For A Start

Events somewhat overshadowed the Spring Statement, not that it was particularly thrilling, so you may not have heard that Britain now had the lowest economic growth in the G20. Conservative Party figures, so to speak, are always assumed to know about the economy, anyway. Journalists never question them on it. Their assertions are taken on simple trust, while their Labour counterparts are expected to bring along 10-year spreadsheets. Well, since I am not a member of the Labour Party, still less am I a spokesman for it, you will find no 10-year spreadsheet here.

Instead, you will find a call for the promised £350 million per week extra for the National Health Service to appear on the face of the legislation withdrawing the United Kingdom from the European Union. You will find a warm welcome for the additional billion pound investment in jobs and services in Northern Ireland, and a call for Scotland, Wales, and each of the nine English regions to receive the same per capita, as part of the application of Modern Monetary Theory, including the Land Value Tax. You will find a call for the Universal Basic Income, while continuing to campaign, through Modern Monetary Theory’s Jobs Guarantee, for full employment with the Living Wage, and thus for the bargaining power of the trade unions. 

You will find a call for the reassertion of democratic political control over the Bank of England, including that the approval of the House of Commons be required for changes to interest rates, and for the assertion of democratic political control over the City of London, with a Glass-Steagall division between investment banking and retail banking, and with the closure of all tax havens under British jurisdiction. You will find a call for a reorientation towards the BRICS countries, including the integration into the Belt and Road Initiative of all four parts of the United Kingdom, of all nine English regions, and of all of the British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. And you will find a call for supporters of economic equality to be elected to the City of London Corporation, to the States of Jersey, to the States of Guernsey, to Tynwald, and to the legislatures of the British Overseas Territories.

For a start, anyway. Here in North West Durham, I have been politically active for more than 20 years. The next General Election will result, either in another hung Parliament, or in a tiny overall majority. You know what you have to do, brothers and sisters. You know what you have to do.