Nicola Jennings in The Guardian
Monday, 25 November 2019
Sunday, 24 November 2019
Labour's spending plans aren't especially unusual – just look at Sweden
The US favours small government and low taxes, but many developed countries thrive on the opposite writes Larry Elliot in The Guardian
The gap between the richest and poorest in Sweden is far smaller than in the US. Photograph: Kevincho_Photography/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Labour’s plans for Britain involve a big increase in the size of the state. Government spending as a share of national output would rise to 45%. And apart from brief spikes in the mid-1970s and during the more recent financial crash, it has not reached those levels since the second world war.
To which the mature response should be: so what? A glance around the world shows that there are rich developed countries where the state is relatively small and there are rich developed countries where the state is large. In democracies, voters get the right to choose between the competing models.
Take Sweden and the US as examples of the contrasting approaches. The Scandinavian country, population just over 10 million, has a state that spends 50% of gross domestic product. The United States, population 329 million, operates with a much smaller state that accounts for 38% of national output.
The received wisdom, particularly among free-market economists, is that a small state means economic dynamism while a big state means the opposite: a sclerosis caused by governments burdening their populations with levels of taxation that stifle enterprise.
So how do the US and Sweden stack up against each other?
In terms of growth rates, there’s not been a lot to choose between the two in recent years, with both averaging around 2.5% a year in the half-decade up to 2018. If anything, Sweden’s growth rate was a tad higher.
The US has a slight edge when it comes to living standards. The average American had an income of $59,928 (£46,700) in 2017 while Sweden’s per capita income was $51,405. But the Swedes, as tends to be the way in Europe, are prepared to sacrifice income for leisure time. They work 1,621 hours a year on average compared to 1,781 hours for the average American.
What’s more, the focus on GDP per capita is a bit misleading since it says nothing about the way in which national income is divided up. In some countries, there is a wide gulf in incomes between those at the top and those at the bottom; in others there is a more even split. The US falls into the former category, Sweden into the latter.
One way of assessing income inequality is through the Gini coefficient. If income was distributed evenly in a country it would have a Gini coefficient of zero If, on the other hand, one person had all the income its coefficent would be 1. Obviously, every country is bunched around the middle of this range, but Sweden is closer to the bottom than the US. It has a Gini coefficient of 0.27 while the US’s is 0.41.
Big-state Sweden has a higher unemployment rate than the US – 6.3% against 3.9% – in 2018, but its employment rate is also higher. According to figures from the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development dating back to 2016, 69.4% of Americans aged 15 to 64 are in work, compared to 76.2% of Swedes.
The two countries have very similar inflation rates of around 2%, but there is no evidence that high levels of public spending have impaired Sweden’s export performance. A current account surplus of 1.7% of GDP in 2018 was in contrast to the US’s 2.4% of GDP deficit.
The big economic numbers – income per head, unemployment, inflation and the current account – do not provide a complete picture of how successful a country is. Sweden has a much lower murder rate than the US – 1.1 per 100,000 inhabitants against 5.3 – and has a much lower incarceration rate – 59 per 100,000 people as opposed to 655 per 100,000 in the US. Swedes live more than four years longer than Americans on average.
When it comes to Nobel prize winners, the countries have similar records once their differing populations are taken into account – 383 for the US and 32 for Sweden. Here, though, the US has the edge. Only three of Sweden’s laureates have come since the turn of the millennium while 130 Americans have been awarded during the same period.
The comparison between these two quite different countries helps to illuminate the debate in the UK. Apparently, the size of the state has no bearing on whether a country is successful or not. At a guess, not many Swedes would want to see their country transformed into small-state America.
This is the right time to have just such a debate about the size of the state because there are factors in Britain that are systemically putting upward pressure on spending. Demographic changes mean all parties need to address the rising costs of an ageing population; the bills for the state pension, the NHS and social care are all going to increase. The climate emergency will require hefty state investment to make the transition to a zero-carbon economy.
But a word of warning. Sweden has evolved its model gradually whereas Labour’s plans involve abrupt change. The price for a big state is high levels of taxation – and it is a price the Swedes are prepared to pay. Overall, government revenues are 49.5% of GDP and taxes on the average Swedish citizen are substantially higher than they are in the UK. The Conservative party is going into the election promising both lower taxes and higher spending. The Labour party says a big state can be paid for by rich individuals and the corporate sector with everybody else tucking into a free lunch.
