Zack Polanski has just brilliantly answered his critics

Green Party leader Zack Polanski just got serious on the economy.  Not just on substance.  His 32-minute speech at the New Economics Foundation on Wednesday 18 March saw a change in tone.

“Our fiscal framework is hypersensitive to market movements, and this creates policy uncertainty that then fuels the very market jitters it was there to supposedly prevent” is one phrase that stood out for me.  There was lots of talk of productivity and fiscal multipliers.

This was Zack answering his critics.  He can do the heavyweight economics.

Zack Polanski: a shift

Is this a shift away from insurgency?  Kind of.  It had to happen.  To hold power in this country, especially with a media that is equally hostile and banal, you have to talk money.  The vast majority of the British people agree that the Iran war is terrible and the Gaza genocide is criminal.  But they feel the cost-of-living crisis every day.

I’ve been advocating that we need to appeal to the “Green Curious”.  The people who would like to see a government serious about climate action, on poverty.  On restoring crumbling infrastructure and creaking public services.  There are millions of Green Curious people who see the benefits of compassion and long-term investment.  But they want reassurance that their taxes will be spent wisely and their mortgages won’t shoot up.  If you want their cross on the ballot paper, you have to look like a safe pair of hands.

Polanski still communicates clearly in everyday language.  Rents have gone up by £3300 per household since 2022, he said.  That’s £18 billion countrywide.  That could have been an extra £18 billion people spent with local businesses.  The bakery on the way to work.  The local pub at the end of the week.  That’s why we’ve got hollowed out high streets.  He’s right, and that’s a clear way to explain it.

It’s a welcome change from the long shopping lists the left often recite.  We want more money on schools, colleges and universities.  Hospitals and care homes.  Trains, buses, metros and trams.  Of course we do.  But unless you answer the question “how?” the public are justified in being sceptical.  They’ve been let down by too many politicians too many times.

This speech gets us into the territory of how you actually fix things.  Something I’ve been banging on about for years.

Fixing

A wealth tax is a day one priority.  Not because it can fund everything, said Polanski.  Although £15 billion a year will buy you quite a bit.  But because it’s far better for society to spend that on productive infrastructure and long term investment in energy, housing, health and education than it is sitting in private equity funds.  The billionaires will still be mega-rich.

There was detail on equalising Capital Gains Tax with Income Tax.  That’s another £12 billion.  This is bleeding obvious and it’s a scandal that Labour haven’t done it.  We should not tax people more for working for a living than we do for owning things.  Unlike Income Tax, it’s only taxed on the profits made, anyway.

There was detail on replacing the Office of Budget Responsibility.  Established in 2010 to bring down the debt and the deficit, it has obviously failed. I’ve written about it before.  It makes unfounded assumptions and always, and I mean always, gets its forecasts wrong.  So let’s have an Office for Fiscal Transparency whose job it is to publish the hidden assumptions in Treasury and Bank of England forecasts.

Instead of assuming that all investment has no benefit after five years, let’s get the real evidence.  And let’s stop obsessing over GDP as the only measure of economic success.

Polanski is working for everyone

Let’s have a wellbeing measure than includes health, education, and economic security.

I was the first Mayor to introduce one.  We used it to guide policy decisions.  We still smashed the job creation target, beating our 15 year target in just four years.  Every £1 we invested in job creation returned over £3 to Treasury in payroll taxes alone, above and beyond the economic benefits of people having money in their pockets.  This stuff works.

And yes, we’d look at borrowing for investment, and when there are adverse economic events, we’d look at quantitative easing.  “I’m not an ideologue,” said Polanski, “I’m a pragmatist.”

I liked it.  You could deliver it all in the first term of a government.  Realistic.  Effective.  It would make life better for everyone.  Even the billionaires would live in a safer country.

Featured image via the Canary