Politics
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07 Apr 13
10:58
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Date Joined:
14 Jun 06
After 18 years in the wilderness, the UK Labour Party was elected to office in May 1997. It inherited a growing economy, falling borrowing, rising employment, a true golden legacy. So after 13 years of Labour rule, what is their legacy and how should we judge them? The landslide victory of Tony Blair to the crushing defeat of Gordon Brown 13 Labour years saw a massive shift in UK policy which changed the face of UK society.
Labour went on a massive spending binge and borrowed money, even though the economy was growing. It spent billions of pound more than the opposition would have done had the Conservative party won the 2005 General Election.
Most of the growth of the Labour years can be traced back to an increase in public spending and a large increase in personal debt. Personal borrowing fuelled the housing boom and created an economic illusion that could not last forever. People felt richer and spent more. The economy grew fuelling more consumption leading to more debt.
As David Cameron said in his Conservative Party conference speech on 10 October 2012, Labour is "the party of one notion, to borrow" Labour has only one answer when in government and when in opposition, to borrow more money. See the Borrow more money part of Cameron's speech.
UK economy will be bigger than Germany by 2013?
In 2003 a UK government minister predicted that the UK economy would be bigger than Germany by 2013. This ludicrous prediction was based on the fact that UK GDP would surge ahead whilst GDP in Germany would stagnate.
This prediction shows exactly why Labour are not fit to run the finances of a village fete, let alone the nation. Yes GDP surged ahead under Labour but at what cost? 100's of Billions of pounds that are going to be taken out of the economy for decades to come just to pay for 1 decade of excess.
The German economy is surging ahead, unemployment is falling, it has a huge trade surplus, its citizens are not laden with debt, it has a huge number of SME that will power the economy ahead. In the UK we are faced with the bill for 2001 to 2010, have a much reduced productive economy in which to pay it and have a huge population who are not only reliant on the state for all or part of their income but who also believe that they are entitled to it.
Public Spending
Friendly Overspending
One quarter of the deficit is directly due to the difference in spending levels between Labour and the Conservatives at the 2005 general election, £35BN, Labours own figure. You could also speculate that there is around £7bn overspend on public sector wages.
Using that Labour party figure,there would now be £42BN each year not being borrowed by the government and we must presume that somebody somewhere still has this money to invest. The real question is how many private sector jobs, overseas earnings and tax revenues does investing £42BN in a private business generate as opposed to buying £42BN of government debt?
Dependency Culture
Something for Nothing
Its tax credit policies destroyed the incentive to work and increased the notion of a dependency culture with even people earning upto £60,000 being able to claim benefits. Ministers saw nothing wrong in taxing people simply to give them the money back as a tax credit, in fact they revel in embedding the "dependency culture" in the national phsyche.
PFI, whereby the private sector is supposed to provide public services and provide value for money to the taxpayer has in some cases cost the taxpayer 12 times as much with reports of hundreds of pounds bill to replace light bulbs and move beds in NHS hospitals. Poorly negotiated deals have left the taxpayer with a £60BN bill to pay.
Almost 1 million new public sector workers were taken on during the period of Labour rule, adding billions to future pension liabilities and massively increasing the size and cost of the public payroll. In addition to this, public sector pay rises were significantly higher over the period with some areas public sector pay being 30% higher than the equivalent local pay in the private sector. Of course you can win a pay negotiation if you have a sympathetic employer, namely the Labour Party!
Stealth Taxes
Labour removed tax credits for pension funds on company dividends, effectively wiping out £75BN of assets and destroying confidence in holding shares. Many company final salary pension schemes close as a result. New accounting rules introduced by the government in 2001 hit the value of shares and worsened the looming pension crisis.
"It was the right decision for investment. It was the right investment for our pensions and the right decision for our economy"
Gordon Brown
The Labour government has inherited a Golden Economic Legacy of strong growth, growing exports, low inflation, falling borrowing and falling unemployment. Its first term in office was relatively benign, however seeds were sown and promises were made. Not least the National Minimum Wage which hailed the end of the narrowing trade deficit with the rest of the world and the surge in the public sector to make up the shortfall in economic activity and employment.
