The Misery Index is back in fashion. It's simply the aggregate of the inflation and unemployment rates, and I am the first to say that is a little bit crude and yet it is not without merit. That combination is an indication of both well being and stability and those are both valued, I know. Most are plotting it over 20 years. I think this over 40 is better (and acknowledge my source, here):
My point is a simple one, even if it caused outrage when I mentioned it on Twitter last night. The Tories messed things up badly from 70 to 74 as matters rocketed out of control, with the impact peaking in 75. Labour sorted it out and then Thatcher went out to create havoc again by 81. Labour finally sorted out the Tory mess and sustained a low index for more than a decade. Even in the face of a world wide recession they kept the lid on things. Now the Tories have sent it spiralling again.
I stress: three new Tory governments and the same outcome in each case: a mess, inflation, unemployment and misery. Coincidence? Hardly. The pattern is clear - the Tories can't be trusted to run the economy and it's Labour who is left to sort out the mess. And I strongly suspect Labour will have to do so again, soon.
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Every Labour government has left office with unemployment higher than it was at the time it entered office. Fact.
It’s a pretty spurious stat – they’ve also delivered much lower overall unemployment – which is the real measure of success
2 questions for you:
1. Do you think the economy was in better shape in 1997 or 2010?
2. Do you think the economy was in better shape in 1997 or 1979?
1) 1997 – but the collapse was not in any shape or form Labour’s or it would only have been seen in the UK so the comparison is spurious
2) 1979 – we had manufacturing and we had not squandered oil so we were much better off
Richard
Your point is well made and was made by Roy Hattersley years ago in his autobiography. He did it by comparing the Red Book figures for each administration. Harold Wilson’s mistake was not to devalue in 1968, it was not to devalue in 1964 to deal with the legacy of the previous economic mismanagement.
You only have to recite the failed Tory Chancellors…Selwyn Lloyd, Maudling, Walker, Lawson, Lamont….and now Osborne.
But unemployment is a price worth paying to keep wage inflation under control.
Oh, and the rich were richer at the end of each conservative administration.
Have I said enough to ensure selection as the next conservative candidate ?
We really need a taxation system that operates beyond international boundaries and targets people who try to hide their wealth in “safe havens” .Taxations role is to circulate money for social projects.We have to start to see money as a tool again rather than as a means to an end. Social cohesion has a cost, and taxation is the price.
I have suggested worldwide taxation for UK passport holders
Richard,
Can you please point in the direction of that recommendation – it would make worthwhile reading. Thanks.
Might one suggest that after the obvious instability in the 70’s (all long before I had any conscious thought.. but any decade in which Nottingham Forest win two European Cups is clearly not quite right in the head) there was a fairly consistent decline right through the governments of Thatcher, Major and Blair (who was fairly tory-lite). The tide turned in 2002, and Labour got it back to where it was when they started by the time the crisis hit.
Given said crisis, I’m not sure you can pin the 09-11 increase on the Tories. It is, after all (and as everyone is rightly reminded when trying to pin the blame for everything on Labour) a global crisis.
It’s fun to look at, but I wouldn’t really draw any conclusions from it.. and certainly wouldn’t draw the same ones you did. It would be interesting to overlay some reletaive comparisons for other developed nations where we could see how the patterns vary and whether changes in government are necessarily significant.
Oh I can pin 10-11 on Tories
Of course the crisis was not of their making
But they have massively exacerbated it
I think some people, right-wing people, would benefit from ‘knowing’ some of the salient economic policies of the 1970-74 period (they DO actually know but have been lying about the economic record back then as they lie about it now). Our unhealthy relationship to debt stems from that era when credit controls were relaxed on Heath’s watch and a shadow banking system ballooned and then crashed. Inflation on Heath’s watch was heading towards 20% from a base of 6% in 1970. The mid-20% figures from 1975 were Heath’s legacy NOT Labour’s. Then Labour managed to get the figure down to 8% but then it jumped to 18% in 1980 under the Tories and back up to 11% after the Lawson boom.
Whatever the right-wing nutters say about Labour’s competence, they cannot plead any expertise at all!
Wholeheartedly agreed!
Why isn’t Labour taking out adverts 20 feet high in every major location, using a simplified version of this, and punning on the Cameron/Tory line “It can’t go on like this”, to ram home to people the argument (I would say the correct argument) that
a) it has been Labour that pulled the chestnuts our of the fire each time
b) Labour did NOT cause the deficit in the run up to 2010, and
c) had a plan to deal with the deficit, and was taking effective action to do so – action that has not only been halted, but thrust into reverse by the Cameroonies.
If Labour doesn’t win this crucial propaganda battle, the public will continue to think that the Tories are a safe pair of hands, and that Labour are not – the EXACT opposite of the fact, as shown in the graph.
