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Originally posted by Rocinante:
Corbyn owns a house in Islington, has his salary as leader of the opposition and is drawing his parliamentary pension, so I think we can assume he isn't looking for coins down the back of the sofa at the end of the month.

However his personal lifestyle has always been modest, going on frugal, and he has never waivered from his commitment to old-school socialism all through the Thatcher & Blair years. It's hard to make a hypocrisy charge stick (one reason why the gutter press hate him so much), and he is no populist opportunist.

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
He's not exactly an ascetic but he doesn't have the lifestyle of someone who has paid of the mortgage and has earned 3 times the average for decades and now earns even more. He could be stashing it under the mattress or spending it on his children, but I wouldn't be surprised if he is giving a fair chunk of it away.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Please, put me out of my misery, tell me I'm laughably, stupidly wrong, that I don't understand and couldn't possibly?

The turkeys are paying for Christmas.

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
AFAIUI, the argument goes like this:

Investments are made with taxed income. Therefore to tax the profits of investments would be to tax the income twice. This applies to both Capital Gains Tax and dividends.

(Note that this argument does not apply to VAT, which is absolutely a double tax, and it impacts the poor disproportionately.)

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Originally posted by Rocinante:
There were economic problems all over the world in the mid 1970's, caused by the OPEC oil embargo of 1973 which quadrupled the price of oil.

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Originally posted by Sarah G:
This is wrong.

It wasn't France who decided things were so bad that they had to get the largest ever loan from the IMF. It was the UK. France were doing just fine.

It wasn't Germany who had the IMF telling us how to run our country because we'd messed it up and a dramatic run on the pound was imminent. It was the UK. National archives.

It wasn't Belgium that was called the sick man of Europe. It was the UK.

Everywhere else coped fine. It was the Corbynite policies that nearly destroyed the UK. Corbyn was about the only person in the UK who didn't accept that reality, and this is why older voters won't touch him with a barge pole.

I was watching the superb 70s drama Smiley's People a little while ago. There's a lovely line where his German counterpart offers to buy him lunch, on the grounds that British people have no money, because their country is so poor.

Let's not go there again.

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The 1973 oil crisis began in October 1973 when the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries proclaimed an oil embargo. The embargo was targeted at nations perceived as supporting Israel during the Yom Kippur War. The initial nations targeted were Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States with the embargo also later extended to Portugal, Rhodesia and South Africa.

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Everywhere else coped fine. It was the Corbynite policies that nearly destroyed the UK. Corbyn was about the only person in the UK who didn't accept that reality, and this is why older voters won't touch him with a barge pole.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Come the next general election (whether as scheduled or called early by Mrs May) it will be obvious to all just how unbelievably incompetant the Tories are, and the proverbial donkey with a red rosette would walk into Downing Street.

That's when Corbyns problems will start. He'll inherit a country heading inexorably towards the plug hole as a result of the totally idiotic Tory approach to Brexit (Brexit, of course, is a totally stupid idea anyway, the current government have managed to find a way to make it even more idiotic). The worst of those Brexit consequences are likely to hit on his watch, and he'll get the blame for a mess that wasn't of his making.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:


Brexit will probably sink everybody in political terms, since it is unmanageable.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
It's very pleasant to see a reference to Gramsci. I wonder what dazzling aphorisms he would produce in the present situation, well, at least, we always have, 'The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.'

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Come the next general election (whether as scheduled or called early by Mrs May) it will be obvious to all just how unbelievably incompetant the Tories are, and the proverbial donkey with a red rosette would walk into Downing Street.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

The PMs in the 1970s were Wilson and Callaghan, the latter who famously criticized Keynesian policies, and recommended a form of neo-liberalism. But plenty of Labour politicians were critical of that.

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Originally posted by Higgs Bosun:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

The PMs in the 1970s were Wilson and Callaghan, the latter who famously criticized Keynesian policies, and recommended a form of neo-liberalism. But plenty of Labour politicians were critical of that.

