We know austerity is failing. What we should be debating is the size of stimulus we need

As austerity maintains a grip over Europe, the left is desperately casting about for policies that will both win them support and drive forward economic growth. Surprisingly there has been no significant debate on the merits of a major economic stimulus programme.

There is now a public recognition that austerity is harming all of Europe’s economies and in Britain, Ed Miliband has made clear that austerity is ‘failing’. But that condemnation of austerity, or the effects of austerity, is not yet matched by an alternative economic policy that explicitly rejects spending cuts.

Paul Krugman’s summer media blitz in London, when he argued we need government investment, not austerity, to get through the economic crisis, should have blown open a much-needed debate within the Labour Party on a investment-stimulus-based economic alternative.

But talking to Decca Aitkenhead, he said:

“As far as I can make out, the serious opposition to the coalition’s policy is basically a half-dozen economists, and it looks as if I’m one of them.”

Krugman took Labour to task for its weak opposition to Tory spending cuts, a policy he called ‘deeply destructive’. He argued the Tories are not prepared to adopt a different model because ‘economic recovery was never the point; the drive for austerity was about using the crisis, not solving it.’ 

His call for greater government investment was based on the multiplier, which he explained on Radio 4’s Today programme at the time. More recently the IMF’s World Economic Outlook stated the multiplier impact of spending cuts is having a greater effect than expected. As Jonathan Portes explained it, ‘the bigger the fiscal consolidation, the worse growth has been relative to IMF forecasts – implying that the Fund was drastically underestimating the negative impact of fiscal consolidation’.

Mick Burke, of Socialist Economic Bulletin, who has consistently made the case for greater government investment, said ‘The debate on the size of the multipliers is effectively debate about the role of the state in determining economic activity’ and that the driving force of our current economic contraction is the fall in public investment.

So how much should we, and can we, invest?

Labour’s Five Point Plan, as good as it is, seems wholly inadequate for the scale of the crisis. Ed Balls’ latest pledge, to build 100,000 homes through the £3 billion expected from the sale of the 4G mobile phone spectrum, is another welcome step, but remains limited by the scale of the windfall.

Anthony Painter in his summer article talked of investments of £10 billion. One would suspect this is what George Irvin would describe as ‘peanuts’ in his blog asking how Labour will respond to Krugman. Jonathan Portes of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research recommends a £30bn investment programme to which Martin Wolf of the FT responded, ‘I would go for far more’.

But how much further?

With the cost of borrowing lower than ever, the government can afford to do more to get the economy moving.

We know austerity is failing. It is the scale of the stimulus that needs now to be debated in the Labour Party.

 Steve Turner of Unite, Katy Clark MP and Mick Burke will speak at an ‘Alternatives to Austerity’ meeting on 20^th November, Committee Room 6 in Parliament, organised by Next Generation Labour