Richard Exell at the TUC has written an excellent blog entitled Eight Prime Ministers and the Economy. One thing jumped out for me: the data on unemployment. GDP and inflation can be linked to other events. Unemployment is about real people. This is the data on that issue:
Labour delivers is the message.
And Tories don't.
So much for Thatcher clearing up the mess too.
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Oh come on Richard (and Russell) although I am hardly a Tory boy, surely basic data understanding might tell you that although unemployment was high under Thatcher by the time any policies and the effect of events materialised, Blair was sitting pretty in the driving seat. One could reasonably argue this graph might also show Blair was the bad boy that caused the ensuing rise in unemployment?
Candidly, that’s absurd
You believe in 10+ year time lags?
Utter nonsense
Thatcher and Blair had ample time in office for impact to tell
Not sure about the Labour ‘delivers’ message. Blair presided over the disastrous 3-4fold house/rent price increases in the buy-to-let scam which, in effect was a currency devaluation for anyone not owning property before 2003. This has been a social disaster in the face of which Labour was utterly supine. Yes, the endless credit kept jobs bobbing along but how worthwhile is a job when you can barely house yourself? We know that the gap(http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/aug/02/socialexclusion.politics)between rich and poor grew at a greater rate under Labour than Thatcher. They were also deluded and arrogant enough to think that they had magically solved the boom and bust cycle – hubris of a Luciferian quality! No – I’ve had it with Labour, they can go where Thatcher is heading!
Labour made vast numbers of mistakes
They did deliver on jobs
Shall we stick to what I said?
Yes, I accept the bald statement. Nevertheless, in my view the mistakes vitiated most of the ‘gains.’
But with respect, Richard…..
1) Unemployment is only part of the story – and the pursuit of one sole economic objective usually ends in disaster. Successive governments up to 1979 pursued the objective of reducing unemployment at all costs, and look what THAT produced
2) Inflation is about real people as well — amongst other things, it’s systematised theft from anyone who lends the State money (ask anyone who bought War Loan at par)
3) Why 8 PMs? I notice Harold MacMillan\s figures are conveniently left out…..
I made clear I picked one
The TUC did more – go see
And as for MacMillan, it’s called data shortage
Looking at entry and exit unemployment rates tells a slightly different story as to the impact they had in power.
Entry Exit
Thatcher 5.30% 7.30%
Major 7.30% 7.20%
Blair 7.20% 5.40%
Brown 5.40% 7.80%
On that basis Brown looks worse than Thatcher
And you forget that the biggest recession of all time began under Brown
Where is Heath? The eighth implied by the title, presumably – why is he missing from the graph?
Or is that Wilson’s second term only and the title is in error?
The TUC had data for Heath, and for Wilson’s first stint, for the other graphs they produced in the article. For the unemployment graph they didn’t, so they’ve had to drop those two premierships out.
The “Eight prime ministers” thing is from the TUC’s original title for the whole article, and doesn’t apply to this particular graph.
See the original article by TUC
TBBH I think you should include many, if not most, of those claiming incapacity, in which case the figures would look v different.
I’m not (I hope) demonising but I knew 2 people, in their 50s, who were on IB. In both cases the problem was that they couldn’t do the manual work they had done, because of genuine illness, & they couldn’t do an office job because, honestly, they couldn’t (could barely) read nor write.
Were they deliberately unemployed ? Don’t know, I couldn’t imagine either of them working in a Call Centre – where else would they go?
It is so easy for the Gideons of this world to cry out “Scroungers”. They really weren’t.
Neoliberal propagandists often forget the superiority of socialist countries (e.g. the old Warsaw Pact countries, Cuba, etc) in the area of ensuring full employment. There really is/was a job for everyone. Even the North Koreans (from what I have read) have pretty much cracked the problem! Is it that hard?
This helped create the equality, contentment and social cohesion we surely all desire and deserve.
(and no use of tax havens or tax avoidance, but that is another story).
Leaders of those countries could show the likes of Mrs Thatcher how its done. We can only dream of being so lucky.
So lucky as living in North Korea??
It would be very interesting to do this for the TUC’s “total unemployment” measure, which includes includes unemployed, discouraged, marginally attached and under-employed workers (see http://www.tuc.org.uk/economy/tuc-20616-f0.cfm). Although I’m not sure how far consistent Labour Force Survey data exists to do that – I think it goes back to 1983 on a consistent basis, so at least the second and third Thatcher terms could be looked at.
I can remember that Thatcher’s government had most of the workforce of South Wales mining towns on Incapacity Benefit, which, ironically, was relatively ‘generous’ in those days. This kept the figure to about 3 Million instead of, say,5(?). These communities were deeply traumatised by the rapid collapse of their livelihood and cultural identity.