I don't see Keynes's ghostly hand.
Here's the headline at the linked article: "'Truly shocking' that the private-school educated and affluent middle class still run Britain, says Sir John Major"
Keynes always saw "the private-school educated and affluent middle class" as the correct leaders of Britain (and the world). To maintain its power he was willing to chuck over a century's worth of capitalist ideological ballast--and if there wasn't a threat to this class in the 1930s, I doubt Keynes writes the General Theory. "The class war will find me on the side of the *e*ducated *bourgeoisie*..." This is as pithy a political credo as he ever wrote.
Also, here's Major in the article: "The Bank of England ought to return interest rates to 'normal levels, say three to five per cent', so that society treats 'the saver as fairly as it treats the debtor'." I can't remember Keynes making a defense of that (petty) bourgeois paragon, The Saver, that wasn't backhanded, barbed, or hinting at morbidly perverse psychological tendencies. I certainly don't remember a moral defense like Major's. In fact, I'm not sure Major's policy position here, such as it is, is inconsistent with what Keynes called the Treasury View, Major's new-found love for the struggling classes notwithstanding. Also, in the article I read zero, zip, nada recommendations of direct government investment to bolster employment, let alone call for *full*employment, which Keynes did, clearly.
A comment after the article suggests that Major is trying to woo elements that form, or can form, the UKIP constituency. I think there may be something to this.
On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 4:09 AM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
> He got visits from the ghosts of Christmas past and John Maynard Keynes
>
> CB
>
> Bruce Bartlett
>
> "Major has suddenly noticed the logical consequences of policies that
> screw the working class."
>
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10439303/Truly-shocking-that-the-private-school-educated-and-affluent-middle-class-still-run-Britain-says-Sir-John-Major.html
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