Lost sight of purpose

In the most recent paeon to English Labour shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, “My mum showed me how to balance the books at the kitchen table,” anyone left hoping a Labour government will reverse Tory austerity should know better.

The UK is in recession. Trade volumes have suffered a record five-year decline. Austerity policies since 2010 have resulted in 335,000 excess deaths. The NHS is close to complete collapse but is not as bad in Scotland thanks to mitigation by Holyrood.

What Reeves either doesn’t understand or wilfully ignores, is that when a government reduces public spending it triggers a self-sustaining economic contraction. With less money circulating, wages fall, businesses fail, investment declines and the shrinkage accelerates.

American economist Stephanie Kelton compares austerity to a six-foot tall person crouching in a room with eight-foot ceilings because he’s been convinced that if he tries to stand up, he’ll suffer a severe head trauma. Austerity stems from irrational fears about government debt and fiscal deficits. The UK is nowhere near the productive capacity or ceiling in the economy.

Increased government spending can’t by itself cure the UK’s ills. Reversing the grotesque levels of inequality and giving workers back their economic power and security requires curbing corporate monopoly power, reforming tax policy and strengthening trade unions. English Labour and the Tories have lost sight of the purpose of government which is to build an economy and society for the benefit of the people they’re supposed to serve. In this, the UK has utterly failed. Scots have felt the brunt of this failure most keenly.

Leah Gunn Barrett, Edinburgh

I suspect society will always debate how much government exists to protect us from ourselves