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.
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