Corbyn Taps In to What's Eating Society...

[Fence]

7 hours ago, Byron said:

1. Jeremy Corbyn

1. 1. Invited ...........

So that's the Conservative Party (well researched) response?  Slag him off and enough will run and vote Conservative?  Yeh, that MO sure worked to manipulate the angry plebs come Brexit vote time.  And things are so much better now!

Such a very stupid and vacuous tactic but so very understandable if one knows anything about how dying organisations think and behave.  It could have all been so much better. 

It's been one strategic c*ck up after another for the last decade or so.  We now have a final days bunker mentality. 

And I used to be a Conservative.  Still am a conservative, just waiting for a sane and functioning party to make a seismic shift from the current systemic political mess, else I'm out of it.  I'm not bothering choosing the least bad and legitimising a failed system. 

That game's gone on too long and we can see how it works out.  We've had the full range from sincere incompetents to out right snake oil salesmen.  It's too far gone now to save any of them. 

Maybe the're enough naive millennials out there who are too angry and whatever to listen to the wisdom of others but they sure ain't going to be voting Conservative.  A complete clusterf*ck! 

It was the Conservatives to win but they fumbled the ball and now walk listlessly around the field chanting empty slogans while they wait for the whistle.  Meanwhile the stands have been emptied and echo "'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings".

Edited February 21, 2018 by Fence

[Fence]

1 hour ago, frankvw said:

The Tories rely on home ownership and wealth accumulation yet all their policies are eroding their natural voter base. It's not just the young screwed. There are significant, and growing, numbers of folk entering and leaving middle age without home ownership, pensions, significant assets, traditionally the demographic that swings to Tory ranks in increasing numbers to form their core voter base. Take away a large chunk of that demographic and the Tories can no longer secure a victory.

Very good point (one of many).  To be seen against a backdrop of declining economic power and increasing financial instability to which all prior governments have contributed and in which the only way to fake the necessary prosperity is to redistribute wealth within the same sized pie.  Thus you accentuate the winners and losers and surprisingly quickly sow the seeds of your own rather unintelligent destruction.  

[Fence]

2 hours ago, frankvw said:

You've probably hit the zeitgeist there. Even if you are naturally uncomfortable with labour and think he is an incompetent, virtue-signalling buffoon, and are convinced he will cause economic chaos, that alone will hit the reset button on the current mess we have.

The Tories are in a huge bind now. I include NuLabor as part of that since they operated the same neo-liberal policy formula. The Tories rely on home ownership and wealth accumulation yet all their policies are eroding their natural voter base. It's not just the young screwed. There are significant, and growing, numbers of folk entering and leaving middle age without home ownership, pensions, significant assets, traditionally the demographic that swings to Tory ranks in increasing numbers to form their core voter base. Take away a large chunk of that demographic and the Tories can no longer secure a victory. Any real policy measures to address that will affect their remaining core. Who are dying off in rapid numbers due to the same demographic bubble that made house price inflation a vote wining formula. There's no way out for them. When Osborne smirked that 'everyone loves a property boom' as he introduced HTB and REITS policies, he was right in the short term but at the expense of destroying the parties long term electability.

At this stage, they would probably need to swing towards tradtional Conservate policy of savings, investment and home ownership. House prices at current levels preclude that, as does zero interest rate policies of the BoE (capitalism, savings and the function of government bonds all but destroyed), the gig economy and insecure emlpoyment, mistrust of private pension companies and corporations rading pension salary schemes with regularity. It's a perfect storm against traditonal Conservative philosophy, so that won't work. The alternative is full on libertarian laissez-faire but, from this starting debt position, they would never get through one term with the system 'cleansing' that would require. Unintentional 'Corbyn' cleansing would be the alternative to that. But maybe Corbyn can pull of his own policies, who knows? That's the current win-win scenario for labour at the moment amongst floaters and increasing numbers of disenfranchised Tory voters.

Either way, Tories are toast here on. They could have hit reset after 2012 and blamed everything (rightly so ) on Brown. Instead, they chose to go on an even bigger debt splurge and double down on house price inflation policy. They've snookered themselves

 

I've got to say it again, that's a smashing piece.  Not only razor sharp but extremely well written.  A lot of people feel betrayed about a lot of things right now, Conservative voters and members included.  Any conservative values have fallen into the collective cesspit that passes as our current political system - not the system itself, but it's content.  Alas, the end game is never pretty.

