Some blog posts get a life of their own it seems. This one has:
This is that post's sharing data:
It's doing the rounds on Facebook again right now. But that's not really surprising. This is what the data shows:
The Conservatives have borrowed more in total and on average than Labour whether in original or current prices.
And Labour has a better record on debt repayment.
And this is true even when the years impacted by the 2008 crisis are taken out of account.
But Labour never says that.
And so neither does the media.
Why?
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Surely the key point is that, in the early stages of a parliament the amount of borrowing is inextricably linked to the amount of the deficit at that time i.e. inherited from the previous government.
Do you have the statistics to show the average surplus / deficit inherited by the different governments to see how this compares?
You would also need to take into account the economic environment during the period, given that borrowing is inevitably going to increase under a slowing economy. Indeed, you yourself have complained that the current (and Coalition) government should be borrowing more to support the economy at the current time.
Your statistics also only include public debt, ignoring hidden ‘off balance sheet’ debt like PFI etc.
At present the numbers only show a fraction of the try picture and a professional like yourself should be able to explain that.
Spread over the periods in question and given that government change is not frequent I do not think that stacks
As excluding post 2008 showed
House of Commons data does not support “Bruce’s” claim of an ‘inextricable link’, over years 1955 to current days? The 2008 GFC caused by Capital shows an ‘unsurprising link’. BD – not enough of a connection to analyse mathematically, any further.
http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN05745
I wonder if they taxed more too. Wouldn’t that be ironic?
So you don’t accept that if a government inherits a large deficit then necessarily they will be forced to borrow lots of money in the short term compared with a government inheriting a surplus / balanced budget?
How does the data look if you ignore the first (2 say) years of office which would then adjust for this factor?
To discount this out of hand appears to show that you have a pre-set agenda rather than want to properly understand the data,
I have already answered the point many times including earlier on this blog post
Bruce Dixon:- “To discount this out of hand appears to show that you have a pre-set agenda rather than want to properly understand the data”.
A clear case of pot calling kettle black. Despite the censoriousness, it’s only too apparent that B.D’s agenda is to try, by suggesting excuses for the inferior Tory performance which your figures point to in regard to this particular yardstick, to cause people to doubt the truth of what they show:- ie what your headline baldly states.
This has more the appearance of trying to throw dust in people’s eyes than of “properly understanding the data”, it seems to me.
Whether being bigger (or smaller) borrowers is a fit criterion for measuring *anything* in regard to governments’ competence in economic management is another question entirely. But it is after all the Tories themselves and their lickspittle allies in the media who have chosen that particular criterion above all others when lambasting Labour – so they and supporters such as B.D. have only themselves to blame if their own propaganda boomerangs upon them.
Sorry Bruce but the fact that you mention the ‘deficit’ already shows that you are mindlessly following someone else’s pre-set agenda.
That someone else is George Osbourne by the way.
When you factor in the substantial cash windfall each Conservative government receives from selling off national assets; the amount they need to borrow should be less, and all their balance sheets should blow Labour out of the water. Where does it all go?
Possibly in tax reductions to the better off – to a large extent kicked off by Thatcher. The above might be useful to combine with stats that show how wealth has been shifted from poor/less poor people to the already well-off/rich. A combo of Tory profligacy with money (as the table suggests) plus structural bungs to their supporters would be quite powerful.
I hope this is relevant. It’s about economic leadership. I wrote this on the Guardian’s CiF yesterday.
the idea that the Tories are economically competent amazes me. In 1925 they put the £ back on the gold standard which made exports more expensive, In 1931 when they formed most of the National govt. (which later came off the gold standard) they insisted on cuts during the depression. Keynes said the opposite and we know that he was right, In the 1970 Heath brought in the Competition and Credit Control Act which unleashed a flood of money, and inflation, and was abandoned in 1973. In 1980 we had monetarism which was also abandoned (and Thatcher had the cheek to say she never really believed in it ) but until much of British industry had gone to the wall. We had the 1980s ‘Big Bang’ in the Stock market, which let in foreign bankers and enabled the sell off of many British companies. We had the Lawson Boom followed by the Lawson Bust. In the 1990s we had the fiasco of the ERM. After that, with Labour, and even the Lib Dems it was the de-regulated finance sector that was going to be the answer, and that culminated in the crash of 2008 and the expensive bail out. Then in 2010 we had austerity and forecasts of removing the deficit by 2015. That didn’t happen and has now been quietly dropped. Not a great record. Now we told by Fox and co it will be global free trade which will save us. I suspect it will be cheap goods putting yet more domestic firms out of business and little in extra exports. Meanwhile the Germans will continue to sell more than we do to the Australians, despite all that EU red tape. They concentrate on long term investment in industry and product improvement whereas we put the interests of the City above that of industry.
