The Most Dangerous Myth in Britain today
There are a lot of contenders for the title of the most dangerous myth in Britain today
Dangerous Myth number one is the idea that as soon as the economy recovers Britain can return to the levels of spending in the final years of the last Labour government.
We can't, and we won't be able to do that no matter who wins the next election. Gordon Brown doubled the national debt. That debt is still there and we are paying a terrifying amount of interest on it. Which would be even higher if interest rates were not at what is historically an exceptionally low level.
To put it in context, even at these low interest rates the cost of interest payments every year on the debts inherited from Gordon Brown's debt is double Britain's defence budget. As the economy recovers further and it is necessary to raise interest rates to encourage the savings which are essential if people are to be able to provide for their pensions and give businesses the money to invest, that cost will get even higher - in a couple of years the cost of servicing Gordon Brown's debts will probably be more than the entire Education and Home office budgets put together.
With that kind of burden no government is going to be able to reverse the coalition's cuts unless they take equally savage measures to cut something else or put taxes through the ceiling.
Yes we are making progress, but after nearly four years of tough and painful measures have been taken to deal with this situation, what we have acheived so far is to avoid a complete financial meltdown, get the economy growing again, and sharply reduce the absolute rate at which nominal public debt is going up.
Dangerous Myth number two is that you can close the gap in the nations finances by "soaking the rich."
Even Blair and Brown, whatever their other faults, knew that won't work, which is why they didn't do it except for the entirely token 50% top rate at the very end of their time in power. There just are not enough rich people, and they're very good at taking their money out of countries which are about to adopt penal rates of tax. Do you know what happened to the share of government revenue coming from the richest 1% of society when Mrs Thatcher slashed the top rate of tax from 98 pence in the pound to 40%?
The share and amount of money paid by the very rich INCREASED enormously when Mrs Thatcher slashed taxes from penal levels
Dangerous Myth number three is that there is some easy answer to these problems.
There isn't. Those Kippers and BOO people who think that quitting Europe will solve everything overnight, Federalists who think more Europe is the answer, Anti-Globalisation types who think an economic "Little England" policy and the end of trade and capitalism will be the magic wand that solves all our problems, any SNP supporters who imagine that an independent Scotland will be vastly better off and English Nationalists thinking that an independent Scotland will make England vastly better off - anyone who believes any of those things is living in cloud cuckoo land.
Magic wands only exist in fairy tales.
But I think the most dangerous myth of all is the idea that all political parties, or even all the three main ones, are the same.
Anyone who thinks this, or who imagines that labels like "LibLabCon" reflect a helpful way of thinking about British politics, would be well advised to read this week's Spectator Magazine and particularly Frazer Nelson's article advertised on the front cover,
Old Labour: New Danger
Despite the humorous reference to perhaps the least successful Conservative campaign slogan of all time, Frazer Nelson makes a very strong argument that Miliband's Labour party is about to offer Britain the most radical left-wing programme put before the British electorate since 1983, if then.
The sort of programme which Chris Mullin thought might inspire "A very British Coup." A programme which by comparison makes Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan look like Tory wets, Gordon Brown look like Margaret Thatcher, and Tony Blair look like a fascist.
If you're the sort of person who thinks that all the mainstream parties are far too right wing, Miliband is offering you the best chance you are likely to get in your lifetime of seeing a programme much closer to your beliefs attempted.
If you, like me, think that a hard-left programme has no chance of surviving a collision with reality but that the damage which might be done in the attempt to make it work would be enormous, you cannot afford to assume that Miliband has no hope of winning.
With half the voters the Lib/Dems had at the last election currently supporting Labour, with the boundary changes which should have reduced the bias of the electoral system to Labour defeated following a daft spat over the House of Lords, and with the electorate more volatile than ever, Miliband might win a majority with a third of the votes cast in a general election.
Whenever there is an election people say the present election is a particularly important one. 2015 might be one of the times they are right.
Dangerous Myth number one is the idea that as soon as the economy recovers Britain can return to the levels of spending in the final years of the last Labour government.
We can't, and we won't be able to do that no matter who wins the next election. Gordon Brown doubled the national debt. That debt is still there and we are paying a terrifying amount of interest on it. Which would be even higher if interest rates were not at what is historically an exceptionally low level.
To put it in context, even at these low interest rates the cost of interest payments every year on the debts inherited from Gordon Brown's debt is double Britain's defence budget. As the economy recovers further and it is necessary to raise interest rates to encourage the savings which are essential if people are to be able to provide for their pensions and give businesses the money to invest, that cost will get even higher - in a couple of years the cost of servicing Gordon Brown's debts will probably be more than the entire Education and Home office budgets put together.
With that kind of burden no government is going to be able to reverse the coalition's cuts unless they take equally savage measures to cut something else or put taxes through the ceiling.
Yes we are making progress, but after nearly four years of tough and painful measures have been taken to deal with this situation, what we have acheived so far is to avoid a complete financial meltdown, get the economy growing again, and sharply reduce the absolute rate at which nominal public debt is going up.
Dangerous Myth number two is that you can close the gap in the nations finances by "soaking the rich."
