General Election 2024
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To be fair, the rising deficit wasn't Gordon Brown's fault, but was a result of the 2008 financial crisis (in which Sunak played a significant and profitable role in burdening the government with RBS debt)
Austerity, as much as it has ruined this country, did bring the deficit down, but the pandemic spending sent it rocketing to it's highest ever in peace time.
You can't blame Brown for the 2008 crisis and you can't blame the Tories for the pandemic, though their spending during it was incredibly wasteful. But simply saying national debt has gone up since 2010, though true, ignores quite a bit of context.
It was said at the time, the pandemic was a blessing for the Tories because it masked the damage Brexit has done.To be fair, the rising deficit wasn't Gordon Brown's fault, but was a result of the 2008 financial crisis (in which Sunak played a significant and profitable role in burdening the government with RBS debt)
Austerity, as much as it has ruined this country, did bring the deficit down, but the pandemic spending sent it rocketing to it's highest ever in peace time.
You can't blame Brown for the 2008 crisis and you can't blame the Tories for the pandemic, though their spending during it was incredibly wasteful. But simply saying national debt has gone up since 2010, though true, ignores quite a bit of context.
I agree with that, and would say the same for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it all works as a good excuse for the self inflicted stuff going wrong. Without the pandemic and Ukraine we'd still be in a shitty position, but not as fecked up as right now, also we'd likely still have Boris as PM and maybe wouldn't be looking so sure of a Labour landslide.
EDIT: I also believe that GDP and deficit are shitty ways to measure how a country is doing as it focuses entirely on economics, is often propped up by the wealthy and ignores vast swathes of the population. But sadly The Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems all use it as a key measurement.
Sunnacchio is genius.
Labour was borrowing around 2-4% of GDP during its boom years just prior to the financial crisis, though. It's low by current standards, but even a 3% deficit was considered quite punchy in European terms.To be fair, the rising deficit wasn't Gordon Brown's fault, but was a result of the 2008 financial crisis (in which Sunak played a significant and profitable role in burdening the government with RBS debt)
Austerity, as much as it has ruined this country, did bring the deficit down, but the pandemic spending sent it rocketing to it's highest ever in peace time.
You can't blame Brown for the 2008 crisis and you can't blame the Tories for the pandemic, though their spending during it was incredibly wasteful. But simply saying national debt has gone up since 2010, though true, ignores quite a bit of context.
Arguably, if you are a Keynesian in these matters, you should use periods of economic expansion to run a surplus, not a deficit, so Labour weren't immune to criticism on that.
Of course, we'd bite our hands off for a 3% deficit now.
The first two were Thatcher's policies, the mass deregulation under her reign and continued under Mayor are the roots of the financial crisis in this country. Brown could of regulated more and the FSA was weak but the damage was done.
The linking of pensions to retail piece index rather than average wages was fast more devesting to pensions..
Surplus are an exception, and it was always going to grow due to the short termisn of Thatcher and Mayor, the budget was a healthy deficit till Sunak and his mates can't along in 2008.
PFI was again Tory policy, used more under labour.
Iraq I'll give you.
I think it's been mostly answered above. Absolute debt is largely irrelevant. The important figures are the budget deficit and especially deficit as a percentage of GDP.
To be fair, the rising deficit wasn't Gordon Brown's fault, but was a result of the 2008 financial crisis (in which Sunak played a significant and profitable role in burdening the government with RBS debt)
Austerity, as much as it has ruined this country, did bring the deficit down, but the pandemic spending sent it rocketing to it's highest ever in peace time.
You can't blame Brown for the 2008 crisis and you can't blame the Tories for the pandemic, though their spending during it was incredibly wasteful. But simply saying national debt has gone up since 2010, though true, ignores quite a bit of context.
I'm not blaming Gordon Brown for now.
I blame him for leaving us in a shit situation in 2010 through borrowing excessively to prop up his spending plans and fighting to reduce regulatory oversight on the banking sector to keep the tax receipts growing. Banks were taking on increasing risks but the FSA at the time kept getting told by Brown to leave them alone. Then, when Northern Rock went under with a glaring hole in their balance sheet a prudent Chancellor might have thought 'maybe we should check to see if the other banks have a similar problem' but instead he sat on his hands for another year until HBOS and RBS went under and sent us spiralling. We had little slack left in the system by the time 2008 came around because of his actions and difficult decisions had to be made by the next government - and they were doing a good job of it until Brexit. But that's all water under the bridge now.
