Back to Black? The return of In The Black Labour

18 months ago Anthony Painter, Hopi Sen and Adam Lent released their pamphlet “In the Black Labour”, which generated a substantial amount of coverage after calling for Labour to embrace “fiscal conservatism”. Now they’ve written a follow up essay, entitled “Moving Labour ‘into the black'”, which argues that:

• Labour should not do an about-turn on fiscal policy and welfare as it did under pressure eighteen months ago.
• The leadership needs to go further than recent speeches – publish fiscal rules for consultation, run some independently verified growth/deficit scenarios, develop welfare policy further.
• Labour should drop the VAT-cut stimulus policy.
• And there needs to be a realisation that social justice depends on challenging concentrations of wealth and power in the economy and state.

They also argue that the left is now obliged “to demonstrate how alternative routes to social justice can be nurtured beyond the role of a high spending state” and to show that “social justice, economic efficiency and, indeed, fiscal conservatism will go hand-in-hand.”

You can read it here.