Edited February 21, 2018 by Fence

[Fence]

4 minutes ago, Fence said:

Instead, they chose to go on an even bigger debt splurge and double down on house price inflation policy. They've snookered themselves

And we know who's strategic idea that was.

[PopGun]

4 hours ago, Byron said:

1. Jeremy Corbyn

1. 1. Invited two IRA members to parliament two weeks after the Brighton bombing.
   2. Attended Bloody Sunday commemoration with bomber Brendan McKenna.
   3. Attended meeting with Provisional IRA member Raymond McCartney.
   4. Hosted IRA linked Mitchell McLaughlin in parliament.
   5. Spoke alongside IRA terrorist Martina Anderson.
   6. Attended Sinn Fein dinner with IRA bomber Gerry Kelly.
   7. Chaired Irish republican event with IRA bomber Brendan MacFarlane.
   8. Attended Bobby Sands commemoration honouring IRA terrorists.
   9. Stood in minute’s silence for IRA gunmen shot dead by the SAS.
   10. Refused to condemn the IRA in Sky News interview.
   11. Refused to condemn the IRA on Question Time.
   12. Refused to condemn IRA violence in BBC radio interview.
   13. Signed EDM after IRA Poppy massacre massacre blaming Britain for the deaths.
   14. Arrested while protesting in support of Brighton bomber’s co-defendants.
   15. Lobbied government to improve visiting conditions for IRA killers.
   16. Attended Irish republican event calling for armed conflict against Britain.
   17. Hired suspected IRA man Ronan Bennett as a parliamentary assistant.
   18. Hired another aide closely linked to several convicted IRA terrorists.
   19. Heavily involved with IRA sympathising newspaper London Labour Briefing.
   20. Put up £20,000 bail money for IRA terror suspect Roisin McAliskey.
   21. Didn’t support IRA ceasefire.
   22. Said Hamas and Hezbollah are his “friends“.
   23. Called for Hamas to be removed from terror banned list.
   24. Called Hamas “serious and hard-working“.
   25. Attended wreath-laying at grave of Munich massacre terrorist.
   26. Attended conference with Hamas and PFLP.
   27. Photographed smiling with Hezbollah flag.
   28. Attended rally with Hezbollah and Al-Muhajiroun.
   29. Repeatedly shared platforms with PFLP plane hijacker.
   30. Hired aide who praised Hamas’ “spirit of resistance“.
   31. Accepted £20,000 for state TV channel of terror-sponsoring Iranian regime.
   32. Opposed banning Britons from travelling to Syria to fight for ISIS.
   33. Defended rights of fighters returning from Syria.
   34. Said ISIS supporters should not be prosecuted.
   35. Compared fighters returning from Syria to Nelson Mandela.
   36. Said the death of Osama Bin Laden was a “tragedy“.
   37. Wouldn’t sanction drone strike to kill ISIS leader.
   38. Voted to allow ISIS fighters to return from Syria.
   39. Opposed shoot to kill.
   40. Attended event organised by terrorist sympathising IHRC.
   41. Signed letter defending Lockerbie bombing suspects.
   42. Wrote letter in support of conman accused of fundraising for ISIS.
   43. Spoke of “friendship” with Mo Kozbar, who called for destruction of Israel.
   44. Attended event with Abdullah Djaballah, who called for holy war against UK.
   45. Called drone strikes against terrorists “obscene”.
   46. Boasted about “opposing anti-terror legislation”.
   47. Said laws banning jihadis from returning to Britain are “strange”.

Accepted £5,000 donation from terror supporter T

You do know the likes of Martin McGuiness were in negotiations and talks with UK government and MPs about ending conflict in NI for many many years right?

Obviously this makes him an empire sympathiser and potato famine enabler..

[Byron]

56 minutes ago, PopGun said:

You do know the likes of Martin McGuiness were in negotiations and talks with UK government and MPs about ending conflict in NI for many many years right?

Obviously this makes him an empire sympathiser and potato famine enabler..

Yes.

