u must be one of the few people on the planet to believe

that they're proposing a little here, a little there ..

read for this for example - written from a pretty sympathetic perspective

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"What was required was a careful development of Labour’s 2017 manifesto, prioritising the need to raise investment on targeted programmes with feasible tax and borrowing increases, along with a more forensic approach to the reshaping of capitalism and an unambiguous commitment to Remain. The 2019 manifesto, notwithstanding the virtue of its ambition, stretches even the kindest observer’s credulity to the limit.

The doubling of 2017’s already ambitious borrowing and taxation targets to fulfil a faux “every wish granted” radicalism means that suddenly one of Johnson’s “lies” – that Labour will lift corporation tax to extravagant levels – turns out to be uncomfortably near the mark.

There is a programme of nationalisation more far-reaching than even Attlee’s. Other ideas have been not been considered – for instance, the social democratic proposition to take privileged £1 shares in every privatised utility to create a network of public benefit companies, constitutionally obliged to produce only for the public good, for a total outlay of a mere £100.

As a result the party has unnecessarily gifted its enemies the juiciest of ammunition. The Institute of Fiscal Studies has an endemic suspicion of spending, taxing and borrowing – but don’t hand it the chance to trash your plans. Nor are the CBI and Financial Times ever going to be active allies: but don’t hand them the chance to say you are going to break the economy. Reform the private sector, certainly, but it is nonsense electorally and in terms of economic fact to characterise so much of it, and those who run it, as the enemy of the people. With the party stagnating at 30% in the polls, it is thus driven back to its heartlands."

Posted By: paulg on November 25th 2019 at 18:09:44

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