Ed clear on Gordon's record

Hang on Nick. I watched this and I was utterly astonished at how gently Andrew Marr treated Milliband. I could have destroyed his entire argument in about ten seconds flat by pointing out that household debt went through the £1 trillion level in 2006 well before the so called global crash, the trade gap was already at record levels, house prices were soaring and so on and so forth.

Marr needs to grow a pair.

Ed Miliband defends Brown's record, there's a surprise! Miliband is a Brownite through and through and until he starts distancing himself from some Brown's worst decisions I, for one, am not going to take him seriously. Iron Chancellor indeed. Iron with the poor - the 10p tax debacle - soft on the rich and powerful - his ludicrously soft 'regulatory' regime. And what about his privatisation deals maquerading as 'off book' PFI projects. These things, and a lot more besides were and continue to be a disgrace and if Ed Miliband thinks otherwise then he will be a long time in the wilderness.
Regards, etc.

Until Ed Milliband and (new?) Labour accept that they made many mistakes in government: participating in wars, wielding power with complete arrogance, expenses, being dishonest about immigration etc. and that a wholly new approach is needed then Labour won't (deservedly) get anywhere.

The economy is only part of the story. Effective opposition please, Mr Milliband.

"...he stated that Labour had not spent too much in government - spelling out his answer to me at his last news conference....".

The IPPR agrees. It has issued a paper giving details and suggesting that George Osborne's claims that Labour's profligate spending leaves him no alternative but to cut deep and fast "....does not stack up...".....see here...

https://braveheart-braveheartsblog.blogspot.com/

"The Labour leader said that his predecessor should have acknowledged before the election that his plan involved spending cuts.
However, he stated that Labour had not spent too much in government"
Like miliband is doing now then?
slating cuts and reform of the government, but when pressed on what alternative is left, has nothing to say.
telling the voters of oldham and saddleworth that the cuts are wrong and a mistake, days later telling the whole country that cuts would have come under a labour government had they won the last election!

"His argument is that Britain's borrowing was manageable before the crash and only became unsustainable thanks to it - as happened all over the world"
labour/ ed miliband are misleading the public.
brown's labour government removed the safeguards put in place to stop a crash, from their first day in office in 1997!
safeguards that had worked very well for years, yet brown didnt trust the BofE to run independantly, which is why he gave their powers to his cronies in the FSA, indirect control whilst giving the perception that they were free to act without political intervention, which they were not and did not do.
"it happened all over the world" - not entirely accurate there either!
the crash didnt throw even all our banks into chaos, lloyds were doing fine until brown's intervention!

"Brown believed that voters feared big tax rises under Labour because they did not believe the party could control spending. He set out to prove that they were wrong "
more than 100 new taxes brought in by brown, big rises in national insurance, after "assuring" the british public he wouldnt prior to one election.
when he need more money, he simply borrowed it instead of taxing, and when that failed he printed more money.

its worth remembering:
if miliband thought that brown was wrong to deny cuts before the last election, why is he denying and opposing them now?
if brown was planning cuts before the last election and not telling the public, miliband knew this to be true, why not say something then?

i dont think miliband knows what hes doing.. much like the last labour government

Actually, I'm not convinced even a Conservative government would have spent less during the recession. One of the things that made the recession so bad was that a lot of people in the private sector feared for their jobs and hung on to their money. The last thing we needed was everyone in the public sector fearing for their jobs and hanging on to their money as well. That could have turned a recession into a depression. (Okay, it would have helped if the Labour Government had seen the credit crunch coming in the first place, but no-one else did so I don't believe a Conservative government would have been better prepared.)

Anyway, I'm not too bothered about what Ed Miliband says the Labour Party should or shouldn't have done in 2008 and 2009. I want to know what the Labour Party plans to do now. It's now been over three months since the leadership election, and I'm still waiting.

I'm with wee-scamp on Miliband being given an easy time.

Heard him on the Kate Silverton Radio 5 show being given an easy ride on the 50% tax band. There's a story in today's Sunday Times about professional footballers avoiding tax which states that players have been 'rushing' to take up schemes since the 50% tax band came in. Profesional foortablers are not alone as many entrepreneurs are now taking up schemes and taking actions they never did before because the 50% rate is seen by them as too much. On the same theme, there was a story in the Telegraph in the week which estimates that the "non-Dom tax levy" has cost the UK £800million a year more in tax than it has brought in because 16,000 non-doms have simply left the UK since it was introduced.

Miliband needs to be challenged. Does he see these increased tax charges as a way to bring in money (in which case he's clearly wrong) or does he see them as ideoligically 'right' in which case do we want someone in power who is so bound to ideology that he's willing to loose tax just to make a point.

Who in the BBC is going to challenge Miliband on these points? You don't even have to think up the questions, I've laid them out for you.

For supporters of the government or, more likely, opponents of Labour, Miliband is fantastic.

He demonstrates, along with a number of left-wing blogs, that Labour still does not 'get it'. There has been no mea culpa. By the looks of things, none is forthcoming. And without that catharsis, the party cannot move on.

There is still plenty of anger about Labour's record, despite what some might believe. It's easy to point to the riots in London and the proposed strikes throughout the country and say that people are angry at the coalition. Undeniably, some people are.

But not everyone is a firebrand. There was more anger when Labour was in power, but instead of smashing things up people voiced their frustration at the ballot box.

Not only does Milliband look and act like Bernie Winters, his comic rendition of how Labour didn't destroy the economy is nearly as funny. Marr was exceptionally gentle with him, allowing him to ramble on in an attempt to excuse the incompetence of the Labour government he was part of. He looked and acted like one of the about to be fired candidates on "The Apprentice', perhaps he should start a telecommunications company on the Isle of Man, because that is about what he appears capable of. He seems to be as competent on finance as his shadow chancellor, unable to understand the figures , but able to repeat them parrot fashion from the briefings he has been given by his spinmasters.

New Labour failed on taxation planning, spending, pension reform, the pursuit of peace, and city regulation.

Otherwise, they did a pretty good job.

In my view they did spend too much in government, also the local West Midlands BBC NEWS covers lots on what cuts will do locally but not why are we spending tax on this?

It would be better to have a debate on what is government for?

His argument is that Britain's borrowing was manageable before the crash and only became unsustainable thanks to it - as happened all over the world. America has not got a deficit, he said, because Gordon Brown spent too much. No one can argue with that.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes but Gordon Brown failed to insure us against the inevitable collapse in the same way that the US failed. No it didn't happen all over the world, Canada Australia and Germany to name a few have survived the recession quite well.

"America has not got a deficit, he said, because Gordon Brown spent too much."
Very true, but it is a lame and pointless comment. It was intended to suggest to those with less critical minds that because other economies collapsed our own problems can't be Gordon Browns fault. This is typical of the sort of loose logic and flawed arguments that politicians are allowed to get away with all the time.
America got in a mess because they managed their economy recklessly and allowed rampant fraud to go unchecked. We got in a mess for exactly the same reasons. The language used by Ed Milliband tries to exonnerate Labour simply because someone else screwed up too.
If only interviewers would focus on hounding politicians for this type of flawed logic or other false syllogisms they would quickly burrow down into what they are trying to avoid admitting to. It's only then that interviews become worth doing in the first place.

It is disappointing if Miliband really believes GB got the economic policy right because at yesterday's meeting he clearly said the reliance on skilful management of private enterprise to reduce poverty through the benefits system did not work. He talked of jobs, investment and a living wage.

Demand equality 5

"i dont think miliband knows what hes doing.. much like the last labour government"

I think Mr.Milliband knows perfectly well what he is doing.He is bringing into the open the question of UK debt and deficit prior to the slump.It has to be discussed,otherwise the coalition mantra of the mess we inherited from Labour goes unchallenged.

The facts are these,according to the IFS,(2008),Labour entered the recession with a deficit of 3.5% of GDP,and lower debt.The deficit was roughly equavalent to the one inherited from the previous government,the debt was lower.

