Tell me Sunnt, what would Labour have done differently?

George Osborne is the greatest Chancellor in living memory.He will ensure that Labour win by a landslide at the next General Election

This is why I am getting tired of politics – you would rather that a person you blame for tanking the economy stays in power and continues to make it worse – so that more people are unemployed and more people go bust…

…simply to play politics and help Labour win an election in a few years time.

You actually put your electoral considerations ahead of reducing the effects of the recession on people.

@Tyler: The same thing America, Germany, Sweden and Russia did to get out of the Great Depression. Invest in developing and repairing our infrastructure by creating work programs for skilled and unskilled labourers. Germany went from abject poverty to building the most powerful army in history, Russia built up a production capacity that allowed them to not only withstand and defeat that powerful army but also keep up with an undamaged America in the years after the war.

And they all have the nerve to tell us Scots that we are ‘better together’…

Well for a start Labour wouldn’t have cut income tax for the richest people in the country. They also wouldn’t have spent a fortune reorganising the NHS which most people do not want. Labour’s overall economic policy was to reduce the deficit slower by encouraging growth.

The coalition policy of slashing spending only results in lower tax receipts and higher costs in unemployment benefits. Front line services are suffering, waiting lists are longer, there are less police walking the street and libraries are shutting down. This has put us back into recession and the coalition are having to borrow more money to cover the poor tax receipts.

The Labour policy would see borrowing increase short term but (hopefully) their investment in infrastructure projects would see a growing economy leading to an increase in tax receipts while which would reduce the budget deficit steadily. They would have looked to some cuts but they would have been much less and the impact on front line services would be reduced. This would hopefully not lead to the fear that has paralysed the economy.

I trust that this will help to clear up the difference between the two for you.

Do the same thing as Russia? Did you mean to include Russia?
The price paid by the SOVIET peoples was not a price worth paying to fail to keep up with America. Perhaps you meant something other than collectivisation, The Terror, religious and political intolerance and wide-spread murder of your own people and colonised peoples and extraordinary levels of repression. Not to mention long-term economic failure.

@ GOE

Russia built up a production capacity that allowed them to not only withstand and defeat that powerful army but also keep up with an undamaged America in the years after the war.

That’s what we need, a Five Year Plan!!!!

After all we seem to have most of the rest of the tyranny.

There’s also quite a large amount of massaging of the unemployment figures going on too, as the DWP comes up with ever more kafkaesqe ways of classifying unemployed people as something else.
http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/how-the-dwp-manufactures-falling-unemployment-figures/

Always a good sign the economy is being handled well…

Absent demand in the economy from extra net exports, business investment or indebted consumers to make up for the public spending cuts, the government’s supply-side measures obviously aren’t working.

“Hopes that the British economy is about to pull strongly out its double-dip recession received a blow yesterday with new figures from the Office for National Statistics pointing to the biggest slump in business investment in more than three years.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/investment-slump-hits-hopes-of-imminent-uk-recovery-8079527.html

“The UK’s trade gap widened sharply in June, to its worst level since comparable records began in 1997.” [BBC website 9 August 2012]

Why invest if the demand isn’t there to sell the produce of the new investment?

What Osborne and his rapidly diminishing number of allies need to do is to read up on Keynesian economics – soon.

This is why I am getting tired of politics – you would rather that a person you blame for tanking the economy stays in power and continues to make it worse – so that more people are unemployed and more people go bust…

It annoys me when people get precocious without even reading my piece properly.

I’ve addressed this point already. If people genuinely think Tory policy would change if they replaced Osborne – I’d like them to name who has shown willingness to challenge party line and has said something interesting / useful on this issue.

And no, LAws / Cable won’t do as they’re Libdems and they won’t be Chancellor. I want people to name me a Tory alternative they think will change direction on the economy.

@Notenuffluv + @Pagar: It’s an example of how government involvement in the economy can work very well. It would probably still be working if they hadn’t gotten into a pissing match with the US and diverted all their money into arms and space technology.
As for their abuses of power and civil liberties, they’re not mutually inclusive to the economic policy., in fact they’re nothing to do with it. Germany did pretty much the same thing with their economy under Hitler’s rule, are you saying the Nazi’s killed millions of Jews for their economy?

Speaking as a bobble-hatted lefty, I’m not sure that wishing for the economy to get even worse just so’s that you can proved right is entirely healthy.

