Sunak`s duplicity

Polly Toynbee`s excellent article on the despicable George Osborne omitted an interesting parallel with today (Osborne`s cuts left Britain powerless to resist Covid). Justifying his austerity measures, he claimed Britain to be "on the brink of bankruptcy" when the Bank of England`s quantitative easing programme had created £375bn by 2012. Now we have a chancellor about to warn us of impending austerity, claiming a national debt of over £2tn, and in need of repayment, when £895bn of the debt, the amount created by quantitative easing since 2009, is owed to the government-owned Bank of England! Strange how the Tories never mention quantitative easing when they are trying to shrink the state back to pre-crisis levels, and introduce austerity for their dangerous ideological reasons! The country, as a recent Guardian editorial pointed out, is again being "softened up for austerity policies" (Vaccines will not end the unemployment crisis, even if they end the health crisis,17/11/20). Hopefully Starmer and Dodds have learned from Osborne`s duplicity, and not only are aware of the shortcomings of the Tories` economic theories but ready to put matters straight! Your editorial is right to rebuke the chancellor for claiming that "the government`s ability to spend is temporary while interest rates remain low" (Covid has seen economics revolutionised. Where are the UK`s revolutionaries? 08/02/21). With Sunak already intimating that austerity measures are on the cards, it is vital that Labour starts to challenge his figures before the March budget. For a start, with no evidence anywhere to suggest that the markets will deliver a post-coronavirus recovery, the flaws in Tory economic ideology have to be exposed. Sunak`s self-proclaimed "moral obligation" to start repaying the national debt is based on the misleading Thatcherite claim that a country`s debt is similar to that of a household, one of the devious methods Osborne used to justify his cuts in 2010. The real obligation of the government is to provide security against poverty and disease for the whole population, not to protect the profits of financial institutions. Sunak`s £2tn of national debt includes £895bn of quantitative easing, ostensibly owed to the government-owned Bank of England, and pales into insignificance when compared with that of other countries. A debt of $27tn is not preventing Biden spending $1.9tn on a stimulus package, whilst we hear lots about the UK 's debt-to-GDP ratio being over 100%, but nothing about Japan`s having been higher for over 20 years! Far better than flag-waving, an under-pressure Starmer can show his and Labour`s patriotism with a plan wherby quantitative easing kickstarts the economy, rather than funding bonuses in the City!