Heterodox
Letter: The New Statesman, 6th of September 2024 It is to the great credit of the New Statesman that it allowed two such opposing views on Ukraine to be published in its issue of 23 August. Brendan Simms says that Britain must do everything it can to “empower” Ukraine to restore its 1991 frontiers; Wolfgang Münchau writes that waning German and US support for “doing whatever it takes” to expel Russia from Ukraine will force a negotiated peace. Simms and those like him who advocate...
Read More »Marx and Keynes can free Labour from its budget bind
Rachel Reeves needs a new economic narrative to break the fear of deficits and debt 24th November 2023 To observe the basic thinking behind Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement on 22 November, and how Rachel Reeves will respond, is to find that the Chancellor and his shadow inhabit the same mental universe. They both aim to lift the British economy out of the doldrums, and they agree that doing so depends on improving the efficiency of the supply side of the economy – the way capital and...
Read More »Beyond Austerity: The Challenge Facing Labour
This essay, published in the New Statesman, is based on a lecture hosted on 19th September by the Progressive Economy Forum, of which Lord Skidelsky is a Council member. Labour has always been set a higher standard on the economy than the Conservatives: it had to be more orthodox, more competent, more successful to win equal praise or escape equal blame. The reason is not hard to find: created and financed by the trade unions, and committed to the abolition of capitalism, the Labour...
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