Gordon Brown's reply was: "What am I supposed to do about this? Write a thank-you letter?"
Gordon Brown on the golden economic legacy
GDP growth came from both expanding the public sector and a debt fueled housing boom. Interest rates were kept too low, the Labour government borrowed, despite the so called boom, people borrowed in the naive belief that Labour had abolished boom and bust, Browns catchphrase during his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Personal debt hit record levels, people remortgaged their houses to buy cars, go on holidays and fit new kitchens. All consumption, the productive economy was unable to keep up.
Labour was hailed in 2003 as keeping Britain out of a recession which hit Europe and the USA, but in reality it was the spend now on the back of a "golden economic legacy handed to us on a plate". Buying themselves out of recession, with borrowed money was one of Labours biggest crimes. It fuelled the belief that boom and bust was no more and created a dangerous notion that the money would never run out. It was a selfish act, Labour was obsessed with maintaining its "economic credentials". Would an alternative government been so paranoid about losing its newly found "economic competence" mantra that it would have allowed this to get so out of hand? Doubtful, Labour needed that money to pump up the economy because it could not possibly preside over a recession just 4 years into its government. it even cut the basic rate of income tax despite the fact that it was borrowing and that tax revenues were coming from unsustainable sources such as stamp duty of house sales and the City of London.
All of Labours growth was based on building the public sector and personal consumption. It could not have enjoyed the tax revenues it did without personal consumption and personal consumption was fuelled by personal debt as the productive part of the economy was choked off by government borrowing, government regulation and a growing government workforce.
The true annual average inflation figure for the 1997 to 2010 period is 6.8% if you include house prices. Think you are richer than you were in 1997? Forget it. Its almost impossible to buy a house on one average salary. UK growth under the Labour party was all built on debt, we may have consumed more but it hasn't been paid for yet. UK households are expected to be no better off in 2015 than they were in 2003.
Government borrowing was amongst the highest in the world in 2010, at 12.8% and only our debt profile (UK debt rolls over more slowly than any other country) and the fact that we are outside the Euro have saved us from another Labour induced IMF bailout. The national debt is £1TRN and rising with the tax revenue that Labour depended on having dried up. As the pension crisis was never seriously tackled we have several years of rapidly spiraling pension costs as the baby boomers start to retire and draw their pensions.
Labour went on a massive spending binge and borrowed money, even though the economy was growing. It spent billions of pound more than the opposition would have done had the Conservative party won the 2005 General Election.
Most of the growth of the Labour years can be traced back to an increase in public spending and a large increase in personal debt. Personal borrowing fuelled the housing boom and created an economic illusion that could not last forever. People felt richer and spent more. The economy grew fuelling more consumption leading to more debt.
As David Cameron said in his Conservative Party conference speech on 10 October 2012, Labour is "the party of one notion, to borrow" Labour has only one answer when in government and when in opposition, to borrow more money. See the Borrow more money part of Cameron's speech.
UK economy will be bigger than Germany by 2013?
In 2003 a UK government minister predicted that the UK economy would be bigger than Germany by 2013. This ludicrous prediction was based on the fact that UK GDP would surge ahead whilst GDP in Germany would stagnate.
This prediction shows exactly why Labour are not fit to run the finances of a village fete, let alone the nation. Yes GDP surged ahead under Labour but at what cost? 100's of Billions of pounds that are going to be taken out of the economy for decades to come just to pay for 1 decade of excess.
The German economy is surging ahead, unemployment is falling, it has a huge trade surplus, its citizens are not laden with debt, it has a huge number of SME that will power the economy ahead. In the UK we are faced with the bill for 2001 to 2010, have a much reduced productive economy in which to pay it and have a huge population who are not only reliant on the state for all or part of their income but who also believe that they are entitled to it.
Public Spending
Friendly Overspending
One quarter of the deficit is directly due to the difference in spending levels between Labour and the Conservatives at the 2005 general election, £35BN, Labours own figure. You could also speculate that there is around £7bn overspend on public sector wages.
