Precautions in case of a Labour win

SonOf

MaxiRobriguez wrote: »

The money was spent propping up capitalising the banks, an action taken by governments across the western hemisphere, left, right or centrist.

The Tories were elected on a promise that a short period of austerity would eliminate the deficit and allow us to pay down our debt. Ten years on, the debt has doubled, and despite making peoples lives harder most people have absolutely nothing to show for it.

We've probably done OK on here, because we're financially savvy and will have benefited from rising asset prices, but most of the country has missed out.

In reality, there wasn't true austerity. There were cuts but not to the level that was proposed as the timescales kept getting pushed back and things put off and never ended up happening. If you look at periods of auserity in the past, then this was not on the same scale.

I said "The Tories were elected on a promise that a short period of austerity would eliminate the deficit and allow us to pay down our debt. Ten years on, the debt has doubled, and despite making peoples lives harder most people have absolutely nothing to show for it."

The Tories and LibDems bottled the level of cuts that were needed. The fact there was a coalition meant that campaign promises and manifestos effectively went out the window.

So I state again: We've had a period of austerity which has left a lot of people in a bad way and we've got nothing to show for it, and furthermore looks like the change of policy within the Tory party is going to start pushing out that deficit again.

In which case, its a good job we didn't have true austerity then.

JoeCrystal

Arguably, the Irish government did harsh austerity measures which are surprisingly wide-ranging if I remember their budgets right like cutting the child benefits, JSAs, public sector pay and raising taxes and VAT massively.

Ireland even has 12% ATM Debit Card Stamp Duty which gets charged up to 2.50 Euros every time you use a cashpoint and Credit Cards get charged 30 Euros once a year as Stamp Duty. We do have it easy in this country. Somehow, I got a feeling that our politicians do not have guts to do anything like that unlikes in Ireland.

[Deleted User]

The Brexit Party's intention (or threat) to stand in every seat increases the chance of a Labour victory.

JoeCrystal

ZingPowZing wrote: »

The Brexit Party's intention (or threat) to stand in every seat increases the chance of a Labour victory.

We will see. Frankly, I don't care which party get into power since they are equally bad as each other in my eye.

MaxiRobriguez

ZingPowZing wrote: »

The Brexit Party's intention (or threat) to stand in every seat increases the chance of a Labour victory.

It certainly benefits Labour more rather than the BXP Corporation only standing in Labour leave seats.

We'll see if there's any pacts though, I don't expect Farage to fully compete against the Tories, he's not that dumb.

redmalc

The Tories are going to have to chat with Farage or they will have an issue because the vote will get split and let the Bearded Gnome in through the back door,then god help the hard working people of this country

[Deleted User]

redmalc wrote: »

The Tories are going to have to chat with Farage or they will have an issue because the vote will get split and let the Bearded Gnome in through the back door,then god help the hard working people of this country

That will keep Farage in the news and get him into history books. He is probably not entirely averse to this scenario.

Would people actually vote for a hard Brexit knowing that in the real world they will instead get a Marxist in number 10? Hard to fathom.

Triumph13

Bailing out the banks added significantly to the debt, but not much to the deficit. That arose from a combination of greatly increased costs (Brown and Blair oversaw significant rises to both overall welfare payments and the public sector payroll) and lower revenues when the bust that Brown thought he had abolished finally came. Rather than running a surplus during the boom years to be ready for the next downturn, the UK government blew through all the money coming in and took on lots of huge spending commitments that couldn't be easily reduced when the income dried up. As has been pointed out, cutting hard in the face of a downturn tends to be counterproductive so the UK in 2010 was basically up the creek. There was no conceivable way to cut the deficit quickly without damaging the economy and the deficit was so high that the debt was mounting rapidly.
It has taken until now to get the current deficit back to a sustainable level, but we still have a significant overall deficit when you add in the interest on the debt - which is why people have been quoting different deficit numbers.

fizio

Given that its highly unlikley that labour can win outright, I am going to vote tactically to stop teh tory's getting a majority. I am just about ok with a minority labour govt with snp/lib-dems keeping them in check. At least while brexit gets sorted and I may revert back to tories if they stop being such right wing extremists and following trumps style of politics. Cameron and May were Ok as was Blair/brown and Major before him..

Hard for anyone wanting a sensible centre party to vote for

SonOf

If you really want to simplify things, Labour will improve public services but build up public debt in doing so. Conservatives then come in to improve public debt but cut public services to do so.

If Labour stay in too long, they build up significant debt. If conservatives stay in too long, they cut back too much.

On day in the future, the interest payments will get so big that there will have to be cuts that remain in place. It isnt a case of if but when. Unless the UK manages to find some energy supply that can only be got from the UK. We had North Sea Gas and Oil but blew that.