[Closed] Labour is to blame for austerity according to....

When did that happen?

In the OP:

Blair favoured deregulation of the banking industry – leading to one of the worst crashes in modern history. While spending on public services was higher, his legacy will ultimately be the austerity that followed his failure to stand up to big finance.

They're claiming the crash was due to Labour's deregulation, the crash lead to austerity.

The gold sale cost us about £2bn spread over 3 years

<Sigh> You obviously predicted a massive terrorist atrocity and invested heavily in gold at the time GB was selling? If you didn't how the hell could GB? It only cost us £2bn in hindsight, it wasn't known at the time.

corporation tax cuts brought in by Osborne (during “austerity” remember) which will cost £6bn per year by 2020.

It's a global market and countries all over the world are cutting corporation taxes. Loathe it or hate it if you don't have competitive tax rates companies move to places that do. In the industrial estate I work on three low profile medium sized firms have moved their head quarters abroad (Belgium I think) specifically because they get a better tax deal abroad. That's three firms that now pay zero UK corporation tax. You don't need to be a massive company to shift your HQ abroad. Move 3 or four employees and minibus a few directors to a few board meetings in the new country. It really is that simple. Setting tax in general is about finding the sweet spot on the laffer curve.

Can't really see how you can say it's cost 6bn because you don't know how much would have been raised if it hadn't happened. Could just as easily have saved £6bn if failing to do it had driven £12bn worth of corporation tax away, we'll never know.

It’s pathetic! Which is why the Labour Party are presently polling at 19%. Not a problem Blair ever had to deal with. The treacherous electable bastard

I think it's charming that you speak so approvingly of a man with so much blood on his hands.

I think it’s charming that you speak so approvingly of a man with so much blood on his hands.

You can argue Labour were responsible for the Uk's involvement in Iraq but they were *not* responsible for the 2007/2008 global Crash. It's not about approval or disapproval, that's just what happened.

You can argue Labour were responsible for the Uk’s involvement in Iraq but they were *not* responsible for the 2007/2008 global Crash. It’s not about approval or disapproval, that’s just what happened

I mostly agree, and think the Brown/ Darling response was the right one. Nevertheless, Labour encouraged the mood of deregulation.

As for Blair, I often wonder what gymnastics his supporters perform to justify lying to parliament in order to launch an illegal war. Presumably a few hundred thousand dead brown people is ok because of the minimum wage.

So by your logic, anyone who thinks Blair and Brown were infinitely preferable to another 13 years of Tory hegemony is a warmongering racist?

How’s your revision going for your A Levels? Getting close now.

We could well be living in a socialist utopia by the time you get your results

I mostly agree, and think the Brown/ Darling response was the right one. Nevertheless, Labour encouraged the mood of deregulation.

As for Blair, I often wonder what gymnastics his supporters perform to justify lying to parliament in order to launch an illegal war. Presumably a few hundred thousand dead brown people is ok because of the minimum wage.

Well there will be an election before long and you can continue to punish them for the war and for the mood of deregulation they encouraged. That's the nice thing about democracy **** up and you can be out of government for 11 years, perhaps even 16.

It's interesting that binners characterises Corbyn's supporters as juvenile while the man himself is characterized as senile. Ageism is prejudice, and says much.

Like what..?

Well there will be an election before long and you can continue to punish them for the war and for the mood of deregulation they encouraged

I've no idea what you're talking about: I voted Labour in the last election and will do so next time, because whatever you think of Corbyn, Iraq was absolutely nothing to do with him.

Finger on the pulse of the burning issues of 2019...

Like what..?

Amongst other things, that you're a blowhard who chooses to discriminate on the basis of age, because you're unable to make an argument without referring to people's innate personal characteristics. I strongly suspect that if you were doing the same on the basis of skin colour, you'd be shown the door.

Finger on the pulse of the burning issues of 2019…

You'd know all about those in your middle class enclave. Now, don't you have people to discriminate against?

I often wonder what gymnastics his supporters perform to justify lying to parliament in order to launch an illegal war.

I voted Labour in the last election and will do so next time, because whatever you think of Corbyn, Iraq was absolutely nothing to do with him.

I think you've answered your own question.

I think you’ve answered your own question.

You think that it's a stretch to not blame Corbyn for Iraq? The man who was prominently protesting against it? Err, ok.

You’d know all about those in your middle class enclave

Sick burn is sick.

He’s also not even partly responsible for the inherent problems caused by the Treaty of Versailles or the assignation of archduke Franz Ferdinand

He’s getting my vote!

"Thank you for your vote, comrade"

the assignation of archduke Frank Ferdinand

Secret appointments? I must've missed that bit in history lessons.

You think that it’s a stretch to not blame Corbyn for Iraq? The man who was prominently protesting against it? Err, ok.