Were these ideal circumstances,of course not,but the money went to pay for underfunded public services and bring them close to European levels.Should the money have been spent? That`s a matter of political priority.Critics think it should have been put away towards the cost of the next recession.I disagree,government`s have other priorities than just maintaining the stability of a market economy.

The soaring debt and deficit were mainly the product of a collapse of private capital.To pretend otherwise is dishonest.The objection isn`t just moral but economic.Unless an accurate diagnosis of a problem is made,how can it be properly treated? The speed and intensity of deficit reduction in an uncertain economic climate is reckless and ideological.

The crisis was caused by a collapse in private capital.Until the right can talk about capitalism,it can`t talk meaningfully about anything else.

It saddens me to learn that the new Labour leader is so unradical in his thinking. With popular opinion so against the banksters, now would be the ideal time for the left to talk seriously about monetary reform. It's ridiculous that sovereign nations create new money by borrowing, at interest, from private banks - all the more so when they give it straight back to the banks in the form of a bailout - it's utter madness. Our taxes will be paying off this interest from now until the end of time and going straight into the pockets of the greedy idiots who got us into this mess in the first place.

The alternative is to have the treasury create debt-free money by fiat and spend it into the economy on public projects (infrastructure, health, education), while banks - who are currently allowed to magic up money by lending more than they have in deposits - would be forced to only lend what they have.

It's not exactly a radical idea: In its short life time, the united states has flipped between government and private money supplies six times, with private banks and wealthy industrialists, unsurprisingly, always lobbying hard for the latter. It's about time Labour started acting like a champion of the people and offering us a viable alternative.

I hope you've enjoyed this rant, to find out more see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U71-KsDArFM&feature=channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_doYllBk5No

9. At 12:26pm on 16 Jan 2011, kaybraes wrote:
"Not only does Milliband look and act like Bernie Winters, his comic rendition of how Labour didn't destroy the economy is nearly as funny. Marr was exceptionally gentle with him, allowing him to ramble on in an attempt to excuse the incompetence of the Labour government he was part of. He looked and acted like one of the about to be fired candidates on "The Apprentice', perhaps he should start a telecommunications company on the Isle of Man, because that is about what he appears capable of. He seems to be as competent on finance as his shadow chancellor, unable to understand the figures , but able to repeat them parrot fashion from the briefings he has been given by his spinmasters."

Style is a problem for Mr.Milliband,I found him hard to warm to.Comparing him to a candidate in "The Apprentice" is apt,he has a debating style of presentation rather than the assured journey around the outside of an argument shown by Mr.Cameron.

He is North London,not West London. He doesn`t pretend to know the truth of an argument in advance of evidence,his hestancy is genuine not rhetorical.

He is gauche,but highly intelligent and learns fast.Where he scores is on substance rather than form.The debate on rhe causes and consequences of the deficit has to be brought into the open,otherwise the myth of inevitability surrounding the speed and intensity of cuts will remain unchallenged.

One lars Melvang

"But not everyone is a firebrand. There was more anger when Labour was in power, but instead of smashing things up people voiced their frustration at the ballot box."


And long may they continue to do so!

Quite right bryhers.

If the coalition gets it wrong, I firmly expect them to get a pasting at the election. That's how it should be. No-one should have made their mind up about the government yet; there's a whole lot more governing to do, as it were. It's perfectly right that a government should be punished for its failings at the ballot box (e.g. Major in 1997 and Brown in 2010).

It's perfectly wrong, however, that society in general (police, street cleaners, office workers, those trying to go on holiday, etc) should be punished by the unedifying actions of a vicious minority who made up their mind about Cameron and co long before they came into office and are now deciding to riot and strike at will.

What about Ed Miliband being economical wih the truth in the Andrew Marr interview:
'ANDREW MARR: 'You say they’re going to drive this country into a double-dip recession.'

ED MILIBAND: 'No, I don’t say that. I’ve never said that.'


Which is interesting, because last year, Mr Miliband accused the Coalition of implementing "harsh cuts to public investment which go faster and deeper than needed and will damage the economy, risking a double-dip recession.”

Those words come from an entry on his website, which is signed “Ed.”

More on Ed 'Double dip' Miliband here - https://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2011/01/ed-double-dip-miliband.html

Every tory is now jumping on the bandwagon of the mess that Labour left the country in.

Not being funny or anything, but it wasnt in such a great state in 97 after the beloved Iron Lady and her cronies had been increasing social mobility by selling everything and putting us all on the dole was it?

Mr Cameron will now finish what the pre 97 government started.

As far as the post at #10 is concerned, although the pursuit of peace argument is very valid, have you forgotten the Northern Ireland Peace Process?

With opinions like yours being bandied about, all i can say is Thank God your Welsh and I aint!!

:-)

It saddens me to learn that the new Labour leader is so unradical in his thinking. With popular opinion so against the banksters, now would be the ideal time for the left to talk seriously about monetary reform. It's ridiculous that sovereign nations create new money by borrowing, at interest, from private banks - all the more so when they give it straight back to the banks in the form of a bailout - it's utter madness. Our taxes will be paying off this interest from now until the end of time and going straight into the pockets of the greedy idiots who got us into this mess in the first place.

The alternative is to have the treasury create debt-free money by fiat and spend it into the economy on public projects (core industries, infrastructure, health, education), while banks - who are currently allowed to magic up money by lending more than they have in deposits - would be forced to only lend what they have. This would allow the government to directly control the money supply thus allowing it to better control inflation.

As it is, the banks, despite their ineptitude, are still in control of our money supply. Without comprehensive monetary reform it's only a matter of time until they return to old patterns of behaviour. They'll swell the money supply again by leveraging themselves up to the eyeballs, lending 40 times what they have in deposits to anyone they can get to sign a loan agreement. We'll see another boom if not in the property market then in something else, and we'll see another bust, and with banks that are bigger now than they were before the present crisis, we'll hear the same cries of "too big to fail" and the taxpayer will underwrite yet another period of greed-fuelled recklessness.

Granting the government the right to create debt-free money represents a way of ending this madness and it isn't even a particularly radical idea: In its short life time, the united states has flipped between government and private money supplies six times, with private banks and wealthy industrialists (unsurprisingly) always lobbying hard for the latter. The UK has had debt-free money creation in the past as well, and on the Island of Guernsey they still do.

It's about time Labour started acting like a champion of the people and offering us a viable alternative. If they wrestle back control of the money supply from private hands they might just be able to belatedly deliver on Brown's promise of an end to boom and bust.

I hope you've enjoyed this rant, to find out more head over to YouTube and watch the excellent documentaries "The Secret of Oz" and "Money as Debt II Promises Unleashed", oh and read "Whoops! Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay". Then go and lobby your MP!

Ed Milliband would have good presentation at a press conference. Press conferences can be rehearsed as are PQMs. If I want acting I go to the theatre. What I am looking for is political substance. I have read your piece above and I watched Andrew Marr this morning. I am still looking for political substance.

Andrew Marr allowed Ed Milliband a fairly smooth ride which is only reasonable as he is new to the job and still feeling his way. However, despite this courtesy Ed came across at times as very confusing. I thought that perhaps in conversation he feels he can speak more frankly than he can when addressing journalists, but concluded that since his main sponsor for the leadership was Neil Kinnock he is just as muddled as dear Neil: nice bloke to have as a neighbour or have a drink with but not much else was on show.

It is not enough for Labour to blame the crisis just on the Yanks and the banks. In 1997 Labour changed the regulatory system for managing the City from a three hundred year old tried and tested methodology to the Tripartite system where responsibility is shared between the Bank of England, the FSA and The Treasury. By 2005 it was obvious to even the casual observer that there was an economic bubble forming and the top of the market should have been called then. But nobody did as nobody was in charge and our friend Mr. Brown was more concerned about being leader than a wise Chancellor. The Labour Party has to explain this failure as well as its failure to produce a balanced fiscal budget since 2001.

