{"id":11306,"date":"2011-08-04T10:25:13","date_gmt":"2011-08-04T09:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=11306"},"modified":"2011-08-04T10:25:13","modified_gmt":"2011-08-04T09:25:13","slug":"i-get-so-bored-of-tories-talking-about-debt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2011\/08\/04\/i-get-so-bored-of-tories-talking-about-debt\/","title":{"rendered":"I get so bored of Tories talking about debt"},"content":{"rendered":"

I admit I get really bored of Tories\u00a0talking\u00a0about the\u00a0government's\u00a0debt.<\/p>\n

Take this from new Tory MP Sajid Javid in the Telegraph<\/a> a day or two ago:<\/p>\n

Over the past decade, our net public debt has rocketed from \u00a3312 billion to \u00a3920 billion (or from 31.5 per cent of GDP then to 60 per cent now). This happened because Labour chose the easy way out instead of trying to find solutions to the long-term challenges facing the public finances. It believed that the answer to every problem was to spend more money: so budgets and debt soared.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now that's complete nonsense. This is what actually happened on debt\u00a0excluding\u00a0interventions in banks:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Source here<\/a>, from ONS.<\/p>\n

If we take 2001 to 2007 as the years for which labour was wholly responsible - i.e. after the Tory policies had washed\u00a0out\u00a0of the system and before the worldwide crash - then debt as a\u00a0proportion\u00a0of GDP was very obviously much lower as a\u00a0proportion\u00a0of GDP then during most of Thatcher's era and way\u00a0better than much of Major's period in office.<\/p>\n

Of course debt went up in 2008 and onwards - but unless Tories wanted the economy to have been destroyed, as I explained would have happened if Labour had not acted here today<\/a> - then first Labour had to bail out the banks and second bear the costs of the crash which was the sole cause of the resultant increase in \u00a0debt which was not and never could have been Labour's fault.<\/p>\n

So what word describes most accurately the Tories' claim? Does 'lies' work for you? It does for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I admit I get really bored of Tories\u00a0talking\u00a0about the\u00a0government’s\u00a0debt. Take this from new Tory MP Sajid Javid in the Telegraph a day or two ago:
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96,35,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatives","category-economics","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}