There are politicians who want Britain to be more like the US and some who favour the Swedish approach. Both are possible. What’s not possible is to have Swedish levels of public spending with American levels of tax.
Labour’s plans for Britain involve a big increase in the size of the state. Government spending as a share of national output would rise to 45%. And apart from brief spikes in the mid-1970s and during the more recent financial crash, it has not reached those levels since the second world war.
To which the mature response should be: so what? A glance around the world shows that there are rich developed countries where the state is relatively small and there are rich developed countries where the state is large. In democracies, voters get the right to choose between the competing models.
Take Sweden and the US as examples of the contrasting approaches. The Scandinavian country, population just over 10 million, has a state that spends 50% of gross domestic product. The United States, population 329 million, operates with a much smaller state that accounts for 38% of national output.
The received wisdom, particularly among free-market economists, is that a small state means economic dynamism while a big state means the opposite: a sclerosis caused by governments burdening their populations with levels of taxation that stifle enterprise.
So how do the US and Sweden stack up against each other?
In terms of growth rates, there’s not been a lot to choose between the two in recent years, with both averaging around 2.5% a year in the half-decade up to 2018. If anything, Sweden’s growth rate was a tad higher.
The US has a slight edge when it comes to living standards. The average American had an income of $59,928 (£46,700) in 2017 while Sweden’s per capita income was $51,405. But the Swedes, as tends to be the way in Europe, are prepared to sacrifice income for leisure time. They work 1,621 hours a year on average compared to 1,781 hours for the average American.
What’s more, the focus on GDP per capita is a bit misleading since it says nothing about the way in which national income is divided up. In some countries, there is a wide gulf in incomes between those at the top and those at the bottom; in others there is a more even split. The US falls into the former category, Sweden into the latter.
One way of assessing income inequality is through the Gini coefficient. If income was distributed evenly in a country it would have a Gini coefficient of zero If, on the other hand, one person had all the income its coefficent would be 1. Obviously, every country is bunched around the middle of this range, but Sweden is closer to the bottom than the US. It has a Gini coefficient of 0.27 while the US’s is 0.41.
Big-state Sweden has a higher unemployment rate than the US – 6.3% against 3.9% – in 2018, but its employment rate is also higher. According to figures from the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development dating back to 2016, 69.4% of Americans aged 15 to 64 are in work, compared to 76.2% of Swedes.
The two countries have very similar inflation rates of around 2%, but there is no evidence that high levels of public spending have impaired Sweden’s export performance. A current account surplus of 1.7% of GDP in 2018 was in contrast to the US’s 2.4% of GDP deficit.
The big economic numbers – income per head, unemployment, inflation and the current account – do not provide a complete picture of how successful a country is. Sweden has a much lower murder rate than the US – 1.1 per 100,000 inhabitants against 5.3 – and has a much lower incarceration rate – 59 per 100,000 people as opposed to 655 per 100,000 in the US. Swedes live more than four years longer than Americans on average.
When it comes to Nobel prize winners, the countries have similar records once their differing populations are taken into account – 383 for the US and 32 for Sweden. Here, though, the US has the edge. Only three of Sweden’s laureates have come since the turn of the millennium while 130 Americans have been awarded during the same period.
The comparison between these two quite different countries helps to illuminate the debate in the UK. Apparently, the size of the state has no bearing on whether a country is successful or not. At a guess, not many Swedes would want to see their country transformed into small-state America.
This is the right time to have just such a debate about the size of the state because there are factors in Britain that are systemically putting upward pressure on spending. Demographic changes mean all parties need to address the rising costs of an ageing population; the bills for the state pension, the NHS and social care are all going to increase. The climate emergency will require hefty state investment to make the transition to a zero-carbon economy.
But a word of warning. Sweden has evolved its model gradually whereas Labour’s plans involve abrupt change. The price for a big state is high levels of taxation – and it is a price the Swedes are prepared to pay. Overall, government revenues are 49.5% of GDP and taxes on the average Swedish citizen are substantially higher than they are in the UK. The Conservative party is going into the election promising both lower taxes and higher spending. The Labour party says a big state can be paid for by rich individuals and the corporate sector with everybody else tucking into a free lunch.
There are politicians who want Britain to be more like the US and some who favour the Swedish approach. Both are possible. What’s not possible is to have Swedish levels of public spending with American levels of tax.