[PopGun]

8 minutes ago, Byron said:

Yes.

Ah missed the link to the Tory shill. Got wrong end of stick 

Edited February 21, 2018 by PopGun

[Dorkins]

6 hours ago, Byron said:

I would only vote for Corbyn if he stood true to his principles and came out firmly in favour of Brexit.

I'm not sure coming out in favour of Brexit would be staying true to his principles. He has other priorities, so perhaps dumping huge quantities of political capital on a painful Brexit process which is likely to end in quite similar arrangements with the rest of the EU as we have now is not high on his list. Similarly he's no great fan of the monarchy, but I doubt a Corbyn premiership would bother with the hassle of trying to get rid of it.

[Byron]

So, another Tony Blair then?https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3408128/tony-blairs-old-election-leaflet-reveals-the-brexit-wrecker-used-to-want-to-leave-the-eu/

 

[chronyx]

7 minutes ago, Byron said:

So, another Tony Blair then?https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3408128/tony-blairs-old-election-leaflet-reveals-the-brexit-wrecker-used-to-want-to-leave-the-eu/

 

Printed before I was born

 

Could have been yesterday. Meet the new boss...

Edited February 21, 2018 by chronyx

[Guest]

I instinctively believe in education, hard work and self reliance, things I have also on the whole done for many years of my life, too many to mention without feeling embarrassed. I also believe in compassion and helping the genuine weak and down on their luck. I also feel apart from the odd really good idea and genuine sincerity J.Corbyn will be a disaster for the UK, I cannot stand the vast majority of his entourage, I even consider some to be dangerous.

But now here is  the problem. 

I have given the Tories ample time to reverse so many of Tony Blair's stupid and quite frankly evil policies, followed by that fool Gordon Brown. I kept my faith, gritted my teeth and thought to myself often "hang in there and the world will turn for the hard working and aspirational".  But enough is enough, the modern day Tory leader is an expert in BS and assumes me an millions of others will forever be taken in by weasel words, that's why I decided to vote Brexit to punish them and it is why I will also be voting for Corbyn.

There is more hope for me now voting for a scorched Earth policy with a hope that we will come out of the other side a better country. I know Corbyn will build all of those homes and he will not consider Banks and those who blackmail the government with home equity. I consider my actions to be desperate, but that's what desperate people do, I will live with the mess I know he will create.

[Dorkins]

5 hours ago, frankvw said:

You've probably hit the zeitgeist there.

snip

Good post. Funny thing is, I bet half the people working at Conservative Party HQ could write exactly the same analysis. They know the game is almost up but the leadership are too busy/scared/tired/complacent to make any major shifts in direction. May and Hammond have both been in Parliament for decades and between them they've held almost all of the major offices of state. They probably don't really care if the Tories get dumped at the next general election, they've personally had a good run in politics and are probably starting to think about what to do afterwards. Let the next generation of Tory politicians clean up the mess of high house prices and the failure to create a new generation of Tory voters to replace the ones who are dying off, not my problem is probably what they're thinking.

[PopGun]

Both main parties have swallowed the magic pill of neo liberalism (or whatever moniker qualifies), and in turn alienated both their core support and values. That takes some doing. It’s been over 40 years of $hit and people have had enough.

[Lurkerbelow]

If you go read up his actual speech its even better than the bits they took out and quoted in the telegraph.   The DT didn't quote those for the usual boomer asset price loving reasons.

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/jeremy-corbyn-vs-city-labour-leaders-eef-speech-full/

 

Here are the relevant bits.  It seems that he full well understands what has gone wrong and is willing to speak out about it which no other political is yet willing to do.   Given the prior labour manifesto commitments to create regional and national investment banks to lend to real businesses (as opposed to against housing), there is some home he will do the right thing.   Just have to hope he can ride out the HPI loving boomer and banker backlash if he does become prime minister and does act.