My point is that it's quite simple, excessive borrowing puts an economy in a weak position. There's nothing contentious about that. In 1997 the country had a strong economy with a budget surplus and Brown's borrowing, whilst it made for nice short term gain, put us into a weak position long term and took years and a lot of pain to undo post 2010. Right now in 2024 we already have excessive borrowing through a series of missteps from the Conservatives that will ultimately cost them their jobs, but nonetheless we are in a weak position. The next Chancellor needs to have a plan to address borrowing and it's concerning that less than a month from the election Reeves doesn't appear to have any plan at all, especially when Labour's usual modus operandi has always been to increase borrowing. If she does that from here we will be fecked for decades.
Sunnacchio sounds like a player United would be linked with but never sign.
Just before you cast your vote, remember you are a human being, remember this tory government is actively complicit in war crimes, and the donkey Labour leader encouraged the starvation as a weapon of war. Be a human.
All those policies are fine when managed carefully. Why I (and everybody else I've ever met in finance) dislike Brown is because he saw good, viable policies delivering a return and thought he could keep squeezing more out of them until they were no longer good or viable. It was an astonishing lack of foresight and even the most junior analyst could have told him what was going to happen but he was such an arrogant prick he wouldn't listen to anybody.
Oh my god 
Obviously fake but...
Obviously fake but...
Be a human, do not vote for genocide.
Tbh I don't think voting labour makes me any less human.
On the other hand, Brown's leadership in that coordinated response to the financial crisis, when it hit, was exemplary - he was the right person in the right place at the right time. And Alistair Darling's approach to managing the fall out was in retrospect, the right one rather than the austerity driven approach of the Tories - which has been disastrous. It's not Brexit that caused a chronic underinvestment the results of which we see now, it was austerity.
I think you are overstating the effect of Labour's 3% deficit. It probably was't prudent, but it wasn't the height of recklessness either.
The long plan to reduce borrowing has to be about growth.
I'm really not sure what to make of the Reform surge.
Instinctively, I want to jump for joy at the prospect of the right wing vote being dilluted between the Tories/Reform, allowing more "progressive" parties to sweep in. But stepping back and thinking of the long term picture, it's slightly worrying. Labour will face insurmountable obstacles that won't be fixed in the next Parliament - the rot is too deep. The Tories have gaslit right leaning voters for years, kicked out their moderates and appear to lurch further and further right to win back the right wing vote. In this vaccum, Reform can promise the earth. Farage keeps batting away the mockery of his electoral failures by pointing out that Reform/UKIP was a protest party in previous elections, but now they're trying to establish themselves as a serious alternative. With Labour unlikely to fix the economy/migrant issues, Reform will be able to point to successive Tory/Labour failures and exploit the discontent in the election after next. The right wing media are already pushing hard the narrative that Labour/Tories are one and the same.
I think the most crucial factor in the direction of Britain will be where the Tory party goes post-Sunak. Can they fight for the centre ground again or will their internal division propel Britain further right and mimic the 1920/30's landscape.
Instinctively, I want to jump for joy at the prospect of the right wing vote being dilluted between the Tories/Reform, allowing more "progressive" parties to sweep in. But stepping back and thinking of the long term picture, it's slightly worrying. Labour will face insurmountable obstacles that won't be fixed in the next Parliament - the rot is too deep. The Tories have gaslit right leaning voters for years, kicked out their moderates and appear to lurch further and further right to win back the right wing vote. In this vaccum, Reform can promise the earth. Farage keeps batting away the mockery of his electoral failures by pointing out that Reform/UKIP was a protest party in previous elections, but now they're trying to establish themselves as a serious alternative. With Labour unlikely to fix the economy/migrant issues, Reform will be able to point to successive Tory/Labour failures and exploit the discontent in the election after next. The right wing media are already pushing hard the narrative that Labour/Tories are one and the same.
I think the most crucial factor in the direction of Britain will be where the Tory party goes post-Sunak. Can they fight for the centre ground again or will their internal division propel Britain further right and mimic the 1920/30's landscape.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/brown-most-successful-chancellor-say-british-political-scientists
That doesn't include post-Brown chancellors though. Maybe a Tory hero like Kwarteng or Zahawi would feature higher.
When the crisis hit I don't think it mattered who was in charge, the government had no choice but to act in the way they did. I will disagree all day that Darling's response was right. What the feck was he doing from Northern Rock in September 2007 to RBS in October 2008. We had a full year head start on the Lehman collapse to sort our house out and he did nothing.
Brown started off the deterioration of UK public finances that we have not recovered from. Because of that austerity was the necessary and correct approach in the years immediately after 2010 but Brexit came along and blew the whole thing up.
You need to check the date on that. And political science academics? Ask anybody with the faintest idea of economics the same question. The country has had a few defining negative moments in our economic history. Suez, SET, ERM, selling the gold, pensions raid, BoE/FSA regulatory restructure, 2008. Brown being present for four of those is no coincidence.
Are you trying to blame Brown for the crash caused by US mortgage lenders? Also, wouldn't selling the gold (I don't know enough about it TBH) not be similar to Thatcher selling off...?
