia Group, owner of chains such as Topshop, Burton and Dorothy Perkins. With his wife Cristina he has a fortune of £4.3 billion. He has attracted hostile press before and now he is being reviled as the unacceptable face of capitalism for his part in the downfall of British Home Stores (BHS). On 20 October, MPs supported a motion recommending Green be stripped of the knighthood he was awarded in 2006 for “services to the retail industry”. Green bought BHS for £200 million in 2000 and sold it recently for £1. Now it has gone...

Jeremy Corbyn’s Environment and Energy policy is a fleshed out version of the policy he announced last year. It shows Corbyn at his most radical and visionary. Anyone who cares about the future of human civilisation should read it and rally to the Labour Party to make it a reality. Corbyn’s broad vision is to solve the climate crisis whilst maintaining 21st century level of material wealth and abundance. His proposed National Investment bank will provide £500 billion of investment, creating 300,000 green jobs that will “accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy”. The plans are...