Windy Rhetoric

I was present at the Scottish Labour Party conference many years ago - when Tony Blair came to town, Inverness if I remember correctly, to tell his troops that Clause IV was a busted flush - and had to go into the dustbin of history.

For those unfamiliar with Labour's constitution or history - Clause IV contained a commitment to public ownership and, depending on your point of view within the party, nationalising the means of production which - by the 1990s - was a ludicrous stance for a party of government to take.

So, in Tony Blair's words, Labour should not be saying things it didn't mean - 'Say what we mean and mean what we say' was the mindset of the day - and after a robust and sometimes lively debate Clause IV was no more.

Such are the moments of history - they come and go in the blink of an eye - and the forward march of Tony Blair and New Labour continued all the way to the 1997 general election where the party won a landslide victory. 

Some people say that Labour would have won that election with anyone in charge - even the proverbial monkey wearing a Red Rosette - but I don't buy that for a minute because part of Tony Blair's message was that New Labour was different - and serious.

But I don't get the same feeling - I have to say - in listening to the present Labour leader - Ed Miliband - who was also up in Inverness the other day banging on about making the bankers accountable, especially these hedge fund types who really make money through nothing more than a form of gambling on currency and stock movements.

In plain language - these buggers don't produce anything useful that people can use, so why are they so important and influential?

Now I don't know the answer to that - but I do know that the Labour party has been saying the same thing for years and years - and years.

As evidenced in this previous post from 2010 which refers to an essay written by Denis Healey in 1991 - and deals with an even earlier period, most likely the 1980s, I would say.

So after all these years - after a period of 13 years when Labour was in office continually with two different Prime Ministers - when Ed Miliband was a Government Minister himself - why in the world would I believe that Ed Miliband is likely to do something radical next time around?

And the answer to that question is that I don't - it's all just so much spin and hot air.    

Money Men (4 July 2012)

All this fevered activity over Britain's banks and its bankers - has left my head in a bit of a spin.

It's as if the political classes have only just discovered that the money men in the city really do take a bit of watching because - some of them at least - are little better than spivs.

But here's a previous post from the blog site to prove this is simply not the case - the bad behaviour of some bankers has been with us for years - and no less a figure than Denis Healey drew attention to the problem more than twenty years ago.

Yet far from regulating the banking more effectively - the last Labour government got far too close and cosy with the money men - and provided the worst possible example by encouraging a debt-fuelled spending boom - as if there were no tomorrow.

So to my mind some of the politicians involved should be in the dock as well - not just the money men and and bankers.

Hitting Nails on the Head (23 September 2010)

I am currently reading a collection of essays written by Denis Healey - a true Labour warhorse - reckoned by many as the best Prime Minister Britain never had.

The essays were written between 1952 and 1991 - and cover Healey's long and distinguished career both in government and in party politics.

Call my reading habits a bit odd if you like - but I came across this little gem the other day - which was written in 1991.

"These markets were managed by young men who treated money simply as numbers on a computer screen - as a commodity, like rice or coffee beans. As a result interest rates and exchange rates began to fluctuate violently without reference to the flows of production and trade which they were supposed to reflect.

New financial instruments were invented to hedge against interest rate or exchange rate risks. Anything which could be given a monetary price was turned into a security which was traded on the global markets by anyone who had a computer.

So there was none of the prudential supervision which was traditionally exercised by central banks over commercial banks."

Seems like Denis Healey hit the nail on the head - all those years ago.

Because that's exactly what happened when banks across the world started buying up and selling on bad debt - like it was going out of fashion.

And while this was happening - governments, politicians and central bankers - all looked on from the sidelines - until, of course, it was too late to do anything - other than pick up the pieces.