Just been catching up on some news and found the chart here rather interesting: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13361930
What it seems to show is that the Labour government maintained Government debt as a % of GDP at its normal level of 35-40% of GDP which compares extremely favourably with both France and Germany and many other European countries over the same period. Now I make no apologies for saying I voted for Blair and indeed Labour for every election of my adult life and I have often debated this with various work colleagues - most of whom it must be said are somewhat right of centre!
The criticism that is most often levelled at Labour/Blair is that they wasted huge amounts of money on the NHS, education, bureaucracy and generally supporting the workshy, lazy uneducated slobs of the world and so created a massive amount of national debt for no good reason. Most of my collagues fall into the higher rate tax bracket and most feel they have thus had to subsidise such profligacy by Government. I have never actually had any figures to counter this view and so most of the arguments with colleagues were always subjective. I find this chart interesting because it shows:
1. Through all of Blair's 'reign' national debt remained constant as a % of GDP and was below Germany, France and many others.
2. The sharp rise in national debt has occurred only since the 2007 credit crunch and thus would seem to be a direct result of bailing out the banks, not by profligate spending
3. The rate at which debt has been increasing as a % of GDP has remained broadly constant under both Labour and Coalition Governments since 2007.
I find it interesting (and if I'm honest) slightly surprising that Labour did manage to spend so much on improving schools, introducing the minimum wage, investing in the NHS, building millenium domes, olympic villages, bringing in paternity pay, limiting working hours and offering financial benefits to working parents for nursery places and seemingly did all of it without increasing national debt!
I guess from this I am starting to wonder if actually what at the time seem to be huge seismic shifts in Government policy in the longer run are mere blips in the overall scheme of things due to the vast inertia of the state. Does it make as much difference to the economy as we might think when a left or indeed right of center Gov't are in power?? The only thing that seems to have made any real difference to the public finances is the banking crisis and we have Thatcher to thank for the deregulation of financial markets...
Views?
Jonathan
Posted on: 19 September 2012 by George Fredrik
The hiding of public debt under the Blair/Brown administration was achieved with the PFI intitative that allowed for investments in new school and hospital buildings that did not appear on the public debt scheme, because we are all going to be paying for them as mortguaged over the next decades - in annual installments!
Never under-estimate the ability of politicians [of either stripe] to cook the books.
As one departing about Minister said to his Coalition replacement, " Don't worry. We've spent all the money!"
It is no secret that the long period of growth under Labour was financed by [hidden Gov't] borrowing and also private spending above the GNP, whether this was via the PFI route for State spending, or artificially low interest rates and a massive increase in personal debt over the period.
Truth is that many had a decade long spending party, and it is going to take as long to put the economy back on a proper course again, after the howlers commited economically by Balir and Brown, and spend thrift private people.
ATB from George
Posted on: 04 October 2012 by Mike Hughes
Never quite sure why Tories, so very keen on history, constantly fail to learn the lessons of the Great Depression. Osborne is probably the least competent chancellor in my lifetime but its of little consequence. Anyone pursuing such idiotic policies will produce the same result. Capitalism does not work by living within a budget. Sad but true.
Brown managed well for several years before making some big errors but to criticise PFI when it's exactly what the Tories had been calling for us to do for years is laughable in the face of the current privatisation of the NHS and education and local government and quangos and social security and tax and... etc.
However, on the original point. Go look at share values. Remember those massive falls the media et al were apoplectic about? They were but blips in a trend. We've long since for back to where we were as any share tracking graph can show.
Posted on: 04 October 2012 by Bruce Woodhouse
Maybe this deserves a new thread but here goes.
I rarely post about NHS politics etc but I do get weary of the repetition of the simplistic argument that where the NHS is considered it is just Labour good:Tory bad. I'm now quite involved in clinical comissioning and I see it quite differently.
Blair pushed harder than the preceding Tory administration to 'marketise' the NHS. His policies dragged in multiple private proividers to cherry-pick elective care in particular and in so doing caused considerable harms. The Labour administration did invest, but it also wasted enormous sums on management (much comissioned from the private sector) and created all sorts of spurious practices due to its obesession with badly designed targets and resultant gaming. If Labour had won the last election the NHS would have continued in these directions, and certainly the involvement of private providers at clinical and at management level would not have reduced. Not all the ideas were bad but make no mistake they were surely not all good.
From my experience working with commissioning, in my own area at least, I see no push to privatisation. We are in fact having less interaction with private providers in a variety of areas. We have no money, and we have all sorts of problems with some of the structures the new bill creates but the framework of the bill appears to be allowing local innovation and change. In some places the NHS seriously underperforms, and fails to meets intended standards, or give good value. Running those services better may need the philosophy of for-profit organisations but the essence of the NHS is free care for all. I would suggest that who provides those services is not as important than the quality and value they deliver and the crucial retention of that basic philosophy in a sustainable health economy (not the Blair-era quick fixes). After all, I'm a private provider; a self-employed practitioner who sub-contracts to the NHS, who runs his own busines and who is not paid a salary but instead from the the profits of my NHS and other work. I employ my own staff and own my own building. This is true for almost all GP's, yet we are the core (and I'd say the the jewel) of the NHS.
I have great doubts about the new NHS bill for all sorts of reasons, but the present policy does not appear to be pushing towards wholesale privatisation. Maybe this is different elsewhere in the UK. It may happen in specific areas for certain services but I believe the NHS is still essentially the same organisation it was (and it is always evolving). Labour policies were seriously flawed and wholesale change had to happen, and would not have looked so different to the coalition policies in my opinion.
Most of all, for goodness sake will politicians please not rip everything up every 5 years. These structures take time to deliver. The NHS matters hugely, it is valuable and it is expensive but it should not be a political football that suffers at the whims of successive ideologies.
When it comes to the NHS maybe all politicians are bad news!
Bruce