Using that Labour party figure,there would now be £42BN each year not being borrowed by the government and we must presume that somebody somewhere still has this money to invest. The real question is how many private sector jobs, overseas earnings and tax revenues does investing £42BN in a private business generate as opposed to buying £42BN of government debt?
Dependency Culture
Something for Nothing
Its tax credit policies destroyed the incentive to work and increased the notion of a dependency culture with even people earning upto £60,000 being able to claim benefits. Ministers saw nothing wrong in taxing people simply to give them the money back as a tax credit, in fact they revel in embedding the "dependency culture" in the national phsyche.
PFI, whereby the private sector is supposed to provide public services and provide value for money to the taxpayer has in some cases cost the taxpayer 12 times as much with reports of hundreds of pounds bill to replace light bulbs and move beds in NHS hospitals. Poorly negotiated deals have left the taxpayer with a £60BN bill to pay.
Almost 1 million new public sector workers were taken on during the period of Labour rule, adding billions to future pension liabilities and massively increasing the size and cost of the public payroll. In addition to this, public sector pay rises were significantly higher over the period with some areas public sector pay being 30% higher than the equivalent local pay in the private sector. Of course you can win a pay negotiation if you have a sympathetic employer, namely the Labour Party!
Stealth Taxes
Labour removed tax credits for pension funds on company dividends, effectively wiping out £75BN of assets and destroying confidence in holding shares. Many company final salary pension schemes close as a result. New accounting rules introduced by the government in 2001 hit the value of shares and worsened the looming pension crisis.
"It was the right decision for investment. It was the right investment for our pensions and the right decision for our economy"
Gordon Brown
The Labour government has inherited a Golden Economic Legacy of strong growth, growing exports, low inflation, falling borrowing and falling unemployment. Its first term in office was relatively benign, however seeds were sown and promises were made. Not least the National Minimum Wage which hailed the end of the narrowing trade deficit with the rest of the world and the surge in the public sector to make up the shortfall in economic activity and employment.
Gordon Brown's reply was: "What am I supposed to do about this? Write a thank-you letter?"
Gordon Brown on the golden economic legacy
GDP growth came from both expanding the public sector and a debt fueled housing boom. Interest rates were kept too low, the Labour government borrowed, despite the so called boom, people borrowed in the naive belief that Labour had abolished boom and bust, Browns catchphrase during his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Personal debt hit record levels, people remortgaged their houses to buy cars, go on holidays and fit new kitchens. All consumption, the productive economy was unable to keep up.
Labour was hailed in 2003 as keeping Britain out of a recession which hit Europe and the USA, but in reality it was the spend now on the back of a "golden economic legacy handed to us on a plate". Buying themselves out of recession, with borrowed money was one of Labours biggest crimes. It fuelled the belief that boom and bust was no more and created a dangerous notion that the money would never run out. It was a selfish act, Labour was obsessed with maintaining its "economic credentials". Would an alternative government been so paranoid about losing its newly found "economic competence" mantra that it would have allowed this to get so out of hand? Doubtful, Labour needed that money to pump up the economy because it could not possibly preside over a recession just 4 years into its government. it even cut the basic rate of income tax despite the fact that it was borrowing and that tax revenues were coming from unsustainable sources such as stamp duty of house sales and the City of London.
All of Labours growth was based on building the public sector and personal consumption. It could not have enjoyed the tax revenues it did without personal consumption and personal consumption was fuelled by personal debt as the productive part of the economy was choked off by government borrowing, government regulation and a growing government workforce.
The true annual average inflation figure for the 1997 to 2010 period is 6.8% if you include house prices. Think you are richer than you were in 1997? Forget it. Its almost impossible to buy a house on one average salary. UK growth under the Labour party was all built on debt, we may have consumed more but it hasn't been paid for yet. UK households are expected to be no better off in 2015 than they were in 2003.
Government borrowing was amongst the highest in the world in 2010, at 12.8% and only our debt profile (UK debt rolls over more slowly than any other country) and the fact that we are outside the Euro have saved us from another Labour induced IMF bailout. The national debt is £1TRN and rising with the tax revenue that Labour depended on having dried up. As the pension crisis was never seriously tackled we have several years of rapidly spiraling pension costs as the baby boomers start to retire and draw their pensions.
