Labour candidates turn fire on Jeremy Corbyn in last-ditch vote push
Jeremy Corbyn’s economic policies came under sharp criticism yesterday as his opponents in the Labour leadership contest used one of their last public debates to attack the front-runner.
In a live, televised hustings, Yvette Cooper called so-called Corbynomics “dodgy economics”, saying that the Islington North MP’s proposals for a “people’s quantitative easing” were “not responsible” and would be “ripped apart by economists”.
“You cannot print money when the economy is growing in order to pay for infrastructure,” she said on Channel 4, adding, “It just means what you’re actually really doing is you’re pushing up borrowing, but you’re also pushing up inflation.”
Corbyn – the anti-austerity candidate in a field that also includes Cooper, Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall – has campaigned on a radical economic agenda, saying that his government would allow the Bank of England to print money to be used for investment in public services such as large-scale housing developments, energy and transport.
Corbyn defended the policy proposals yesterday, saying: “There is nothing wrong with using quantitative easing to stimulate growth, better doing that for productive industry and infrastructure, rather than giving it to the banks to play with as they’ve been doing.”
Voting in the Labour leadership contest closes on 10 September, with a winner due to be announced on 12 September. The most-recent national public poll, conducted by YouGov last month, showed Corbyn was heading for a decisive victory, 32 points ahead of Burnham.