the snap general election thread

Filo25

hallmark wrote: »

So your understanding of what Labour meant is that they would protect jobs by NOT restricting immigration?

Labour's position on Brexit has never seemed particularly coherent to me either!

chucknorris

Joeskeppi wrote: »

Blue Power Rangerrrrrrr!!!!!!

Definitely not the lefty red power ranger!

lovinituk

Herzlos wrote: »

Plenty of people vote for things that make them worse off, for a variety of reasons.

That also explains a large portion of Labour voters. You know people voting for what they thought was best for the country or themselves. Just like the Conservative voters.

Everybody voted for what they thought was best. Its just more voted Conservative. That's elections for you. Next time round it might be Labour.

Arklight

ThinkingOutLoud wrote: »

Agreed - deficit vs debt seems to be a common misconception.



This is interesting.

However there are some key considerations of what you take on when voted into power.

It seems reasonable to assume that there was absolutely massive and wholly necessary borrowing:-
> post WWII
> When we nearly went bankrupt in 1970's
> Post Global meltdown in 2008

It would not have mattered who was in power - each those events would have triggered the same response from any party (you'd hope). So the figures are facts, but the reasoning is opinion and our world is affected by world events.

It seems to be a common Tory trope that reckless spending and borrowing is a feature of Labour governments, and parsimony and repayment is a feature of Tory ones.

But this just isn't the case, either currently or historically. The reverse is true.

If the Tories want to justify their borrowing then they should do so. If they want to lie about it and then spout silly alliterative slogans like "Magic Money Tree" while they add another few zeros to the national debt, then they should be held to account.

spikyone

Arklight wrote: »

If the Tories want to justify their borrowing then they should do so. If they want to lie about it and then spout silly alliterative slogans like "Magic Money Tree" while they add another few zeros to the national debt, then they should be held to account.

As you have previously pointed out, there is a difference between deficit and debt. The zeros are being added to the debt because there is a deficit. The debt will continue to grow until the deficit is zero. Conservatives' policies are targeted at reducing the deficit towards zero. Labour policies will not, in my view, achieve this, because a) they want to borrow more, and b) their policies are far less friendly towards businesses, so GDP is likely to reduce. A Labour government will therefore increase the deficit, and increase the debt by a far greater amount.

As to your previous link on the taxresearch.org.uk blog, I would be interested to see when each government was borrowing and repaying. The data would be meaningless if, for instance, Labour are always leaving a financial mess for the Conservatives to clear up and the Conservatives are leaving a thriving economy for Labour - since the first few years of any government will be a reflection of what came before. The data also fails to consider the global economic conditions other than the 2008 crash. If the Conservatives were always the party in power when there were other economic crises, then the results are again skewed. Lastly the data considers net borrowing as an absolute value, rather than as a % of GDP. I'm sure you can see why that is flawed.
I'm not saying that the data points one way or the other. I'm saying that the data puts far too much faith in very limited statistics without providing any real context. There are plenty of references both on that website and on the author's Twitter feed that would suggest he is pro-Labour, and his use of statistics should be viewed in that context.

hallmark

Arklight wrote: »

It seems to be a common Tory trope that reckless spending and borrowing is a feature of Labour governments, and parsimony and repayment is a feature of Tory ones.

But this just isn't the case, either currently or historically. The reverse is true.

Ah hang on, after 7 years of hearing Labour moan about Tory spending cuts you're now saying they spend too much?

Make your mind up:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

ukcarper

ilovehouses wrote: »

The deficit is massive so they're either spending too much, borrowing too much and/ or not taxing enough.

Gordon Brown was no different but his biggest crime was being in charge of the baby when the GFC hit. If there was another financial crisis in the next couple of years the Tories spending, in hindsight, will look like that of a chav with a lottery win.

Being overly partisan is preventing you from taking a step back.

The deficit as proportion of GDP is now about what it was prior to crash.

GreatApe

With the Tories not attaining a majority and reading/listening to the various Tory MP interviews I think we may have come close to the end of 'the cuts'

ThinkingOutLoud_2

ilovehouses wrote: »

The deficit is massive so they're either spending too much, borrowing too much and/ or not taxing enough.

Gordon Brown was no different but his biggest crime was being in charge of the baby when the GFC hit. If there was another financial crisis in the next couple of years the Tories spending, in hindsight, will look like that of a chav with a lottery win.

Er well not quite.

The deficit has been brought down to similar levels to 2002-2005 - so overspending is nothing like as huge as you are claiming (unless you mean if it were your personal deficit).

And if the Tories hadn't spend anything like what they did to survive the meltdown - then what kind of austere austerity would you have been enjoying?

Joe_Horner

lovinituk wrote: »

Are 42% of those that voted, rich? Or did they vote conservative even though they were miserable? I'm neither rich nor miserable.

At least one of that 42% - my MIL - voted Tory because "that's what you do".

She loathes May and most of the cabinet, she's furious over the destruction of public services and the demonisation of the disabled, she agrees with most of Labour's policies, but one simply can't voted for the workers' party - even if yoy agree with them - having left "working class" behind through decades of effort. It would be like admitting you strived for the wrong things all those years.

She's not alone