Spot on
Spot on.
Could we also mention how the Tories relaxed controls on Banks keeping money for a rainy day (being able to bail themselves out) enabling them to lend this money instead for risky ventures!
Another feather in the cap for the Tory lie of being ‘good at managing the economy’.
Please can you tell me where the stats come from? I did a quick search and can’t find any reference. ‘Facebook’ is not necessarily a reputable source! Can you vouch for their accuracy?
I am by no means a Conservative supporter and their years of austerity placed on the less able; creating a greater and greater gulf and division in our society.
If these stats are accurate, the utter irony, and how, yet again, the way information is disseminated and how we believe what is so often presented without facts (or facts distorted). Facts must outweigh rhetoric.
Thank you for your blog – I really appreciate your non partisan allegiance to a particular political party. Social and environmental justice is something most humans want; and the greater consensus and facility for bringing this about, I believe you help in.
The basic data is from the House of Commons Library briefing on government debt: a new version has been issued since the one I used
Thanks for clarifying.
Why, oh, why, has Labour, and any opposition party, not been shouting this from the rooftop’s?
I wish I knew
But the rich get immensely richer under the conservatives.
And Rupert gets to be sucked-up to by conservative prime ministers.
Isn’t that what conservatism is all about?
Interesting what pops-up on twitter:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/shinealight/carolyne-willow/england-s-bonfire-of-children-s-rights
Richard
You ask pointedly “why?”.
Good question, seemingly.
But wouldn’t for the Labour *Party* – as distinct from independent commentators such as yourself – to major on this theme make them complicit in acceptance of the myth of the overwhelming imperative of “deficit reduction” as cardinal objective for fiscal policy which both Tories and Labour (hitherto) – as well as both parties in the USA, the IMF, the Bundesbank, all the EU Finance Ministers (especially Schaüble),the ECB and the EU Commission – have bought-into down to the present?
And which is complete crap, as well as distracting attention from the question of which, better, policies ought actually to be adopted instead – which even May shows some signs of having woken-up to?
That could boomerang severely upon Corbyn and McDonnell.
I do not think it needs to be majored on
But lies do have to be countered
Now try the last four categories ” INCLUDING the Global Financial Crisis”
Just for fun.
Also please clarify why certain totals do not gel arithmetically e g 17.8 +20.6 = 19.4.
Even its average is 19.2. (?)
There is one objective basis for this
I used it
And figures do not exactly fit because of rounding – a completely normal issue
Looking at today’s announcements concerning BREXIT, the way May is spinning this out means that the Tories will go into the 2020 election being the party who led us out of the EU.
Whoever is the Labour leader in 2020 may not mean anything at all and the fact that the Tories are the most irresponsible Government when it comes to managing the economy may will mean nothing either.
Food for thought…………………..
We can expect the usual media suspects to carry on extolling the joys of Brexit and either ignoring the problems, or blaming them on an intransigent Europe. Rather as they have ignored or whitewashed the real causes and suspects behind the financial crisis, and covered for the Tory governments mismanagement.
So far no-one has succeeded in countering these narratives. But in todays social media world, perhaps it could be different. That would need a seriously co-ordinated effort to make it happen, but might just shift public opinion enough.
I think the problem is that the tabloid press and other powerful interests have successfully cowed the Labour party in the same way as they have cowed institutions such as the BBC. Labour fears that, if they had pointed out this inconvenient fact, they would have been subject to vicious attacks on their competence, which the public have been conditioned to accept. If we do succeed in discrediting neoliberalism in the minds of the public and that fear goes, which is akin to what happened in Eastern Europe in 1989, I wonder how many in the Labour party who currently publicly support neoliberalism, would declare that they never really supported it?