Britain
Via Michael Roberts
The Keynesian economic advisors to the British leftwing Labour opposition leadership are ditching Corbyn and McDonnell as fast as they can. Several Keynesians resigned in June from the economic advisory council, including Thomas Piketty.
Now Keynesians David Blanchflower and Simon Wren-Lewis have come out in support of Owen Smith, the MP running against Jeremy Corbyn in the leadership election. Apparently they reckon Corbyn is 'unelectable'.
Via Michael Roberts
The Keynesian economic advisors to the British leftwing Labour opposition leadership are ditching Corbyn and McDonnell as fast as they can. Several Keynesians resigned in June from the economic advisory council, including Thomas Piketty.
Now Keynesians David Blanchflower and Simon Wren-Lewis have come out in support of Owen Smith, the MP running against Jeremy Corbyn in the leadership election. Apparently they reckon Corbyn is 'unelectable'.
David Blanchflower, a former member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, and Simon Wren-Lewis, a professor at Oxford University, were both members of Labour’s economic advisory committee.
Blanchflower said Smith had been better at "consulting businesses and economists" in three weeks than Corbyn’s leadership had over the last nine months.
Wren-Lewis, who was still a member of the committee until meetings were suspended in June, wrote on his blog: “What seems totally clear to me is that given recent events a Corbyn-led party cannot win in 2020, or even come close."
Joining these rats jumping a (sinking?) ship was Richard Murphy, the tax justice campaigner and architect of the People's Quantitative Easing that Corbynomics originally espoused, but has gone very silent on recently.
Politics is more important than economic policy so Corbyn-McDonnell continue to advocate left Keynesian policies while their Keynesian advisers ditch them - and even the support of political commentators like Owen Jones has become dubious.