The labour party really is finished, isnt it?

Generali

antrobus wrote: »

On a point of order, I can't see any evidence that he has a PhD in economics.

The Torygraph claims he does as does Wikipedia. It would be unusual for someone to be running a doctoral program at a university that did not have a doctorate I would imagine.

markharding557

I don't think Labour are finished but their recovery will not begin until 2020 when after a heavy defeat Mr Corbyn and his CND tendencies will be no more. As in 1983 they will be at the start of a long road back.

westernpromise

Except that in 1983 the unions were trying to contain the loonies, whereas today, they are a big part of why the loonies are in charge.

There is a very good chance that Corbyn will be replaced in 2020 by another loony. He will have had 5 years by that time to ensure that loonies get selected as MPs and can nominate another nutter to be his successor.

The next Labour PM is not yet in Parliament and may not even be born yet.

antrobus

Generali wrote: »

The Torygraph claims he does as does Wikipedia. It would be unusual for someone to be running a doctoral program at a university that did not have a doctorate I would imagine.

Well I was looking at his Wikiepdia entry, and there was no mention of it under 'Academic Career'. I see they stuck it in the previous bit.

antrobus

mwpt wrote: »

I'm not a defender of Varoufakis but on this point data shows debt accumulation began in earnest after those years.

Greece fiddled the figures.

Thrugelmir

bap98189 wrote: »

Why is his appointment as an advisor ridiculous?

He has a PhD in economics and has taught the subject at several universities including Cambridge. He was also highly critical of the level of debt the Greek government was building up, and was involved in the negotiations with the EU the ended the Greek debt crisis.

Aren't those the sort of qualifications you would want in an economics advisor?

Considerable difference between theory and reality though. Sometimes what's required is simply common sense and practical solutions.

mwpt

As a game theorist, surely he would know that the optimal solution isn't always the one that people choose. He can expend a lot of energy trying to convince everyone the best way forward but he's failing to account for signals. How could he have thought that writing off Greek debt while other EU states were sitting on a lot more would be allowed? I happen to think Greece should have taken the decision out of the rest of EUs hands and defaulted, taking short term pain. I think the same political forces that prevented writing off Greek debt would have also forced the EU to help Greece regain her footing in short course.

patman99

I was working with a Greek when the SHTF and he explained that no matter what the various ministers tried to do, the way the Greek economy worked was always going to end up with them in a mess.

Your average Greek business owner likes to run a 'two receipts' system. Take a cafe for instance.
You go into a cafe and buy a meal for 15 Euros and pay in cash.
The cafe staff issue you with a receipt from the till.
The owner at the end of the day takes all the cash transactions and runs them through a proper EPOS system out the back. For each cash payment, he applies a '5Euro' discount voucher.

Thus, if he takes 1,500Euros in cash, he pockets 500Euros and only pays tax on 1,000Euros.

If the Tax due is at 20%, then that is 100Euros in Tax that have been avoided.
The cafe owner then uses some of the 500Euros to pay part of the staff wages as cash in hand, thus more Tax is not paid.

The same goes on in every business. Thus, not enough Tax is collected to pay the running costs of the Country.


Meanwhile, here in the UK, the Tories are vote-buying by playing a very dangerous financial game in which they increased the Tax allowances for everyone and thus reduced the amount of cash that is available to pay to run the Country.

By 2020 whether or not we are still in the EU, we will be in the same mess as the Greeks.

Thrugelmir

patman99 wrote: »

Meanwhile, here in the UK, the Tories are vote-buying by playing a very dangerous financial game in which they increased the Tax allowances for everyone and thus reduced the amount of cash that is available to pay to run the Country.

The welfare dependency state that Brown created was never going to be easy to dismantle. Redistribution by tax allowances and living wages seems the best option available.

Spidernick

ukcarper wrote: »

I don't think UKIP will replace Labour and I don't think the Labour collapse will be as big as you think, there are a large number of people who will support a left wing party. I believe quite a few posters here are out of touch with a large part of the country. Saying that although I think they will be the second larges party by a margin I don't think they have a chance of being elected. The interesting thing is where the moderate left wing vote will go might be a resurgence in Lib/Dem vote but not enough to make a real difference.

I very much doubt it after they sold their souls (well the leadership at least) for a few short years in (a semblance of) power. It will take a very long time for many people to forgive them for that and I can never see me voting for them again. To my mind they got their just desserts last May.

As for Labour being finished - don't be too sure. We had similar comments with the advent of the SDP. Yes, they have a leader totally unsuited to the job, but it wasn't that long ago that the Tories had three of those in succession and many people wondered how long it would be before they were in government again. Politics is a funny old game at the end of the day.