Lessons of history support Greens’ economic vision, says leading Green

Another piece from one of the national Green Party leadership candidates:

Green Party policies show Britain how to “escape austerity and prepare for sustainability”, leading Green Party campaigner Peter Cranie said today.

In a comment article in online current affairs magazine The Economic Voice, Peter Cranie accuses Labour as well as the Coalition parties of being in thrall to the banks, which he says “continue to show themselves unworthy of public trust”, and of “running things in the interests of the One Per Cent.”

Peter Cranie says history shows that “austerity measures have never worked”. He cites top economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman’s recent advice on “the urgent necessity of massive government spending to get us out of the recession” – which Peter says accords entirely with the Green Party’s policy on the Green New Deal.

In his article, Peter Cranie argues that the austerity policies followed by the Coalition government – and which Labour has pledged to continue if it wins the next general election – are “devastating Britain’s public services and wrecking our economy” as well as standing in the way of a serious effort to tackle “the immense threat posed to the world’s economy and its inhabitants by climate change”.

Peter Cranie argues that the Green Party’s track record on economics is good – he cites instances ranging from the party’s opposition to the financial deregulation that facilitated the recent global crisis, to the Green Party’s warning that austerity measures would trigger a double-dip recession. And he says that Greens can therefore feel confident in pushing the party’s economic policies in order to reach a wider sector of the electorate than ever before:

“Consider all those people opposed to the austerity agenda who will have no established party other than the Greens to vote for; all those who want a Robin Hood Tax, redistributive taxation, a crackdown on tax avoidance and evasion; those who want to protect the NHS and post offices. Those who want an end to huge bonuses in the publicly-owned banks, and a windfall tax on private bankers’ bonuses; those who want a government that would pay not one penny more to the private banks in bailouts, but which would establish a not-for-profit People’s Bank as a safe place for people to keep their money.”