I am sorry but Labour and its spokepersons can wriggle and writhe as much as they like but the optimism that brought them into power in 1997 was destroyed by them and them alone. With apologies to Johnny Cash we are looking at another version of the Wreck of the Old '97 in which it is the taxpayer who has been scalded to death by the steam.

Prior to the election I remarked that after its pending defeat Labour has to go back to its campaigning roots to reform and renew itself. Labour is failing to do that and seems to be thinking that all it needs is another political fix to be back in power. I am sorry but what this country badly needs is a political party that can face up to the harsh reality of debt, chronic overspending and the crying need to rebalance the economy so that we can eventually have all the things Labour rightly articulates as necessary. What we can't afford is politicians who are unable to learn from their immediate history.

For my mind I would prefer a National Coalition at the moment and a national debate as to our priorities than the current pointless cat fight. We have to honestly address our problems and seek a way forward.

Sadly, as it stands Ed doesn't have a prayer unless he manages to break out of the current political framework. Somehow I can't see that happening without a process of confession and regret. I am afraid all our current political leaders are wanting in that particular department as well so I trust he does not take these comments personally..

21. At 2:21pm on 16 Jan 2011, Theunforgivingminute wrote:

With opinions like yours being bandied about, all i can say is Thank God your Welsh and I aint!!

=========================================================

Ah well, not to worry ... I suppose it was inevitable really.

Like everyone else, I'm just expressing my opinion. That's the whole point of democratic debate.

The sycophantic BBC have clearly decided that Labour will win the next election and are setting out their stall now for the licence fee. Why else are they giving the left such an easy time?
Labour didn't promise it - remember they actually abolished boom and bust.
Good that Ed is consistent with the rest of them - "It's not our fault Guv." the Labour party anthem.

The Tories have a history of caution in the good times and have not spent up to the hilt in the past, though that is now changing. They are left with a black hole in finances and a public sector which effectively runs the country through weight of numbers. We'll soon be left with a communist system which failed in Russia, though Putin wants it back.

So Miliband is saying that it is perfectly ok to be billions in debt, as long as there isn't a worldwide crash?

Those who accuse Labour of tax and spend have got it badly wrong - if only they were!

The real tragedy is that they are a spend and spend party, which inevitably leaves the country billions in debt.

And when the inevitable downturn comes - as it regularly does for any government or country - we all pay the price.

5. At 11:59am on 16 Jan 2011, demand_equality wrote:


its worth remembering:
if miliband thought that brown was wrong to deny cuts before the last election, why is he denying and opposing them now?
if brown was planning cuts before the last election and not telling the public, miliband knew this to be true, why not say something then?

i dont think miliband knows what hes doing.. much like the last labour government
=============================================================================
Well, firstly, Milliband (and the last labour gevernment) believes halving the deficet in 4 years, the tory led government belives the deficet should be wiped out in 4 years. That's the difference and why Milliband opposes the tory cuts and not labour ones. There's also a ton of other stuff like labour taxing bankers bonuses and tories not ect.

For further reading look at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12091432

Milliband is intelligent. The poster that said he could 'destroy' milliband's arguments in seconds is living in fantasy of sell delusion and ego

typical Tax and Spend

Its my money...the govt should only use for basic functions not elaborate wars and multi billion dollar G20 Conferences

Its a Disgrace the David Cameron said Vat will remain at 20% even into the Next Parliament

Its my money not the governments .

Some one remind Milliband of the Structural Deficit before the crash and that Labours policy of chucking money at every problem is not the Solution. Govt Spending should not have risen beyond the rate of inflation from 2005

Although I would have taken Milliband to task of some of the things he said, I think that Andrew Marr's approach of politely letting the interviewee make a fool of himself can be also effective. I've sufficient confidence in the British Public to credit them with noticing when they get flannel and lies, a confidence which Ed Milliband does not seem to share, rather like his predecessor, when he continues to defect questions and spout inconsequential nonsense.

Did I sy "Lies"? Well, yes. he accused the Tories (or did he say Coalition? - - Tories is usually the expression in his attempts to steal supporters from the Lib Dems) of only cutting and not working also for improving job prospects. That was not true and to suggest that any party would have that as their agenda is insulting to the viewers and dishonest nonsense.

Andrew, if you're reading this, please pick up on that type of thing next time.

9. At 12:26pm on 16 Jan 2011, kaybraes wrote:

Not only does Milliband look and act like Bernie Winters

=============================

I never thought of this, now I cannot get the picture out of my head. Absolutely brilliant


I am afraid Ed showed his (and to be fair Andrew Marr's) ineptitude after about a minute of the interview when faced with a question about the public spending being 42% of GDP before crash Ed dismissed it with some crack about lets not talk about numbers.

Ed lets talk about numbers. Just before crash Labour was spending 5-7% of GDP more than it should of. Historically spending in a recession rises by 6-8% of GDP (compared to the point just before a recession) so in late 2007 Labour had already spent all of the cushion that a sensible govt ought to build up in good times.

Even when Ed uses numbers he is incapable of putting them into context - eg Labour in 2007 was spending less than Tories in 1997 and had a lower deficit (both true by the way). In 1997 Tories were only a couple of years from the end of the previous recession and were bring down spending and debt rather quickly. In 2007 alledgedly we were 10 years into good times without a cloud on the horizon, yet spending was not a lot lower than 1997 and the deficit was already on the rise.

I wonder if Nick Robinson has read the article by Michael Ballast elsewhere on the BBC site:
https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7733794.stm

For those of us who have read the article, Nick's arguments seem increasinly simplistic.

According to DebtBombshell the UK government debt is just short of 1 trillion pounds:
https://www.debtbombshell.com/

The bank bailout accounts for £850 billion of this, so debt becomes a much more reasonable £150 billion. We can assume that much of the public debt will be repaid when the bank shares are sold.

The only thing that Labour failed to do while in power was re-regulate the banks, and pursue full employment.

The sad thing is that politicians of all persuasion have been left behind by the voters. The modern voter is a far more sophisticated creature than his/her 1960's counterpart. We are not as tribal as we used to be and, thanks to the internet, we better understand what is happening in the world. Wool no longer obscures our vision.

And yet, politicians seem to believe that, by denying (or failing to recognize) the obvious, we can be fooled into supporting them. That approach won't work anymore.

If a politician said:-

"We were wrong on ...."

"We made a mistake when we introduced ..."

"We should not have ..." etc. etc.

"But we have learned from that experience and will do better in the future", I would be persuaded to consider the policies being promoted more seriously. As it is, we have this stupefying attitude where the admission of any failure is to be avoided at all costs.

Come on politicians, catch up with us - we're adults!

I am having to choose my words carefully because I am about to make a blanket criticism which usually brings the fire of the Gods down on your head,viz Sayeeda Warsi and right wing Tories.

So many blogs, while coherent and intelligible, present their ideas without evidence. Taking a random cross section,Demand Equality
says that Mr.Milliband misled the pubic with his statement that Britain had manageable debt before the crisis. If he did,facts and figures please, and what is meant by manageable debt?/ Politically incorrect writes that Gordon Brown failed to insure us against the inevitable collapse.If it was inevitable, then why didn`t Mervyn King,Bernanke,the IMF or the conservative party see it coming? And does this refer to an inevitable collapse in government finance? or international capitalism?

There is a saying in the history of science,could be by Einsten,"Theories without facts are vacuous,facts without theories are blind." A theory is a testable explanation of the way that facts are related.Without an explanatory theory,facts are random,i.e.blind

What many of these blogs represent are theories about the relationship between politics and economics presented without supporting evidence.They are vacuous.

Gordon Brown presided over some of the highest public spending partly financed by his innovative NI and tax rules and partly by borrowing. Like Tony his public presentation was managed- iron chancellor not in fact- his lack of demonstrable prudence evident in the lack of any clear things that got better. The health service is as much unmanaged now as before, education in as rudderless. For allthe extra spending he contrived there is little to show but a large bill.
The banks didn't help and on that I can't help thinking that the unsecured houses at the bottom of the pile could have been bought outright and their loans cleared for a lot less than the billions that the banks received.
I hope the coalition will reduce the debt significantly and even if they have no other legacy than that, they will have been more successful for those few that actually work to pay the tax and NI than most. They also have to balance their books.

