The status of Labour’s council of seven economic advisers is becoming a little clearer. Following Danny Blanchflower’s revelation that John McDonnell didn’t consult him about the fiscal charter, another adviser has said the team has yet to meet — and it wasn’t even the shadow chancellor’s idea. On the World at One, Ann Pettifor, director of Prime Economics and one of Labour’s seven economic advisers, echoed Blanchflower’s belief that McDonnell’s U-turn on the fiscal charter was all about politics:
‘I think that clearly what John McDonnell was doing was thinking of the politics of it – and the politics of it is that Mr Osborne is trying to frame the Labour as being reckless with the finances and in a sense by going along with that framing, with that analysis, the Labour party enforces the analysis.’
Pettifor acknowledged ‘I don’t know how politics works and it does sound to me to have been pretty messy’ but stated Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters would have been ‘very disappointed’ if the party had backed the fiscal charter. She also revealed that it was Corbyn who assembled the council and McDonnell didn’t get in touch with anyone about the charter, or to convene a meeting:
‘No, none of us have. We were invited not by the shadow chancellor but by the leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, and it’s for John McDonnell to convene the meeting and he has not done so so far. But of course, we’ve all made our views known… I’m quite sure he and his team read our material.’
There appears to be no date set for this meeting of minds but Pettifor said that the advisers have written to ask for one soon: ‘we’re being called on by the media, we’d really welcome a meeting with him’. While McDonnell’s team are focused on the fiscal charter, Coffee House understands that the shadow chancellor has spoken to members of the economic council individually but a formal meeting hasn’t been convened — but there will be one in the near future.
The council will meet quarterly and, as well as meetings with the shadow treasury team, the advisers will also be meeting with Labour MPs to give talks on each of their specialisms. Given the response McDonnell received at the PLP meeting last week for Labour’s economic stance, you can imagine how some of the moderate MPs will react to this — especially the ones who abstain on tonight’s vote.
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