Quote

For all their warm words, whether Osborne’s “March of the Makers” or this government’s new-found enthusiasm for the words ‘industrial strategy’ for decades now, the Conservatives have created, encouraged and sustained a system that rewards those who lend and speculate over those who make things. Thatcher’s progressive abolition of restrictions on financial trading culminating in the ‘Big Bang’ deregulation of 1986 placed the needs of speculative finance at the helm of British economic life. When Thatcher took office the ratio of private debt to GDP was 60%. In the 30 years that followed, that trebled. That increase wasn’t due to banks supporting a healthy and productive economy by lending to businesses represented here today. It was because banks started lending to households and inflating asset prices on a scale never seen before. At the same time, investment banks began trading new kinds of financial products, packaging up debt in increasingly opaque ways and becoming ever more removed from the real economy. Now let me be clear, finance has a central and essential role to play in a functioning economy. Oiling the wheels Without access to finance, how would the entrepreneur or business person just starting out find the means to get their idea off the ground? How would a growing company afford new equipment that will make their business more productive and more profitable? Or expand their activities by opening new premises? Finance is the grease that oils the wheels of our economy, and without it, economic activity would seize up. But when private debt is twice the size of the real economy, when traders no longer understand the products they are trading and banks are funding speculation, rather than productive investment, something has gone grossly wrong. Banks should be helping the real economy not suffocating it. Let me remind you of the words of John Maynard Keynes when he said: “There cannot be a real recovery . . . until the ideas of lenders and the ideas of productive borrowers are brought together again . . . . Seldom in modern history has the gap between the two been so wide and so difficult to bridge’.“ Keynes was writing about the Great Depression of the 1930s but the gulf between finance and the real economy may be even wider today. Money flows away We know the results, money flows away from the productive activities that you are engaged in that create jobs and exports to instead inflate asset prices, concentrating money in the hands of a few owners, not producers, while households become more reliant on borrowing. And we end up with an economy with more risk, more volatility and more instability. It was a “heads I win, tails you lose” gamble for the banks, not my words, but those of the Governor of the Bank of England. And we’re all still paying for the inevitable crash. When the last Labour Government stepped in to shore up our major banks as they stood on the brink of collapse it prevented a total meltdown. But the public should have been given a say in how the banks, propped up by our money were being run. And there should’ve been a much more concerted effort to rein in banks’ speculation to refocus on productive lending. We need a fundamental rethink of whom finance should serve and how it should be regulated. Sluggish economy There can be no rebalancing of our distorted, sluggish and unequal economy without taking on the unfettered power of finance. For forty years, deregulated finance has progressively become more powerful. Its dominance over industry, obvious and destructive; its control of politics, pernicious and undemocratic. The size and power of finance created a generation of politicians who thought the City of London could power the whole economy. Out of control financial wizardry and gambling were left barely regulated, while the real economies in once strong industrial areas were put into managed decline. The welfare state was left to pick up the slack with sticking plaster redistribution to the people and places held back by the finance-led boom of predominantly the South East of England. For a generation instead of finance serving industry, politicians have served finance. We’ve seen where that ends, the productive economy, our public services and people’s lives being held hostage by a small number of too big to fail banks and financial institutions. No more.

Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/jeremy-corbyn-vs-city-labour-leaders-eef-speech-full/

For all their warm words, whether Osborne’s “March of the Makers” or this government’s new-found enthusiasm for the words ‘industrial strategy’ for decades now, the Conservatives have created, encouraged and sustained a system that rewards those who lend and speculate over those who make things.

Thatcher’s progressive abolition of restrictions on financial trading culminating in the ‘Big Bang’ deregulation of 1986 placed the needs of speculative finance at the helm of British economic life.

When Thatcher took office the ratio of private debt to GDP was 60%. In the 30 years that followed, that trebled.

That increase wasn’t due to banks supporting a healthy and productive economy by lending to businesses represented here today.

It was because banks started lending to households and inflating asset prices on a scale never seen before. (See notes section.)

At the same time, investment banks began trading new kinds of financial products, packaging up debt in increasingly opaque ways and becoming ever more removed from the real economy.

Now let me be clear, finance has a central and essential role to play in a functioning economy.

Without access to finance, how would the entrepreneur or business person just starting out find the means to get their idea off the ground?

How would a growing company afford new equipment that will make their business more productive and more profitable? Or expand their activities by opening new premises?

Finance is the grease that oils the wheels of our economy, and without it, economic activity would seize up.

But when private debt is twice the size of the real economy, when traders no longer understand the products they are trading and banks are funding speculation, rather than productive investment, something has gone grossly wrong.

