A warning from history: the return of Patrick Minford
Scrolling through Twitter I came across a GB News clip of Farage talking to Patrick Minford. Minford thinks Rachel Reeves Budget was a disaster. He argued there should be tax cuts starting with the 45p top rate of tax. He did not get around to the other bit of the well worn Minford doctrine about interest rate rises for some reason.
Patrick Minford, currently at Cardiff, previously Liverpool, has been around a long time. At over 80 he was Thatcher’s favourite economist. In 2022 Liz Truss was a fan of Thatcher and Minford.
Minford aside from influencing Thatcher, was also a key ideological mover in Brexit and Truss’s autumn 2022 Budget. Farage who supported all three is also a Minford fan
Minford is essentially a free market fundamentalist believing that tax cuts are a way to promote a sound economy and accepting that interest rate rises go along with this. He has no time for State intervention believing people to be rational economic actors who can make their own choices with their own money.
There is of course a wider political agenda here, essentially one of letting the free market rip. Meanwhile Joseph Choonara is good on what was specific about Trusseconomics and the Guardian’s Larry Elliott provided a good uptodate profile of Minford in 2022
Joseph Choonara’s analysis of Trusseconomics in International Socialism. Beyond Neo-Liberalism
http://isj.org.uk/trussonomics/
The Guardian 6th September 2022
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