It's time to retire metrics like GDP. They don't measure everything that matters
The way we assess economic performance and social progress is fundamentally wrong, and the climate crisis has brought these concerns to the fore writes Joseph Stiglitz in The Guardian
‘And it should be clear that, in spite of the increases in GDP, in spite of the 2008 crisis being well behind us, everything is not fine.’ Photograph: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images
The world is facing three existential crises: a climate crisis, an inequality crisis and a crisis in democracy. Will we be able to prosper within our planetary boundaries? Can a modern economy deliver shared prosperity? And can democracies thrive if our economies fail to deliver shared prosperity? These are critical questions, yet the accepted ways by which we measure economic performance give absolutely no hint that we might be facing a problem. Each of these crises has reinforced the fact that we need better tools to assess economic performance and social progress.
The standard measure of economic performance is gross domestic product (GDP), which is the sum of the value of goods and services produced within a country over a given period. GDP was humming along nicely, rising year after year, until the 2008 global financial crisis hit. The global financial crisis was the ultimate illustration of the deficiencies in commonly used metrics. None of those metrics gave policymakers or markets adequate warning that something was amiss. Though a few astute economists had sounded the alarm, the standard measures seemed to suggest everything was fine.
Since then, according to the GDP metric, the US has been growing slightly more slowly than in earlier years, but it’s nothing to worry about. Politicians, looking at these metrics, suggest slight reforms to the economic system and, they promise, all will be well.
In Europe, the impact of 2008 was more severe, especially in countries most affected by the euro crisis. But even there, apart from high unemployment numbers, standard metrics do not fully reflect the adverse impacts of the austerity measures, either the magnitude of people’s suffering or the impacts on long-term standards of living.
Nor do our standard GDP measures provide us with the guidance we need to address the inequality crisis. So what if GDP goes up, if most citizens are worse off? In the first three years of the so-called recovery from the financial crisis, about 91% of the gains went to the top 1%. No wonder that many people doubted the claims of politicians who were then saying the economy was well on the way to a robust recovery.
For a long time I have been concerned with this problem – the gap between what our metrics show and what they need to show. During the Clinton administration, when I served as a member and then chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, I grew increasingly worried about how our main economic measures failed to take into account environmental degradation and resource depletion. If our economy seems to be growing but that growth is not sustainable because we are destroying the environment and using up scarce natural resources, our statistics should warn us. But because GDP didn’t include resource depletion and environmental degradation, we typically get an excessively rosy picture.
These concerns have now been brought to the fore with the climate crisis. It has been three decades since the threat of climate change was first widely recognized, and matters have grown worse faster than initially expected. There have been more extreme events, greater melting of glaciers and greater natural habitat destruction.
It is clear that something is fundamentally wrong with the way we assess economic performance and social progress. Even worse, our metrics frequently give the misleading impression that there is a trade-off between the two; that, for instance, changes that enhance people’s economic security, whether through improved pensions or a better welfare state, come at the expense of national economic performance.
Getting the measure right – or at least a lot better – is crucially important, especially in our metrics- and performance-oriented society. If we measure the wrong thing, we will do the wrong thing. If our measures tell us everything is fine when it really isn’t, we will be complacent.
And it should be clear that, in spite of the increases in GDP, in spite of the 2008 crisis being well behind us, everything is not fine. We see this in the political discontent rippling through so many advanced countries; we see it in the widespread support of demagogues, whose successes depend on exploiting economic discontent; and we see it in the environment around us, where fires rage and floods and droughts occur at ever-increasing intervals.
Fortunately, a variety of advances in methodology and technology have provided us with better measurement tools, and the international community has begun to embrace them. What we have accomplished so far has convinced me and many other economists of two things: first, that it is possible to construct much better measures of an economy’s health. Governments can and should go well beyond GDP. Second, that there is far more work to be done.
As Angel Gurría, secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, has written: “It is only by having better metrics that truly reflect people’s lives and aspirations that we will be able to design and implement ‘better policies for better lives’.”
The world is facing three existential crises: a climate crisis, an inequality crisis and a crisis in democracy. Will we be able to prosper within our planetary boundaries? Can a modern economy deliver shared prosperity? And can democracies thrive if our economies fail to deliver shared prosperity? These are critical questions, yet the accepted ways by which we measure economic performance give absolutely no hint that we might be facing a problem. Each of these crises has reinforced the fact that we need better tools to assess economic performance and social progress.