Banks should be helping the real economy not suffocating it.

Let me remind you of the words of John Maynard Keynes when he said:

“there cannot be a real recovery . . . until the ideas of lenders and the ideas of productive borrowers are brought together again . . . . Seldom in modern history has the gap between the two been so wide and so difficult to bridge’.“

Keynes was writing about the Great Depression of the 1930s but the gulf between finance and the real economy may be even wider today.

We know the results, money flows away from the productive activities that you are engaged in that create jobs and exports to instead inflate asset prices, concentrating money in the hands of a few owners, not producers, while households become more reliant on borrowing.

And we end up with an economy with more risk, more volatility and more instability.

It was a “heads I win, tails you lose” gamble for the banks, not my words, but those of the Governor of the Bank of England. And we’re all still paying for the inevitable crash.

When the last Labour Government stepped in to shore up our major banks as they stood on the brink of collapse it prevented a total meltdown. But the public should have been given a say in how the banks, propped up by our money were being run.

And there should’ve been a much more concerted effort to rein in banks’ speculation to refocus on productive lending. We need a fundamental rethink of whom finance should serve and how it should be regulated.

There can be no rebalancing of our distorted, sluggish and unequal economy without taking on the unfettered power of finance.

For forty years, deregulated finance has progressively become more powerful. Its dominance over industry, obvious and destructive; its control of politics, pernicious and undemocratic.

The size and power of finance created a generation of politicians who thought the City of London could power the whole economy.

Out of control financial wizardry and gambling were left barely regulated, while the real economies in once strong industrial areas were put into managed decline.

The welfare state was left to pick up the slack with sticking plaster redistribution to the people and places held back by the finance-led boom of predominantly the South East of England.

For a generation instead of finance serving industry, politicians have served finance. We’ve seen where that ends, the productive economy, our public services and people’s lives being held hostage by a small number of too big to fail banks and financial institutions.

No more.

The next Labour Government will be the first in 40 years to stand up for the real economy.

We will take decisive action to make finance the servant of industry not the masters of all.

 

The reign of finance doesn’t stop at the gates of the City of London.

Its extractive logic has spread into all areas of life with short-term performance and narrow shareholder value prioritised over long-run growth and wider economic benefit.

[Lurkerbelow]

Uggh I'm new to this site is it possible for me to edit old posts and clean them up?

[Guest]

I instinctively believe in education, hard work and self reliance, things I have also on the whole done for many years of my life, too many to mention without feeling embarrassed. I also believe in compassion and helping the genuine weak and down on their luck. I also feel apart from the odd really good idea and genuine sincerity J.Corbyn will be a disaster for the UK, I cannot stand the vast majority of his entourage, I even consider some to be dangerous.

But now here is  the problem. 

I have given the Tories ample time to reverse so many of Tony Blair's stupid and quite frankly evil policies, followed by that fool Gordon Brown. I kept my faith, gritted my teeth and thought to myself often "hang in there and the world will turn for the hard working and aspirational".  But enough is enough, the modern day Tory leader is an expert in BS and assumes me an millions of others will forever be taken in by weasel words, that's why I decided to vote Brexit to punish them and it is why I will also be voting for Corbyn.

There is more hope for me now voting for a scorched Earth policy with a hope that we will come out of the other side a better country. I know Corbyn will build all of those homes and he will not consider Banks and those who blackmail the government with home equity. I consider my actions to be desperate, but that's what desperate people do, I will live with the mess I know he will create.

[Guest]

I keep hearing how Corbyn wants to save the weak and vulnerable, and I seriously have no problem with that, I applaud him even. But my problem is who does he see as the weak and vulnerable?

I would like to hear more about what he will do for people earning £20K to £40K doing constant 10 plus hours work daily , his thoughts on business people, they are not all bad and are essential, cannot keep treating them like the bad guys, fair but firm I would say. Does he just assume all welfare is dished out fairly and none of them are cheating scum.

The greatest unspoken victims in the UK for the best of 15 years now in my views have been the average work who gets close to zero help from the state.

[Lurkerbelow]

1 minute ago, inbruges said:

I keep hearing how Corbyn wants to save the weak and vulnerable, and I seriously have no problem with that, I applaud him even. But my problem is who does he see as the weak and vulnerable?