Why are you so sickeningly biased towards labour and miliband. The party that squandered prosperity and crushed any respect Britain had in the World. Are you, like so many other of your oppos so convinced that the public are too thick to remember or even realise the damage that these people did to so many aspects of British life? Why is it? Where does this bias come from? I would really like to Know. Is it something to do with when blair swept the bbc out a few years ago and filled it with his own apparachnics? If so please let us all move on. I been around long enough to see labour drag this country to its knees twice. What with you, robert [i am so majesterial] peston and dimbleby filling his programme with carefully picked labourites, where does a thick peasant like me look to find out the truth of where we're at and where we're going in this country? Or have i got it wrong?

At last someone - even if as dubious a someone as Miliband - has said openly that the cause of current problems lies firmly in the hands of the financial institutions!

But now is the time to force them to face up to their responsibility. Whilst it is sensible to get our house in order regarding deficits, there is no earthly reason why the only people NOT to suffer any austerity, any reduction in what they might otherwise expect to receive, are the very ones who caused it.

I don't pay taxes to give financial institutions profits, I pay them so that the government may have the wherewithal to meet their obligations to the citizens of this country by providing services. So pay them back what has been borrowed, not a penny more, not a penny less. NO INTEREST!

"However, he stated that Labour had not spent too much in government - spelling out his answer to me at his last news conference.

His argument is that Britain's borrowing was manageable before the crash and only became unsustainable thanks to it - as happened all over the world"



Nick, this total denial!

If this is acceptable behaviour, one might draw the conclusion, that borrowing during growth should be repeated in the future? Does he advocate this?

Is this a modification to Keynesian economics, where you borrow during recession and then just continue borrowing during growth? Based on this logic, is there a time when you don't borrow?

And, why on earth did a 'prudent' government need to borrow all this money anyway?

The BBC gives Ed Miliband a free ride to re-write history.

What a surprise - NOT!

We consistently hear about "the biggest peace-time deficit ever". Whether you agree with the reasons for it or not we have actually been at war in Iraq and now Afghanistan for some time! War costs and plenty of people have been quick to criticise the equipment made available to our forces. So I think this point should be fought far more by Labour as I don't think they have used half of the ammunition available to them against the CONDEMnation!
Labout left a mess for the coalition? Whoever was in control would have left a similar situation after such a global crisis, simply convenience shopping by CameronCo. After only 8 months in office what kind of mess has he already created and the year hasn't even begun. David may be asking the Blue Fairy (Mrs T) to be a real Prime Minister but we know what she did! And in a century where things seem to now always be bigger and bolder than ever before God help us in the summer when even more people will be bothered to take to the streets.

"At 4:47pm on 16 Jan 2011, Lucas wrote:

According to DebtBombshell the UK government debt is just short of 1 trillion pounds:
https://www.debtbombshell.com/

The bank bailout accounts for £850 billion of this, so debt becomes a much more reasonable £150 billion. We can assume that much of the public debt will be repaid when the bank shares are sold."

======================

Sorry, this is just plain wrong.

The website referred to makes it plain. "The bank bailouts account for £134.5 billion of net debt". The country has been spending more than it should for decades. This year alone our national debt will increase by £167bn. last year it increased by £170bn.

All the cuts announced are to simply peg back spending to roughly equal revenue. That doesn't pay back anything; it just stops the debt mountain getting bigger!

Yes, the bankers have been negligent and we've guaranteed lots of money could be available in case the banks' losses become realised but the debt mountain is NOT because of the banks.

You can't blame your bank if your credit card bill is enormous and rising monthly. Spend less and pay back more is the only way to cut an existing bill.

43. At 5:50pm on 16 Jan 2011, Dazz wrote:

' ... We consistently hear about "the biggest peace-time deficit ever". Whether you agree with the reasons for it or not we have actually been at war in Iraq and now Afghanistan for some time!

====================================================

Iraq was wrong! - I thought so at the time and I still believe that to be the case.

It was an unworthy and unnecessary crisis. It was a shameful episode that cost many thousands of lives - something not easily dismissed.

By comparison, politics is less than trivial.

39. At 5:28pm on 16 Jan 2011, Ody wrote:

Why are you so sickeningly biased towards labour and miliband. The party that squandered prosperity and crushed any respect Britain had in the World. Are you, like so many other of your oppos so convinced that the public are too thick to remember or even realise the damage that these people did to so many aspects of British life? Why is it? Where does this bias come from? I would really like to Know. Is it something to do with when blair swept the bbc out a few years ago and filled it with his own apparachnics? If so please let us all move on. I been around long enough to see labour drag this country to its knees twice. What with you, robert [i am so majesterial] peston and dimbleby filling his programme with carefully picked labourites, where does a thick peasant like me look to find out the truth of where we're at and where we're going in this country? Or have i got it wrong?
========================================================================

Yep you've got it wrong!
the reason we are in a mess is due to the neo-liberal ideology and de-regulation of banks introduced by the Torys, do your home work.

I find Ed confusing. He makes out he has all these strong ideologies and how he's going to break from the past but then all he ever seems to do is jump on bandwagons opposing everything and use pre-rehersed quips and one liners.

There is an avoidance of simple mature debate, which i think would suit him better. For instance how is it ideological to reduce the size of the state, yet it is not ideological to grow it?

For all the spending and increasing of mainly management positions in the public sector have we actually got an improved service? Education results using an international method show the complete opposite for example.

I think Ed and his short-termist view will come back to bite him, all this 'Conservative-led' branding is embarrassing and so transparent and is a sign he's not convinced himself of the issues yet and how to approach them maturely.

Indeed, Ed Milliband was clear, confident and at ease during the Andrew Marr interview. To be effective as a strong and credible Opposition party, it is time Ed Milliband must now make the extra effort to explain to the general public the incredible myth that the 2008 Global Recession was caused by the Labour Party. Also Explain that the "2008 Financial meltdown started in the USA. Before 2008, Great Britain's debt was the second lowest of the G7 countries. When it comes to public sector debt, Britain is not the worst offender. Japan has more sovereign debt than any other leading world economy at 225% of its GDP. This burden has not stopped Japan being the world's third largest economy. Britain is 12th (77% of GDP), Ireland 7th(94% ), USA 8th(93%), France 9th, Germany 14th...Ed Milliband must try to make an effort explaining that the Tory led govt must not risk slowing growth by cutting too far and too deep, ripping cherished institions (NHS, Crime rate, building schools..etc), putting a generation of young people out of work, condemming them to years on the dole instead of paying taxes etc etc. Also he must stop the Conservative led govt from misleading the public that Labour would have made similar cuts. Ed M must make an effort to explain that Labour will not be making the £40 Billion additional cuts that Osborne is cruelly and unnecessarily making; and that whipping up hysteria about the deficit is just a convenient cover to roll back the state permanently.

Ed Milliband is floundering over post Brown Labour policies and really benefitting from the treachery of the Con/Dems coalition government whose savage cuts and broken pledges are enough to sour voters' view of politicians even further than their expenses scandals. I cannot possibly see the British public accepting the notion of The Big Society whilst ever the city bankers are being rewarded with HUGE bonuses. Divided Britain is not a recipe for stable government.

I thought Ed did ok. But he has still not come to terms with the mistakes on economic policy Labour made in power.

1. It is not good enough to say the global financia crisis happened all over the world. London was THE global financial centre by the mid noughties.

2. If the deficit was only caused by the collapse in tax revenues and bailing out the banks why did Labour not demand more from the banks in return for State support? Even now Ed has not given us anything about what should have been done differently in terms of regulating the banks.

3. He is still too keen to defend the labour record. He needs to develop and understand a proper critique. If he cannot do it then Labour needs a leader not intellectually tied to the Brown/Blair past.

