The cost of Labour's Failure

When I am asked why Conservative governments are unpopular, I usually answer "Because they've had to do unpleasant things to clear up the mess left by Labour governments."

Today the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition will have to dish out one of the most painful doses of medicine ever inflicted by a British government in order to clear up the worst mess ever left behind by a former British government.

National Debt doubled - the last Labour government borrowed more than every previous government in history put together

The worst deficit ever left by a British government - this year HMG will borrow £140 billion, more than Britain spends on the NHS

More interest to pay on the national debt - £25 billion a year, more than Britain spends on schools, not to pay back the debt but just to service the interest on it. And if we don't get a grip that amount will keep on going up.

This situation cannot be allowed to continue: failure to take firm action now would condemn us to the sort of meltdown which has happened to Greece.

The government will be forced to announce today measures which nobody likes and things which no politican, least of all David Cameron, wants to do.

But everyone who is hurt by one of the measures announced today should remember the identity of the real culprit, the man who inherited a golden economic legacy of a full treasury and strong non-inflationary growth, but whose whose catastrophic failure to keep borrowing and spending under control over thirteen years made today's pain inevitable.

Gordon Brown.

Comments

Tim said…
You describe the meltdown in Greece. This would be the country where some of its fabulously wealthy and patriotic citizens have managed to salt away over 300 billion euros in Swiss bank accounts through a combination of tax avoidance and evasion.

Funny thing - up until about 2007, there was no talk about Britain being in debt - then the banksters wreaked their havoc and the rest is history. As usual it's been all about privatising the profit and socialising the debt.
11:29 am
Chris Whiteside said…
To be fair, Tim, both the Conservative party and a number of respected independent analysts have been expressing concern about both the size of the UK national debt, and the rate at which it was increasing, since well before 2007.

For example, our platform for the 2005 election included a promise to use more than half of the efficiency savings we were proposing to make to cut public borrowing.

Indeed, I can recall that the IFS, who by no means always agree with the Conservatives, praised us for taking that line, agreed with our concerns about the level of national debt, and said that we had the most responsible economic policy of the three major parties.
8:42 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more