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A Political Thread pt. 2

God knows how long it's going to take this nation to recover from over a decade of Tory mismanagement...
 
Rachel Reeves isn't exactly coming across as the alternative we need. Is she really Labour's top Finance guru? Heaven help us.
 
The Oggmonster said:
Rachel Reeves isn't exactly coming across as the alternative we need. Is she really Labour's top Finance guru? Heaven help us.
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It's the problem if the government announce a program you'd probably agree with.
 
Ragey Erasmus said:
God knows how long it's going to take this nation to recover from over a decade of Tory mismanagement...
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Not sure a global pandemic and the UK voting Brexit helped. Rachel Reeves and Labour don't exactly strike the average voter as being able to competently manage the economy.
 
Saintjay said:
Not sure a global pandemic and the UK voting Brexit helped. Rachel Reeves and Labour don't exactly strike the average voter as being able to competently manage the economy.
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Certainly moreso than the current shower. Realistically how much worse do you think it could have been? I am quite tired of proven incompetence / maliciousness being ignored in favour of assumed incompetence. The Tories have 12 years in power and at no point in all of that, through varying global conditions and governments, have they shown anything approaching economic competence. When was the last time Labour showed they didn't have a clue over the economy? Even after the banking crash, we had started recovering and it was Tories who then torpedoed the recovery and set it back by over a year, and when it did return it was smaller than we already had. Brown by most accounts did a lot to lead global action after the banking crash, what have any of the Tories since led on?

Even using historical data, the Tories are worse on ever count. More years in deficit, larger deficits, lower growth, lower employment, pretty much every economic measure they have historically performed worse than Labour. So they don't have a good current track record, they don't have a good historical record so what exactly is the basis for thinking they are right now the better option?
 
I'm not saying they are. Brown was Chancellor ten years prior to the crash. He was PM 2008\9 when the recession hit and was voted out a year later 2010. Some economics believe he should have been better prepared. Selling off gold reserves not being a great move. The conservatives then inherited a horror show economy. It appears Labour will this time around. Rightly or wrongly I think Corbyns economic policy for the last election was widely mocked and rejected by the public. At the moment as opposition it just strikes me as easy to shout "Your rubbish" Until Labour show they have a better, fully costed way of getting us out this mess i don't know if they can. Would Labour have managed the economy better during the pandemic or during Brexit, we will never know.
 
Saintjay said:
I'm not saying they are. Brown was Chancellor ten years prior to the crash. He was PM 2008\9 when the recession hit and was voted out a year later 2010. Some economics believe he should have been better prepared. Selling off gold reserves not being a great move. The conservatives then inherited a horror show economy. It appears Labour will this time around. Rightly or wrongly I think Corbyns economic policy for the last election was widely mocked and rejected by the public. At the moment as opposition it just strikes me as easy to shout "Your rubbish" Until Labour show they have a better, fully costed way of getting us out this mess i don't know if they can. Would Labour have managed the economy better during the pandemic or during Brexit, we will never know.
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Bearing in mind the move towards mass, unregulated banking was initiated under the Tories, as was the destruction of our manufacturing sector, the privatising of utilities and rails, the mass sell off of council housing and massive cuts in new council housing being built. These are all things that came to bite us in the arse. The gold sale was a poor decision in hindsight but the upper estimate of £7 billion still pales in comparison to the estimated £30 billion of damage Truss dished out in just a few weeks in office with absolutely nothing positive to offset it.

Corbyns policies were outdated but, as we seem to need to say many times, The Labour party is not Corbyn and only Corbyn. If you are going to define an entire parties policies by a current back bencher who never got into power then that implies you have nothing against the actual current team. Starmer is not Corbyn, Labour is not Corbyn.

As for the fully costed measures, they have repeatedly said they have them. As for if Labour could have done a better job, it's debatable. However the facts we do have are that the Tories have made a right mess of it. I would ask, after Truss and Johnson, how exactly do you suppose we realistically could have done much worse? Truss was days away from driving the entire economy into a meltdown. I don't think anyone is saying Labour will walk in and everything will be fine, it won't. What is being said is the Tories have had plenty of chances and failed at every turn. As for things like handling the pandemic, I'm reasonably certain a lot of the dodgy contracts that went out to friends of the Tories would not have happened under Labour. There was a study done a while ago that showed on average, right leaning governments in the developed world have a significantly higher level of corruption than left leaning ones. I'm also pretty sure that a large chunk of the mess relating to Brexit would have been handled much better without the dogma, belligerence and outright hypocrisy the Tories approached it with. Generally you can only be belligerent if you are the big player at the negotiating table and the other side has more to lose than you do. We were the smaller party but went about it like we were vastly bigger and that was off the back of jingoistic nonsense, something far less prevalent in Labour.