And all of the above needs to be done in a properly thought out set piece speech (in the City or at a serious academic institution) or article (serious journal) based on a proper analysis of the historical record. It is not good enough to try to do it in a BBC interview or some opinion piece for a paper.

My fear is that is all his advisers are capable of is the journalisitic short hand spin - a proper academic analysis based on unarguable fact is what is needed. Do it once and do it properly. Instead we are going to see Ed forced to make concessions every week or so without ever developinbg the over arching narrative.

Ed will not beat Cameron on PR and spin but he will beat him on detailed analysis. I don't think you will find anyone suggesting Dave is good at that - not his fault - it is in the genes.

The problem for Ed Miliband and the Labour Party in general, is that they really do need to address their fundamanetal identity crisis. Who do the Labour Party actually intend to represent ? And as for Ed himself, having won the leadership election he seems to have no idea as to actually what to do. His position is to have a blank sheet of paper, and to have two years for come up with something. No sign of anything at all so far. Labour effectively have no policies at all. The people who voted Labour last week at Oldham, what were the actually voting for policy wise?

Regarding the deficit, simply attempting to re-write history to present himself in a more favourable light isn't really much of policy when push comes to shove. Add to this the shadow chancellor who clearly knows very little about what is nvolved and the inadequecy is complete. His attempts to woo Liberal MPs to destabilise the coalition government may make for good schoolboy politics but what happens if he actually succeeds in forcing a general election. What policies would he have to fight it on ?

Please Mr Miliband, tell us what your party is for, who you think you represent, and come up with some positive direction for your party to develop some credible policies. And stop trying to reinvent the past, and start developing something constructive for the future. How about a Buzz Lightweight soundbite "To the future and beyond ..."

At 11:43am on 16 Jan 2011, BloominEck wrote:
"...he stated that Labour had not spent too much in government - spelling out his answer to me at his last news conference....".

The IPPR agrees. It has issued a paper giving details and suggesting that George Osborne's claims that Labour's profligate spending leaves him no alternative but to cut deep and fast "....does not stack up..."
(Full report available from ippr.org.uk/publicationsandreports)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for the heads up Eck. Don't you just love it when something (the Tory Story - everything is labour's/Brown's fault), you've been arguing for months is bogus is backed up by a great big juicy, fact filled, report from a think tank.
Perhaps Nick R had read this before he put together this piece. It would explain his semi-acceptance of the Miliband defence. TINA, as always, turns out to be a fake. A convenient excuse for what you want to do.
I worry for the right wing posters here. What will they do now that there standard reply - we have to do these unpleasant things because of the mess left by the Labour government - has had serious doubt cast on it? How will they cope now that they have to argue why their policies are right rather than we have no choice?
@John_Bull(45) You might want to read the report and then reconsider your rude dismissal of NR's piece, along with the question of who is really in denial.

48. At 6:55pm on 16 Jan 2011, Mary wrote:

' ... and that whipping up hysteria about the deficit is just a convenient cover to roll back the state permanently.'

====================================================

Even if one accepted your premise, what's wrong with that?

Freedom of choice and individual responsibility is a sign of a mature democracy. A bloated state sector feeds upon taxes and encourages dependency.

Of course New Labour did not cause the global recession - it was a collective financial failure. But we were not prudent in joining the party - we were mixing with the wrong sort. A 'bust' arrived when we were assured by our CFO that this was a thing of the past. We were let down.

PS: I should mention that I am politically neutral, although I am a little more confident that our problems will now be sorted than I was a year ago.

This was a pathetic soft interview. Milibands argument could have been blown out of the water by a child.

Brown said there would be no bust, and therefore, with no need for a rainy day fund he blew the lot on a public spending binge, racking up a structural deficit even before the recession.

If he had kept something in reserve the current cuts would be smaller.

Come on BBC. Lets have some challenging questioning for a change. It's not rocket science.

24 hours since his last pointless speech and here he is still in denial. "It wasn't our fault, we did nothing wrong". Yes you did, you spent money you didn't have! "Brown was right, a total genius". No he wasn't and most of what happened was directly his fault for not regulating the banks enough and spending money he didn't have (yes and the Tories got this wrong too). You can't compare us to America we're nothing like their size and far more socialist. By the way, they're heading for disaster too. All that money pumped into their economy yet their unemployment is still near 10% and the recovery is weak much like ours. So much for that plan then. What a surprise that a system built on confidence isn't going to react well to a government spending like there is no tomorrow.

Yes there was a global crisis but imagine it came along and we had no debt at all? It wouldn't have been anything like as bad because we could have borrowed and not been in this mess. And now the cat is out of the bag, he's not going to do anything different next time and after 5 years of pain and the country balancing its books again he's going to start frittering money he doesn't have again.

You really do wonder why anyone gives this man the time of day.

Ed himslef has said that he is a socialist. socialsts are all about tax and spend. Any government that does that can expect to ruin the economy in the long run. and Ed must realise that the public HATE TAXES, so all hats off to the coalition when they lower then in a few years.

MikeTimbers @44
Agree with most of what you say. Particularly nice to hear someone talk about 'decades of overspending' instead of the usual 'it was Labour wot done it' version so popular here.
However you did leave an option out of your final point.
"You can't blame your bank if your credit card bill is enormous and rising monthly. Spend less and pay back more is the only way to cut an existing bill."
You can, of course, increase your income to help pay off your debt. One way to do this is to borrow and invest the money in things that will not only repay the loan but make a profit which helps to pay off your initial debt.

Young Ed needs to start hitting the headlines more. If Labour loses the next election, at least he can maybe flog a book

'America has not got a deficit, he said, because Gordon Brown spent too much. No one can argue with that.'

What a completely bonkers piece of comparative illogic, Nick: I'm surprised at you. Here's another one: 'The UK has not got a deficit because Dubya spent too much'. Hurrah: another victory for Oxbridge clarity.

Sadly for Labour and GOP supporters everywhere, both Brown and Bush presided over a spree of deficit spending unparalleled in the history of either country.

Between 2002 and 2007 - before Northern Rocky put off Gordo's snap election that he never considered - the UK spent more than it earned in every year. Go to the ONS site and check it out.

No doubt people will read this comment and go, "Yeh, whatever". Google The Slog at wordpress to see why the Whatever Culture means inevitable decline.

>Number 3
"Until Ed Milliband and (new?) Labour accept that they made many mistakes in government: participating in wars, wielding power with complete arrogance, expenses, being dishonest about immigration etc. and that a wholly new approach is needed then Labour won't (deservedly) get anywhere."

...all of which can apply to the Conservative government prior to Labour. If you think ANY of the above is specific to one political entity...

"There is an avoidance of simple mature debate, which i think would suit him better. For instance how is it ideological to reduce the size of the state, yet it is not ideological to grow it?"

This a very interesting question and it is surprising that is so rarely raised in the context of the debate on the economy and deficit.

Is the increase in the role of the state ideological,or a consequence of other pressures? It certainly can be,there are people who believe government rather than private provision of services is preferable on principle.This is ideological.The opposite is also the case among those who think private is always best.

However,underlying this ideological debate are the historic pressures which have given rise to a bigger state in countries with highly diverse ideological preferences from free market,palinesque USA,to the scandinavian democracies where government has traditionally had a bigger role.

The pressures, to which no-one is immune, consists of three factors:-Economic crisis of which we have a present example,war and war preparation and of course social spending.Response to these institutional pressures is pragmatic rather than ideological and embraced by governments with very different political cultures.You might say the growth in the role of the state has the mark of historical inevitability.

Idont Believeit @52

Deal with the points I made IDB, explain the inaccuracy.

It was not a rude dismissal of NR's piece at all; it was perfectly valid point about Ed's wriggling. Just because you don't like it, doesn’t mean its invalid!

