I am circulating this campaign suggestion based on a letter Richard Murphy and I had published in the Guardian during the winter break. It said:
Its importance to my mind is that, whether you are a campaigner or communicator on social or environmental on domestic or international arenas, to achieve your objectives you will need to include in your campaigns how to overcome the roadblock of the Curse of the Fiscal Rule.
This will be so crucial in the run up to next year’s election because of Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer’s misguided obsession with controlling debt, rather than providing the necessary large scale funding to make sure of widespread improvements in social and environmental conditions.
In her speech at the Labour Party Conference, Labour Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves referred explicitly to the ‘iron discipline’ that will characterise her approach to the public finances.
She went on to assert that ‘a Labour government will not waiver from iron-clad fiscal rules’. This covers transparent limits on the public deficit (the gap between government revenue and spending) and the level of public debt (the total amount the government has borrowed).
Finally, if you will forgive a personal note, Richard very kindly added this PS to his widely read blog post about his Guardian letter:
“PS And congratulations to Colin on becoming a grandparent to Ava Rose on Christmas Day. It’s for people like her that we will keep on banging on.”
We all will have different reasons – but working for present and future generations is what I’m sure gets most of us out of bed in the morning.
