The new Labour breakaway MPs are well-placed to claim the kind of economic competence voters think Jeremy Corbyn lacks.
In 2014/15, likely future leader, Chuka Umunna, had Parliament’s most costly staff at £169, 469 per year and came sixth in personal expenses at £192, 170.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mps-expenses-live-updates-shameless-6416109
In 2009, Angela Smith claimed for four beds to install in her new one-bedroom flat in London and spent £11 000 setting the flat up. That’s the kind of entrepreneurship the UK sorely needs.
To be fair to Chuka, he has been able to keep his expenses down a bit by taking on a second job, supplementing his miserable £80 000pa with a wee part-time job, 12 hours per month, with Progressive Centre at £452 per hour or £65 000 per year. Once more, what an entrepreneur!
Progressive Centre do not reveal who funds them but if they can pay Umunna at that level then someone or some corporation with cash to spare, opposed to Corbynism, must be involved. Their board includes regular contributors to the Telegraph and the Economist. They’re not even listed in the Who Funds You survey:
http://whofundsyou.org/compare
What can Scottish Labour learn from this? Get a good-looking young man who knows his worth in front of the cameras.
Umunna’s looks derive in part from an Irish mother. I’m advised by TuS Talent Correspondent that young Paul Sweeney with a bit of expense-account grooming is ‘your man’. His surname suggests he too has a bit of the Irish in him.
Footnote: Umunna’s father blessed his child by naming him in the South Eastern Nigerian dialect, Igbo, ‘Chuck your money’.
Talking-up Scotland 
No rebel yells from this bunch of sad sacks. What ever happened to political passion: the righteous anger of the downtrodden?
I think you are correct, John. They are too deep in the trough to feel the hunger of the masses to throw off their chains!
But somehow the news “where you are” made this their second top story( and the longest). Why Ian Murray NOT jumping ship is news is beyond understanding. And obviously the “news where you are” had to go to London for enlightenment on Murrays non-defection. And drag in Kezia and the Kenneth Williams stand-in just for fun.
Before devolution we had a Scottish Secretary with power over Scottish responsibilities: Cabinet Ministers responsible for the equivalents in England and Wales.
Devolution came and the Scottish end became the responsibility of our elected parliament.
But then……,.Westminsters “England and Wales Ministries” became “UK Ministries”.
Seems Scotland cannot ever become autonomous within our union of equals.
LikeLike
The Expenses 7?
LikeLike
*The Magniloquent 7*
In widescreen and technicolour cinemascope. Coming to a BBC near YOU!
Starring……..well, no one you have ever heard off. But you will soon get to know their names: the BEEB will see to that.
LikeLike
I have vaguely put forward the Green New Deal as an economic framework, assuming that it would involve MMT – but it doesn’t! So I would like to correct this mistake, as outline by Richard Murphy here:
The green new deal doesn’t actually involve MMT
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2019/02/18/does-the-green-new-deal-need-modern-monetary-theory/
To summarise:
So if my fiscally deficit ridden brain has understood this, the GND does not involve MMT, because MMT is anathema to all conventional economists, so involves mechanisms for running the economy that properly uses fiat currency and progressive taxation to ensure its balance?
So maybe you could call this the Fiscal Fiat System (FFS)?
The Green New Deal might not seem immediately relevant – Scotland can’t have its own economic policy until independence, but if Westminster adopted this, the funding for renewable energy projects would increase substantially – things like the carbon capture research would have gone ahead etc. I think it’s a good thing to support from any view.
LikeLike
Hi Contrary – think you might just have stumbled onto something here – I suspect FFS (Fiscal Fiat System) might quickly establish itself as a major plank of radical economic theory. I suspect we’ll be observing the acronym FFS appearing with some regularity when BritNat neo-con/neo-lib economic theory is being deconstructed in the literature from now on in.
LikeLike
Hi Ludo! Good to see you back in action.
I was so hoping FFS was going to take off and I’d be really famous forever – Richard Murphy liked it, so I was hopeful, but someone else then suggested FMS – Fiat Monetary System – or something, and he’s looking at that as a better idea. I am most disappointed. But it was actually a serious suggestion! (With a tiny touch of irony obviously)
It was the fact that as long as you don’t CALL it MMT, you can effectively use it (rolls eyes, FFS etc ) – you have to kind of use it anyway, because we have fiat currency, it’s just the principles of how the system works could be used to make everything so much better (but the Tories DO love their austerity don’t they).
Apparently there is a neo-liberal Green New Deal,,, which would seem to be contradictory,,, but to tell the truth I can’t be bothered trying to understand what they’re on about, FFS 😀 (sorry, I think I’m hilarious, it’s not often I come up with a decent joke – although it’s obviously still not on par as those awful puns you and John indulge in 😉 )
LikeLike