Boom then bust leaves Labour no leg to stand on

TrevorH

The 'armoury of the state' is bare.

There is no money left - we have entered this recession with a massive financial deficit.

Taxing the rich of course would mean that they and their money would flee.

Klaus Westwood

This is a point I think is being somewhat ignored. One of the main reasons the electorate has turned against Brown is that they remember ten years of his gloating face at the dispatch box on Budget Day telling us all how clever he was having ended "boom and bust". People are not angry that he was wrong, but that he was so certain and so condescending to others who doubted him. That is why people will not let him off the hook in the curren economic climate...

THX1138

Brown has no brand loyalty, we didn't vote for him as PM so no one's saying ...Oh well I voted for him, give him a chance it's early days lets see how it is in a in a year or so.

If Labour pulls the plug on him the new leader should go straight to the country.

Roger Thornhill

"Stuff the market". Well, at least that is honest, for they most certainly would given a chance to implement their "solutions".

Our predicament is caused IMHO in part by focusing the BoE on price and not currency inflation. Money supply was allowed to grow, this then provided a petticoat behind which bow-legged Brown could increase government spending in truth while appearing "prudent" in terms of GDP.

We are on track for £700bln of debt with more to come. No main party - Labour, Lib Dem or Tory has the cojones to do what any housekeeper would do when debts have grown and incomes are at best stagnant - cut spending, dramatically if necessary, and pay of most if not all of that debt. The debt is not about infrastructure, for it rolls over and grows each year - it has been a decade of using the credit card to pay the mortgage.

cityboozer

TrevorH, you are spot on.

The bit about the rich fleeing has been much overstated in the past but the thanks to the social deficit which Labour has been running in parallel with the fiscal one there really isn't the option of a non-monetary bribe to keep the abused middle classes loyal.

Paul B

The working classes, of which I am one, know thats its not the City and the markets that they need saving from, but rather the meddling ,interfering and if it moves tax it policies of Labour Old or New.

New Lab really only represent the superior sneering sanctimonious cosmopolitan public sector employed/protected elite nowadays, the Tories are truly the party of the white van man & lady, the working, grafting backbone of this country. Dave & mates needs to spell that our time & time again.

John Miller

Brown's greatest success was making "growth" the ONLY economic target. All the others were forgotten. So Germany grappling with eastern integration was ignored, for example. They were in recession, but the UK was still GROWING. That this was achieved by record taxation, record borrowing and record spending was not taken into account. This was the secret of the Brown years. Labour supporters will tell you that foreign economies went into recession in 2002 and 2005 , while we stayed out of it. This is true because we all paid to stay out of it. Like the person who takes out a new loan to fund the repayments on their credit card, we could still drive around in our Ferrari.

Until payback time arrived , as it always will with socialist governments.

Now we have not one asset to borrow against, we have no leeway for taxation increases (if most of Britain were Scottish, the marches resulting from the road tax increases would make the poll tax protests look like the storm in a small haggis)

The tories are in deep shit, they just don't know it yet. Read the lovely Alice on UK Bubble to see, graphically, how bad it is.

But don't tell Dave...

TGF UKIP

"It's hard to imagine that the Labour Party wouldn't now be crying bloody murder if they were in opposition." Absolutely right, and when Labour were in opposition pre-97, what a ferociously professional lot they were and how loudly and effectively they cried bloody murder. Indeed, while poor old Major & co made nowhere near as big a mess of government as this lot have done, they got torn to shreds whereas in government Labour have torn themselves to shreds with very little help from this feeble opposition.

The Tories have not destroyed this Labour government nor have they yet provided ordinary voters with any convincing reason why they should vote Tory. They may still be favourites for the next election, but especially in the unknown territory of a new Labour leader, they are certainly no shoo-in.

mitch

Gordon just doesn't get money cos he has never earned any.He is like a kid playing with a chainsaw he pressed the wrong switch chopped his arm off and doesn't know why.

bill

The Tories used to be the friend of the working classes but I do not see it that way now. Too many patricians at the top.

