This comment is from Gordon Brown in the Guardian this morning:
Austerity was based on an analysis that what had caused the global recession was the high level of public debt rather than the reckless action of the financial sector. Nobody who has looked at it seriously would come to that conclusion but the Conservatives dined out on it for five years.
If only Labour had said that from 2010 to 2015.
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Would anyody have believed them?
Perhaps not, but at least the he said, she said style of reporting would have put some doubt in the mind. The right-wing media would have gunned for the Labour Party, of course, but the BBC would, perhaps, have put across a more nuanced view. Then, the just criticism of austerity from the left would have been set aside from the ‘there is no alternative’ narrative of the right. As it stood, Labour post-2010 backed austerity to some degree, just less of that than the coalition. Didn’t give the voters a big enough choice to decide on in 2015. I get the idea that the policy was probably decided based on the results of focus groups as opposed to sound economic thinking.
Even the current Labour leadership haven’t broken away from this fully though they’ve been under greater attack from the right (including those in their own party) than Miliband and Co were.
Most of the world lives in countries that didn’t enter a technical recession at that time. However because North America and Europe make a big part of the world’s economy, then you can get away with calling at a global recession if you insist. But being reminded by Gordon Brown that it was always somebody else’s fault with his glottal and repeated use of that word global has quite put me off my breakfast.
Liam Byrne had already said there was no money left.
And he was wrong
Byrne should have been asked to leave the party after gifting the Tories the biggest excuse ever. Plus his post it note was grossly insensitive to the suffering that was going to follow.
He should go and get a real job some where.
New Labour were so in thrall to markets that could not see for looking when considering what to do. I still can’t believe that the change that did not come as a result of the 2008 crash and we seem to be at the gates of doom again.
Rod White says:
“Liam Byrne had already said there was no money left.”
This quip by Liam Byrne, clearly intended as a joke by someone relieved to be leaving office and relieved of any responsibility for clearing up the mess contributed to by New Labour, set the new standard for political discourse.
Since then not only have most politicians sounded as if they were reading a script from Rory Bremner and the Two Johns, but we have a government of clowns and buffoons.
Liam Byrne has assured his place in the history books as the man who changed the course of British politics.
Scotland for Aye ! (or me as it should more properly be)
“Liam Byrne had already said there was no money left.”
It’s a silly, unofficial custom for an outgoing Treasury minister to leave a joke message about how ‘terribly’ things are going to the minister taking over. It’s been done for countless years, but the Tories just decided to exploit it this time, because they knew it would be ideal for reinforcing the Austerity message.
Spot on, Richard. Brown is being too kind tho’ – ‘Austerity was based on the deliberate lie that what had caused the global recession was the high level of public debt…’ There, fixed that for him.
MiliBalls’ considered response to the lie was five years of ‘Don’t mention the war’/‘If we keep quiet about it, it’ll go away.’
The failure to challenge, at each and every PMQ’s, this outrageous dishonesty allowed the lie to embed itself in the nation’s psyche so that now ‘wreckless spending’ sits alongside ‘can be trusted with the NHS’ in the established list of Labour traits.
It was a masterly piece of PR from the vacuous Cameron and the sharper-than-a-shithouse rat Osborne, but Balls in particular allowed them…chose to allow them…to get away with it and, whilst doing nothing to address the lie, also allowed the ‘government expenditure is just like household expenditure’ to embed alongside it so that when it came to the next round of Party Leaders’ tv debates the ‘But how are you going to pay for it?’ question from the audience left Miliband looking sickly.
Meanwhile people like you, and the occasional Nobel prize-winner, were pointing out that Austerity was an economically illiterate response to the ‘problem’ and, as the comment above suggests, no-one was listening.
Whenever I see Balls in his new role of ‘jester’, or whatever, as he tries to earn a crust I remind those saying ‘Oh bless him’ that he, up there with Osborne and chums, is equally culpable for the current mess, because he was derelict in his duty to Oppose…a phrase which could usefully sum up the Labour Party for rather too many of the last 40 years.
“I was being criticised for being too tough in terms of regulation and tax.”
Typical exculpatory twaddle from the man who “saved the world”.
Labour supported much of Osborne’s fiscal responsibility nonsense, which was really a war on welfare, and Brown only talks of insufficient fiscal stimulus.
The Labour Party really is a sad excuse for a party purporting to stand up for the interests of the many. It seems largely full of pompous MP chancers too lazy to research how the UK monetary system really works or for that matter the disfunction embedded in global trading!
The way the Labour party failed to challenge the barefaced lying of the Tories and Orange Book Liberals over the cause of the Great Crash of 2008 was nothing short of criminal in itself. That the Coalition, with its austerity and overall economic incompetence were thus allowed to “get away with it” never figured in the thinking of some, if not all of the then Labour leadership, thus creating greater obstacles for their successors to climb. Shameful.
Karl – what did you think caused the crash in 2008? Also what exactly was the “crash”?
@ Johnny
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/09/marshall-auerback-central-bankers-dealers-last-resort.html
And on BBC breakfast news yesterday their correspondents were blaming the years of wage and living standards stagnation on the financial crisis itself rather than the politically motivated, economically illiterate austerity that followed. One of the BBC ‘experts’ talked of the austerity measures that the financial crisis ‘forced’ the government to adopt. After all this time, they still don’t get it
Thanks for this article. Some great comments too. Labour have a heck of a lot to answer for, and as we know they sent back £1.5 BILLION or so to WM when at Holyrood, pretty much saying there was nothing to spend it on in Scotland. Utterly criminal. All of the Britnat political parties have been keeping Scotland poor and begging, meanwhile removing revenues and resources, for a long time.
Poorer parts of England have suffered and no doubt were collateral, but you never hear those people slagging their own regions in England, no matter how bad things are! In contrast, the idea that Scotland is rubbish at just about everything, only deserving of ridicule and contempt, has been going on for so long it’s very hard to shake off.
With the SNP at Holyrood for a relatively short span, they have so far managed to at least start to repair the terrible damage left by the Britnats. Against the odds I have to say. The Britnats will take Scotland back a 100 years if they can, and they will try, they are trying! We mustn’t allow that to happen. Independence is the only way for Scotland to survive, nevermind thrive.
Hetty, the British right don’t just want to take Scotland back 100 years, it’s the whole of Britain the useless cretins want to take back. Actually, forget 100 years; as things stood in 1918 Britain was far too advanced socially for their tastes. After all, Lloyd George had brought in pensions before WW1 hadn’t he? And attacked the Lords .
No, I think 1818 is more their preference. The British Empire still increasing in power, lots of starving soldiery left over from the Napoleonic Wars, pre the great Reform Bill and Chartism, and only a year from the Peterloo massacre. Lovely!
Hetty says:
“Independence is the only way for Scotland to survive, never mind thrive.”
Quite so and the message is beginning to become mainstream.
Brexit is the gift that will keep on giving.