A lot of points being missed in comments here from - let me be charitable - discernible viewpoints.
Facts to note:
Our exposure to the financial sector has been taken for granted by all parties for as long as I can remember, some, the conservatives, have been historically more inclined to place a greater reliance on our financial sector and upon regulation models that have been demonstrably deficient than others
There has been agreement on public spending levels for some time now
Granted that the previous administration let it happen on their watch
But so did everyone else

Castigating the BBC for not publicly flaying Milliband jnr does not educate or illuminate

54. At 7:52pm on 16 Jan 2011, TheWalrus999 wrote:
"This was a pathetic soft interview. Milibands argument could have been blown out of the water by a child."

I suggest that what makes you uncomfortable is Mr.Milliband has brought into the open a debate which had become a settled view on the source and consequences of government debt and deficit.

He thinks the view it was all or mainly Labour`s responsibility has been accepted by default because it was never properly challenged.It should be,there is a convincing argument to the contrary which I touch on in an earlier post.More importantly,accurate analysis of the causes of a problem is essential for its resolution.Deficitis,which is having disastrous consequences in Greece and Ireland,arises from the belief that state spending is the problem, whereas it is a consequence of the collapse in private capital across the globe.That is why the American example is pertinent,its not just us,or Brown,it`s the Eurozone,the USA,Japan....

Think on it for a moment,stop being so parochial.We are all in this together.

Mr Robinson
You got it wrong again ... the labour mess legacy on mass immigration?
More of the BBC's 'frightened rabbit syndrome' ... as deliberately left out of Andrew Marr's questions ... to the Toy Story serial liar?

Criticising the government for "assuming that the City would continue to pour tax into the government's coffers while continuing to increase government spending significantly year on year" is completely ludicrous. Essentially nobody thought that the banking sector was going to collapse, so it seems reasonable to have thought that it would carry on bringing in the same revenues that it had done reliably throughout the 90s. Labour's spending/debt/deficit prior to the crash wasn't the least bit unsustainable or heading in an unsustainable direction, in fact the debt was slightly lower (%GDP) than it was when they took power from the Conservatives.

56. At 8:07pm on 16 Jan 2011, mename2332 wrote:
"Ed himslef has said that he is a socialist. socialsts are all about tax and spend. Any government that does that can expect to ruin the economy in the long run. and Ed must realise that the public HATE TAXES, so all hats off to the coalition when they lower then in a few years."

If its only taxes they lower think yourself lucky.Expectations will be lower,conservatives have always been good at doing that.Incomes will be lower,health provision lower because social engineering from public to private on the scale envisaged will be costly.EMA not just lower but abolished.Public sector pensions will be lower.So will employment and economic growth..

What will not be lower are fares,VAT,student fees,prices in the shops,council tax,employees NI contributions,petrol,rail fares....

Self congratulation is premature,happy New Year.

Lets get to the nub of the spending argument;

First, government has no money, it spends taxes.

Second, the only real tax is paid by individuals and companies in the private sector.

Third, all public sector workers are a cost to the real taxpayers as above, the taxes they pay are simply refunds of part of the money real taxpayers give them.

Fourth, real taxpayers and those in receipt of tax as income, i.e. everyone on the public payroll, need and want the services they can afford, with emphasis on 'what they can afford'.

Fith, What is the difference between the additional cost of government and the public services between 1997 and May 2010 and the tax they were able to extract from real tax payers, less the £billions Gordon Brown stole from exclusivly private sector pensions plus the value from the sell off of our gold reserves(belonging to the whole nation)at rock bottom price during the Labour period of government. Those are the real costs and the real deficit.

Sixth,the only way out of the current situation is for the private sector to earn more money and pay more taxes so that the government can afford to keep paying the public sector workers what 'they can afford' and get rid of those that 'they cannot afford'.

Perhaps Nick Robinson, John Humphreys, James Naughty et al should have to own up to their politics as a header for any comment that they make for or against the government of the day, so that we know the real value of their commentary.

At the end we can only afford the services that we can earn the money in the private sector to pay for, including the financial sector. Some gratitude for the salaries of public sector workers would not be unreasonable methinks.

Justin 150:

"Even when Ed uses numbers he is incapable of putting them into context - eg Labour in 2007 was spending less than Tories in 1997 and had a lower deficit (both true by the way). In 1997 Tories were only a couple of years from the end of the previous recession and were bring down spending and debt rather quickly. In 2007 alledgedly we were 10 years into good times without a cloud on the horizon, yet spending was not a lot lower than 1997 and the deficit was already on the rise."

Good use of evidence Justin on debt and deficit, but debatablle conclusion.First,Mr.Milliband did contextualize the figures, but not in a way you found acceptable.He has brought into the open the debate about the causes of the 12% deficit the conservatives inherited.They clamed it was mainly Labour`s fault without needing to explain how it climbed from 3.5% in two years.The public bought the story and endorsed the scorched earth deficit reduction programme.

As for the pre-crisis deficit,you make the common assumption that during "The good times" governments have no other aim but to build up surpluses to stabilize private capital in the event of a crisis.Labour had other ambitions, like bringing underfunded public services to European levels.It would not have happened with the conservatives who are now returning state assets to private control,protecting capital not people.

Yes, Ed, get over Gordon and Tony. Launch "True Labour" and erase all memory of that which shall henceforward be nameless.They were just sham Tories and certainly never fooled me.

"Britain's borrowing was manageable before the crash...." was the lamest possible statement. Like someone lost at sea was OK until they drowned. Come on, the country is awash with debt. It's not been tackled yet anywhere near well enough - look at all those commercial as well as public debts - huge and ongoing. And mortgages of overvalued private residences, of course. All the nominal money is steadily evaporating as "real" values become more and more apparent.

Myself, I feel there's been 30 years of Thatcherism. Sadly, Cameron will try to push it forward in the same direction. True Labour can have a few more months leeway from me as they work out, with our Ed, quite which way to go to regroup a British soul.

"The time for banks to apologise is over" - Bob Diamond, new CEO or whatever, Barclays Bank, 14/1/2011.

Shame they've not done so yet, isn't it!!

Phi, delta, theta, as some say! Which is only obliquely relevant to all the above but I just wanted to say it, as it remains the context within which our Ed must develop his new directions: away from the control of fast moving, totally disloyal international capital and towards strong, sustainable and obviously Green localism.

I watched that joker Miliband on Andrew Marrs show this morning.Truely shocking.I thought i was listening to Blair all over again.Denying labours over spending and constantly avoiding answers with the same old Blair/Brown non answers like"hear me now,i believe,i believe,i believe"and blaming it all on what they inherited in 1997.The man is a fraud like his predecessors and no wonder his brother is not by his side because David knows only too well that his brother is an embarrassment.If anyone in this country sees fit to vote for any of these traitors in the Labour party then you truely deserve what you get which is ruin because as Miliband said"he would do it all the same again".Buffoon.

Everyone keeps blaming brown for "getting us into this mess"

The only alternative was to let the banks collapse which was what Dave and George were saying at the time. Everyone has seemingly conveniently forgotton this. Northern Rock, Barclays, RBS, Haifax etc etc millions of people saving pensions etc......................apparantly a price worth paying .......so much for market forces being the only answer.

If Brown did not do what he did I can only guess at where we might be now

All these politicians are as one other blogger said"whores to big buisness and Banks"every decision Cameron makes will be to the benefit of the afore mentioned giving him the easiest ride possible over the next four years.Nick Clegg has a more sincere air about him and i reckon if he was shot of Cameron the stooge things might actually improve.Its not going to happen though as they would rather sell us out and screw us out of everything we got than take OUR money back from the leeches in the Banks.So get used to it good people of Britain we are screwed and the vast majority of us are about to pay an unbearable price for their greed while the 10% with it all will enjoy the spoils.Its always been that way and always will.As Wolfie Smith would say"POWER TO THE PEOPLE".

Marr is a socialist so is never going to give one of his kind a tough interview. Bring on Andrew Neil

Lots of people are saying over and over again that it was gordon not regulating the banks that was the problem.

derrrrrrr! no one had regulated the banks anywhere that was the problem saying that gordon could regulate the banks in the UK and its would have stopped the global meldown is very very dim

With fuel food clothes education in fact everything rising without it seems any way of stopping it, how long will it be before we have commodity riots on the streets of britain. TUNISIA should be a lesson for all of us Greece and Ireland will become a sideshow

Nick Robinson, quoting Milliband, wrote:
"America has not got a deficit, he said, because Gordon Brown spent too much. No one can argue with that."

