The rubbishness of Rawnsley
I’ve pretty well stopped reading the Observer, but I looked through it this morning as we stayed with a friend last night.
I read Andrew Rawnsley’s column on how the Labour leadership candidates should not dismiss Blair’s teachings, and remembered why I’d stopped reading the Observer.
Pretty well from beginning to end, it’s garbage - from the vain name-dropping about having employed Ed Miliband through to the conclusion that the Labour leadership candidates should simply heap praise on Blair, whatever he said in his book about hating Labour.
It’s perfectly clear Rawnsley’s not been following the detail of the leadership campaign, and his views on the various candidates are nothing more than rehashing of trite views he’s heard at a dinner party somewhere.
But it’s this attack on Ed Balls which convinces me that he is no longer, if he ever was, a serious journalist.
Comrade Balls made a recent speech which was both superb as a stinging analysis of the coalition’s economic policies and dangerous for his own party because it implied that Labour need not adopt a credible position on how it would address the deficit……
This is sub-Dale in its level of level of stupidity, in its willingness to accept, utterly uncritically, right-wing dogma about the deficit, to ignore any possibility that Keynes might, you know, might just possibly have been on to something.
The WHOLE point about Balls’ Bloomberg speech is that Balls is challenging the Tory lie what a credible position on the deficit actually is:
Interviewers look aghast when I tell them that cutting public spending this financial year and pre-announcing a rise in VAT is economically foolish, when growth and consumer confidence is so fragile.
‘But what would you cut instead?’ they demand.
So strong and broad is this consensus that a special name has been given to those who take a different view – ‘deficit-deniers’ – and some in the Labour Party believe our very credibility as a party depends on hitching ourselves to the consensus view.
I am not one of them…..
By all means, Rawnsley might argue the case that cutting now is more ‘credible’, as David Miliband maintains, but it’s clear that he’s simply not understood the main thrust of Balls’ speech. Does his paper not have a subscription to the FT?
Rawnsley is clearly a fool, and his time has gone. That was a time when you didn’t have to understand too much about the harsh realities of economics to sell yourself as a ‘progressive’ commentator. As Johann Hari has also found to his reputational cost, that no longer applies.
If the Observer is to recover his reputation, then he needs to be put out to grass, and someone with a basic grasp of both politics and economics employed instead.
My rates are available on demand.
I was also pretty outraged by the Observer editorial in favour of Miliband (D). It wasn’t the choice but rather the tone and assumptions that made me choke. If Cameron’s clique is part of what’s going wrong with this country, then the Guardian’s clique is part of why Cameron’s clique has been given the keys to the kingdom.
Awful stuff.
But Andrew Rawnsley is correct about the policies of Balls’ approach.
Balls’ view is that the coalition are going to cut us back into a recession, and that pro-growth policies involve reducing the deficit over a longer time period, and only once growth is secured.
Now suppose that there is a 50:50 chance that the cuts do push the UK into recession:
1. If the UK goes back into recession, Labour is likely to reap the political benefits regardless of whether we had the Darling/Miliband plan for deficit reduction or the alternative strategy which Balls sets out (just as we got the benefit of the ERM debacle despite supporting ERM entry).
2. If the UK doesn’t go into recession, the economy continues to grow and the deficit is reduced, then Labour will lose its credibility on economic policy if it claimed that the consequences of deficit reduction would be disastrous.
It is entirely possible that in scenario 2, the Coalition will win the next election regardless of what Labour’s economic policy is (or that Labour will win if the Coalition cut us back into recession). But it could be the case that at the next election, Labour is preferred by voters on public services and reducing unemployment but distrusted on the economy. It is very, very easy for the right to attack Balls’ plan on the economy, and it would therefore be a higher risk, and more politically dangerous strategy, to adopt.
n.b. that part of the reason why this strategy is dangerous is that Labour is in opposition. If we were currently in power, then we would have the chance to show how Balls’ strategy is best for the economy. But when you are in opposition, there are lots of policies which are technocratically good, but bad politics.
Line one typo: “Rawnsley is correct about the *politics* of Balls’ approach”…
I despair at the politicking nature of politics for this very reason; Balls has made a concerted attempt at unpicking what seems like ill-informed and ideologically driven cuts agenda by the coalition government. But there is a risk that this is not good politics, or as you say Don, “technocratically good, but bad politics.” What a shame it is we have to criticise Balls for his honest, and better informed analysis, of a problem that is having dire effects on us all.
Paul; I wonder if you saw this piece by John Gray [http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/06/ralph-miliband-brothers-john-gray] – it is rather interesting, but then falls short in its analysis of the brothers and Balls and their criticisms/proximity to New Labour.
Dan
Sorry not to reply to this interesting view. It deserves a post in itself, I think.