'Growth' - The New Socialist Utopia?

From: Gordon Lawrence, Stumperlowe View, Sheffield. (Yorks Post.)
THE rallying cry of the Left is now the buzz word “growth”. Whether it’s the Labour Party, or the French President Francois Hollande, it has become the attempted anaesthetic to take the pain out of austerity.
Ed Miliband’s party, having lived the life of Riley during its profligate 13 years of office at the taxpayers’ expense, now clings to the straw of the concept of growth.
This implies that growth is some miraculous alternative to the hardship of cuts and austerity. It also implies that the Socialist approach would be the answer in achieving such a wondrous transformation.

Any rational observer would agree that a successful, and I emphasise successful, growth programme would be a welcome support for austerity measures but even achieving the long-term average growth for the UK of about two per cent would be, in the current eurozone crisis, an Everest to climb.
What is needed are structural reforms that usually take a fair time to implement and to take effect.
Adoption of the majority of the recommendations of the recent Beecroft Report, liberating entrepreneurs from a whole gamut of bureaucratic restraints and improving labour flexibility would be a good start.