Would take an economist or two to determine if the countries been

Comment on Why I’ll Never Vote Conservative at a General Election by David.

Would take an economist or two to determine if the countries been run relatively well since Labour came to power.

Since you and I are not economists, we have to go on what others with a better understanding of economics say.

Places like the National Institute of Economic and Social Research https://www.niesr.ac.uk/

And the NIESC have published the following (yesterday I believe):

Economy growth ‘better with Labour’

The UK has improved its standing for economic growth among top nations under Labour even though output has expanded at a slightly slower pace than under the previous period of Conservative rule, research has suggested.

A study by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) found UK output has grown at 2% a year under Labour, compared with 2.2% in the period from 1979 to 1997.

However, the group said when the figures are adjusted for population increases, Britain has risen to second place in a table of growth rates among the world’s top seven developed nations under Labour, from third place under the Tories.

The UK also rose from third to second place in rankings of productivity growth, although for actual levels of productivity it remained in fourth place below France, Germany and the US.

Meanwhile, the number of people working as a proportion of those aged 15 to 64 years is higher than in 1997, but still ranks fourth among the seven countries.

NIESR criticised Labour, saying the party had not run the country “in a sustainable way”.

Director Martin Weale said: “Labour has delivered an improvement in Britain’s productivity performance relative to other large economies and this relative improvement has survived the recession.

“But the labour market has not done as well as one might have hoped and performance during the recession has been disappointing.”

He said that a “higher level of saving is needed if income is to be sustainable”.

NIESR added talk among the parties of ring-fenced spending on certain public services “make it harder to resolve the fiscal legacy of the current Government”.

I find the above a balanced summary of Labour over the past 13 years. Doing quite well, but could do better.

That’s nothing like how you have described Labour as a kid in a candy shop and similar statements that make it sound like a bunch of buffoons took power and just spent, spent, spent with no thought of how it effects the economy!

Come on Charles you know it’s not been awful living in Britain since Labour came to power. You can argue Labour could and should have done better and I’ll fully agree with you, but it’s not been an unmitigated disaster as people like yourself like to make out.

IMO I think it would have been far worse under the Conservatives, the other day even David Cameron admitted the Conservatives were unelectable in 1997, imagine had they stayed in power until today! That was the whole point of this post and I don’t see that many differences between the Tories of 13 years ago and today: Ken Clark for example was in the last Tory government and he’s still at the forefront of the Tories.

Labour was aiming for sustainable growth to stop the boom and bust cycle that the Conservatives presided over (two recessions in a row under them!).

I fully accept like the vast majority of the rest of the world Gordon Brown missed the problems that caused the banking crisis, which led to the credit crunch, which caused the recession…

I’ll never understand how Gordon Brown (who I think has been very good on the economy) and thousands of other economists who advise world leaders missed this as I saw a problem coming with the housing market, we actually held off buying a house for over three years for this concern (housing bubble and housing price crash) only to buy at the blinking peak of house prices (couldn’t keep waiting). I still think house prices are too high, they haven’t dropped nearly enough.

I also think half the UK population knew house prices were unrealistically high, but didn’t fully understand why, we heard of ridiculous mortgage deals of 10x earnings etc… but never imagined just how retarded, greedy and reckless the bankers had been with giving out mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them and then selling them on to other banks as ‘safe’ investments!!!!

For me Gordon Browns only redeeming feature on the banking crisis is none of the other major economies saw it coming and acted, Conservatives didn’t see it coming, only the Lib Dems Vince Cable had an inkling of the problem that was developing and even he’s admitted he didn’t see it as bad as it really was. So it’s difficult to blame Gordon Brown for missing this when no one ‘important’ noticed the problem AND acted on it. Still, not impressed though and he’s lost some credibility in my eyes, though still better than anything the Tories can offer.

David