Verity

TGI-UKIP You are right. The comatose Conservatives haven't destroyed this government; its revealed ineptitude and is murderous agenda for Britain have done them in. And even now, the Tories are not capitalising on their lack of popularity. David Cameron is a weak, unilluminating, uninspiring leader, and he's almost as self-obsessed as Tone Boy. And as long as he talks about carbon footprints, the enviiiironment, green taxes and all the other Marxist anti-progress, anti-wealth claptrap, he and his party will forego my vote.

He has been a disaster as Leader and would have been gone by now how Brown and the cabinet boys and girls not done his job for him through their clownish indeptitude.

Phil H

I must agree with TGF UKIP, far from providing me with reasons to vote for them the behaviour of members of the Conservative party actually do the reverse. The Wintertons, Spellman, the diverse MEPs and, more laterly, Yeo using his casting vote in a way that would benefit his secondary employers all scream nasty corruption just as much as the antics of the 1990s.

Then we have the vacuous witerings of Grayling on these pages last week, showing another out-of-touch fat-cat Tory MP.

Finally another example from Tory local government can be found in today's papers with the Conservative Controlled Bury Council writing to pensionser victims of crime threatening them with prosecution unless they clean up the damage caused by vandals.

I read that the bookies are only offering 60% on the Conservaives winning the next election. I am not surprised.

Rex Burr

New Labour has made a mess of running the country but who has an alternative economic model?
The world fundamentals have not improved since the late nineties.
When the current hiatus has died down we will have to pick up the pieces and try again.
Is there any clear indication that DC and his party have policies that will produce an outcome in ten years time that is better than where we are now?
I don't remember them telling us, during the past eleven years, that Brown's economic miracle was a sham.
Can we be given, even a hint, that in a globalised world, their alternative to a Labour credit boom won't be a Tory credit boom?
I can't remember the last time I voted. There must be someone in the country I could have confidence in.
Perhaps the time is right for another 'gang of four', say two from each tory party.

cuffleyburgers

Rex Burr - sorry old chap but you're talking utter tosh.

There is no big secret to "running the country" -
the country is quite capable of running itself. 60 million people get up in the morning, go to work, do their best to earn a crust, go home in the evening and dandle their infants on their knee, and have a beer in front of the telly.

You do not need the government to tell you to do what comes naturally.

The government's role is to catch bad guys and lock 'em up, to arrange to help people through periods of bad luck and back into work, and it's not stretching the point to make sure that children from poor backrgrounds have a chance to have a decent education. The government also has a responsibility defend the realm and to make representations to foreign governments on matters of mutual interest.

And to pay for these functions we accept that the government has a certain right to raise taxes, to the minimum extent necessary.

Ever since the war, and more especially since 1997 this simple covenant has been corrupted. The presumption now is that without the government to run things,nothing happens.

In reality nothing could be further from the truth.

The true role of government is to do the things I have mentioned above and generally to try to f@ck things up as little as possible.

That's where Blair failed, where Mr Brown is failing, and where the EU fails.

The evidence is before all our eyes and in the emptiness of our pocket books as the national infrastructure crumbles, the streets are overrun with knife-wielding maniacs, our children leave school less literate than any in the civilized world and you are more at risk of hospital acquired infection than from the disease you originally went in with.

That is the legacy of New Labour and generally the inevitable consequence of socialism.

Rex Burr

cuffleyburgers
You ascribe a good number of tasks to government.
One must be to create a framework in which those 60 million have the opportunity to do what comes naturally.
It seems logical to me that without intervention all businesses in Britain would relocate to china. How would we then pay for our oil and food imports?
Germany, France, Sweden and Canada to name a few seem to run better than us but do not have significantly less government.
We do need a competent government but I doubt that I will live long enough to see one emerge in this country.