FionaK |
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| It seems that the reports of the likely outcome of the dutch elections were not fulfilled in the event, and that the dutch decided to back those parties which accept the current mainstream analysis: backing attempts to save the euro through the impoverishment of european people. That is interesting in itself. It means that my thoughts above are wrong insofar as they are predicated on increased polarisation within the elected body. It remains to be seen whether that represents a true consensus about policy, but the indications are that it does. The differences between the two "centrist" parties appear to be differences of detail such as timing: austerity is accepted by both, as is the case with the main parties in this country too. Here the coalition has proved disastrous for the liberals because they have not defended any part of their agenda and have joined with a party which has no will to compromise at all. I am not clear about how a dutch coalition might be constituted, nor how far compromise is possible there. It is always difficult to get a handle on another country's politics, and the picture of the Netherlands I was given in this country has not survived discussion with Vninect, who has informed me about things like the privatisation of dutch health care: something not much reported here. I am interested in the formation of governments in those countries used to coalition. in the current circumstances and I wonder how this will be achieved in the Netherlands: from my position it seems a little analogous to a recognition here that there is no substantive difference between Labour and Tory. In the past that led to the "National Government" led by Ramsay MacDonald (though to be sure most of the labour party refused to serve) and the de facto rule of the conservatives from 1931. Public spending was savagely cut and the great depression ensued. Subsequently MacDonald was largely villified. It is interesting that an attempt to rehabilitate his reputation did not really happen until the neoliberal hegemony was well advance and it is interesting to note that that was predicated on the idea that Keynes was wrong: written before the crash of 2008 and based on the assumptions of the then current mainstream economic orthodoxy. Wiki has a telling quote from that book QUOTE In the harsher world of the 1980s and 1990s it was no longer obvious that Keynes was right in 1931 and the bankers wrong. Pre-Keynesian orthodoxy had come in from the cold. Politicians and publics had learned anew that confidence crises feed on themselves; that currencies can collapse; that the public credit can be exhausted; that a plummeting currency can be even more painful than deflationary expenditure cuts; and that governments which try to defy the foreign exchange markets are apt to get their—and their countries'—fingers burnt. Against that background MacDonald's response to the 1931 crisis increasingly seemed not just honourable and consistent, but right....he was the unacknowledged precursor of the Blairs, the Schröders, and the Clintons of the 1990s and 2000s Indeed.... The parallels with the 1930's are a bit scary, to me |
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