Sir Keir told party delegates in Liverpool: “Now don’t get me wrong – markets are dynamic. Competition is a vital life force in our economy. This is a Labour Party proud to say that. We work hand-in-hand with business.
“But markets don’t give you control – that is almost literally their point. So if you want a country with more control, if you want the great forces that affect your community to be better managed – whether that’s migration, climate change, law and order, or security at work – then that does need more decisive government, and that is a Labour Government.
“Taking back control is a Labour argument.”
Sure, control etc. But the pro-market argument is that non-market methods – for many to most things, but not all – which lead to that control produce worse, not better, results. The energy system would be better – cheaper – with less government control than we currently have as one example.
We don’t, that is, want more control because the outcome of more control is worse.
Control is what Socialism is all about
Control how you work
Control how you spend
Control how you consume
Control how you think
Interesting that they DON’T seem to want to control immigration.
I suppose what they really mean is ‘We want to control what YOU do.’ It’d be an infringement of our freedom if you could control what WE do!!
@Tim
I don’t doubt that Sir Keir’s instincts on most things are and will be very wrong.
But the only very obviously ‘wrong’ item in the list that he gives here is security at work: that is almost certainly handled better by competitive markets than by government control.
Law and order is a government function (so OK Sir Keir is weaving a straw man to suggest that it might be otherwise) and most of us would think that migration is a sub-set of that (admittedly a very badly handled one).
If you believe as you do in global warming, then the logical solution is indeed the market-utilising CO2 tax rather than windmill-building-by-diktat, but even if this case some group of governments will have to set up the CO2 tax.
You cannot ram through your WEF ESG goals without having control. Also required for the new UN Pact for the Future, UN Agenda 2045, pushed through while everyone was distracted by Chairman Starmer’s plans to cull the elderly this winter.
The problem is that the bits the Government does control – the border, the NHS for example – are shit. Why does no journalist or politician ever say this in public?
Jonathan, most of the Journalists are old study pals, or junior study pals of the current crop, and do not want to rock the boat in terms of future sinecures their Network™ brings.
Easy as that.
Benito must be so proud of TTK
Grikath>
Yes, all that ‘holding politicians to account’ only seems to apply to one side…
Nice article in Spiked summing up this appalling government
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/25/drunk-on-authoritarianism/
“There’s a reason why the same people who want to punish you for what you stick in your gob also want to punish you for what comes out of it.”
Tim the Coder: Exactly what I was about to say. You could hardly ask for a better definition of old fatso’s “corporatism” than that.
“But markets don’t give you control – that is almost literally their point.”
They give us control. That is their point. It’s not your damned job to have control, and anyone who thinks it is isn’t fit to have it.