Labour and the Euro summit

Mr_Mumble

To back up what I said about Neo-Keynesians being aghast, here's the high priest Paul Krugman with his thoughts:

European stocks are up today, and I have no idea why. I’m with Felix Salmon — this looks like a disastrous meeting. More austerity, more posing of the crisis, wrongly, as being all about fiscal deficits; no mechanism for ECB funding. Somehow southern Europe is supposed to deflate its way to prosperity, while everyone runs a trade surplus, presumably against that potentially habitable planet we’ve discovered 600 light-years away.

Maybe Draghi’s actions will be very different from his words — but actually, since this is to an important degree about expectations, Europe needs both actions and words.


Oh, and for desert we have Cameron acting as a spoiler to protect the wheeler-dealers, poisoning EU politics.

The last sentence is priceless - he disagrees with the EU and then he disagrees with Cameron disagreeing with the EU (seemingly not on the merit of Cameron's position but the presumption Cameron's motives are insincere and aimed at backing the bankers).

StevieJ

I thought the fiscal stability treaty was meant to be a precurser to more printing etc? from all the reports it seems to be a stand alone action, very strange.

Jennifer_Jane

BBC News to Ed Milliband: "So what would you have done?". Ed Milliband: "I'd have forged more alliances".

So 'nothing' then. The alliances that Cameron could have forged (and perhaps has) are with the Countries which are returning with a yea/nay to their own parliaments. People like Sweden. Sarkozy would never have agreed to Cameron at all - it would have diminished his power.

People are sick of this constant sniping between politicians. It may be how it works, how it has always worked, but people realise it is intrinsically dishonest, and dislike it. (Yes, I have been watching too much 'Questiontime').

Well done, Cameron, for not losing more power to France and Germany,

Sapphire

StevieJ wrote: »

I would wait to see how the EU Lapdogs from other half of the govt reacts before you have a go at Labour

Why? labour obviously consistently takes the opposite stance to the Tories just because it wants to be seen as opposed to the Tories, not because of the issues concerned. labour certainly does not stand for the good of our country. :cool:

Graham_Devon

Sapphire wrote: »

Why? labour obviously consistently takes the opposite stance to the Tories just because it wants to be seen as opposed to the Tories, not because of the issues concerned. labour certainly does not stand for the good of our country. :cool:

This is the problem for me at the moment.

Labour is in opposition. That does not mean that they have to literally oppose everything that's done, talked about, or put forward. But that certainly seems that's their understanding of their "job".

This, today, wasn't even opposing. It was blatent nonsense spouted in the hope that what they were saying would stick.

It seems we really are at the stage where labours foreign secretary is not at all concerned with how big this item is, and is far more concerned with spreading malice.

julieq

Just for once I couldn't agree with Graham more.

wotsthat

The Conservatives couldn't have been less clear today about what it is that David Cameron has or hasn't done on our behalf. There's very little detail - why have all the other EU members managed to agree, or at least consider, further integration but the Swedes, see an advantage even though they are outside the Euro.

The reason is that the Conservatives will do anything to avoid a referendum which would split their party and the coalition leading to a general election.

Isn't David Cameron just trying to stay in power? Is the UK's role in Europe secondary?

FATBALLZ

Mr_Mumble wrote: »

I think many Labour politicians will secretly be more shocked by the proposals than the Tories. The Germans have effectively killed off any potential for modern Neo-Keynesian thinking in Europe with the first demand of the new fiscal rule being a 0.5% structural deficit (page 3 of the Euro Area statement). This would have devastated the economy back in 2008-9. Britain's structural deficit according to the European Commission's own "Public finances in EMU 2011" (page 24) was: 4.8% in 2008, 8.9% in 2009, 8.2% in 2010 and a projected 6.5% and 5.3% for 2011 and 2012 respectively. If these rules had been in place in 2009 and Britain played by the rules it would have meant a shortfall of £120bn that would need to be made up from tax rises (e.g. a doubling of income tax would be sufficient if taxpayers didn't change their behaviour - i.e. highly unlikely) or spending cuts (the equivalent of privatising the NHS or stopping all non-pension benefits).

These are hypotheticals of course, there is no way any country could keep to these proposals, which makes the latest agreement either ridiculous or a genuine step on the way of a united states of Europe with formerly 'national' governments having their say superseded by Europe (specifically the Court of Justice based on the statement).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you confusing structural and cyclical deficits? It sounds quite sensible not to allow people to run structural deficits as they inevitably cause long term problems. Although I guess you could have problems measuring what the level of surplus/deficit is appropriate for the stage in the economic cycle you are at. Eg. If anybody had told Gordon Brown in early 2007 that we were in an economic boom he would have got angry, told you it was business as usual and smacked you to the ground (well at least 2 of the 3).

StevieJ

Sapphire wrote: »

Why? labour obviously consistently takes the opposite stance to the Tories just because it wants to be seen as opposed to the Tories, not because of the issues concerned. labour certainly does not stand for the good of our country. :cool:

What does does the Cameron no do for the UK? I can't actually see where the gain for Britain is? could you explain please?

Thrugelmir

StevieJ wrote: »

What does does the Cameron no do for the UK? I can't actually see where the gain for Britain is? could you explain please?

Where's the loss? By saying no.