No doubt a US Republican, seeking to defend the last administration, would argue that Britain has not got a deficit because George Bush spent too much.

All politicians can avoid responsibility for their actions if they use this argument. Similar outcomes arose from similar policies followed in a number of Western countries. The policies were mistaken, and the leaders of these countries should all accept their share of responsibility. We can argue about how much this share should be, but the attempt to evade responsibility because it was shared is risible (but coming from a Labour politician we should hardly be surprised).

#73 Rolfe wrote:
"The only alternative was to let the banks collapse which was what Dave and George were saying at the time."

Totally, factually incorrect.

8. At 12:21pm on 16 Jan 2011, One_Lars_Melvang wrote:

"There was more anger when Labour was in power, but instead of smashing things up people voiced their frustration at the ballot box."

Lifelong committed Conservative supporters may be less angry, but with regards to the general population, that just sounds like wishful thinking on your part.

I think anger has increased along with disillusion with all the major political parties and a complete loss of faith in trying to achieve anything through the ballot box. It seems it is not only Labour that 'still don't get it'...

#76 Rolfe wrote:
"saying that gordon could regulate the banks in the UK and its would have stopped the global meldown is very very dim"

This is the fallacy I mentioned earlier. It's the "other people made the same mistake as me, therefore I'm not to blame" defence.

I take an entirely different view of Gordon Brown's legacy.

We should judge a Chancellor entirely on his stewardship in that role and we should judge a PM entirely by his stewardship in that role. His colour, origins, religion, temperament etc do not enter into it. It is the same with a footballer or any professional.

As Chancellor, you should ask the question "What would you think of the treasurer of your football club if he bankrupted the club?"

As PM, you should ask the question "What would you think of the Chairman of your football club if he took all the executive decisions and made all the public announcements alone despite the supposed delegation of responsibilities to executive directors?"

In the short first term his chancellor ship was indistinguishable from his predecessor Ken Clark and the media would count the number of times he used the word "prudence". The word stayed with the media although he has barely used it in the last decade. Given a second term, he immediately jumped employee NIC by 10% (from 10% to 11%) and increased the "jobs tax", employer NIC by 10%. Dozens of new stealth taxes were introduced targeted at business and middle-income earners. Many so stealthy that the media was unable to recognise that they were stealth taxes. For example, NMW is redistribution of income with near universal support except, of course, by the 1% who have to find the money from their own pocket to pay this tax. Another example is "The Social Fund" provided by the energy companies, currently £900,000,000 pa that goes un-noticed because it comes from the energy companies so who cares. Well you should notice and you should care because the energy companies must pass it on to their customers and that means that you pay a premium on your energy bills so that others who don't pay their bills cannot have their supply cut off. Student loans and tuition fees are a stealth tax on middle-income earners.

Gordon's tax take rose from 43% to some 50% (given that state spending is 51% of all UK spending). It is also unrecognised that in his 10 years as Chancellor he spared Scottish distillers a rise in spirit duty.

Yet despite all the tax rises his spending demanded £30,000,000,000 to £40b of borrowing every year since 2001 and £216,000,000,000 of off-balance sheet debt in the form of PFI.

Many have mentioned the new schools and hospitals but every single one was on the never-never (PFI). The children themselves will have to pay for them in increased council taxes and they were not cheap, 17% pa over 20 years.

The boom years, the nice decade, the stability decade was a mirage. It was the debt decade. We didn't have boom years; we simply borrowed money from tomorrow and spend it today. To put it in simple terms we were earning next to nothing, we took a week's sub, spent money as if we were rich and never thought about the following week when we wouldn't even have a wage.

I have often pointed out that if we take personal debt alone, peaking at £1.5t, cut it ten ways and spread its growth equally over the nice decade, at 10% pa, it reduces GDP from plus 3% pa to minus 7% pa. We have failed to make our way in the global economy and yet we have pretended otherwise on the back of borrowing. Borrowing to the extent of a 60-year state mortgage that will, even with the new management, grow to an 80-year state mortgage.

I keep trying to put things in terms that we can all understand like taking a sub. Please ask yourself if it is fair to ask others, who will not be born for 50 years, to pick up your tab. Please ask yourself if it was responsible to ask the workers, the middle-income earners, to pay tax to fund £43,000,000,000 pa of debt servicing. Please ask yourself if it is in the interest of the NHS to sit back and let the debt servicing costs grow to over £100b pa in four years time, equal to the cost of the NHS. Please ask yourself if it worth taking the risk of our debt servicing costs growing to four times the cost of the NHS if we sleep-walk into a Greek, Romanian, Latvian, Hungarian, Portuguese, Spanish or Italian tragedy and we cannot continue to borrow without paying rates proportional to default risk.

What was Gordon thinking about? Were his history modules confined to Robin Hood? Please vet future Chancellors for their numeracy skills and preferably choose Chancellors with a PPE.

If you thought he was part of a team you were wrong. It was a one-man band. Even Tony Blair chose to be out of the country and couldn't explain tax credits or the New Deal. Your Labour MP was either chosen because she was female or because he/she claimed not to be an educated man/woman but could claim working class street credentials. Would you go to a doctor who only claimed street credentials? Your Labour MP couldn't stomach the Fiscal Responsibility Bill or the second reading of the Finance Bill and didn't bother to attend.

I haven't mentioned pensions tax credits, gold bullion sales, LATS, a threefold rise in single parents, guest workers doing our jobs, 90% of the jobs created going to guest workers, 1m extra civil servants with un-costed pensions and 10 days sickies per year, GPs on more than investment bankers and hundreds of other legacies of Gordon Brown. I have tried instead to mention the things that have not been covered.

75. Hughbertsio wrote:
Marr is a socialist so is never going to give one of his kind a tough interview. Bring on Andrew Neil.
-------------------------
You obviously missed the very very friendly and cosy chat mr marr had with mr cameron last week!

So de-regulation of the Financial sector was prudent was it Ed...?

Think again pal. Gordons record over the whole 13 years of Labour's stewardship of the UK had us feeling good at times, but that short-term "success" was built on quicksand...

#69 "As for the pre-crisis deficit,you make the common assumption that during "The good times" governments have no other aim but to build up surpluses to stabilize private capital in the event of a crisis."

It should be an aim, although I would agree not the only aim. It is classic Keynesian economics (and biblical common sense) to build up a surplus in times of plenty.

Perhaps a simple context would be (and I have taken the figures from the Guardian newspaper which is not known for being a Tory paper), in the 1990 and early 2000s govt spending fell from a peak (during recession) in 1992-3 of 43.7% of GDP to a low of 36.4% of GDP in 1999-2000. So our most recent recession demonstrates that govt should pump in about 7% of GDP by way of extra spending to counter recessions. In 2007-8 (ie pre the crash) Lab spent 41.1% of GDP (not far away from the previous peak for a recession spending programme). If we accept that on average a govt should increase public spending in a recession by around 7% of GDP that leads to the conclusion that govt should, at the height of recession have spent about 48% of GDP which is about what it spent last year.

But there does seem to be something wrong with those figures. If Lab and Ed are right and the recession is the fault of banks and we have spent large amounts of money propping up the banks surely the public spending figures should be a lot higher for the last couple of years.

No matter how I cut and dice the figures I am forced to the conclusion that under Lab public spending was significantly higher than was sustainable in good times.

JB @62
Have you read the IPPR report? If you have you will already know what some of the alternative answers to your view of the last 13 years are.
Why are you in denial? Because the Coalition is essentially a continuation of Labour, as Labour were a continuation of Thatcher/Major. I don't see how you solve a problem by repeating the same solution that has failed for at least the last 30 years.
BTW if you're listening Nick, a piece on the IPPR report would make a good follow up blog for tomorrow.
Andrew Marr was rather good, I thought. Rather nice to see an interviwer allow the interviewee to have his say. Far too many are more interested in getting their own clever points across or catching out the interviewee. Paxman may be entertaining but sometimes you learn more from the Marr approach.
Ed did rather well. Much better than I ever thought he would.

