All politicians want these days is a story which enough people will believe in, so the politicians can scrape back into government at the next election. The Tory story, as Ha-Joon Chang summarises it, is that they are having to make tough spending cuts to recover from the mess left by the last irresponsibly overspending Labour government. Moreover, the cuts are working: unemployment is down and earnings are up. The Labour story, as told by Ed Balls, appears to accept the Tory austerity prescription as necessary and effective. So it might be better called the Westminster story. Sir Mike Derrington had a nice phrase which adequately sums it all up: ‘Total Bollocks’!

First, the real source of the mess was the financial crash caused by the as yet largely unpunished criminality of the global financial sector, led by the City of London and Wall St.

Second, government employment statistics are deliberately misleading, massaged by zero hours contracts, reluctant self-employment, and time related underemployment. Adjusted as the statistics are, unemployment still stands at 6%, well over double the rate reported on the more honest basis in the post WW2 decades.

Third, the Westminster story avoids altogether the rapidly rising, and clearly unacceptable, level of inequality between rich and poor.
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