“Credibility with financial markets”
Dead Men Left discusses the chief goals of the neoliberals in Labour and the Lib Dems:
This is the essence of neoliberal economic management: squeeze out the patches of popular control and sovereignty in the economy, however feeble they may be, and introduce supposedly value-neutral management techniques. When New Labour stuffs City consultants’ mouths with gold, or throws public money into the bottomless pit of PFI, it is performing a similar trick. The idea that the entirety of government spending should be subject to the approval of unelected “advisors”, simply to appease the markets, is an enormous extension of the same principle.
If this sounds familiar, it is because any country that had to apply to the IMF/Worldbank for financial aid has been forced to accept these measures before they could be “helped”; the socalled Washington consensus. These people want the UK to voluntarily give up what they could force much less powerful nations to. And once its gone, it is difficult if not impossible to get back.