@ 13 Neil

Arguably, in terms of human impact, it could be better for the Tories to screw things up masssively and be voted out rather than screw up in a manageable way and stay in power. Especially as today’s change is tomorrow’s norm, so the economy could get gradually worse and worse without any single major event.

It’s a question of whether the long-term benefits outweigh the short-term costs. None of the possibilities are pretty.

Kenneth Clarke perhaps Sunny?

In any case while I sort of agree the direction from other tory MPs would be similar Osbourne has shown himself ot be even more useless than normal as a minister.

By all accounts the last budget was essentially written by the Civil Service and rubber stamped by Osbourne, then torn up afterwards as the party realised what he’d done.

I think we can find another tory at cabinet level who would at least take the job seriously.

Possibly Chaise, but you’d have to be very confident in the alternative.

I’m by no means an Osborne supporter, but there are some things his removal won’t change.

a) The Eurozone will still be dysfunctional and unresolved. Changes to our GDP will continue in line.
b) Ed Balls is still Shadow Chancellor.

In answer to GoE, Chris and Sunny…

Labour wouldn’t have done ANYTHING significantly different.

Osbourne is following Darling’s plan’s to cut capital spending, and only going marginally faster when it comes to consumption spending than Labour’s plan.

@ 16 Jack C

Absolutely, it’s a dangerous gamble. Except we’re not talking about an action on Sunny’s part, it’s not like he’s making Osborne stay in the role. I don’t know which event would have a better outcome, and we’ve no way of finding out. I’m just saying that it can be legitimate to want the incumbent government to screw up badly for reasons other than party politics.

@ 17 Tyler

Labour probably wouldn’t have declared an unofficial war on the NHS and tried to define disabled people out of existence, though. I’ll take clumsy over callous.

Meh, life will be crap with a good economy or a bad one.

@Tyler Not with Gordon Brown in charge, no. My original comment wasn’t what I thought they would do but what I think they *should* do, should’ve been clearer.

Philip Hammond’s yer man – he can destroy departments given a chance.

@ 21 GoE

OK fair enough….what do you think they *should* do then?

@ Dan

“Meh, life will be crap with a good economy or a bad one.”

That’s the spirit!

It hurts me to say that Tyler has half a point. Labour are still too wedded to the failed neo-liberal/neo-classical view of economics.

Why blame Osborne? He’s only the Chancellor.

“David Cameron claims that deficit reduction and growth are NOT alternatives: indeed, he argues, delivering the first is vital to securing the second. ”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18100533

At least Osborne has an excuse. He has a history degree whereas Cameron has a degree in PPE.

Would Labour have done any different? Darling was planning to get the budget deficit down by the end of two Parliaments. The coalition government originally set out to end the budget deficit by the end of this current Parliament. Labour has continued to say that is too fast. Try this report in the news on the assessment by the Centre for Policy Studies:

“Analysis by a think-tank showed that only 6% of the planned ‘spending contraction’ had been implemented.

“The report by the Centre for Policy Studies also cast doubt on the whether the Chancellor would meet his target of eliminating the structural deficit within five years, since it had fallen by only 13 % by the end of 2011/12.

“In addition, it showed that while the overall deficit had dropped by 25%, this was almost entirely down to tax rise and cuts in investment spending, rather than falls in public spending.”
[Telegraph website 27 August 2012]

@17. Tyler: ” Labour wouldn’t have done ANYTHING significantly different.

Osbourne is following Darling’s plan’s to cut capital spending, and only going marginally faster when it comes to consumption spending than Labour’s plan.”

Those are valid points. But the Darling/Osbourne recipe is not delivering results. Thus it is time to consider a smidge of Keynesianism on infrastructure projects. Experiment and learn.

We’re has all the money gone? Where has all the money gone from quantities easing? This is what should be investigated and for the British public to get angry about but I think most of us are just to passive to our rulers and elites for anything to be done.

Steve m

For info, this was the BoE’s own account in 2011Q3 of: The United Kingdom’s quantitative easing policy – design, operation and impact:
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/qb110301.pdf

This is the BBC’s explanation and assessment of the BoE’s programme of Quantitative Easing as reported in early July 2012:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15198789

This was the Guardian’s assessment in late August of the distributional impact of Quantitative Easing by way of a response to a recent BoE report on: The distributional effects of asset purchases:

Britain’s richest 5% gained most from quantitative easing – Bank of England
Bank report to MPs reveals wealthiest boosted by QE and low base rate, but insists policy spared UK from even deeper slump
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/aug/23/britains-richest-gained-quantative-easing-bank

“We’re has all the money gone? Where has all the money gone from quantities easing?”