I would never trust Labour with the economy. They spend and waste money like it is going out of fashion and the only reason our borrowing does not appear even higher is because much of it is off balance sheet like pfi deals and pension liabilities. The flagship " Building Schools for the Future" School that was built via a pfi deal with Balfour is closing after just two years and we will be paying for it for the next 25 years. Classic Labour mistake. I would sooner vote for the raving loony party than Labour.

Even if the banks had not had to be bailed out, Brown would have still have had a structural deficit. He maxed out on the country's credit card to such an extent that cuts would have been necessary this year before the country went the way of Ireland, Greece et al.

The man is a disgrace, he is in hiding unable to defend his record as it is undefendable.

Two of the worst actions he undertook were in his first weeks as Chancellor, firstly, by taking £5 billion out of the pension pot and secondly, changing the regulation of the banking industry. The results of these were to reduce the best provided pension system in the world to one of a shadow of its former self, and to introduce a system of regulation that allowed banks a free hand to invest in insturments that had little chance of ever being able to be redeemed at a profit.

The country were warned in his early days, and Blair allowed him to do this and the Labour Party allowed him to become Prime Minister. They betrayed the country and neither should ever be trusted again.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

88 Alan

Totally agree with you. The scrapping of dividend tax relief on pensions was the worst thing ever and I could never understand why this was not picked up at the time by the opposition or economists. Brown also sold our gold at a criminally low rate.

I watched Ed Miliband on the Andrew Marr program this morning and was astonished with his bad temper and body language. Andrew Marr was clearly pretty soft with him also, particulary since his paper reviewers gave him a hand in what questions need answers.
Two things relly worry me perhaps over and above his seemingly lack of any clear view on what he would do if he was in fact the Prime Minister,
Firstly I fett he was like an alcholic who really has to admit being an alcholic before he is able to move on, In Ed Milibands case he has to admit that the previous labour government had a major responsibility in leaving the country in the poor shape it is, only when he does this is when people may listen to him. Secondly is someone who presented him self in such a bad tempered manner the right person to have his finger on the nuclear triger?
Further I have to take issue with the BBC who have for some years leant towards Labour in there news and political views they really are soft on all labour ploiticians and have been for some years, however if a member of the coalition appears on there programs they get a hard time, Breakfast through to newsnight, Today though to PM. Further will your reporters please stop saying we own the banks, we don't if we did I would have share certificates, recieve a dividend, attend AGM's and vote for or against the directors of such bank just as I do with Barclays and HSBC who I believe needed no support from the gvernment. I believe the correct position with the banks is that they have been partially nationalised by the state.
There now I feel a little better!

At 10:11pm on 16 Jan 2011, johnharris66 wrote:
Nick Robinson, quoting Milliband, wrote:
"America has not got a deficit, he said, because Gordon Brown spent too much. No one can argue with that."

No doubt a US Republican, seeking to defend the last administration, would argue that Britain has not got a deficit because George Bush spent too much.
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Hello John. That's the second time someone has made that argument. I'm not sure it makes too much sense the second time around.
Personally I'm not too sure that there wasn't a touch of sarcasm in Nick's 'no one can argue with that' i.e. it is self evidently true as you point out.
Point is he goes on to elaborate firstly what mistakes Gordon made, according to Ed (strangely these are very similar to the criticisms made of Gordon in the IPPR report), and then secondly explains why the position in 2007 wasn't as bad as some have tried to make out (strangely again these seem to be very similar to the many arguments given in the IPPR report).
This is confirmed to some extent by no other than George Osborne, who plans in 5 years time to return us to the situation in 2007. This suggests it wasn't such a bad place to be and that given there is no other fiscal crisis by then, it is a place from which it won't be too hard to recover. Ergo the coalition is largely mounting a recovery from the effects of the fiscal crisis post 2007 rather than the effects of fiscal mismanagement pre 2007.
There are alternative explanations just as there are alternative solutions.

At 10:18pm on 16 Jan 2011, johnharris66 wrote:
#76 Rolfe wrote:
"saying that gordon could regulate the banks in the UK and its would have stopped the global meldown is very very dim"

This is the fallacy I mentioned earlier. It's the "other people made the same mistake as me, therefore I'm not to blame" defence.
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Don't be daft John. Any right wing poster could tell you the answer to that.
If Gordon had regulated the banks more tightly they would have sulked, packed their bags and gone to live happily ever after in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Singapore or some such place. And then where would we be?
Come to think of it that's probably why the Conservatives were always in favour of lighter regulation at the time.

Far too much comment based on 'wise after the event - i knew it all along' smartass presumption that everything is always the governments fault. Strange that when you go overseas, they thank Gordon Brown for leading the way in preventing the total meltdown of the banking system. It seems to be a British disease. They never credited Labour with the most prosperous years of our lifetimes, when we all chose to abuse the levels of credit available, but blame them for the international crisis that followed. The British self-righteous middle-class need to look in the mirror and accept their share of the blame, rather than forever pointing fingers at politicians. Damned if they do, damned if they don't. We want wonderful public services and we want to pay less tax, is a pretty fair summary of the inane view of politics in this country. If they ever tell the truth, you wouldn't elect them. Strange thing is we now have a government that nobody elected. Labour were incredibly unpopular in 2010 yet the Conservatives were unable to win, and the Libdem vote went down. So how did we end up with them ? Did anyone tick a box that said ConDem Alliance, no, i thought not. Conservatives don't like it, Libdems don't like it, and nobody else does either. More of a kind of David and Nick Alliance. Is that DNA ?

All politicians can avoid responsibility for their actions if they use this argument. Similar outcomes arose from similar policies followed in a number of Western countries. The policies were mistaken, and the leaders of these countries should all accept their share of responsibility. We can argue about how much this share should be, but the attempt to evade responsibility because it was shared is risible (but coming from a Labour politician we should hardly be surprised)."

If similar outcomes arose from similar policies,ie.increasing debt/deficit,this is because they faced similar problems and responded inititially in a coordinated way.

The best that can be said across all economies affected is that measures taken prevented a depression.They share common problems,especially the failure of GDP to fully recover to its previous peak.I cannot therefore see the justification for your remark about Labour politicians evading responsibility.

Idont Believeit @86

Idont Believeit @86

IDB, it is not me that is in denial!

There is no excuse whatsoever for borrowing money when you don't need to. If they had borrowed this money for investment, then fair enough, but they didn't, they borrowed it to fund increased running costs in the public sector, which IS inexcusable. As a result, we now have to fund much higher debt repayments and have absolutely nothing tangible to show for it. Why do you find it necessary to defend this nonsense?

nick did you go to specsavers??????

As the National Debt will reach one trillion pounds (£1,000,000,000,000) within the next few hours, then that figure becomes a handy waypoint at which to apportion responsibility:

30% pre-1997 Tory Government (£300Bn)
40% post-1997 Labour Government (£400Bn)
13% bailed out banks (£130Bn)
17% interest on the above (£170Bn)

Go figure.

Justin 85;

Thanks for your response.There is no economic justification for saying what percentage of GDP should be spent to fight recessions.Not only does the beast vary in its size,intensity and duration,but our instruments are not precise enough to make that kind of judgement.

We do know that to increase spending,ie.to go into debt* during recessions helps the economy to recover.Beyond that it`s trial and error and flying by the seat of your pants.,

*Sometims called deficit financing for that reason.To expect a surplus to fight recessions is a bonus as tax receipts fall and pump priming takes time to be effective

Alan 88

"The man is a disgrace, he is in hiding unable to defend his record as it is undefendable.

Not the view abroad where they think Mr.Cameron and Mr.Osborne lack substance compared to Mr.Brown.A view shared by Mervyin King who said recently they were more interested in politics than economics.