At her “stability is change” speech this morning Rachel Reeves is asked by Channel 5’s Andy Bell if she, like her leader, is a socialist. Reeves refused – trouble in paradise?
It’s a question that’s going round at the moment after Starmer’s admission yesterday. Jonathan Reynolds said this morning he was a “christian socialist”. Reeves said she wasn’t a socialist but a “social democrat” who believes in equality of opportunity and a “cradle to grave” state. The former Bank of England economist can’t bring herself to take the red…
For the past few years, the TrotsApp crowd have been trying to push the ‘Preston Model’ – Preston Council’s Corbynite version of community wealth-building – as the antidote to all of Labour’s woes. John McDonnell claims it “has been and must continue to be at the heart of Labour’s economic model”. Aaron Bastani says it “needs to be rolled out everywhere in the UK”. Owen Jones calls it a “bold policy offer“. With all these ringing endorsements, it’s a mystery why Starmer hasn’t mentioned it once…
The Legatum Institute’s UK Prosperity Index might explain why: it shows that the Preston council area has plummeted down its league table by more than 100 places, with the city’s ‘investment environment’ score (measuring the level of capital available for investment) among the lowest in the whole country. Overall, the city is now less prosperous than it was a decade ago. Who could’ve guessed?
It turns out even Preston’s own Labour MP Sir Mark Hendrick did. Speaking to the Lancashire Post, Hendrick laid into the council’s absurd policies, saying:
“It’s all very well saying that the Preston Model is bringing in millions of pounds into the city. That is not quite the reality that I see […] we can’t go around pretending everything is all right.”
Even so, the Labour left are still trying to sell the Preston Model as “a lesson” for the party by claiming Preston’s council results were some kind of thumping victory. The only problem is the Conservatives actually picked up two seats in those elections, with Labour making no gains on their previous result. If the Preston Model is so brilliant, you’d have thought they’d storm it…
Last night, Twitter user Nick Kapur decided to launch into a 21-Tweet thread critiquing Hasbro’s Monopoly: Socialism edition. Who amongst us can say they haven’t?
In the increasingly hysterical Twitter chronicle, Nick managed to attract an audience of 20,000 like-minded revolutionary board game fans who watched in agog as Mr Kapur went into microscopic details reviewing the game, from the design of the box to the names of the spaces, which this Militant Moaist decreed to be containing too great a level of ‘snark’.
Perhaps Hasbro’s greatest faux pas in the eyes of this cabal of communists was being “entirely uninterested in trying to understand what socialism actually is and how it might function”, which is – as any academic will tell you – the basis of all good comedy.
The game highlights the effect of socialism by scrapping the famous ‘$200 when you pass Go’ in favour of a $50 living wage, and introduces a ‘community fund’ which tops up the wages of players if they can’t afford a property, helping teach the real world effects of socialism to the whole family (aged 18 and up).
The Twitter thread damningly concluded that the game was not really a socialist model, but “more of a billionaire philanthropy model”, which will no doubt be looked into seriously by the advertising standards agency…
https://youtu.be/K_kGbHyn9kE&rel=0
John McDonnell, probably after a few pints of (unpaid) Workers’ Beer, finally explained to the LabourLive fans how he would “find the magic money tree” that opponents accuse him of relying on to fund all that “free” stuff he promises. Surprise – he’s going to put up taxes…
Not the smartest quip. Suspect it will be used against him in the future…
Picture credit: Jim Pickard
This graphic is from a presentation presided over by John McDonnell today. It apparently explains the structure of McDonnell’s proposed Strategic Investment Board. If it looks to you like a diagram of the power grid for the Central Electricity Generating Board circa 1949 it is because it comes from the same mindset that designed the CEGB. Does it look like the kind of nimble financial organisation to take on and beat the Silicon Valley investment giants creating our world?
Not impressed? It is only when you see the kind of nonsense being pumped out by the people around McDonnell trying to update state socialism (with an iPad) that you remember that only 3 years ago McDonnell was typically spending his evenings giving his alternative economics briefings to two old tankies, an adolescent plastic-bag carrying trot and a confused old lady keeping warm. Now the FT comes along to wonder at his ideas.
