And Another Thing…

You need to get a grip, Tom.

I am no fan of Vince Cable – I think some of his ideas (eg the Mansion Tax) are dotty.

But you are saying Cable knew the structural deficit was £12Bn wider than expected then? Remind me what the VAT rise will take? £13Bn isn’t it?

Given the lies, obfuscation and general bending of the economic truth that your party was guilty of over the last 13 years Tom, you really don’t have much of a leg to stand on on this stuff. You (Labour) are also doing and saying nothing tha in any way further’s the Economic argument. In fact the standard of opposition argument coming from your party is very weak indeed.

It is also painfully obvious that Labour has decided that the way to break the government is to undermine and “turn” the Lib Dems. Its really quite funny to watch when you realise what’s going on.

Especially because it would appear that all such pathetic bitching does is bind the coalition more resolutely together.

The grapes are getting more sour by the day hereabouts.

I used to enjoy this blog. It used to provide an insight into ‘sensible’ Labour.

The switch from government to opposition has reduced it to LabourList levels…

Speaking for the dead now Tom?

[ CITATION NEEDED ] as they say in wikipedia-land.

Have you seen the books Tom? Looks like these Lib Dems got the biggest shock of their lives. Liam Byrne appeared to have been communicating merely the tip of the iceberg when he said “there’s no money left.”

It appears Labour’s only strategy in opposition is to drive a wedge through the middle of the coalition.

The budget was against everbody’s taste. Nobody wants cuts. In case nobody told you, your party left the country in an absolute mess.

As I understand it, Vince called it the least worst option. This is compared to the worst option which would have been a Labour budget.

>>what did the LibDems get today in return for agreeing to turn their backs on their own policies and principles

It is called governing for the benefit of the country, not for party interest. Your party should try it some time.

>>Cable’s old boss and friend, the late John Smith, would be ashamed of him today.

If anything, the state that Labour got the country in would be the thing to make him roll in his grave.

On a lighter note, George Osbornes new role.

Tom, I think John Smith would have been more ashamed at what you and others in the Labour Party done in power than what Cable is now doing. It’s all well and good to sell yourselves as saviours of the poor and needy now that you’re in opposition, but let’s bear in mind that Labour had spending cuts of the same magnitude in the pipeline, possibly higher, and that it was Labour that got us into this mess by bailing out the banks.

And I know how necessary and you think bailing out the banks was; it wasn’t even up for debate, was it? Well, I can tell you a lot of people were against it and would have preferred to see them go to the wall, just as many ordinary people are going to the wall now.

The money you so generously gave to the banks was our money, and it would have been better spent on house building and other stimuli to the economy.

And what else did you prioritise with our money, war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and your expenses fraud?

Politically the whole labour movement is dead now, thanks to you and yours, totally discredited. Between your support for the Israeli slaughter in Gaza last year, Iraq, and a multitude of other sins, Vince Cable isn’t even worth mentioning.

You fail to mention that vat is not on food and childrens clothes. A £300 washing machine will cost you another £7.50. Vince has had to make compromises as have we all, But we had strength from George Osbourne against weakness from Gordon Brown. You cannot bury your head in the sand Tom and just slag off the Lib/Dems all the time. They have made an effort to protect those of us on low incomes, They had to tackle welfare as it has become a cancer to the total economy.

“…why did his party (the party of “fairness”, remember) oppose raising it a few weeks ago?”

Because he wasn’t yet aware of the dire state Labour had left our finances in?

Because the other options proposed by the Cons were even less palatable to the Dems?

Cable’s reputation was always unjustified.

It’s always better to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.

How’s Gordon Brown’s reputation looking now, or Darling’s or anyone else in the last Labour Government who left us in this mess ?

Good to see you have taken to Opposition so well. Natural for a Labour politician.

Wow.

Pol Pot yells ‘killer’.

Yes the two other parties did some positioning pre-election. You chose to fight the election on spurious and dishonest grounds. They reacted by pulling back form the full grim future and did a little politicking in response. Did give you the VAT bat to swing during the campaign. There has been a coalition formed. Compromises made.

Defensible? Maybe, but probably not.

