And Another Thing…

And repeatedly saying that we will have a ‘private sector recovery’ and not one led by government and the public sectorjust confirms this lack of leadership by the Tories. Their friends in the private sector aren’t accountable to us – why should we leave it only to then to get the country back in sustainable growth?

A: Your own plans spoke of 20% cuts. Why don’t we here your proposals? Why were they not made before the election?

B: When one says ‘unavoidable’. They might mean ‘unavoidable unless we want catastrophic financial failure’. The point being that you would have avoided the unavoidable and given us the failure.

C: More pots yelling at kettles. All we heard form 1997 to about 2003 was “18 years of Tory rule”. It was the answer to ANYTHING.

Moral of the story: Don’t vote for a media organisation that can only operate in terms of next mornings headlines.

“we should all blame Labour.”

As with every time Labour has been in government we are left in a terrible financial position. How unreasonable to expect your party to take some responsibility for it’s overwhelming incompetence.

You are an opposition MP so that is fair comment.

What I am interested to know is what Labour would have done differently. Harman, like your own fetish, has spent her weeks as leader of the opposition complaining about the Lib Dems.

We will Labour stop complaining and offer an alternative?

There are some rather good letters in the Guardian today under the heading “Gambling on economic growth” on this topic. And none of them are from me!

International bankers (especially those in thrall to the US’s neocons) and some captains of industry have done everyone but themselves great harm by recklessly gambling with other people’s money.

Mr O and his chums seem determined now to do the same with our country’s economy…

Absolutely spot on Tom.

Absolute cack Tom

Sarcastic nonsense.

Osbourne, Cameron the Tories and Lib Dems do not take and should not take any responsibility for where we are – why should they.

The Labour Party on the other hand should take full responsibility but does not. Of course to do so would be to admit failute and make you unelectable – we all know that.

What they (the Gov’t) should and will have to take responsibility for is where we now go and where we end up in 5 years. I have heard nothing to suggest they won’t and I very much doubt they would even contemplate trying to suggest otherwise.

The caveat to that is that your incompetent colleagues have left this governemnt with very little to work with and therefore realistic expectations as to what can be achieved from this starting point have to be set. I am encouraged by what they think is possible.

As I and others have said, not everything Labour did was bad but you did waste inordinate amounts of our money. Yes we have new school buildings and hospitals but did you deliver things we could afford and that were sustainable and that represented good value for money?

Not anywhere near is the answer to that
and the incompetent management of our country (not just economically) is being laid bare for all to see.

” you know, new schools and hospitals and extra police officers and stuff.”

Glass box schools that look nice but teachers complain are useless, followed by a disastrous college re-build project that left many in debt. PFI hospitals, hidden off the books to paid off over 50 years earning countless millions for the builders. Thousands and thousands of useless pcso’s. Well done.

You are right about “stuff” though, Labour was great at that.

It is interesting really that just a few months ago, Labour were still going on about what the Tories were to blame for (after 13 years of Labour).

Are you finding it hard to adjust now you’re not a majority? Don’t like having to deal with your mistakes over the last 13 years?

Labour will be blamed for the economics for a very long time (until you win again) and for the first decade, most people will agree.

While new schools, extra police and new shiny hospitals are nice, we generally did ok before they were around and can’t afford them?

Can I have 2 bodyguards, a personal doctor and a private tutor? Of course, but I won’t, because I cannot afford them!!

I preferred it Tom when you were in opposition.

I fully agree, Tom.

The Tories love to lecture the rest of us on ‘doing the right thing’ and ‘taking responsibility’ (translation: do as we say, or else.)

But as soon as they get into power they abdicate responsibility in a way which would make Pontius Pilate gasp in disbelief.

I can see Tom’s point.

The thing that he hasnt realised yet is that the party in power gets to set the narrative. Osbornes message is about rewriting history.

Labour got to rewrite history when they blamed the banks for the deficit, even though Gordon was burning through our money before the banks even started to wobble. Now they get the joys of sitting bored on the opposition benches while the coalition gets to do the same thing to them.

I call it Political Karma.

Off topic: Harriet was wrong about Vince Cable. He is not a poodle after all.

@ Tim

…and I suppose its still all Thatcher’s fault ???