Into bank reserves. Unlike the rhetoric that this is “printing money”, it’s nothing of the sort. This is just an asset swap. You can imagine cash money as bonds with a zero redemption period and zero interest. QE just swaps these for real bonds, so does nothing apart from create liquidity and a search for other interest-bearing assets.

As much as it would be fun to throw the “mess” charge back at the Tories with double gusto in the upcoming General Election campaign, the real focus has to be on sorting out the economy right now to alleviate the suffering that is unnecessarily being meted out by the coalition.

Tyler’s economics for example has been blasted out of the water by reality. No one except a dwindling band of deluded fanatics now thins that conservative economics has anything to offer as a solution to this crisis.

It doesn’t work, and the bankruptcy of those ideas can be seen in his bleating about Labour not doing anything different. This is perhaps true, given the moribund level of discussion about the economy in the 2010 campaign (Cameron should have been totally exposed then for his “government must do what households are doing” type arguments in the debates).

But I still think Labour would have been a little more flexible when faced with the facts as they developed and the economy sagged under the weight of badly timed, unnecessary Austerity. When a government remains so unbending to reality, you can only begin to question its motives. And conservative governments are far more in thrall to rank idiotic ideology than other parties.

So for the sake of the British people, Osborne ought to be replaced immediately by someone more in touch with what is going on and who is more likely to allow more policy space to breathe life into the economy.

He won’t be of course, which is a Shakespearean tragedy for the Tories, as they are holed out by the electorate in 2015, and a very real tragedy for people left idle by Osborne’s (and Cameron’s) sheer arrogance and not a little incompetence.

I’ll tell you one thing Labour would have done differently: accept the possibility that a change ot tack was necessary, if after two or three years of ruinous failures it was clear that their policies weren’t working.

That alone is a BIG difference – screwing over the economy for purely idealogical reasons isn’t Labour’s stock in trade.

Labour probably wouldn’t have declared an unofficial war on the NHS and tried to define disabled people out of existence, though. I’ll take clumsy over callous.

They’d have cut departmental spending on the NHS though (as they have done in Wales), meaning that as far as the usual suspects go, they’d have “declared unofficial war”, caused the deaths of thousands etc etc.

AS for the disability comment – I’m not sure that the Tories have actually changed anything here – aren’t they just basically continuing with Labour’s policy?

I’ll tell you one thing Labour would have done differently, Tyler: accept the possibility that a change ot tack was necessary, if after two or three years of ruinous failure it was clear that their policies weren’t working.

That alone is a BIG difference – screwing over the economy for purely idealogical reasons isn’t Labour’s stock in trade.

@32 TimJ

Before the election our local NHS Trusts here in Sussex had been told by Labour to prepare for cuts of around 40%. The difference, obviously, is that Labour wouldn’t have implemented the Coalition’s insane reorganisation and exacerbate the damage.

@ 32 Tim J

“They’d have cut departmental spending on the NHS though (as they have done in Wales), meaning that as far as the usual suspects go, they’d have “declared unofficial war”, caused the deaths of thousands etc etc.”

We don’t know if they would or wouldn’t. But they wouldn’t have started the process of trying to kill it.

“AS for the disability comment – I’m not sure that the Tories have actually changed anything here – aren’t they just basically continuing with Labour’s policy?”

I’m not sure. The proverbial didn’t seem to hit the fan with ATOS until a while into the Coalition’s reign. Maybe it was just business progressing, but I have a hard time imagining a Labour leader shrugging off stories of badly disabled people being redefined as slackers.

We don’t know if they would or wouldn’t.

Well, it was in the Labour budget in 2009 – the one that essentially planned out Labour’s electoral position:

Budget 2009 proposed total real-terms spending falling by 0.1 percent a year for three years starting April 2011. Those figures Brown read out in PMQs represent a real-terms cut as any half-sentient economist will tell you. The IFS spotted the complete trick the day after the Budget. Factor in the rising cost of debt interest and it implies that public service spending will fall by 2.3 percent a year. This makes a cumulative 6.7 percent over those three years. This is what Labour proposes to do if it wins the next election.

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2009/06/the-truth-behind-that-10-percent-cut/

It’s true that if Brown had won the election, he might have ignored his previous budget, torn up his manifesto and increased borrowing to pay for increased spending, but I think that’s something of a stretch.

