Corbyn's innovative green economic investment strategy

 

Letter sent to Independent on 30 July:

Well done to Mark Leftly for taking seriously Jeremy Corbyn’s alternative economic strategy and analysing its merits (“The City has been too quick to dismiss the threat of Corbyn,” Parliamentary business, 29 July http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/the-city-has-been-too-quick-to-dismiss-the-threat-of-jeremy-corbyn-10423002.html). As Leftly rightly reports, Corbyn’s strategy has been all but ignored by other newspapers and broadcasters, which is one reason so many are bemused by Corbyn’s popularity in the Labour leadership race.

However, I disagree with Leftly that Corbyn’s leadership “must be considered a political risk British business” and “his supporters would relish that.”

Corbyn’s strategy might be a threat to some old-fashioned, dinosaur-like and vastly overpaid  British business executives, but is actually just what British workers and investors in British business needs.

Corbyn’s economic strategy is innovative and progressive, to borrow former Labour deputy leader Lord Prescott’s favourite Labour aphorism:  traditional socialist ideas in a modern setting.

Corbyn's strategy spells out that Labour “must create a balanced economy that ensures workers and government share fairly in the wealth creation process

• that encourages and supports innovation in every sector of the economy; and

• that invests in skills and infrastructure to build an economy that is more

sustainable and more equal.”

He then fills in the policy space by suggesting that:  "One option would be for the Bank of England to be given a new mandate to upgrade our economy to invest in new large scale housing, energy, transport and digital projects."

This, he dubs, “quantitative easing for people instead of banks.”

To be fair, as you reported on 28 July “Yvette Cooper: Our choice is years of Tory rule under Jeremy Corbyn or a return to a Labour government” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/yvette-cooper-our-choice-is-years-of-tory-rule-under-jeremy-corbyn-or-a-return-to-a-labour-government-10422279.html)

- notwithstanding the headline - Ms Cooper has an approach to investment in low carbon greener technology very similar to Corbyn’s when she revealed her plan includes a wholesale review to ensure economic growth does not increase carbon emissions; encouraging local action to decarbonise in cities and towns; building more “ecotowns” and developing  carbon capture and storage to create up to 30,000 jobs by 2030.

The sooner all political commentators examine  whatCorbyn writes and says in rallies, rather than report the ubiquitous, ill-informed political prejudices of his opponents in the Labour Party, especially Blairite MPs, the more sensible and better informed the important  political debate over Labour’s leadership  will become.