To hear you guys whining about it? Nauseating.

Cable knows that most people don’t understand economics. In fact, many of them just tend to have blind faith in whatever they’re told by the right-whinge media. Hence he knows that they at least will accept his line that he had a sudden Damascene moment about the state of the economy – which meant he now believed the opposite to what he’d believed before.

However, there is the inconvenient fact (which the govt has been playing down) that the debt is actually less than had been thought, certainly much less than Greece’s.

Also, for someone who was regarded as a great sage and seer (before the election), can we really believe that he wasn’t fully cognisant with all the facts? Wasn’t that what his reputation rested on?

I saw LibDem MP Bob Russell (Colchester) on the local news last night. He wasn’t at all happy about his party defending Osborne’s budget. He at least was admitting it flew in the face of what they’d been saying before the election, and he couldn’t see how he could possibly justify it with his constituents.

I would think John Smith would be more shocked by what people in his own party have done over the last 13 years than an opposition MP – friend or not. No point going into details and depressing us all even more.

@ Nicky,

My but the grapes our sour this morning!

Oh wooo hooo! we ONLY need to borrow £150Bn this year – what a fantastic achievement is that?? Get real for goodness sake. Ans.: Its not, its a disaster.

And again, as usual, you offer no credible alternative but to whinge and snipe at those that are trying to fix the mess.

As to what Cable knew before the election – nobody knew the structural deficit was £12Bn bigger than expected – probably because your party didn’t tell the truth and massaged the figures yet again!

As to the changes in what he is supporting, he’s part of coalition. a coalition is a compromise. There were a number of things in that Budget that were cosre LD policy. I know that word (compromise) isn’t in the Labour party’s dictionary but try looking it up because the rest of the population seems to be quite enthusiatic about how that’s working at the moment.

As to Russell disagreeing with his party: Hold the front page, alert the media: “MP disagrees with Party line!” – film at 11! You’d think that was somehow a new phenomenom from the hysteria.

….or would you be daft enough to try & suggest it never happens in the Labour party?

At last. The Con Dems have had too much of an easy ride with their claims about everything being worse than they thought, and their fears that the country was in exactly the same situation as Greece. It’s about time an opposition MP called those claims what they really are: lies.

@ Nick.

See above, the deficit for this year is ONLY £150Bn – lets all cheer.

You are arguing about shades of black.

It’s just so unimportant given the scale of the issue. It also reflects what the whole Labour party is currenty engaged in – bitching about things that are completely irrelevant

Greece maxed out their credit card. No one is saying that the UK has the same structural problems as Greece, or that it doesn’t have a bigger credit limit.

Why though, are Labour intent on trying to find out where that limit is? Things can unravel very quickly in todays world. Greece went from paying 5% to around 10% on 10 year debt, then to handing the keys to the coffers over to the IMF within a couple of months.

BP was downgraded from AAA to BBB (the lowest investment grade) within the space of a few weeks.

I’m not impressed with the tories, lib dems or labour (none of them will admit that the fundamental problem is the – popular with swing voters – house price bubble) but labour are the worst.

Labour allowed the bubble expand to epic proportions, let it burst, then put the entire British economy (and currency) at risk trying to blow it up again. Their solution was just to keep borrowing, printing and spending money, to keep making unaffordable long term welfare and social security committments and worst of all to keep lying to the British public.

They lied at the beginning of the crisis when they told us nothing was wrong. They lied in the middle of the crisis when they told us it had nothing to do with their policies. They lied to the bitter end telling us their policies would ‘secure’ a recovery.

Here’s a choice for everyone to digest: a modest rise on the income tax threshold, or unemployed?

Its all very well for LibDems to say they have influenced the budget, but a modest rise in the income tax threshold, wont mean anything to the hundreds of thousands of workers who are going to be made redundant in the coming four years.

I have never really understood economics and therefore all the figures quoted are really just that figures, however I do know people and it seems to me that a lot of the coalition government are having to go back on what they said or thought initially. I am really not sure what this makes them or how they must be feeling. It is like the England football team being asked to stand in for Germany to make up the numbers and be told to feel patriotic!!!