Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones is preparing to make big cuts to departmental budgets as part of the June spending review. Downing Street sources say a reshuffle is planned in the fallout. High stakes for Darren…
As ever with Labour figures their thinking is baked in during union activity. Jones’ is interesting…
The treasury secretary served as official delegate for Unite South West Young Members back in 2011 and served on its executive, during which he filmed himself at the March for Alternative protests against Osborne’s budget cuts. Co-conspirators may remember that protest descended into violence with protestors “on the rampage, smashing windows and attacking property around Oxford Street” while battling riot police – though Jones was not involved in any violence. He described the large-scale public sector strikes that year as “brilliant.” How things change…
At the same time Jones’ Unite executive sent a delegate to Cuba on a “solidarity trip” to stay in a “camp with comrades from every corner of the globe.” The conclusion Jones’ group officially drew was that “the very existence of the Cuban state, organized to a broad extent around socialist principles, offers confirmation that there can be alternatives to capitalism.” Darren’s current superior has a framed picture of a Soviet asset above her desk…
Jones also wrote in the Advocate Socialist magazine in February of that year that private schools shouldn’t exist:
“I fail to understand how anyone can see education and health as anything but core provision of the state and how others fail to see that, in these arenas, there is no room for shareholder profit and the harsh realities of the market.“
When it comes to immigration the chief secretary praised the courts for blocking Theresa May’s attempt to impose a temporary cap on non-EU immigrants – he said he “loves a good bit of judicial intervention” over that one. Meanwhile Jones wrote in the Plymouth Herald that all Brits “have an inbuilt sense of grandeur following our imperial past and that, with our current Government’s aversion to the European project, a tone of nationalism rests upon us all.” Not much funding for stopping the small boats in the spending review then…
Jones is in charge of public spending for the entire UK which is 44% of the country’s GDP. Gulp…
Speaking to Sky News off the back of Rachel Reeves’ Air Passenger Duty hike, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said:
“Labour is dependent on those Red Wall seats, and yet every move she makes poisons economic growth and damages the UK’s recovery… it’s the Chancellor who stumbles from policy misstep to policy misstep… I think her policy decisions are incredibly stupid.”