But they wouldn’t have started the process of trying to kill it.

I think that’s a bit silly really. Reforms you don’t like aren’t the same as “trying to kill the NHS”. In any event, in most cases the Coalition has built on pre-existing reforms initiated by Labour – it’s more a question of speed of travel, rather than direction.

It’s a little unedifying that the only argument that the right seem to have over the economy is that Labour planned to follow the same crap policies but slightly slower.

Surely it’s more constructive to have better policies.

@ 36 Tim J

“Well, it was in the Labour budget in 2009 – the one that essentially planned out Labour’s electoral position:”

That’s spending cuts in general, not NHS cuts.

“I think that’s a bit silly really. Reforms you don’t like aren’t the same as “trying to kill the NHS”.”

No, but reforms aimed at beginning the slow death of the NHS are exactly like trying to kill it. I don’t like the localism trend that creates postcode lotteries, but I wouldn’t describe it as an attempt to kill the NHS. Whereas the Tories are trying to privatise it on the sly and stop it being free at the point of use. If the NHS becomes privatised and profit-based it stops being the NHS in any meaningful sense.

“In any event, in most cases the Coalition has built on pre-existing reforms initiated by Labour – it’s more a question of speed of travel, rather than direction.

By definition, any government can be said to be “building on” the policy of the previous government. Even if you think that the incumbant’s approach is similar to their predecessor’s, that doesn’t make the latter complicit in the actions of the former.

That’s spending cuts in general, not NHS cuts.

Well, yes. The Tories pledged to increase spending on the NHS even as they cut everywhere else. Labour were (frequently) asked whether they would match this, and refused. The final policy looked like this:

During the last general election Labour said it would increase spending on front-line services in the NHS only in line with inflation. In addition, the Labour government proposed finding £15bn-£20bn in efficiency savings to try to relieve the extra pressure on the NHS.

Andy Burnham went on to say “It is irresponsible to increase NHS spending in real terms within the overall financial envelope that he, as chancellor, is setting.”

It’s possible to argue that nothing Labour said before the last election should be taken seriously, but that does make ‘what-if’ scenarios tricky to discuss.

@ 30 BenM (and others)

You can’t have it both ways. You claim that the Tories massive spending cuts are causing the recession/lack of growth. Yet if you look at actual spending figures, they have been rising.

Running a massive deficit *IS* a Keynesian stimulus. As we can see, it’s not really working…unless you are suggesting we run an even bigger deficit. At which point the national debt will increase even faster and more likely than not interest rates will rise as the markets (investors) lose confidence in the UK’s ability to control it’s spending and service it’s debt.

This in turn would cause debt financing costs to rise which would wipe out much of the extra spending, eventually leading to a debt trap.

Darling knew this, which is why his budget was little different to Osbourne’s (the former wanted to cut the entire deficit over 2 terms, the latter the structural deficit over 1 term – about 3% difference over the 2nd term in practice).

So what your argument essentially boils down to is that because the Tories are in power there is no growth, because they are cutting, yet if Labour were in power, with roughly the same cuts, we would be heading for sunlit uplands.

That argument can be rendered down even further to “I hate Tories, I love Labour”. Reality be dammed.

The point is not to engage in an infantile political blame game but that with almost all the public spending cuts yet to come, investors plainly have no confidence that there will be sufficient aggregate demand in the market to support investment decisions. Hence the slump in investment:

Investment by government, businesses and households in the three months to June has suffered its biggest quarterly fall in three years.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/91938384-edca-11e1-8d72-00144feab49a.html#axzz24q1HcixP

The policy issue is what to do about that. Continuing with fiscal austerity as Osborne originally planned and Cameron supports obviously isn’t working. We need to face up to the reality of the situation or accept the likely prospect of a continuing recession bringing with it no increase in tax revenues to pay down the budget deficit. Austerity isn’t working. That is the reality. What is going to change?

@ 39 Tim J

To clarify, were those proposed “efficiency savings” (God, I hate that phrase) supposed to be within the NHS or outside of it? Because I would have thought NHS cuts would INCREASE the pressure on the service, not relieve it. Although I’m fully aware that politicians are fond of doublethink in cases like this.

The problem with what-ifs scenarios – and thus a problem with both your argument and mine – is that they’re conjecture by definition. My issue with Tory policy here is more in the specifics: backdoor privatisation, shaft the disabled because they can be easily conflated with benefit scroungers. I think we should be spending more money on the NHS, not less, but I accept that this isn’t always possible, and it doesn’t mean that there aren’t places were money can be genuinely saved.