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Don't forget Edward Heath (19 June 1970 to 4 March 1974).

When was the oil crisis? Oh, yes, it started in October 1973 and ended in March 1974. The three day week? Oh, yes, that was from 1 January to 7 March 1974.

The economic problems of the UK in the 1970's seem to have been mainly during a Tory PM's term of office.

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Some interesting rewriting of history here. Benn's faction, which advocated the Alternative Economic Strategy, is the tradition of which Corbyn is heir, though moderated by time and experience. It was the right of the party, the Liz Kendall's of their era, that went to the IMF. Whether you think the Labour left's ideas would have worked, they're not to blame for the winter of discontent. Ironically those ideas included withdrawal from the common market as then was.

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Originally posted by Rocinante:
I think the main folk memories of the 70s in this country are of unions and strikes (and terrible clothes). Any serious analysis of that decade reveals a much more nuanced picture; often the strikers had good reason for their dissatisfaction - many industries were appallingly mismanaged, many public servants subsisted on meagre wages. The oil shock caused rampant inflation throughout the western world.

But it was all the lefties' fault.

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Originally posted by betjemaniac:

Essentially, other countries seem to manage with unions who work *with* the bosses, and bosses who *trust* the unions. The fact that it isn't like that here is the fault of idiocy (and idiots) on both sides.

Not sure what the answer is, but post WW2 Britain is a litany of poor choices.

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Originally posted by betjemaniac:
Britain (led by Labour on this one) blued it on defence capability and (AIUI) essentially paying for national service).

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

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Originally posted by betjemaniac:
Britain (led by Labour on this one) blued it on defence capability and (AIUI) essentially paying for national service).

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You seem to be forgetting the NHS, the welfare state, the massive housebuilding program, all of which happened post-war. Private enterprise didn't invest - a failure of capital, if you will.

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

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Originally posted by betjemaniac:
Britain (led by Labour on this one) blued it on defence capability and (AIUI) essentially paying for national service).

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You seem to be forgetting the NHS, the welfare state, the massive housebuilding program, all of which happened post-war. Private enterprise didn't invest - a failure of capital, if you will.

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:


I'm certainly not arguing that the money wouldn't have been better off spent at home, rebuilding infrastructure and communications, but private capital should have been shouldering at least part of the burden of modernisation.

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Originally posted by betjemaniac:
For clarity, I'm not saying that it isn't a mark of shame that private capital didn't just deal with it by itself, but then I'm more of a social democrat anyway so I'd not expect them to behave purely virtuously by themselves!

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:

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The 1973 oil crisis began in October 1973 when the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries proclaimed an oil embargo. The embargo was targeted at nations perceived as supporting Israel during the Yom Kippur War. The initial nations targeted were Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States with the embargo also later extended to Portugal, Rhodesia and South Africa.

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(opening paragraph on wiki 1973 oil crisis)
Neither Belgium or Germany were subjected to an oil embargo.

(eta)

So unless Corbyn is planning to declare war on oil-producing Middle Eastern states, I think we're good here.

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Of the nine members of the European Economic Community (EEC), the Netherlands faced a complete embargo, the UK and France received almost uninterrupted supplies (having refused to allow America to use their airfields and embargoed arms and supplies to both the Arabs and the Israelis)...Despite being relatively unaffected by the embargo, the UK nonetheless faced an oil crisis of its own—a series of strikes by coal miners and railroad workers over the winter of 1973–74 became a major factor in the change of government.

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So the embargo's not the thing to blame for the economic crises of the 70s. In fact the main problem appears to be the unions, and here Corbyn's Labour are vulnerable. He's already said he wants to see union strike rights restored, and he owes the unions for keeping him in power.

Since the £312 billion or whatever investment will likely create noticeable inflation again, strikes could once more become a serious problem.

Those bright eyed 20 year old Corbynistas will think again when their electricity/wifi/phone usage gets cut off for hours every day.

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That’s what we fought for in the election and that’s what’s needed to replace the broken model forged by Margaret Thatcher many years ago.

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