Why Rachel Reeves doesn't need to sabotage collapsing UK economy in 2025 budget, but will Steve Hall

Steve Hall orthodox economics religion tax does not pay for public spending good v bad growth.

The Death of the Left: Why We Must Begin from the Beginning Again
Simon Winlow, Steve Hall
The left is dead. Its ailments cannot be cured. The only way to resurrect what was once valuable in leftist politics is to declare the left dead and begin from the beginning again. Winlow and Hall identify the root causes of its maladies, describe how new cultural obsessions displaced core unifying principles and explore the yawning chasm that now separates the left from the working class. Drawing upon a wealth of historical evidence to structure their story of entryism, corruption, fragmentation and decline, they close the book by outlining how a new reincarnation of the left can win in the 21st century.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62363052-the-death-of-the-left

A clear and cutting call-to-action. Since the collapse of the Corbyn project in 2019, I've wanted to read something like this - and I think that Winlow and Hall are very successful here in articulating just what the state-of-play is. Modern Monetary Policy and new western green industrialisation are the way forward baby.

As someone who is inspired by the work of John Maynard Keynes, Ha-Joon Chang and earlier neomercantilists and mercantilists, I am so tired of work in this paradigm being described as “national socialist” or “populist”, as if any attempt to focus on the community of a particular country is a road upon which one goose-steps towards the abyss. Nothing could be further from the truth. Likewise, what is often dismissed as “populist”, in reality has a magnificent pedigree of thought behind it. In the last century, the finest of this was the work of John Maynard Keynes, who proposed using the instruments of fiscal and monetary policy in order to prompt investment in the national real economy. Erik Reinert, author of “How Rich countries Got Rich … and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor” (2007) has set out this excellent pedigree in his website http://othercanon.org.

It is in this pedigree that Simon Winlow and Steve Hall make their bold contribution with their fantastic “The Death of the Left: Why we must begin from the beginning again”. Too often the alternative to the neoliberalism that was spawned by Thatcher and Reagan, and then adopted by the neoliberal left, is conceived of in terms of debt-fuelled consumerism, and an erosion of concern for the dominant working class, by insisting on a focus on an ever-increasing list of minorities. Winlow and Hall tackle this head on. They praise Jeremy Corbyn’s rise to the leadership of the Labour Party, and his 2017 national election campaign for its focus on the jobs and welfare of the dominant working class. By the time that the London latte-sippers had muscled in on the campaign in 2019 “voters did not hear enough about reindustrialisation, job creation, wage levels and job security, and as time passed (in 2019) it became increasingly clear that he commanded little respect amongst the majority” (Winlow & Hall; 2023: 81).

They discuss the legendary Ernest Bevin, who in the 1940s, although decidedly not a communist and very much a supporter of working with the Americans, was also a supporter of the national liberation of the British colonies. Bevin was passionate about the welfare of the working class in Britain, worked as “to improve their lot. People needed to be given a chance to grow, make progress and provide for their families. Bevin knew all too well that the poor were overwhelmingly willing to work and keen to support themselves. And there was not a trace of liberal relativism in Bevin’s socialism. The lives of the working class would improve if they received a higher wage and better conditions” (Winlow & Hall; 2023: 81).

While the “traditional left was worldly” (Winlow & Hall; 2023: 81) in a way embodied by Bevin, a new left informed by Post-Modernism, and concerns about minority rights, pulled the focus away from the communitarian ones of the old Labour Party. To the extent that this new neoliberal left was worldly it with an individualism which fitted neatly with the new economic zeitgeist of a global unipolar world – both in economics, and in support of Washington’s reach into other people’s countries. The curse of these people’s foreign policy focus is dealt with by John Mearsheimer in “Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realties” (2018), as he shows how the desire to remake the world in their own image has given support to the American perpetual war machine in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine.

The western media does not see the Post-Modern left as a threat, because they are not. Slavoj Zizek is no threat to the Globalist: neoliberal or Pentagon. But Winlow and Hall are. Which is why it is worth reading