This extract from a speech by Labour front bench Treasury spokesperson Rob Marris MP has just been published in Hansard and refers to a debate on the UK economy in Parliament last night. Rob said when discussing UK government debt:
I am grateful to the economist Richard Murphy for providing me with these historical figures. In 2014 prices, the average borrowing by Labour Governments for each year in office since the war was £26.8 billion. The figure for Conservative Governments was £33.5 billion. The average borrowing, in 2014 prices, for each year in office excluding the period since the world crash in 2008–it could be argued to be unfair to the last Labour Government and the Conservative-led Governments to include that period–was £17.8 billion for Labour Governments and £20.6 billion for Conservative Governments.
Let us look at the percentage of years in which debt was repaid by Governments since the war. Part of the national debt was repaid in a quarter of post-war Labour Government years; the same happened in 10% of Tory Government years since the war. Let us now look at the total repayments of the national debt made by respective Governments, in 2014 prices. Conservative Governments have managed to pay off £19.9 billion of the national debt. Labour Governments, who have far more economic credibility, have paid off £108.8 billion. This Government's spending is out of control. The national debt is up two thirds in six years, and this year it is forecast to increase slightly as a percentage of GDP.
Rob Marris was, of course, referring to my work on respective party's borrowing and debt repayment published on this blog less than a fortnight ago.
I am grateful to him for drawing it to the House's attention.
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I would have liked to have seen that having read the Blog, how was it received Richard?
Moderately
As you said to me once “Never underestimate your ability to change anything”.
Good for you Richard.
Confused as to why this wasn’t picked up by the media? Wouldn’t it be helpful if the population was given a more balanced picture of our political parties competence. This would dispel a number of “urban facts”!
Unfortunately, the corporate media have no interest in presenting a balanced picture nor anything which contradicts the neo liberal faith. Many of the “urban facts” are out there as an active result of that corporate media.
Moreover, even when presented with the facts and an analysis based of evidence and rationality there remains a significant section of society who would rather accept the fantasy of their beliefs and prejudices than face up to reality. The following observation;
“Indeed, Nyhan and the political scientist Jason Reifler carried out a study demonstrating that attempts to set the record straight can even reinforce misperceptions: self-described conservatives were shown evidence that the Bush tax cuts had lowered over-all revenues, but, Nyhan told me, “the information actually made them more likely to believe that the tax cuts had increased revenue.”
Voters didn’t come up with these misperceptions on their own. “The ideas spread because politicians and pundits told people they were true,” Nyhan says. “And once misperceptions are out there they’re very difficult to overcome.””
from this recent article:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/21/the-g-o-p-s-economic-delusion
provides merely one example of this problem, which is one of deliberate manipulation of perceptions of the general population based on Berney’s methods and techniques by corporate interests through media, paid for politicians, and more recently, I the Internet age, trolls and sock puppets.
The myths are now so hard-wired into people’s thought processes that any attempt to convince them otherwise is like ‘sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.’
Well done Richard! I had absolutely assumed this would be the case but it is nice to have this confirmed. We seem to live in a world where perception differs from reality. Keep on with this analysis. Dynamics would be very interesting to add but one would need a good economic model which few could agree upon.