Even Blair and Brown, whatever their other faults, knew that won't work, which is why they didn't do it except for the entirely token 50% top rate at the very end of their time in power. There just are not enough rich people, and they're very good at taking their money out of countries which are about to adopt penal rates of tax. Do you know what happened to the share of government revenue coming from the richest 1% of society when Mrs Thatcher slashed the top rate of tax from 98 pence in the pound to 40%?
The share and amount of money paid by the very rich INCREASED enormously when Mrs Thatcher slashed taxes from penal levels
Dangerous Myth number three is that there is some easy answer to these problems.
There isn't. Those Kippers and BOO people who think that quitting Europe will solve everything overnight, Federalists who think more Europe is the answer, Anti-Globalisation types who think an economic "Little England" policy and the end of trade and capitalism will be the magic wand that solves all our problems, any SNP supporters who imagine that an independent Scotland will be vastly better off and English Nationalists thinking that an independent Scotland will make England vastly better off - anyone who believes any of those things is living in cloud cuckoo land.
Magic wands only exist in fairy tales.
But I think the most dangerous myth of all is the idea that all political parties, or even all the three main ones, are the same.
Anyone who thinks this, or who imagines that labels like "LibLabCon" reflect a helpful way of thinking about British politics, would be well advised to read this week's Spectator Magazine and particularly Frazer Nelson's article advertised on the front cover,
Old Labour: New Danger
Despite the humorous reference to perhaps the least successful Conservative campaign slogan of all time, Frazer Nelson makes a very strong argument that Miliband's Labour party is about to offer Britain the most radical left-wing programme put before the British electorate since 1983, if then.
The sort of programme which Chris Mullin thought might inspire "A very British Coup." A programme which by comparison makes Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan look like Tory wets, Gordon Brown look like Margaret Thatcher, and Tony Blair look like a fascist.
If you're the sort of person who thinks that all the mainstream parties are far too right wing, Miliband is offering you the best chance you are likely to get in your lifetime of seeing a programme much closer to your beliefs attempted.
If you, like me, think that a hard-left programme has no chance of surviving a collision with reality but that the damage which might be done in the attempt to make it work would be enormous, you cannot afford to assume that Miliband has no hope of winning.
With half the voters the Lib/Dems had at the last election currently supporting Labour, with the boundary changes which should have reduced the bias of the electoral system to Labour defeated following a daft spat over the House of Lords, and with the electorate more volatile than ever, Miliband might win a majority with a third of the votes cast in a general election.
Whenever there is an election people say the present election is a particularly important one. 2015 might be one of the times they are right.
Comments
Others include:
a 2017 referendum on terms promised by DC
The Norway option being government by fax.
That scottish independence is an economic argument (its actually an issue over sovereignty, even if salmomd is desperate to give it away before even gaining it)
they are just 3 of the front runners for the "biggest myth" claim, so I think yours should be nowhere near myth number 1, though granted it is a dangerous myth, perhaps somewhere around number 37 in this weeks chart, that sounds about right.
I agree with you that not many Scot Nats support Independence on economic grounds though some do, but a lot of those who don't support independence are put off by concerns, in my opinion justified, that there might be economic disadvantages.
If the Conservatives win the 2015 election there will be an in-out referendum on the date promised in next year's manifesto, and at the moment is looks like that will be 2017. I don't agree that this one is a myth.
The idea that the "Norway option" means government by fax is an oversimplification though the option is not without its' problems and issues.
Glad you agree that the idea that all parties are the same is a dangerous myth. We'll just have to agree to disagree about the ranking.
i was agreeing with "Dangerous Myth number one is the idea that as soon as the economy recovers Britain can return to the levels of spending in the final years of the last Labour government." though i do despute its myth number 1.
that all current political parties are the same is not to far from the truth. far from being a myth.
A few years ago i was sent up for an 18 months "naughty boys" tour in the Shetland Islands. now when ever i had returned home on leave i always had to go back (curse of a worker that), though i had a choice, i could use the aeroplane from Glasgow, or i could use the ferry from Aberdeen, two very different modes of transport the thing is both had something crucial in common.
In the end (one mode quicker than the other - granted) but in the end they both took me to a place i really did not want to be.
the same i think could be said about todays political parties, sure labour will kill the country much quicker than the torys would but in the end the torys will also reach that very destination.
So i guess the consevative party are the ferry, a slower overnight trip, and the labour party are the Aeroplane a quick fire way to get to a bad place, but in the end really is there so much different we end up with a country in ruins either way.
Well it seems DC has upped the game, its now a really clear promise, and in the case of another coalition its a red line promise to that too.
I dont know, perhaps a really clear red line promise, is better than a cast iron one? - You know kind of like a flush beats a straight in poker.
well we just dont know for sure.
Actually I wasn't suggesting that "Myth number one" was the most dangerous myth - though it is a very dangerous one - just the first one I wrote down in a list of dangerous myths.
I've been trying to tell you that David Cameron is absolutely 100% serious about holding an in-out-referendum in 2017 if he is Prime Minister.
I accept that the sceptics may have a point about how far any renegotiation may have got by then, but at least it should be clear what terms are available for continued British membership.