It's been suggested that my comparisons of Labour and Coalition borrowings have been unfair either because I used different time periods (13 years and 5 years) or I excluded the years 2008 to 2010 when my argument is no one could have stopped borrowing going through the roof.
But, to answer criticism let's do 2005 to 2010 and 2010 to 2015:
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I thought you thought borrowing was a good thing anyway? So, if these figures are correct, when you say the coalition are failing to take advantage of supposedly rock bottom interest rates, you are wrong?
It is what you borrow for that matters
And whether you tell the truth about that borrowing that is key
The Coalition has not told the truth and has not borrowed to invest
Richard
Forgive my ignorance on the subject but these stats look like a bombshell for the Tories. Why do I not see the opposition shouting this from the rooftops?
I do agree that what you are borrowing for is critical. Spending billions on subsidising poor wages/zero hour contracts with housing benefit (to rich landlords) and council tax support is not anywhere near the definition of investment.
I have no idea why this stat is not being shouted from the roof top
craven,cowardly, pusillanimous politicians?
They don’t just fail to shout it from the roof tops,. With a few notable exceptions they roll over and accept whatever the government say about their record. Chris Mullin – one of the exceptions – put it clearly in a radio interview in August last year:
There are a few clear things that Labour should be doing. They have to get a clear line on the economy, the economy is the key issue. They they have to counter, and they should have been doing this for a long time, the vast lie which has become allowed to be embedded in the public consciousness, that our economic problems are primarily caused by the last Labour Government. to paraphrase Bill Clinton, “It was the bankers, stupid.” The only thing Labour has to apologise for is not regulating the banks sufficiently.
Because the public blame labour for the debt. They believe that labour are still in denial about their responsibility. That narrative is settled. Once a narrative is settled it cannot be rewritten until it is distant history.
If Labour “shouted this from the rooftop” the voters would use it as evidence that they have not learned the errors of their way.
It is a variation of the principle that convicted criminals can only be paroled once they admit their guilt. If you are innocent and there has been a miscarriage of justice – tough. Not that I think Labour are innocent, but that is why they are not shouting and why they won’t thank you for raising this.
But I am not a Labour member
I am interested in economic realities
I am not a Labour member either – I am a Green – but I _am_ interested in justice. The narrative is simply wrong – no, make that WRONG, capital letters. Maybe if Gordon Brown had said ‘No, let’s not bother bailing out the banks – let all those Northern Rock customers lose their shirts,’ Labour wouldn’t have been terribly popular, but they wouldn’t have had to borrow so much money.
The financial and economic crisis of 2007/8, which was the result of ‘subprime lending’ by multinational banks and bankers, not the UK Labour Government, was what led to that Government’s having to borrow more than it planned to. As Chris Mullin argues, the Labour Party can rightly be criticised (as the Democrats can in the US) for not regulating the Banks or the City sufficiently, but they failed to do this precisely because they feared that, if they didn’t give the City what it wanted, the City would use its considerable power to prevent Labour from getting into office in the first place: proof enough that we do not live in a democracy, but a ‘corporatocracy’, and have done for a considerable period of time. Why else did Tony Blair feel it necessary, when he first became Leader of the Labour Party, to travel all the way to Australia specifically to woo Rupert Murdoch?