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2 sure signs that a post is utter nonsense.
First is when it is penned by the forums prize idiot -ahkunnter Second is when the word facts is inappropriately put in capitals |
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You are welcome to tear it down cryofb' take each point one by one .
Your name calling exposes your argument and only confirms the FACTS. |
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But what about Labour's fascism?
There is much confusion about precisely what fascism entails and the word is thrown around rather wildly as a term of abuse. Those who oppose the EU are dismissed as fascists. (Though the EU is probably the most perfectly fascist organisation in history). And politicians and commentators sometimes seem to suggest that fascism and racism are the same thing. (This simply isn't true. Fascism isn't racism. Mussolini's Italy was not racist). It is, however, fairly simple to find a definition. The official Oxford English Dictionary definition of a fascist is: `One of a body of Italian nationalists organised in 1919 under Benito Mussolini to oppose Bolshevism.' So, in order to find out what a fascist really is, all we need to do is find out what Mussolini meant by fascism. Mussolini defined fascism as a political system in which the rights of the state expressed the real essence of the individual. And he went on to say that: `We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms of civilisation, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become.' It is, incidentally, assumed that fascism always comes from the right. But fascism can also come from the left. Indeed, today most fascism comes from the left. And there is absolutely no difference between the two varieties. To the victims it doesn't matter whether the fascism is created by right wingers or left wingers. Fascism reduces our freedom and privacy because only the state really matters and the state (and those who work for it and control it) takes precedence over everyone and everything else. In principle, the state exists to provide citizens with an infrastructure. To pay for this the state is allowed to tax the electorate. But this Government now uses the taxes it raises for other things (funding wars, hiring civil servants to vote Labour and hiring expensive spin-doctors to make the lies ever more convincing) so that there is virtually nothing left for the essential infrastructure. The British Government now spends nearly half of the nation's Gross Domestic Product but it spends most of the money on the wrong things and so the country is falling apart. In a fascist country the government doesn't nationalise the means of production because it doesn't need to. Instead it merely assumes total control through regulation and legislation. Small businesses, regarded as a dangerous sign of independence and freedom, are controlled by regulations and red tape. In other words, although fascism leaves ownership in the hands of individuals it gives effective control of those businesses to the state. But, of course, ownership without control is a contradiction and what this means in reality is that the individual has all the responsibility while the state has all the authority. A fascist country is one where the state controls virtually everything; it is a country where the state bureaucrats decide what is good for the ordinary citizens; it is a country where the state makes all or most of the decisions about how money should be spent; it is a country where the state grabs most of the wealth and then doles the cash out in dribs and drabs. A fascist state is paternalism gone mad: everyone works and the state hands out pocket money. Fascism is the annihilation of democracy. The UK, without doubt a fascist country, is now one of the most centralised political systems in the world. People have stopped bothering to vote because politicians no longer take any notice of them. Today, more people in Britain vote in television talent shows than vote in parliamentary elections. The subordination of the individual to the state is an integral part of fascism. The fascist has no real doctrine except a passionate desire to remain in authority. People won't complain about what is going on because they have been institutionalised by the system - in the same way that prisoners or long-term hospital patients become institutionalised. Real people, with real passions, real interests in their community, have been replaced by apparatchiks, Labour party gofers, hacks and professional expense claimers, people who once shared a train compartment with Tony Blair, people whose sole ability is to fill in forms and who live within the system, for whom the system is the end rather than a form of management, and people whose only real skills are perjury, fraud and extortion. The Tories were bad enough, but Labour has finally shown us the extent to which politicians will go, just how dangerous they can be and how crucial it is to control their power. We don't have a Prime Minister (in the sense that Winston Churchill was a Prime Minister). Instead we have a malevolent dictator, a man for whom most of us never voted in any election, a man whose primary motive seems to be self-aggrandisement and self-enrichment rather than any sense of public service. The Government is anti-worker, anti-poor, anti-peace, anti-freedom, anti-ambition and anti-democracy. Modern politics, as practised by Gordon is all about self-preservation and self-glorification. It has nothing to do with the needs of the electorate or the country. *** If you are British there are now 266 ways that Government-employed thugs can enter your home. Britain has more public and private closed circuit television cameras per person than any other country in the world. The 4.2 million CCTV cameras work out at one for every 14 people. *** In a fascist country it is the sick, the weak and the needy who suffer most, and we are now seeing, at first hand, the institutionalised economic oppression of the masses by the state. Remember: fascism means that the state comes first and the people come a long way second. The state's employees exist to defend the state (rather than to care for the people) and that is why their loyalties are to the state. Civil servants whose working lives are dominated by the need to satisfy the state machinery by hitting performance targets are working not for the people but for the party machinery - the state. |
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Where are the Labour lot? Routed. Again.