Brown was in post for 10 years - he was the longest serving chancellor in British history - so of course he's going to see more than his fair share of financial events.
The selling of the gold "a defining negative moment on our economic history". C'mon man. The money raised was reinvested and can you point to any long term impact of the decision?
And there's much more to the "pensions raid" than you are saying (the first raid there was made by Norman Lamont!).
Brown gets credit for his leadership during the financial crisis, especially as chair of the G20. Source source
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Same. I'm not entirely sure why they posted that
Selling the gold made us a laughing stock internationally and pushed other countries to move against us, which then spiked the gold price even further. There are limits on gold sales to this day because of it. And the pensions raid really refers to the taxation which Brown brought in and is arguably the single worst decision any chancellor has made.
Anyway, none of this is relevant to the next election. Just pointing the country can't afford a typical Brown/Healey Labour Chancellor right now and Reeves isn't showing much of anything so far.
... that interviewer got really excited didn't he?He has helped save Labour billions off their spending plans, hope Sir Keir thanks him properly.
Yes. You would hope so. But there are people who will have heard that and it will stick in their mind.
Sunak said it so many times and he completely wrong footed Starmer, which definitely should not have happened. Starmer should have been told or should have known it was going to be said.
Either way, bad preparation.
It is important now that he goes on the offensive.
I am amazed how little Brexit is mentioned nowadays.
In my opinion, by far and away the biggest own goal the UK has ever scored.
A self inflicted catastrophe of epic proportions.
I referred to the time it was published quite clearly, your comment doesn't inspire me with confidence.
And yes, I give greater weight to the opinion of 300 political science academics than yourself, others may judge for themselves.
Well the article was published in 2006 before the crash. Bit like saying that Germanwings pilot was doing a great job as he was steering you into a mountainside. A layman would have thought they were in safe hands but somebody who knew how to fly would have been asking what the feck is he doing.
If you think a Tory chancellor would have seen the banking crisis coming and taken action to avoid it then that's a fair comment. The rest of the world thinks Tories would have had less regulation rather than more, but you go for it.
Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Argentina and Australia had all sold an enormous amount of gold at about the same time - Britain was not alone in this. The rather poor way the UK did it, rather than the act of the UK doing it, is why other countries (with large gold reserves) agreed to limit sales, ie put a floor under the price.
That change to taxation on dividends was first made by Norman Lamont, not Brown. Brown's tax raid cost the pension funds £5bn but what caused them all to close was a £36bn deficit in the fund values - 7x the value of Brown's raid - thanks to the Dotcom crash a couple of years later.
Whether or not the country can afford a typical Labour government should at least be based on the facts of what happened rather than folk memories, no?
Testament to being a proper broad church. You've got climate deniers and ultra-Zionists all being brought into the fold. Just make sure you keep the doors closed for those taking issue at a genocide
They have spent over 1,5 million quid on it, all gone. They will likely have to pay as much again in costs for the people they tried to aim this action at.
The worst of it is, this was the work of the head of Labour's legal team, Alex Barros-Curtis. He was told, by his own lawyers, he would lose the case before they spent a penny.
Alex Barros-Curtis, has just been named as a candidate for Labour safe seat Cardiff West as a reward.
I'm not surprised at all, not whilst their is still a Tory government and the man who set up Brexit to fail, is now our Foreign Secretary.
(@Paul the Wolf has swapped opinions with me on this so he will have a different take.)
I am still of the opinion that Cameron, somewhat buoyed by his success in the UK 2015 election, and having seen off the SNP in the Scottish Independence referendum in 2014, thought he would go for the hat-trick and settle (once and for all) the pesky 'anti-EU contingent' in his own party in a 2016 Referendum.
Despite the complexities involved, Cameron wanted a swift (and as he perceived) decisive verdict... hence 'Remain or Leave' were set up as the only two choices, no percentage thresholds to be achieved either way, to ensure realistic result. Hence die was cast and so those who were happy with their lot would tend to vote Remain and those who were unhappy (about anything) would vote Leave, and so it came to pass.
As for a third referendum on this, I cannot imagine any sane UK politician going down this route in the foreseeable future, especially as the EU, up to now have rebuffed any straightforward approaches. However I do see some 'backdoor', maybe even clandestine type attempts to salvage something, especially before the increasingly right-wing leaning governments in a number of EU countries start to flex their muscles. These (if they take place) may transpire a reconciliation result but unless they are successful of course, we shall never know
Also in the future I think Cameron's gamble/expectations on the referendum that eventually delivered Brexit, will in historical terms, equate to the expectations of the appeasement policy and the 'peace in our time' letter Neville Chamberlain brought back from Hitler in the 1930's..... a complete 'c---k up'.
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