The standard measure of economic performance is gross domestic product (GDP), which is the sum of the value of goods and services produced within a country over a given period. GDP was humming along nicely, rising year after year, until the 2008 global financial crisis hit. The global financial crisis was the ultimate illustration of the deficiencies in commonly used metrics. None of those metrics gave policymakers or markets adequate warning that something was amiss. Though a few astute economists had sounded the alarm, the standard measures seemed to suggest everything was fine.
Since then, according to the GDP metric, the US has been growing slightly more slowly than in earlier years, but it’s nothing to worry about. Politicians, looking at these metrics, suggest slight reforms to the economic system and, they promise, all will be well.
In Europe, the impact of 2008 was more severe, especially in countries most affected by the euro crisis. But even there, apart from high unemployment numbers, standard metrics do not fully reflect the adverse impacts of the austerity measures, either the magnitude of people’s suffering or the impacts on long-term standards of living.
Nor do our standard GDP measures provide us with the guidance we need to address the inequality crisis. So what if GDP goes up, if most citizens are worse off? In the first three years of the so-called recovery from the financial crisis, about 91% of the gains went to the top 1%. No wonder that many people doubted the claims of politicians who were then saying the economy was well on the way to a robust recovery.
For a long time I have been concerned with this problem – the gap between what our metrics show and what they need to show. During the Clinton administration, when I served as a member and then chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, I grew increasingly worried about how our main economic measures failed to take into account environmental degradation and resource depletion. If our economy seems to be growing but that growth is not sustainable because we are destroying the environment and using up scarce natural resources, our statistics should warn us. But because GDP didn’t include resource depletion and environmental degradation, we typically get an excessively rosy picture.
These concerns have now been brought to the fore with the climate crisis. It has been three decades since the threat of climate change was first widely recognized, and matters have grown worse faster than initially expected. There have been more extreme events, greater melting of glaciers and greater natural habitat destruction.
It is clear that something is fundamentally wrong with the way we assess economic performance and social progress. Even worse, our metrics frequently give the misleading impression that there is a trade-off between the two; that, for instance, changes that enhance people’s economic security, whether through improved pensions or a better welfare state, come at the expense of national economic performance.
Getting the measure right – or at least a lot better – is crucially important, especially in our metrics- and performance-oriented society. If we measure the wrong thing, we will do the wrong thing. If our measures tell us everything is fine when it really isn’t, we will be complacent.
And it should be clear that, in spite of the increases in GDP, in spite of the 2008 crisis being well behind us, everything is not fine. We see this in the political discontent rippling through so many advanced countries; we see it in the widespread support of demagogues, whose successes depend on exploiting economic discontent; and we see it in the environment around us, where fires rage and floods and droughts occur at ever-increasing intervals.
Fortunately, a variety of advances in methodology and technology have provided us with better measurement tools, and the international community has begun to embrace them. What we have accomplished so far has convinced me and many other economists of two things: first, that it is possible to construct much better measures of an economy’s health. Governments can and should go well beyond GDP. Second, that there is far more work to be done.
As Angel Gurría, secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, has written: “It is only by having better metrics that truly reflect people’s lives and aspirations that we will be able to design and implement ‘better policies for better lives’.”
Friday, 22 November 2019
Thursday, 21 November 2019
Wednesday, 20 November 2019
I’ll take Labour dithering over Conservative cruelty any day
We face a choice between a party in it for themselves and one seeking to solve our massive problems. It’s no contest writes George Monbiot in The Guardian
FacebookTwitterPinterest ‘The Conservatives are entirely focused on wealth and power, and the protection of those who wield them.’ Boris Johnson at the CBI conference in London. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images
Yes, drift in politics is a sin. But compare it with the alternative. Last week, I wrote about the government’s proposal to criminalise the lives of Romany Gypsies and Travellers, among the most persecuted minorities in European history. It was so determined to beat them up in public that it broke its own rules: “Consultation exercises should not generally be launched during local or national election periods.” This is what institutional racism looks like.
Of course, it does not cancel or excuse Labour’s failure decisively to crush antisemitism. Yet, by contrast to the justified outrage about Labour’s weakness on this issue, my article, a week after the consultation was published, was the first in the national press to criticise the government’s extraordinary assault on threatened minorities. There has been almost no take-up since.