PS – in Alex Gallagher’s list of “failed Tory Chancellors” he’s surely missed off the egregiously unsuccessful Anthony Barber, Heath’s disastrous replacement for Iain McLeod, who would surely NOT have gone down Barber’s calamitous route of “the dash for growth”
Thanks Andrew. I suspected I had missed someone out.
Because Labour can’t afford the advertising that the Tories, with their huge and unspecified sources of cash, can. When the Tories have a loan of 5 million made available to them at the last election, from a bank which has a Swiss branch, you should rightly be suspicious.
I’m sure it’s spurious because it doesn’t suit your argument.
Ted Heath was a Labour Prime Minister in all but name anyway – caved in to the Unions, lied about Europe, hugely inflationary fiscal policies etc. He was certainly well to the left of Tony Blair, who was similarly a Tory PM in all but name – soft touch on the City, Atlanticist, tough on law and order etc.
Richard also contradicts himself – if the Tories caused the 10-11 crisis then one can’t claim that Labour didn’t cause the 08-09 crash.
Like Lee I’m not sure any conclusion can be drawn from the graph and I suspect much of the movement would have happended whoever had been in power. The early 1980s saw unemployment rates just as high in mainland Europe as in the UK – certainly Germany and France both had over 10% unemployed at that time.
I note you are assering
I provide reasons
So the get out of jail card is that Heath was a Labour-lite figure…hmmm interesting debating point but not much of an argument. I was reading recently that Heath wanted the UK to have more of a German-style economy but I doubt if that meant involving the unions, who represent those who do the work remember, in the management of industry.
As for the 10% plus unemployment in France and Germany..well I wonder if those countries were fiddling their figures as much as the Tories did during that era …do people remember the fourteen or so changes to the count? UB40’s 1 in 10 ended up nearer 1 in 7 at its worst.
Of course the Tories caused the 2008-9 crash. In the ’80s & ’90s, they:
a) deregulated the financial services sector (the Big Bang), which was the direct cause of the crash.
b) promoted huge private sector and household debt, which has killed the recovery.
c) increased Government debt while cutting investment in schools, hospitals, etc, which forced Labour to invest. (More taxing & spending and less debt repayment in the ’80s & ’90s than in the ’00s).
And all in the interests of crony capitalism and capital, never in the interests of the country. Kick the traitors out.
They also wasted North Sea oil on unemployment
Interesting changes to defamation law……..
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/19/proposals_on_defamation_law/
The draft “Defamation Bill” contains provisions reforming the law to strike the right balance between protection of freedom of speech and protection of reputation. If the Bill’s proposals on defamation get passed into law just one complaint about an anonymous article or posting online could be enough to legally force a website to take it down.,
If the internet service provider believes that there are significant reasons of public interest that justify publishing the unidentified material – for example, if a whistle-blower is the source – it should have the right to apply to a judge for an exemption from the take-down procedure and secure a “leave-up” order.”
If the writer or creator does identifies him/herself, the dispute can then be taken to before a defamation judge, following the same notice and take-down procedure stated above.
The Premier Shareholders Group (PSG) has never made any pretence of “anonymity ” and is wholly transparent about its genesis — as personified by hundreds of pensioners who were misled by nefarious means to become shareholders in the Isle of Man registered company the Premier Low Risk Fund plc.
The methods used by the directors of the Premier Low Risk Fund plc to obtain bank transfers from these pensioners and the response of various Isle of Man government “consumer protection” and “law enforcement” agencies are in the public domain —and copies are freely (postage extra).available from the PSG.
The PSG will continue to publicize this matter until the pensioner’s money is fully refunded.
Some of us are now quite elderly but be assured that our children and our children’s children will continue the campaign for another hundred years if necessary to publicise the serious defects in the government of the Isle of Man. Trust us.
“And I strongly suspect Labour will have to do so again, soon.”
The sooner the better as far as I am concerned.
“2) 1979 — we had manufacturing and we had not squandered oil so we were much better off”
I am baffled by how anyone could believe that most people would be better off living 30 or so years go than they are now.
The veritable panoply of figures purporting to prove that middle-class incomes have declined over the past thirty years can’t overcome the fact that no one in their right mind wakes up in the morning and wishes it was still 1979, with the unreliable cars, cold houses, dearth of good food, bad tv, conspicuous lack of iPads, virtually no foreign holidays and a shorter lifespan.
Happiness data suggests 1974 was the time to be alive
And I was around in 1979 – and I would much much rather have been a graduate then than now
I had hope – which graduates are denied now. No ipad makes up for that
Thanks for the reply, but I never actually posted this comment here. I did post a slightly different version of it over at Worstall’s blog a few minutes before this one appeared. Is someone pretending to be me?