It's bad out there, Darling 

TrevorH

Can Darling explain why we should vote for the party that got us INTO this current mess?

Charlie T

"Realistically, it is hard to see how Labour can win unless the economy improves"

I was just wondering though this government has clearly reached this end of its tether do you not still think Labour will/could squeak home in 2009 or 2010 even with the economy on the rocks? People forget by normal standards Labour won by a landslide in 2005. The Tory performance only looked good in comparison to what happened to them in 1997 and 2001.

The Tories still have a big Labour majority to overturn at the next GE.So bearing this in mind even though most people want to see Labour turfed out could we not be in 1992 situation? Whereby the out going governmental party has such a big majority this cushions them against voter hostility and just sees them to a narrow win. The Tories need a big swing just strip the Labour majority away. To get a working majority will take an even bigger effort.

The last thing Cameron wants is there to be a hung parliament. Labour and the Libs would then go into a coalition. The price the Libs would extract would surely be a ditching of first past the post for the GE after that.

Under FPTP any party which wins a big majority effectively (baring any major disaster) wins the next GE as well, two for the price of one. Even though most people are sick of them Labour will have an inbuilt advantage from the off. For the Tories the 2009 or 2010 GE will be like a football team playing a tie where the opposition already have a 3 goal lead before the game kicks off.

The current parliamentary boundaries also favour Labour.

thomas

Under the new boundaries the Labour majority would have only been 22. That isn't too bad a deficit to overturn. If the polls are anything like they are now come the next election then the Tories will win outright. Don't forget that Labour looks like losing substantially in Scotland and Wales.

John L

Charlie T - A 1992 situation? In 1992 the alternative was Kinnock. He was never gonna be PM - In the same way that Brown won't be an 'elected' PM.

Football Analogy (#2)

As for being 3-0 up from the first leg - In the second leg Labour is effectively down to 10 men having had their goal keeper sent off in the first minute and no reserve 'keeper on the bench. The Tories won't even need extra time to win this one.

Dumb Engineer

Excluding the very recent food and fuel effects, the current state of the economy is a result of Brown’s ill-conceived strategy over the past eleven years.
Why does Cameron not make more of this disastrous situation?
Is it because, apart from a bit less tax, and a bit less spend, if the Tories win the next election the only alternative to a Labour credit boom is a Tory credit boom.
The world fundamentals will be no better than they were at the end of the nineties. Globalisation will still facilitate the export of jobs, earnings will still be falling and our balance of trade will still be deteriorating.
I have seen a suggestion that the large Corporations are acting irresponsibly by moving their activities around the world for their own benefit. It is naïve to expect otherwise. Leaders of Corporations have their share options to consider and before the whole thing goes down the tubes they will have cashed then in and be living in the Bahamas.
The naïve idea that in World trade we will do the clever bits and India and China will do the low level stuff is clutching at straws.
Anything that we can do they can do at least as well, and cheaper. We have to struggle to make a decent showing in the Physics Olympiad.
India and China will soon realise that they can do their own financial services and they have the cash to do it with. There goes another chunk of our income.
It is bad out there but what is Cameron’s plan for the regeneration of the UK?

Hysteria

we gotta start making stuff again. Plus increasing transport cost helps jobs get repatriated - this is already starting to happen here in the US.

DWL

Hysteria - we DO make stuff, it's just that you are too blinkered to see that 'stuff' can be consultancy, the creation of intellectual property (like the fabless chip industry), the creation of technologically advanced startups that get sold off.

In Hysteria's world, 'stuff' needs to consist of low value mass produced items coming off a production line, requiring huge amounts of backbreaking and mindnumbing labour.

Mass manufacture isn't coming back to the UK anytime soon.

Go to Wikipedia and search for
'comparative advantage'.

Dumb Engineer

Hysteria
I drive some of the stuff you used to make. Two Studebakers and a Ford Fairlane all from the fifties.
Oh to return to the fifties.

JohnA

"The government has announced the planned implementation of a range of government cutbacks, in an effort to save almost £1 billion by the end of 2009.

The payroll in all government departments is to be slashed by 3% percent by the end of next year, with the exception of the health and education departments.

In a joint statement at government buildings, the Chancellor and the PM said the cutbacks were designed to minimise impact on the health, education and social welfare sectors. However, targets for reducing surplus staff in the HSE are to be drawn up in the coming weeks.

As well as the 3% reduction in payroll costs in government departments, the Chancellor said that pay increases for all government ministers and senior public servants would not now be implemented until at least 2010."

Oh, sorry, just a few mistakes - subsitute 'Finance Minister' for 'Chancellor' and 'Taoiseach' for 'PM': that wasn't ours - it was the Irish government, as reported in the Irish Independent on Tuesday July 8th.
I fancy Birnam Wood will have to come to Dunsinane before the current government cuts back on its electorate, sorry, workforce.

Dumb Engineer

The naïve idea that in World trade we will do the clever bits and India and China will do the low level stuff is clutching at straws.
Anything that we can do they will quickly learn to do at least as well, and cheaper. Don't imagine that we have a monopoly on science and innovation.
We have to struggle to make a decent showing in the Physics Olympiad.
India and China will soon realise that they can do their own financial services and they have the cash to do it with. There goes another chunk of our income.
Innovations don't flow like products and they only require small numbers of people while the rest are employed in mindnumbing service jobs.
I was employed in an engineering consultancy that is, piece by piece being moved east.

Silent Hunter

I see that Labour have now dropped the pretence that......

"Yes it's bad out there in the rest of the world, but thanks to our prudent care of the economy we are better placed to weather the storm than other countries"

It was a LIE then, It's a LIE now!

The one fact is that .......

LABOUR ARE A BUNCH OF LIARS!

Fergus Pickering

Return to the Fifties? The only good thing about the Fifties is that I was younger. Oh, and the Egland cricket team beat the Austrlians three series in a row. The cars were rubbish.

dexey

Fergus Pickering
July 19th, 2008 11:57pm
Return to the Fifties? The only good thing about the Fifties is that I was younger. Oh, and the Egland cricket team beat the Austrlians three series in a row. The cars were rubbish.

My dad's Vauxhall Velox was lovely although it had no mudguards and the wings rotted off.