A survey by YouGov for Hope Not Hate discovered that 54% of Conservative party members believe Islam is “generally a threat to the British way of life”. Islamophobia is a genuine majority sentiment within the party, whose leader has repeatedly made racist and Islamophobic statements. This week, I searched Google for mentions of Labour antisemitism by the BBC, and found 7,810 returns. But a search for BBC mentions of Conservative Islamophobia delivered only 1,420 results.
Labour has an urgent desire for a better world. But it is coupled with such a weak instinct for power or even self-preservation that you can’t help wondering how much of its programme it can deliver. The Conservatives are entirely focused on wealth and power, and the protection of those who wield them. On one side, there is a ferment of new ideas. On the other, the old agenda of stripping away public protections and promoting private business at the expense of public interests.
We have a choice of self-denying dither or determined cruelty. Neither set of traits will deliver an ideal government. But I know which one I favour.
‘The first test of politics is this: are they in it for themselves, or for us?’ Rebecca Long-Bailey and Jeremy Corbyn with other members of Labour’s shadow cabinet. Photograph: Danny Lawson/EPA
Try to imagine Jeremy Corbyn in Tony Blair’s post-political role: flying around the world, enriching himself by striking deals with tyrants and oil companies. Try to picture John McDonnell setting up, like Blair’s righthand man, Peter Mandelson, a consultancy that gives reputational advice to controversial corporations. Try to picture Rebecca Long-Bailey being caught in a sting, like three of Blair’s former ministers, who offered undercover journalists political influence in exchange for cash.
I find these scenarios impossible to imagine. Whatever you might think of Labour’s frontbenchers, you could surely no more picture them behaving this way than you could picture Boris Johnson abandoning his career to become a hospital cleaner.
The first test of politics is this: are they in it for themselves, or for us? I don’t mean to suggest that Blair and his frontbenchers were entirely selfish, but self-interest and the national interest became too easily entangled. Among the Conservatives there is no confusion: self-interest is the political doctrine. Unlike either group, Corbyn’s team passes.
This carries a cost. The game you are supposed to play in British politics is feathering your nest by feathering the nests of others. Those who refuse are denounced in the billionaire press as unfit for government.
I’ve never been a member of any political party, and have no party loyalties. I know the Labour party is imperfect. But what I see is a group of people genuinely seeking to solve our massive problems – environmental, political, economic, medical and social – rather than appeasing press barons and queueing at the notorious revolving door between politics and money-making.
My experience, as an author of the Land for the Many report that Labour commissioned, has been of a party boldly seeking new ideas for improving national life, and being prepared to weather a storm of lies for having the temerity to mention them. We are likely to see a lot more of this when it publishes its manifesto on Thursday.
Of course the first test is not the only test. Another is the ability to lead, and here Labour often fails. First, some context. Several hundred Labour members, out of 485,000, have been accused of antisemitism. That is several hundred too many: every instance is an outrage. However, as a fraction of 1%, it’s a far cry from public perceptions of the issue. According to a new book about the media’s treatment of the Labour party, Bad News for Labour, the average estimate by people surveyed is that 34% of Labour members have succumbed to this evil.
Part of the problem is that Corbyn has failed to get a grip on his party and respond with the decisive speed this deadly bigotry demands. Instead, senior figures sometimes appear to have done the opposite, obstructing the swift and uncompromising resolution of complaints. This is completely unacceptable. But it does not amount to a party riddled with antisemitism.
Corbyn’s dithering on this issue reflects a general diffidence about asserting power. It could be seen as the flipside of his lack of self-interest. Blair might be egocentric, but one result was that he immediately stamped out any tendency he believed would threaten his chances of election.
By contrast, Corbyn wasted precious months failing to articulate a clear position on Brexit. He repeatedly missed the open goals the government offered. He allowed infighting to dominate when the party’s energies should have been concentrated on the Tories. No one could definitively solve the conflicts within the Labour party, but a firmer leader could have prevented them from spiralling into open warfare.
Try to imagine Jeremy Corbyn in Tony Blair’s post-political role: flying around the world, enriching himself by striking deals with tyrants and oil companies. Try to picture John McDonnell setting up, like Blair’s righthand man, Peter Mandelson, a consultancy that gives reputational advice to controversial corporations. Try to picture Rebecca Long-Bailey being caught in a sting, like three of Blair’s former ministers, who offered undercover journalists political influence in exchange for cash.