Tyler: “You claim that the Tories massive spending cuts are causing the recession/lack of growth. Yet if you look at actual spending figures, they have been rising.”

This is a consistent disingenuous trope, ignoring the difference between total government spending and spending on services. Expenditure on services is going down, but in a recession welfare expenditure always rises.

To clarify, were those proposed “efficiency savings” (God, I hate that phrase) supposed to be within the NHS or outside of it?

Within I believe – Labour were pretty up front about the fact that they proposed to cut NHS spending.

This is rather the thing that gets me so depressed about current British politics. Beyond the froth and hype and hyperbole, both sides broadly agree on the economic realities. That’s why you have Ed Balls vetoing pretty much all spending pledges, and Miliband saying that the reality of the 2015 election is one where money is still tight.

Does anyone seriously believe that Labour will go into the election pledging an immediate debt-derived fiscal boost of, say £150bn? Or even £50bn? I don’t. Perhaps the reason everything’s got so tetchy is that the parties are reduced to disagreeing on very little, while needing to keep rhetorical flourishes revved up to the max.

@ 44 Gastro

Your point is moot, given that spending, whether on “services” or “recession welfare expenditure” both end up being counted in GDP figures.

Indeed, it has been argued that the potential GDP multiplier effect is higher for the automatic stabiliser type “welfare” spending as it tends to gets spent on direct consumption more.

So I’m really not sure what your point is, other than being utterly and totally wrong.

Bob @ 42 is quite right, there is simply very little confidence, and/or likely success stories in which to invest.

Regardless of what our government does, confidence will remain low so long as the Eurozone crisis is unresolved, It’s just too big and too near. A more positive message would help, ie shoring up employment where possible, but it’s pointless to pretend that we can just ignore previous errors.

As to whether Labour would have done better, I suppose it partly depends on which Labour party was elected. If it was the right-wing, neo-liberal one so often alluded to on LC, then we would presumably be no better off.

Chaise: ” I think we should be spending more money on the NHS, not less”.

Just out of interest, why?

Just as a postscript to that nice little argument we had over whether higher taxes on high earners might lead to a bankers exodus/

London-based recruitment firm Astbury Marsden, which specialises in the banking sector, has seen a 51 per cent rise in French-language applicants in recent months, compared with the same period of 2011.

“There is a definite spike in French-speaking candidates,” said managing director Jonathan Nicholson.

“We have not seen similar increases in candidates from other countries, so it may well be connected to May’s change in government in France.”

http://www.cityam.com/latest-news/french-bankers-escape-hollande

Interesting anecdotal evidence…

@46 Tyler

The point being that the right cut services in the name of cutting the deficit, watch services being cut, watch the stabilisers kick in, see that the deficit has not been cut, and then run around shouting “OMG, there have been no cuts let’s cut some more”. Asinine.

And your point now is that the cuts actually promote GDP growth because welfare payments will actually be spent? Sounds like a recipe for higher welfare payments all round …

@ 50 Gastro

No, that was not my argument at all. You argue that the Tories are cutting and this is depressing growth. You also argue that certain cuts (services) matter more than other cuts (welfare).

I argue that there are currently no real term cuts, and both parties would have done much the same, so it’s hard to argue that “cuts” are the reason for the recession – and especially hard to argue that Tory cuts are the cause whereas Labour ones wouldn’t be.

I also argue that were there no cuts the deficit and national debt would grow so fast that any extra growth would quickly be consumed by extra debt servicing costs, not least because the government would lose fiscal credibility and the markets would push interest/bond rates higher. So not having a credible deficit reduction plan is simply not an option, so at best the UK could go with the Darling plan or similar – meaning had Labour been in power cuts almost as hard as the Coalition’s plans would have been implemented.

You see, you’re just slippery in your use of the generic term “cuts”.

“You argue that the Tories are cutting and this is depressing growth.”
Cuts in services are cuts in productive work (whatever you might think), and the loss of income and insecurity created by this reduces aggregate demand, both of which depress GDP.

“You also argue that certain cuts (services) matter more than other cuts (welfare).”
I would argue that they both matter, but differently.

“I argue that there are currently no real term cuts …”
If you mean that cuts to services are balanced by increases in welfare, and the loss of tax income, then that is rather obviously true, because it’s what we see in the statistics.