I think the gymnastics you're performing to continue to vote Labour are pretty clear. You're shifting the responsibility from the party to one individual within the party as though the cabinet, MPs & party had zero responsibility for the decision and then convincing yourself that because the leader's changed the entire party no longer has any responsibility for Iraq. You're probably also telling yourself that people were mislead in spite of Robin Cook and Claire Short telling everyone *exactly* how it was in plain language. Somehow I think you don't go through those gymnastics when a party you don't like changes leader!

But we digress. This thread is about Labour's tweet about being to blame for the 2007/2008 Global Crash. (Which I'd guess you'd agree with up to a point, hence "Labour encouraged the mood of deregulation".) I'm saying whether that's true or not it's probably not something Labour should be shouting from the roof tops when an election could happen literally any time in the next 2 years.

Labour’s tweet

Momentum, shirley. Totally different organisations, apparently.

I think the gymnastics you’re performing to continue to vote Labour are pretty clear. You’re shifting the responsibility from the party to one individual within the party as though the cabinet, MPs & party had zero responsibility for the decision and then convincing yourself that because the leader’s changed the entire party no longer has any responsibility for Iraq.

So, in summary, you're telling us that Corbyn bears responsibility for Iraq because he's leader of the Labour party. If that's what you wish to believe, crack on.

Momentum, shirley. Totally different organisations, apparently.

Totally.

In no way is it a totally transparent deflection technique to desperately try to stop people thinking that your staggeringly shit!

More abuse... it's a shame that you're so unpleasant.

Momentum, shirley. Totally different organisations, apparently.

If you're struggling, think of them as a sort of Labour equivalent to the ERG.

So, in summary, you’re telling us that Corbyn bears responsibility for Iraq because he’s leader of the Labour party. If that’s what you wish to believe, crack on.

Nope, if I was telling you that I'd have written it rather than writing something different. I'm saying that your post is a good example of the kind of mental gymnastics you mentioned. You've convinced yourself that Labour stopped being responsible for Iraq because they changed leader.

Trump was opposed to the Iraq War. The Republican party is still responsible for it even though Bush is gone and Trump has taken over.

Anyway I think we've explored this enough. It's miles off topic so I'll let you have the last word.

Anyway… IRAQ

If taking the blame for the 2007/2008 global crash and austerity isn't a surefire vote winner, bringing up Iraq ought to hoover up votes like a Dyson on steroids...

You’ve convinced yourself that Labour stopped being responsible for Iraq because they changed leader.

No, I said that Corbyn was not responsible. Please don't create strawmen to support your flimsy argument.

And still the obsession with Corbyn, Blair, Brown et al continues. It reminds me of the take that vs east 17 teenage culture wars. Madness!

Although to be honest I’m a big fan of John McDonnell. He’s quite the comedian in real life, and an extremely sincere, open minded, pragmatic and adept politician. It’s a shame he doesn’t feel his health is up to the labour leadership.

You might need to remember that the Tories we’re constantly pushing for even more deregulation of financial services at the time. And which country started the rot?
The real issue in the UK is the cowtowing to the City and their short term view on what might, or might not be, best for the country as a whole.

Sssssshhhhhh.... the whole slaggging off Blair thing relies on you being wilfully blind to what the alternative was.

Because obviously the Tories would never have gone into Iraq and would have strictly regulated the banking industry

And they'd Have definitely done Sure Start, the minimum wage, built loads of schools and hospitals and loads more besides.

That’s why we hate Blair and Brown. We’d have been so much better off without them. The bastards! Standing in the way of the socialist revolution that Iain Duncan Smith wanted to usher in.

Anyway... I’ve got a sociology lecture to get to. If I get a B in this I can get in to study history and politics at Loughborough

outofbreath

Member

When did that happen?

In the OP:

Nope. Momentum are not the Labour party.

outofbreath

Member

It’s a global market and countries all over the world are cutting corporation taxes.

Ours was already at the low end of the highly developed nations even before Osborne decided to cut it, second lowest in the G8, lower than France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the USA, Russia... But apparently 19% was terrifyingly high as we were barely undercutting Afghanistan and Armenia. 17% is much more comfortable as it puts us on par with Lebanon.

binners

Subscriber

voice our support of Iran

I thought we'd reached peak Binners before but I was wrong. How you can call other people juvenile I don't know, with your constant hysterics, name calling and made up crap.

binners

Subscriber

Sssssshhhhhh…. the whole slaggging off Blair thing relies on you being wilfully blind to what the alternative was.

Margaret Beckett?

So, who’s to blame for the policy of austerity? It’s complicated.

Doesn't it have something to do with the party/government that implemented it?