So TL;DR, yes I do think Labour would have handled it better. Corbyn may be the exception but Starmer & Milliband I believe would have definitely done better than their counterparts at the time.
 
With regard to the gold selling, I was led to believe the poorest decision was announcing he was going to do it first.
 
Saintjay said:
I'm not saying they are. Brown was Chancellor ten years prior to the crash. He was PM 2008\9 when the recession hit and was voted out a year later 2010. Some economics believe he should have been better prepared. Selling off gold reserves not being a great move. The conservatives then inherited a horror show economy. It appears Labour will this time around. Rightly or wrongly I think Corbyns economic policy for the last election was widely mocked and rejected by the public. At the moment as opposition it just strikes me as easy to shout "Your rubbish" Until Labour show they have a better, fully costed way of getting us out this mess i don't know if they can. Would Labour have managed the economy better during the pandemic or during Brexit, we will never know.
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In hindsight Browns handling of the crash was actually spot on. Yes he bailed out the banks but the banks paid it all back and it saved a much bigger crash. When Labour were ousted Government borrowing Osborne went up to record levels, much of this was due to stupidly low interest rates which for the last 12 years have been kept artificially low this means the main weapon in fighting a recession (lowering interest rates) was off the table.

The situation we find ourselves in today is considerably worse than what I remember in 2008. Our debt is huge and interest rates are increasing, inflation is almost 1980s levels which for those like me who remember it sends a very cold chill down our spine, despite producing 50% of our own gas we are being crippled with high energy costs that no-one seems to be able to explain. In the 80s we were still manufacturing and exporting particularly tech as we (surprisingly) were a world leader in tech. We don't have that now. The last Labour government did a better job of the economy than the current Tory one. Borrowing was lower, growth was consistent and when the **** hit the fan in 2008 the government was able to step in. We now have record debt, record interest rates, low to no growth and a mini budget that almost wiped us out.

Who would you prefer as chancellor: Gordon Brown or Hunt?
 
I can't say for Hunt he's not had the job long enough. Would Brown have done a better job under the umbrella of Brexit, war in Ukraine and the pandemic. It's not possible to say. Would Reeves be better again its not yet possible to say. So who would I prefer i honestly have no idea.
When Labour show the costings etc and Hunt has had a run I'll have a better idea. So yeah fence sitting at the moment.
I'm also balancing this with fairness to workers, better pay and conditions, support for those on strike. With little real support from the Labour front bench and the Tory government hating Unions in general.
 
Saintjay said:
I can't say for Hunt he's not had the job long enough. Would Brown have done a better job under the umbrella of Brexit, war in Ukraine and the pandemic. It's not possible to say. Would Reeves be better again its not yet possible to say. So who would I prefer i honestly have no idea.
When Labour show the costings etc and Hunt has had a run I'll have a better idea. So yeah fence sitting at the moment.
I'm also balancing this with fairness to workers, better pay and conditions, support for those on strike. With little real support from the Labour front bench and the Tory government hating Unions in general.
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I think the situation with Covid, Brexit and Ukraine have been made worse by high government borrowing in the last 12 years. I doubt Brown would have allowed the debt to get to that level in the first place but then many countries have seriously increased their debt over the last decade so who knows?
 
Call me pedantic but Alistair Darling was Chancellor during the 2008 crisis. Always reminds me of Blackadder Goes Forth - Don't slouch Darling. How do I look Darling? Don't be revolting Darling. That said, it was clear that Brown even as PM was taking a hands on approach in dealing with the crisis and was considered to be taking a leading role globally.

IMO the two PMs who have ****** up this country are David Cameron and Boris Johnson. May came in after after Cameron resigned but she was just a caretaker overseeing the Brexit deadlock in Parliament until Johnson took over.
 


A long watch but does highlight how this problem extends far beyond Covid and the Ukraine war and also how we are faring worse than others who have gone through the same crises.
 
The Oggmonster said:
Call me pedantic but Alistair Darling was Chancellor during the 2008 crisis. Always reminds me of Blackadder Goes Forth - Don't slouch Darling. How do I look Darling? Don't be revolting Darling. That said, it was clear that Brown even as PM was taking a hands on approach in dealing with the crisis and was considered to be taking a leading role globally.

IMO the two PMs who have ****** up this country are David Cameron and Boris Johnson. May came in after after Cameron resigned but she was just a caretaker overseeing the Brexit deadlock in Parliament until Johnson took over.
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Bloody hell that's true. Completely forgot about Darling. Suppose although Brown wasn't the chancellor at the time thats all everyone remembers him as.
 
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