I find these scenarios impossible to imagine. Whatever you might think of Labour’s frontbenchers, you could surely no more picture them behaving this way than you could picture Boris Johnson abandoning his career to become a hospital cleaner.
The first test of politics is this: are they in it for themselves, or for us? I don’t mean to suggest that Blair and his frontbenchers were entirely selfish, but self-interest and the national interest became too easily entangled. Among the Conservatives there is no confusion: self-interest is the political doctrine. Unlike either group, Corbyn’s team passes.
This carries a cost. The game you are supposed to play in British politics is feathering your nest by feathering the nests of others. Those who refuse are denounced in the billionaire press as unfit for government.
I’ve never been a member of any political party, and have no party loyalties. I know the Labour party is imperfect. But what I see is a group of people genuinely seeking to solve our massive problems – environmental, political, economic, medical and social – rather than appeasing press barons and queueing at the notorious revolving door between politics and money-making.
My experience, as an author of the Land for the Many report that Labour commissioned, has been of a party boldly seeking new ideas for improving national life, and being prepared to weather a storm of lies for having the temerity to mention them. We are likely to see a lot more of this when it publishes its manifesto on Thursday.
Of course the first test is not the only test. Another is the ability to lead, and here Labour often fails. First, some context. Several hundred Labour members, out of 485,000, have been accused of antisemitism. That is several hundred too many: every instance is an outrage. However, as a fraction of 1%, it’s a far cry from public perceptions of the issue. According to a new book about the media’s treatment of the Labour party, Bad News for Labour, the average estimate by people surveyed is that 34% of Labour members have succumbed to this evil.
Part of the problem is that Corbyn has failed to get a grip on his party and respond with the decisive speed this deadly bigotry demands. Instead, senior figures sometimes appear to have done the opposite, obstructing the swift and uncompromising resolution of complaints. This is completely unacceptable. But it does not amount to a party riddled with antisemitism.
Corbyn’s dithering on this issue reflects a general diffidence about asserting power. It could be seen as the flipside of his lack of self-interest. Blair might be egocentric, but one result was that he immediately stamped out any tendency he believed would threaten his chances of election.
By contrast, Corbyn wasted precious months failing to articulate a clear position on Brexit. He repeatedly missed the open goals the government offered. He allowed infighting to dominate when the party’s energies should have been concentrated on the Tories. No one could definitively solve the conflicts within the Labour party, but a firmer leader could have prevented them from spiralling into open warfare.
FacebookTwitterPinterest ‘The Conservatives are entirely focused on wealth and power, and the protection of those who wield them.’ Boris Johnson at the CBI conference in London. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images
Yes, drift in politics is a sin. But compare it with the alternative. Last week, I wrote about the government’s proposal to criminalise the lives of Romany Gypsies and Travellers, among the most persecuted minorities in European history. It was so determined to beat them up in public that it broke its own rules: “Consultation exercises should not generally be launched during local or national election periods.” This is what institutional racism looks like.
Of course, it does not cancel or excuse Labour’s failure decisively to crush antisemitism. Yet, by contrast to the justified outrage about Labour’s weakness on this issue, my article, a week after the consultation was published, was the first in the national press to criticise the government’s extraordinary assault on threatened minorities. There has been almost no take-up since.
A survey by YouGov for Hope Not Hate discovered that 54% of Conservative party members believe Islam is “generally a threat to the British way of life”. Islamophobia is a genuine majority sentiment within the party, whose leader has repeatedly made racist and Islamophobic statements. This week, I searched Google for mentions of Labour antisemitism by the BBC, and found 7,810 returns. But a search for BBC mentions of Conservative Islamophobia delivered only 1,420 results.
Labour has an urgent desire for a better world. But it is coupled with such a weak instinct for power or even self-preservation that you can’t help wondering how much of its programme it can deliver. The Conservatives are entirely focused on wealth and power, and the protection of those who wield them. On one side, there is a ferment of new ideas. On the other, the old agenda of stripping away public protections and promoting private business at the expense of public interests.
We have a choice of self-denying dither or determined cruelty. Neither set of traits will deliver an ideal government. But I know which one I favour.
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