This is edition 2025/221 of the Ten@10 newsletter.
Hi all,
This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media.
Enjoy!
1. Hard Choices.
Chris Trotter
- 🗳️ Labour could win in 2026, but Barbara Edmonds’ commitment to fiscal and monetary conservatism makes that outcome increasingly unlikely.
- 💸 Edmonds’ promise to “balance the books” effectively commits Labour to austerity if it returns to power.
- 📉 Labour faces an immediate $15 billion shortfall due to promises like restoring pay equity claims ($13B) and meeting climate obligations ($2–5B).
- 🚫 Raising taxes or creating new ones is off the table, making these savings unrealistic.
- 🏠 Edmonds’ proposed capital gains tax is so narrow—with exemptions for family homes, farms, KiwiSaver, shares, businesses, inheritances, and personal items—that it’s largely symbolic.
- 🙇♀️ Her household-budget analogy reflects conservative orthodoxy, ignoring how government spending differs from family finances.
- 💬 Modern Monetary Theory economist Richard Murphy criticizes this logic, noting that government spending circulates income through the economy, unlike household spending.
- 🏦 Edmonds rejects the idea of using state monetary power to stimulate the economy, even though it worked during Covid.
- ⚖️ Her focus on “responsibility” and “stability” signals a cautious, market-pleasing approach rather than transformative policy.
- 🕰️ The author argues voters won’t wait a decade for results while public services languish under austerity.
- 🧱 Fiscal mavericks within Labour feel sidelined, as Edmonds’ orthodoxy dominates party policy.
- ✊ Union leader Sandra Grey’s call for bold economic reform is likely to fall on deaf ears within Labour’s leadership.
- 🇬🇧 Edmonds mirrors the UK’s Rachel Reeves—governing for market approval rather than social transformation.
- 🌹 The essay concludes that Labour 2025 has abandoned its socialist heritage, now devoid of a meaningful left wing.
