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This from Ed Gouge, Agent for Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate Stewart Blackmore. Ed
In your recent article, Island’s MP in favour of extension to Pensioner Bonds. Andrew Turner repeats what all Conservative MPs are taught to say – that the last Labour Government ruined the economy.
The fact that they keep saying it doesn’t make it true.
Banking crisis
Our economic depression was caused by a banking crisis because the main banks had speculated in investments that were not sustainable.
Regulation by many Governments was inadequate, including the British Labour Government, strongly supported by the Conservatives.
This is why all countries had a depression and not just Britain.
1% growth when Labour left office
Alistair Darling acted on 13th October 2008 to stop the cash machines drying up that day when RBS was about to fail.
He then boosted the economy enough to bring growth up to 1% when Labour left office as a start to recovery.
Shutting down industry
When George Osborne took over, he did what every second year economics undergraduate who has studied Keynes knows is the worst thing to do in a depression and that is to reduce demand.
The level of public expenditure cuts have been the equivalent of shutting down the British car industry and the British aerospace industry at the same time.
The result has been a longer depression than in the 1970s and, indeed, the 1930s and, with wages kept low, not enough income to pay off the deficit.
What sort of State do we want?
The economy now is just beginning to recover, as economies do, but further planned cuts after the election put this at risk.
Instead of falsifying history could the Conservatives debate properly what sort of State we want as that is now the real issue.
Image: /simon__syon under CC BY 2.0
