Quote Originally Posted by Montmorency View Post
Wait, but what is the goal? If you think all parties share the same goals with respect to social outcomes, you are mistaken.



What about compared to governments before Thatcher? What happened to the funding after Labour lost the government? What were long-term changes to funding or governance, and were they good or bad? In principle a neoliberal is perfectly capable of rolling out public funding in one area while restricting it in another. The destinations and conditions of funding also matter. For example, in the United States one popular neoliberal policy has been to fund "school choice" by redirecting parents from the public system to private schools and charters with subsidies and vouchers (i.e. government money for private industry).
You expect a post-Thatcher government to rewind the clock to pre-Thatcher days? Blair made it his personal goal to improve education standards, especially for the youngest. The main metric by which this was measured was class sizes. The fewer the children per teacher, the more focus a teacher can give each child. IIRC the BBC article, overall critical of Blair for not doing much, said education funding increased by 50% in real terms, with class sizes reducing accordingly. And what I've read from teachers from that period attest that upkeep of schools was seen to in a way that was not post-Blair. How on earth is that not good all round? Before him it was worse by all measures and accounts, and after him it was worse. But you persist in labelling him as neoliberal, which he was not (reducing public funding is one of the cornerstones of neoliberalism).

No deal Brexit is expected to reduce average wages by 9%, with Johnson's deal not far short of that. With the hit to the average wage, how do you expect to fund the projects that Corbyn talks about? With the reduction in wages comes a reduction in tax money, and an increased reliance on existing public services, even before you look at new projects. Corbyn's group supports Brexit as a Tory project that the Tories will take the can for, before the radical leftists led by Corbyn's group comes to the rescue in the wake of the post-Brexit disaster. While not as primarily responsible for Brexit as the Tories are, they are collaborators in that project.