Ed Miliband, patriotism and austerity

Cautious Ed, once again displaying
his preference for empty soundbytes over
well defined alternative strategies.

On 6 March 2012 the UK Labour party leader Ed Miliband was reported as saying that there should never be a return to the protectionism of "propping up lame ducks or putting up trade barriers of the 1970s" as part of a "patriotic economic policy" as a rehash of Gordon Brown's empty "British jobs for British workers" soundbyte.

Odd that, the bankers bailouts dished out by his party (with the support of the Tories) are the biggest subsidies to a disfunctional sector of the economy in UK history (estimated at around £1 trillion), £45 billion of which was "invested" in RBS. Imagine what "just" £45 billion "bailout" could have achieved if it had been wisely invested in productive sectors of the economy such as manufacturing, engineering, scientific research, computer science, public transport or housebuilding. Yet instead, the UK has been left with £20 billion losses on their RBS investment alone, the grotesquely under-regulated shadow banking sector that caused the neoliberal economic crisis in the first place remains completely unreformed and the "real" productive economy of the UK is being ruthlessly choked by George Osborne's ideologically driven"austerity" crusade to pay back the spectacular losses on his party's "lame duck subsidies" to their financial sector mates at the height of the neoliberal economic meltdown.