GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017
fighting for their victories and, let’s face it, most of them would not be there,
would not have the sort of lifestyles they have if it was not for all that hard work,
they soon forget that. While we are doing that, the real issues that we should
have been struggling for, and this is where Larry is totally right, May says no
snap election, here it comes. Are we ready for that snap election? Okay,
Jeremy Corbyn said, “We are on a war footing for an election”, but in truth our
policies were not ready, because we had been doing too much internal battling
and it still seems to me that we are caught up in the same abysmal situation
that we had with Ed Miliband where it seemed that every day we were making
up policy on the hoof which instantly, when the Andrew Neills of this world get
hold of it, could destroy in a matter of moments. That, to me, is absolutely total
nonsense, that we as a party, a party of government, should be in those sorts
of positions. We have to be strong and determined.
I still have not given up the battle in terms of winning this election. There are
too many doom and gloom merchants going on. I still hope we will win the
election, but if we do not the one thing we have got to start is all this internal
fighting and we have actually got to get down using all that we can in terms of
producing a programme that everybody can commit to, everybody could
commit to and that is why I am proud of the GFTU. I am not going to get
another chance to speak and I am just going to say this, that it looks at what we
are doing in terms of our education programme, we are actually building that
coming together of all people thinking that we can bring about change and that
we can actually influence some of that change and that is what the GFTU is
really about. I thank everybody here and I thank you, Larry. (Applause)
LARRY ELLIOTT: We have not got three or four years, so I am not sure I can solve
the entire problems of the Eurozone! What would I do about Greece? The
obvious thing to do is to give them large amounts of debt relief. They have got
debts running at something like 200% of GDP and rising. One thing you could
do if you did not want Greece to leave the euro was to make their economy
more sustainable by giving them a major amount of debt relief. That is an
anathema though to the Germans, so that is probably not going to happen.
Even the IMF realise that you cannot have a sustainable future for Greece
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