GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

he reached for the old traditional ways of getting it going. You get the banks to

lend some more for mortgages, you get the housing market rolling again,

people feel a bit better, they go out and spend money they have not really got,

they have just got the increased value of their house and you generate a short

term sugar rush which has now run out of steam. We have got to come up with

a proper long term industrial strategy which enables us to pay our way in the

world and means that growth is more about how we produce stuff and export

stuff rather than about how we consume stuff and import stuff and, in my mind,

a proper long term industrial strategy means identifying those bits of the

economy which we think are going to be growth sectors in years to come.

Some of these we have real comparative advantage in – genomics,

environmental green industries and actually backing them to the hilt.

John’s point, I just make one point really about Corbyn. I think, yes, the Labour

manifesto does look a bit like it was put together at a rapid pace and I have

problems with some parts of it, but there are two things. One, what the

manifesto slightly lacks is a coherent story about how we are going to make the

post-Brexit economy work for ordinary people, because Brexit is a reality and I

think Labour’s slightly havering view of it is making it more difficult to come up

with a coherent view about how it is possible to use Brexit as a way of getting

to a proper long term industrial strategy. That said, I wrote a story today saying

that 10 years after Fantasy Island, what is the real fantasy? Labour’s

manifesto essentially has got lots of good old fashioned social democratic

ideas. The idea of nationalising the railways would not seem to be on the outer

fringes of Marxism to anybody living in Germany or France. I get totally sick of

hearing employers who will not pay their taxes whinge on about how they need

better qualified and better educated workers. In that case, bloody well pay for it

then!

My question is this: What is the real fantasy, Labour’s manifesto or the idea

that the current system can sustain itself for very much longer? (Applause)

THE PRESIDENT: I do not see anybody else and it is 25 past 12.

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