Conservative Party Poster
I warned in a post back in January that I expected the Tories to do their best to mislead the electorate about the responsibility for the National Debt. But even I didn’t expect it to be so blatant, so unfair and potentially so damaging.
The latest version of the independent Office for National Statistics graph, which shows the National Debt as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product shows where the Tory figure comes from. Having inherited a debt which was about 42.5% of what the country produces in a year, Gordon Brown used a combination of debt repayments and growth in the economy to drive that figure down to 30%. He then went on the alleged “spending spree” that George Osborne accuses him of.
The massive investment in schools, hospitals, universities and transport infrastructure drove debt up to about 36% of GDP, hardly wild irresponsibility and well below the 42.5% he inherited (although much of the real spending has been hidden as future commitments to pay for PFI contracts, but that is another story).
Then the roof fell in; the roof of deregulated irresponsible banks, lending to wildly overoptimistic consumers and speculating recklessly with customers’ money. Let’s not forget it was the Tories who championed the Big Bang, our overdependence on financial services and an inadequate system for “light touch” regulation of the Banks. If Gordon Brown was guilty of anything it was his naivety in not reining back this golden goose that appeared to be driving the economy.
Governments all around the world had no option but not to allow the cash points to run dry and citizen’s savings to disappear as the banking system collapsed. The only solution was to borrow unprecedented amounts of money to prop up the banking system. the Tories will tell you that Gordon Brown was uniquely irresponsible and bad at rescuing the banks and managing the economy. Labour will tell you that he was a world leader and the architect of the solution adopted throughout the G20.
Which is true? Probably neither, but that is the YahBoo politics the ping pong parties will be throwing at an electorate, they believe to be gullible, over the next five weeks.
The Liberal Democrats do not treat the electorate with such disdain, we know the tuth lies somewhere between the two equally ludicrous assertions from the two ends of the Labservative party. Vince Cable has earned deserved praise for both anticipating a crisis and for having a credible solution. He, and the Liberal Democrats deserve a large say in how we get the country out of this mess.