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Kuenssberg and Polanski face off over who runs the UK

It recently became a meme online that the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg was ducking Zack Polanski. Now, the two have finally faced off, making it their first interview since he became the Green Party leader.

One moment which caught people’s attention was when Polanski and Kuenssberg discussed the economy:

If you heard a loud scraping sound, that was the Overton Window opening.

Zack Polanski: we’re living in a bankers paradise

In the video above, Zack Polanski says:

So Sharon was exactly right earlier when she was talking about borrowing to invest, that’s one way. But also there’s something called spending multipliers, which is where you invest in the economy, say the National Health Service, you get that money back because you have a well population. Now, of course it’s important that people are healthy just to be healthy, but actually if you cut through austerity, that’s a completely false economy. You have people missing work, you have more long-term health conditions, And you break the economy in the way that we’ve seen both Conservative governments do it and Labour government now too.

Kuenssberg asks in response:

But you say there you can borrow. The government’s already borrowing enormous amounts and there is an already massive amount of national debt. and it’s way more than the government spends every year and it costs a fortune to pay the interest on that debt. So would you not put any limits on government borrowing?

Polanski answers:

Well, the first thing to say is debt to GDP ratio is at 100%. In Japan, it’s 270% and they have much better living standards than we do.

It’s certainly true that Japan has levels of public efficiency that the UK could only dream of, but in many other ways Japan is just another stagnating neoliberal democracy. A country with an even higher level of debt is China, as the following video details:

Unlike Japan and the UK, China has realised unprecedented growth and development over the past few decades. China’s economy is actually very different to the UK, and as a result Western economists frequently fail to understand or predict China’s ability to pivot and grow (e.g. when China recently averted a housing market financial meltdown by pivoting their nationwide focus to emerging technologies like solar and electric cars).

One reason why China is able to maintain such a high debt ratio is because they’ve maintained ownership of vital public infrastructure and land, which means they’re not paying greedy private companies to provide half-arsed public services (or pissing money up the wall on wasteful PFI-built hospitals). China also has strong central planning and control, which means businesses and markets answer to the government – not the other way around.

While we couldn’t and shouldn’t seek to emulate everything China is doing, taking control of public land, services, and utilities would make us more secure as a nation.

Back to the interview, Kuenssberg hit back:

But in terms of this country, it’s at the highest level it’s been for a very, very long time. The financial markets are very sensitive to the decisions that the Chancellor makes. that’s the case whether you’d like it or not. The UK’s already got huge levels of debt. So are you suggesting that actually you’d be relaxed about the government borrowing much, much more?

Zack Polanski said it was “interesting” when Labour mayor Andy Burnham said “we need to stop being in hock to the bond markets”. Kuenssberg retorted that there “was a market reaction” to those comments, leading Polanski to respond (emphasis added):

Well, exactly. So what I think we need to do is get back to a place where actually democratic politicians who are elected by the people are more worried about the cleaners, the teachers, the nurses, the people on the ground who are actually creating jobs the economy with their hands rather than the people who hold these assets, who are making money while they sleep without actually working.

That’s deeply problematic.

Now, are the markets important? Of course, they play a role, but much more important is the trust of the public on the politicians that they democratically elect. And we’ve gone so far the other way.

As Saul Staniforth noted, Polanski’s response had echoes of this speech from trade unionist Eddie Dempsey:

Zack Polanski had other good points too:

How long can this go on for?

Let’s be real, the ‘markets’ aren’t some neutral force of nature like the ‘weather’. The markets are driven by a loose collection of undeservedly rich individuals who are using their shared wealth to exert political control in a fashion which ensures they get richer while the rest of us suffer.

While it’s certainly true these people can negatively influence the world we live in, that doesn’t mean we should tolerate the situation; especially as the situation keeps getting worse.

It’s going to take a lot of work to diminish the power that the financial sector has, but at least someone – namely Zack Polanski – is finally acknowledging that this work must be done.

Featured image via BBC

By Willem Moore

This post was originally published on Canary.