It's unnecessary to give Labour a free ride here. Any Tory-led criticisms can be quashed with the valid retort that what Labour did is exactly what the Tories would have done, and indeed did do previously, but claiming it was inescapable misfortune is more than just a step too far, it's a tumble down several sets of stairs.
Rubbish. What got the banks into that mess was the cynical slackening of controls on their activities that was perpetrated by the previous Tory government. Admittedly, New Labour helped nothing (and I note your willingness to elide the very-different neoliberal New Labour approach with Corbyn's anything-but-neoliberal approach when it suits you), but the ball was already rolling before they took power.
That's exactly it. The Tories have been shockingly incompetent in power, they rely on their personal wealth to project competence.
Yes, New Labour did that by following the Tories lead. They were Thatcher's greatest achievement remember.
Oh, and on borrowing there's this:
So Thatch/Major borrowed more on average, and Blair even ran a surplus (not that I think running deficits is necessarily a bad thing; on the contrary it may be a good thing at times).
It's unnecessary to give Labour a free ride here. Any Tory-led criticisms can be quashed with the valid retort that what Labour did is exactly what the Tories would have done, and indeed did do previously, but claiming it was inescapable misfortune is more than just a step too far, it's a tumble down several sets of stairs.
They couldn't stop some of the named events, which are in large part the product of global and irrational sentimental markets, but again they had a degree of control over the domestic magnitude. The events that made up the globally-repeated mess of subprime mortgages was probably beyond control, but that we then had to bail out RBS et al after a decade of Labour government is their failure.
Prudence might have been unpopular, and had its own costs, but there was ample opportunity to identify and mitigate the looming crisis.
So you can't get out of Labour complicity in the historical mismanagement of the economy. In fact, the best thing for contemporary Labour to do, in the face of both reputation and reality, may be to openly admit that, whilst proposing a significant detour from the well-trodden path to failure, and not by way of 'an end to boom and bust' either. I wonder if anyone is well placed to do that?
1. You mean to tell me that the Tories wouldn't have bailed out the banks? Come off it. 2. You're still pursuing the establishment narrative that the Tories have a better record on the economy, yet there is nothing to even remotely suggest that they're better. As VP says, Labour governments have often had to clear up the mess left behind by the Tories. 3. The only person who's "sticking their head in the sand" is you. Why? Because you keep repeating the same old tropes and myths.
I expect that's exactly what some media-obsessed neoliberal New Labour operation would do, yes.That's excellent, they can go out to the voters and say it wasn't us, it was the Tories that did it!.
That's excellent, they can go out to the voters and say it wasn't us, it was the Tories that did it!.
I agree with this but what I would emphasise is that the economy, like the weather, is essentially chaotic. Like the way that weather is made up of a million small moving pieces, the economy is made up of an awful lot of individual segments that each have their own drivers that feed into and are fed back from other drivers for other segments. On top of that, it has shocks that have no predicable factor and those shocks have a chaotic impact.
When precisely the disaster hits is purely a matter of luck. What is done about the disaster is what a government can be judged by, including the mitigations they had in place to limit the damage and improve the result.
no they're not.
Er, yes they are. It's the fundamental tenets of Conservatism. In what way do you say they're not?
So you don't actually know whatever economics Labour governments subscribe to, and yet you know they are nonsense in theory and practice? Clever!
Because of the reasons I described in the part of my post that you deleted.
nobody bothers with tenets. they've been Keynesian consensus types when it's suited. they're certainly not free market fundamentalists - that's not what capital wants and it's not want they want, whatever stuff they may come out with.
ah but it's even cleverer than that, I know that what they subscribe to has changed over time, hence why I said whatever - as in, they've all turned out to be nonsense in the end.
could be, I didn't read that part sorry
So they can share in a little bit of the blame then.
but according to the polls at least, many more people currently think the Tories who are also directly associated with the response to the crash to be more credible on the economy than Corbyn. So there is a logic to seeing Smith, broadly representing a continuation of that, as an answer to this problem (although god help them if he really is their answer) and that problem is one that Corbyn/Labour are going to have to find a way past.
The difference between labour and tory on budget - tories no better than labour - marginally worse up to 2008 I'd have thought.
Deficit, national debt and government borrowing - how has it changed since 1946?
(I'm presuming these allow for inflation).
They don't account for inflation. So as you move towards the LHS, you need to imagine the charts stretching more and more.
Because blame solves everything
it probably would make them look more credible. Smith at least has the dubious advantage of virtually nobody knowing who he is or what he stands for, whereas Corbyn has a particular problem on the issue.
The problem isn't Labour or the tories; it's the totality of their combined macro-economic strategy post 1973 which has been a shared project.