Sssssshhhhhh…. the whole slaggging off Blair thing relies on you being wilfully blind to what the alternative was.

Ah, so that's your justification for killing brown people.

Anyway… I’ve got a sociology lecture to get to. If I get a B in this I can get in to study history and politics at Loughborough

Do they have any remedial courses on how to be less prejudiced?

So, who’s to blame for the policy of austerity? It’s complicated.

Only the tories can be blamed for austerity. Given a problem that we have too much debt there are various solutions. One is austerity which hits the less fortunate more along with downstream long term affects due to less policing., less care, less support etc,.
Another would have been to have taken measures to hit the well off more (higher VAT on luxury items, increased inheritance tax, wealth tax etc, etc,.)

As for how the situation happened you need to go back to Thatcher/Reagan to get to the root cause.

I'm glad there's a decent austerity thread.

Bet you it won't have the legs of the EU one.

And the vile Gove last night who claims he has a detailed plan how to deal with the poorest in society.

Basically - Soylent Green is set in 2022.

And he has a detailed plan on how to fix everything. So where is he hiding it? You going to do it with the market and lower taxes you madman?

And he wants to put Marxism and Jeremy Corbyn in the dustbin.

Sociopaths.

Only the tories can be blamed for austerity.

...so anyone claiming the crash and austerity were actually Labour's fault would be economically illiterate?

Blair favoured deregulation of the banking industry – leading to one of the worst crashes in modern history. While spending on public services was higher, his legacy will ultimately be the austerity that followed his failure to stand up to big finance.

voice our support of Iran

You do know don’t you that Corbyn was simply repeating what the french and German foreign ministers have said about the Iransituation?

You do know don’t you that Corbyn was simply repeating what the French and German foreign ministers have said about the Iran situation?

Do the French and German foreign ministers have a long history of taking paid work on Iranian state television too?

Therein lies the problem with Corbyn, Galloway and the rest of the simplistic, student-level, 'my enemies enemy is my friend' anti-American placard-waving persuasion. And it's interesting that he broke his usual deep cover to comment on that, but has no comment to make on the Tory leadership, Brexit, a second referendum, the economy, Love Island or anything else that's far more relevant to voters in this country. The ones outside the common room, anyway. He just can't help himself. Its been his default instinct for decades*.

Anyway... back on topic. Austerity is not an economic project. Never was. Never will be. It's a purely ideological one. To the Tories, the dismantling of the state is an article of faith. A religion. Ultimately they would like the state to consist of a selection of small offices of the state, with a minimal staff of bureaucrats that would essentially be there purely to hand out contracts to private companies to provide a basic level of purely essential services. This would allow for huge cuts to taxation for companies and the wealthy

That's why saying labour was responsible for it is a frankly ludicrous statement. Without the 13 years of Blair and Brown, the austerity project would have simply been going on for 13 years longer, with all the implications that would entail. It's that simple.

* Out of interest; if it wasn't the Iranians wot did it, who do you think did? Mossad? The CIA? The Judean Peoples Front?

That’s why saying labour was responsible for it is a frankly ludicrous statement.

Not forgetting the fact the claim is predicated on Labour being the cause of the 2007/2008 global crash which is not the case.

Do the French and German foreign ministers have a long history of taking paid work on Iranian state television too?

Which is another of Corbyn's problems, what he said on Iran recently was perfectly reasonable, but because of his History of being openly anti the UK and our allies on almost every issue it just fits right into the pattern and looks like more of the same. ...but that's probably for another thread.

Only the tories can be blamed for austerity

dont forget the lib dems who despite some orange washing had a faction rather strongly in favour as well.
As for the momentum statement.
The actions taken by new labour did weaken the UK system in a way that ensured we would be hit hard by the 2008 crisis which did in turn help lead to austerity. Especially since the 2010 policy approach was to fail to provide any alternative approach to what the tories were suggesting.

or anything else that’s far more relevant to voters in this country.

You should ask some of those six formers for some help since there are some rather ****ing obvious potential implications for the UK economy with the current escalation in tensions. Just go and fill up your car to see.

She was one of the few who predicted it.

Lots of people predicted it. But that's not the same as acting to prevent it. In the dotcom bubble everyone knew it was going to burst, but people were getting cash out of it all the time. People kept inflating it because they were playing a game of see how much money you can make before the music stops.

Given a problem that we have too much debt there are various solutions.

Bit of a leading statement....

By historical standards it's not that high as a ratio of GDP..

The cost of the interest as a % of GDP was affordable..

The policy of austerity, which shrinks the economy, reduces growth and GDP so actually makes the current debt worse situation worse. Osbourse and Mervyn King were moneterists rather then Keynsians and didn't believe in investing to grow your economy out of a recession. Instead they shrank the recession into a 10 year depression. There was no economic necessity or justification for it, they wanted an excuse to shrink the welfare state.

