Question time

chewmylegoff

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Which is fine. Until you remember that for all of this spending binge Labour had less debt than they inherited until the crash forced them to start buying banks.

public sector net debt went up from £365 billion in 1997 to around £500 billion just prior to the 'acquisition' of northern rock. of course you can talk about this figure as a % of GDP, but that is to specifically ignore the fact that the reason that the increase in GDP was fuelled almost entirely by an increase in consumption off the back of an increase in government, household and corporate debt. anyone trying to argue that labour had less debt than they started with prior to the banking crisis is trying to manipulate, or has themselves been convinced that borrowing to consume is a viable long term economic model.

Or that Labour ran a surplus for more years of their 13 than the Tories ran in 18.

and why was that? was it because (i) they inherited a budget that was in balance, and then stuck to the tories' spending plans for the first few years; and (ii) the 3G licence auction.

once brown got going with his spending plans that was it. he used to trot out his projections at each budget which always showed a return to surplus 5 years in the future. each successive year, the future return to surplus was rolled forward a year. (at least this is my memory of what happened, could just be complete rubbish that my mind has fabricated).

Or that Cameron's response to Labour's profligate spending was to pledge to match it if elected.

this is what all politicians seem to do when entering govt - same with labour in 1997. presume it is because it's a combination of (i) lying to get votes (we are nice tories, we care about the NHS we really do) and (ii) laziness.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but can't erase what was said and done at the time.

although people don't necessarily agree with each others interpretation of what happened at the time - i expect you will probably not agree with a lot of what i have responded to your post with.