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You've mischaracterised my position — I'm only talking about monetary authorities here. It's absurd to describe an independent justice system as neoliberal.
To create a technocratic 'automatic-stabilising' independent monetary authority is to exclude other forms of politics. Keynes wanted monetary policy to be actively wielded, not set from models of price stability, but used with intent to reduce unemployment as a political end.
This isn't just "Milton Friedman likes oranges, I like oranges, therefore I'm a neoliberal", it's a central maxim of neoliberalism. 'Sound money', automatic stabilisers, neutrality of the monetary system, all that stuff.
slippers-
I commend you for your sane, patient reasonableness in the face of madness
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Ok - just wasted an hour reading around this while trying to do real work
I get where you're coming from. However I read your line of reasoning as
"they were making it up on the fly, therefore it was ideological; as its a neo-lib concept, then new Labour are (in this respect) neo liberals"
But the first part of this is incorrect as its fairly well documented that it was a multi-year plan-in-secret by Blair and Brown to get inflation under control.
I think in order to label them neo-liberal or not (in this narrow regard), you'd need to understand _why _ they thought it would work. If it was a case that they'd read they theory and subscribed to it, then yes, neo-lib. However if was a more practical stance that the fed and others were independant and these economies were doing better than the UK, then I would find it less convincing.
I guess its the wider problem of, at what point do you label someone based on their actions. When the Tories take a train company back under national control or spend gazillions on social support during a pandemic most people wouldnt label them socialists (although, some do).
Actually - just browsing the thread, ReekBlefs made this point about China and trade
So, I'll give you "New Labour did something that has support from neo-liberals, and it generally worked at the time", but I'm not convinced with "New Labour were neo-liberals, or had neo-liberal tendencies"
Eejit
cookiemonster
That’s not an argument. Just because he supported something doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily neo-liberal. It can just be a sensible thing. You can be against Liz Truss’s acations and still be very right wing.
And, fine, let me rephrase my point. “Belief in the independence of institutions is not necessarily neo-liberal. As an example, I would suggest that a judiciary with a degree of independence from the government is widely supported across the political spectrum (and the opposite has been misused by far left and far right governments in history)
In the same way independence of financial institutions is not neo-liberal.
It is much more related to your level of trust in governments to behave well - whether right wing or left wing”