There was a BBC documentary on, not long back, detailing the run-up to the crash. One senior guy in the City referred too it collectively as 'the suspension of disbelief'. Everyone knew it was unsustainable and that it was going to end badly, but it was all a bit "don't mention the war"

It's alright with hindsight saying that the banks weren't properly regulated. It's obvious now that they weren't. But George Osbourne, as shadow chancellor, was forever banging on about the City being over-regulated. So just imagine the mess we'd have been in if we'd had a government who thought that?

Also worth remembering that the financial tools being developed were so complex that senior people in the banks didn't even understand them. So how do you effectively regulate that? Who do you send into these organisations to try and propose suitable regulation, given the massively complex and opaque nature of everything

I do have a certain sympathy with Brown as, on the surface at least, it looked like the City was the golden goose that was providing enormous amounts of tax revenue, so probably enjoyed fairly lax scrutiny as long as the money kept rolling in.

Obviously, given the subsequent enormous taxpayer-funded bailout, that's something of a moot point now, but you have to view it from how it looked pre-crash from the treasury. Hindsight is a wonderful thing

By historical standards it’s not that high as a ratio of GDP..

Not sure that graph supports that given the base line is chosen to include both world wars! It's twice as high as the average over the last 40 years. That's immense.

The cost of the interest as a % of GDP was affordable..

At current rate. If interest rates quadruple which is nearer to the historic norm?

People kept inflating it because they were playing a game of see how much money you can make before the music stops.

Especially since if you call stop before the bubble actually pops there is a risk of getting sacked since you aint making the profits others are.

The linking of austerity to the 08 banking crash is total horsedrop

Austerity has been invented by the tories because they want to neuter the councils who resist privatisation of services.

This country has more than enough cash swilling round to fund stuff properly but the tax system is so completely fudged we don't collect anything like the amounts we should. Every chancellor since Lawson and Lamont have decided to write arcane tax break laws to boost a business sector but this has just created the small armies of taxdodge services run by banks (Barclays wealth etc) to subvert these.

If we taxed stuff properly there would be money for councils, and we could chip away at the bank debt, but instead the deficit gets bigger and bigger

(Gordon probably should have gone harder in sequestering the assets of the failed UK banks in return for the bailout and definitely should have thrown the idiots in jail. He wasn't responsible for CDOs CDSs or the hubristic ramping of pricing and takeovers and risky lending. Mervyn King knew what was going on and did nothing about it, just gave a load of mealy mouthed flannel about how he wasn't responsible for the FSA even though he should have been calling out the dodgy behaviour and giving the FSA the tip-off on who to go target)

Austerity has been invented by the tories because they want to neuter the councils who resist privatisation of services.

Austerity was invented by the Tories as a meaningless phrase that gave them the look of being financially responsible whilst spending money like water.

When interest rates go up or if the economy slows [1] servicing that debt is not going to leave much spare cash for the good stuff we all want.

Cue people claiming we can reduce debt by borrowing more... Well we are borrowing more and it isn't working.

[1] Quite likely - we've had 10 years of growth, albeit modest so there's a downturn around the corner at some point. Unless people are claiming that boom and bust is *really* over this time.

outofbreath

Member

Cue people claiming we can reduce debt by borrowing more… Well we are borrowing more and it isn’t working.

Of course, it depends on what you spend the money you borrow on- not all spending leads to growth or savings. Borrowing money to buy a house so you don't have to rent, saves money. Borrowing money to upgrade a factory, increases revenue. Borrowing money to spend on hookers while you live in your rented house, doesn't.

Saying "we are borrowing more and it isn't working" doesn't really say anything about the concept of borrowing to reduce debt, it's just a comment on the people doing the borrowing and spending.

Saying “we are borrowing more and it isn’t working” doesn’t really say anything about the concept of borrowing to reduce debt, it’s just a comment on the people doing the borrowing and spending.

Well plenty of the borrowed money is going on classic Keynesian stuff like building needless Aircraft Carriers and subsidising the housing market, it's certainly not going on "less stimulating" (FWOABW) stuff like the disabled and social care for the Elderly.

When your monetary stops working all you're left with is the Fiscal and nobody can accuse the current Goverment of not getting stuck in on the fiscal side. (Ditto all the other EU countries and the USA for that matter, we've all been taking the same desperate steps since 2008.)

This stuff isn't some kind of clever new trick, it's bog standard economics and the Civil Service Economists plus everyone in Government or who is likely to be in Government is well aware of it.

Having said all that, stimulus at this stage of the cycle is deemed a very bad idea and the entire world thinks Trump is mad to try it now, so maybe the next government (of whatever complexion) won't be going down that road.