Careful clutching at that straw, it’ll break quite easily

Hopi Sen gets it. George is just taking a leaf out of Gordon’s book of political voodoo.

I love the way the Tory commenters on the blog (and in the HoC) say “oh, well what are Labour’s spending plans then?”. Erm – go look at the Budget, no, not the one published yesterday, the one published in March.

The plans were 20% cuts in public spending, rises in NI and duties.

The tory plans are 25% cuts in public spending, rises in VAT and CGT (and keep the duty rises from Labour).

As for the also ridiculous charge that Labour hasn’t said what it is going to cut, well, neither has the coalition.

Nobody will know the full details till the CSR in October. What did Labour say before the election? “We will spell out our spending plans before the Pre-Budget Report in the autumn” – Liam Byrne.

And as for this totally fatuous charge that “it was all unavoidable” – of course it wasn’t. Labour laid plans to balance the budget by 2016/2017. The Tories laid plans to balance the budget by 2014/2015.

There’s a concious choice there – to get debt to peak two years earlier. That’s why the new budget announced that the total level of tax rises and spending cuts would be double the previous amount – up from £70bn under Labour to £112bn under the coalition.

That is a CHOICE, and it is debatable as to its merits. There’s no point trying to shut down debate by saying “I can’t see any argument here”.

Comment is free, facts are sacred.

I have just read an excellent report by 2020 Public Services Trust.It very much reminded me of the excellent website set up by Charles Clarke et al when Tony Blair left office. That site was successful in getting party supporters to engage in debate on the big society and the way ahead given the strains on the public purse. The Trust indicated that the current 52% of GDP spent on Total Managed Expenditure is the highest in 29 years. It was 40% in 1997. It also stated the need to reduce it dramatically. I have also read that tax receipts have been stable since 1970′s. (We are not Sweden who are willing to pay high taxes to service such public expenditure). The report also raised issues such as looking at user charges for public services, dropping parts of the welfare state etc etc etc because of the demographic deemands that will be made on public services in the nect twent years. Now Charles Clarke – a great labour thinker also has written extensively on such issues. Charles Clarke saw the writing on the wall and was not bamboozled by the secrecy of the former PM and Chanceller. How he will be missed.

Yesterday’s emergency budget was, in my opinion, unavoidable. It is incumbent upon any government to tackle the deficit to calm the markets etc etc. Further, whilst it is many years since I studied Keynes, I seem to recall that his theories indicated that during the boom years we should save a bit as well as repay our debts to avoid a large structural deficit when the going is not so good. Now, I think I am right in saying that during the boom years, we still operated a large budget deficit? That is why when the world recession hit we were much worse off. The structural deficit is huge and I am sorry to say that this is as a result of political decisions as it is about tax and spend. The Labour Party must take some responsibility for the financial state the country is in. I just count my blessings that Alastair Darling was in charge for the last few years otherwise we would have been much worse off.

I am not impressed by the party’s response to the budget. Rather than provide us all with the knowledge gained throughout 13 years in office on better ways to reduce the deficit, they resort to trying to demolish the Liberal Democrats. This is a sure way to remain in opposition. I wish Labour MPs would grasp the fact that we out here like coalition government. What we see are two parties trying to do the best they can to put the country on a sound financial path. We also see a destructive third political tribal party who can only gripe and offer the country very little in terms of the future.

Dear Tom Harris MP,

I entirely agree with you. The Conservatives must take responsibility for the choices they make now in government, as must the LIb Dems, especially for their changes in opinion since May 6th. They should do all this.

And, I presume, in this spirit of people taking responsibility for the decisions a government has made, we wil never ever hear again from you or a single on of your Labour colleagues an attempt to blame a single jot or iota of the country's state over the last 5 years on events that happened between 13-31 years ago. Surely if after a month a government must take responsibility for what it does then after several years a government must even more so. Surely, considering what you say in this post, to do anything else would be downright dishonest and hypocritical, and reveal that Labour does not in fact care about the country or taking responsibility for their own actions, but merely covering their own backs.

I await your response eagerly,
Yours Sincerely,
Stephen Wigmore

The good thing here is that although the government may be criticising the Labour party now after a certain amount of time they have to take responsibility and then we will see what happens.