I would like to hear more about what he will do for people earning £20K to £40K doing constant 10 plus hours work daily , his thoughts on business people, they are not all bad and are essential, cannot keep treating them like the bad guys, fair but firm I would say. Does he just assume all welfare is dished out fairly and none of them are cheating scum.

The greatest unspoken victims in the UK for the best of 15 years now in my views have been the average work who gets close to zero help from the state.

Read the full speech he made which I linked and partly quoted above.   It gives an insight into his thoughts on this.

[Fence]

2 hours ago, inbruges said:

the modern day Tory leader is an expert in BS and assumes me an millions of others will forever be taken in by weasel words,

 

[Dorkins]

10 hours ago, Lurkerbelow said:

Uggh I'm new to this site is it possible for me to edit old posts and clean them up?

Welcome! I don't think you can edit until you have enough posts, maybe 100.

[Fence]

12 hours ago, Lurkerbelow said:

Uggh I'm new to this site is it possible for me to edit old posts and clean them up?

Apologies. Quite right.  I've done mine.  Ready for inspection!  A rare slip up I assure you. 

Now you know what's coming.......

"'Uggh'. I'm new to this site.  Is it possible for me to edit old posts and clean them up?".

[PopGun]

I still can’t understand why anyone on this site would still consider themselves a Tory. Maybe 13 years of New Labour are to blame (was on the verge myself a few times). Yet the main focus of creating money via debt and speculation rather than real wealth creation via making goods is a central tenet of Thatcher and her dystopian off spring (Blair, May, Cameron, Osbourne). The driver of which is/was of course HPI.

The cynic in me deep down still can’t shake the possibility of JC being another false dawn. Yet the establishment/MSM smearing and backlashing is unprecedented. This is what gives me the most hope. It certifies the notion that their dogma is dying.

 

[Fence]

54 minutes ago, PopGun said:

I still can’t understand why anyone on this site would still consider themselves a Tory. Maybe 13 years of New Labour are to blame (was on the verge myself a few times). Yet the main focus of creating money via debt and speculation rather than real wealth creation via making goods is a central tenet of Thatcher and her dystopian off spring (Blair, May, Cameron, Osbourne). The driver of which is/was of course HPI.

The cynic in me deep down still can’t shake the possibility of JC being another false dawn. Yet the establishment/MSM smearing and backlashing is unprecedented. This is what gives me the most hope. It certifies the notion that their dogma is dying.

 

Yet another great post to add to many over the last 24 hours.  The articulation of the problem is fantastic.  Well beyond party politics, generation slagging, and old allegiances.  It's bringing them all to account, mostly under the neo-liberal banner, which was the elephant in the room I like so many had missed for a long time. 

It's great to read and have it so well nailed.  At best, things have gone wrong.  At worst, we were sold a pup.  Some of us have now had a long enough time to now see the true picture.  I only hope the emerging baton can be honestly passed on to the next generation who will pick it up and run with it too.  I worry this moment of clarity (for many) will be stolen and corrupted so the show can go on. 

Alas, I can imagine the political bots meeting right now to decide how to handle this and bring it around to their advantage.  I wait for the posts!  I see their actions, by taking things up a few notches (adopting the bogyman tactic), as only hastening the inevitable.  Those who descend into the gutter and play with fire eventually tend to get flushed away.  

PS.  I think I'm a true conservative - libertarian, caring, egalitarian, and a believer in sound money not the "Conservative" (and Liberal and New Labour) farce we have now and yes, have had for a while.  Neo-liberalism has not just hollowed out the economy but also our political system (and culture).  I say that only because I believe many (not all) feel like that and the current situation (void) is forcing us all to seek clarity as to what we each really are.   

Edited February 22, 2018 by Fence

[Riedquat]

Although that list a few posts up is clearly intended to be an attack (and I'm no more keen on Corbyn than any other MP), interesting that " Boasted about “opposing anti-terror legislation”. " is there as a criticism, considering what a wonderful excuse for being a draconian 1984 control freak most of it seems to be. A bit of shooting in the foot with that one.