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Not really funny is it EO,they are killing our country whenever they get into power ,Tax,Borrow,Spend,Waste,Tax,Borrow,Spend ,Waste .
A nasty vicious circle from a very nasty ,controlling party who pretend to bat for the poor and vulnerable . |
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If you don't laugh then you might not stop crying. It's like a never ending fairground game of find the lady. This time they'll do better shout the dopes. No they won't shout those who have seen the devastation they bring.
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Jesus just imagine if they wanted to privatise the NHS and make illness profitable. What a shower of shyte.
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See mid staffordshire on how the socialists run the NHS and Nigerian health tourists paid for by British taxpayers,there are threads covering Labour's mis management of that as well
 ,this thread is about how they run the economy though,shower of shyte? |
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HUNTER esq. is quite correct about PFI imo.
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HUNTER esq ,is quite right about all the FACTS .
This is the biography of the Labour government 1997 - 2010 . |
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Mighty Whites really nailed it though.
I well remember the screams of those rich folk rounded up from Mayfair and Chelsea as they passed through Sheffield station in the cattle trucks on their way to what we were told was a "redoctrination camp " in the Peak District. We all know the horrors Cameron's troops found when they liberated the place. Then there were those public school boys and girls put to work in the Cornish gulag. 18 hours down the tin mines with only one ( cold ) pasty for sustenance and cruel overseers like Lampus yelling " Back to work you Otis ! " It's just miraculous how many survived to lead us into the golden age of truth and reconciliation and plenty for all.  |
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Did the forum fool cryofb' come back and take down the FACTS about the Labour government 1997 - 2010?
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or any other Loons for that matter???????
No I didnt think so . |
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So if it was so great under the sleazy Tories in 1997, why did millions vote them out with a landslide for Labour ?
Maybe it had something to do with laying most of industrial Britain into waste areas,selling off Gas,Electricity,Water and the railways, with the promise that competition would benefit the consumer. We are now being ripped off by mostly foreign owners of these utilities who are charging the earth. The Tories are a relic of the past, led by a PR spouting nonentity who has plenty to say but doesn't deliver anything of substance (unless you are a millionaire). |
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Yep mike, selling off the railways... BR was soooooooo great, never a complaint.
As for telecoms , old fools and horses episode,... Del says " that is so British Telecom", then explains he means "out of order" Service was not good in the 70s. |
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Very sad that in the decade the great lady passes away to heaven,the Labour party have left the country in another mess to clear up ,she got rid of the evils of socialism and strikes that lead to the winter of discontent,the UK was the sick man of Europe and a joke on the world map .
But Nulabour proved just as disastrous for the UK . Mrs Thatcher's legacy will be she made Great Britain great again and she returned a world class economy from the ruins of socialism. Not sure if we have anyone with her vision and Iron to clear up this Labour mess? |
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As wipe
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You will soon have what you deserve.
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Please turn off the light.
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Perhaps HUNTER esq could be our PM.
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Cracking thread A H Hunter and so true - why can nobody who supports Labour see what the Blair/Brown years did to this country?
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BLAIR and BROWN were dedicated followers of THATCHER, why do you think that P.F.I,s were introduced by BLAIR?
Their meddling in the ROYAL MAIL is a forerunner of privatisation which has not gone through yet, giving VEHICLE DRIVING LICENSING to another body created by them, why don't people notice these things, BILBOBAGGINS? |
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Shut up you stupid Hobbit
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