[LittlePig]

14 hours ago, Lurkerbelow said:

If you go read up his actual speech its even better than the bits they took out and quoted in the telegraph.   The DT didn't quote those for the usual boomer asset price loving reasons.

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/jeremy-corbyn-vs-city-labour-leaders-eef-speech-full/

 

Here are the relevant bits.  It seems that he full well understands what has gone wrong and is willing to speak out about it which no other political is yet willing to do.   Given the prior labour manifesto commitments to create regional and national investment banks to lend to real businesses (as opposed to against housing), there is some home he will do the right thing.   Just have to hope he can ride out the HPI loving boomer and banker backlash if he does become prime minister and does act.

For all their warm words, whether Osborne’s “March of the Makers” or this government’s new-found enthusiasm for the words ‘industrial strategy’ for decades now, the Conservatives have created, encouraged and sustained a system that rewards those who lend and speculate over those who make things.

Thatcher’s progressive abolition of restrictions on financial trading culminating in the ‘Big Bang’ deregulation of 1986 placed the needs of speculative finance at the helm of British economic life.

When Thatcher took office the ratio of private debt to GDP was 60%. In the 30 years that followed, that trebled.

That increase wasn’t due to banks supporting a healthy and productive economy by lending to businesses represented here today.

It was because banks started lending to households and inflating asset prices on a scale never seen before. (See notes section.)

At the same time, investment banks began trading new kinds of financial products, packaging up debt in increasingly opaque ways and becoming ever more removed from the real economy.

Now let me be clear, finance has a central and essential role to play in a functioning economy.

Without access to finance, how would the entrepreneur or business person just starting out find the means to get their idea off the ground?

How would a growing company afford new equipment that will make their business more productive and more profitable? Or expand their activities by opening new premises?

Finance is the grease that oils the wheels of our economy, and without it, economic activity would seize up.

But when private debt is twice the size of the real economy, when traders no longer understand the products they are trading and banks are funding speculation, rather than productive investment, something has gone grossly wrong.

Banks should be helping the real economy not suffocating it.

Let me remind you of the words of John Maynard Keynes when he said:

“there cannot be a real recovery . . . until the ideas of lenders and the ideas of productive borrowers are brought together again . . . . Seldom in modern history has the gap between the two been so wide and so difficult to bridge’.“

Keynes was writing about the Great Depression of the 1930s but the gulf between finance and the real economy may be even wider today.

We know the results, money flows away from the productive activities that you are engaged in that create jobs and exports to instead inflate asset prices, concentrating money in the hands of a few owners, not producers, while households become more reliant on borrowing.

And we end up with an economy with more risk, more volatility and more instability.

It was a “heads I win, tails you lose” gamble for the banks, not my words, but those of the Governor of the Bank of England. And we’re all still paying for the inevitable crash.

When the last Labour Government stepped in to shore up our major banks as they stood on the brink of collapse it prevented a total meltdown. But the public should have been given a say in how the banks, propped up by our money were being run.

And there should’ve been a much more concerted effort to rein in banks’ speculation to refocus on productive lending. We need a fundamental rethink of whom finance should serve and how it should be regulated.

There can be no rebalancing of our distorted, sluggish and unequal economy without taking on the unfettered power of finance.

For forty years, deregulated finance has progressively become more powerful. Its dominance over industry, obvious and destructive; its control of politics, pernicious and undemocratic.

The size and power of finance created a generation of politicians who thought the City of London could power the whole economy.

Out of control financial wizardry and gambling were left barely regulated, while the real economies in once strong industrial areas were put into managed decline.

The welfare state was left to pick up the slack with sticking plaster redistribution to the people and places held back by the finance-led boom of predominantly the South East of England.

For a generation instead of finance serving industry, politicians have served finance. We’ve seen where that ends, the productive economy, our public services and people’s lives being held hostage by a small number of too big to fail banks and financial institutions.

No more.

The next Labour Government will be the first in 40 years to stand up for the real economy.

We will take decisive action to make finance the servant of industry not the masters of all.

 

The reign of finance doesn’t stop at the gates of the City of London.

Its extractive logic has spread into all areas of life with short-term performance and narrow shareholder value prioritised over long-run growth and wider economic benefit.

All right, which one of you lot on here wrote his speech for him? I am guessing either @spyguy or @durhamborn.