“… and both parties would have done much the same …”
I’ve already stated that I’m not interested in any party that peddles neoliberal/neoclassical crap.

“… so it’s hard to argue that “cuts” are the reason for the recession …”
No it’s not, see above.

“… and especially hard to argue that Tory cuts are the cause whereas Labour ones wouldn’t be.”
Which I don’t argue.

“I also argue that were there no cuts the deficit and national debt would grow so fast that any extra growth would quickly be consumed by extra debt servicing costs …”
So your argument is that when there are cuts to services, and the automatic stabilisers mean that the deficit is not cut, then we should cut some more. But if we didn’t cut services, but increased them, then the automatic stabilisers don’t work in the opposite direction. Very convenient for your supposed logic.

I cannot understand why the Greens are keeping their heads down over this.

Surely, they should be cheering on George Osborne for stopping GDP growth.

@Charlieman

> Thus it is time to consider a smidge of Keynesianism on infrastructure
> projects.

Absolutely.

> Experiment and learn.

All I would say here is that the experiment has already been done, so I think I would rephrase that as “replicate and confirm” .

@Bob B

> Surely [the Greens] should be cheering on George Osborne for stopping
> GDP growth.

You can’t honestly believe that?

I assume your point here is that “environmentalists” are anti-progress? While the radical fringes may be anti anything they consider “unnatural”, I think it is crazy to consider the Greens as actually being against GDP growth, because frankly, that would be nuts.

I think the aim of the Greens is to progress more responsibly from an environmental standpoint, not to halt progress altogether, and rhetoric to the contrary doesn’t help move political discourse forward.

Andy C: “I think it is crazy to consider the Greens as actually being against GDP growth, because frankly, that would be nuts.”

I suggest comparing the analysis of “The Limits to Growth” by the Club of Rome in 1972 and this recent statement in 2011 on the implications of attaining ecological sustainability:

“For 50 years literature has been accumulating pointing out the contradiction between the pursuit of economic growth and ecological sustainability, although this has had negligible impact on economic theory or practice. A few, notably Herman Daly (2008), have continued to attempt to get the notion of a steady-state economy onto the agenda but it has only been in the last few years that discussion has begun to gain momentum. Jackson’s Prosperity Without Growth (200) has been widely recognised, there is now a substantial European ‘De-growth’ movement (Latouche, 2007), and CASSE (2010) has emerged.”
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue57/Trainer57.pdf

As best I can tell, the Greens should be celebrating Osborne for achieving the environmental nirvana of zero GDP growth in the world’s sixth largest national economy.

“They’d have cut departmental spending on the NHS though (as they have done in Wales”

This is misleading.

In Wales, health and social care budgets have merged – in line with what most sane people have been calling for for decades. It has risen slightly in cash terms and will do so over the next few years, but when inflation is counted, it has indeed been cut in real terms. The welsh government having no choice in the context of a massive cut to the block grant, and having fewer borrowing or revanue raising powers than the average parish council (something that remains a scandal and typical of the treasury’s centralising instinct)

So the budget line in Wales isn’t comparable with England. If we look at combined spending on social care and health in england, we find that the total budget has indeed suffered a massive cut – to such an extent that it has become self defeating and patients cannot be moved out of hospital into social care anymore. And the NHS effectively faces more demand than strictly necessary, and the service suffers. This is before we factor in the costs of the re-organisation, and the top-down demand for ‘efficiency savings’ of 20 billion. Or the spiralling repayments for PFI schemes that Wales sensibly put a stop to a decade ago….much to the annoyance of blair.

Nice try though.

@ 48 Jack C

“Just out of interest, why [should we spend more on the NHS]?”

Because there are still problems with the service: some things are unavailable, some things are not free at point of use that should be, and some things are oversubscribed. It’s not bad but it could be better. On top of that, it’s a big employer, so putting money into the NHS could help with unemployment too.

“Given that most of the economy is driven by consumer spending, this means the amount of money circulating contracts further and the economy suffers.”

Well children – does anyone know what else relies on ‘confiddence’ in order to function?

That’s right kids – a PONZI scheme.

Madoff went to prison for his – Osbourne and previous chancellors get honours for running theirs!

@Bob B

“As best I can tell, the Greens should be celebrating Osborne for achieving the environmental nirvana of zero GDP growth in the world’s sixth largest national economy.”

This is such utter nonsense – GDP ISN’T RELATED TO ENVRONMENTALISM.

Once again the amatuers get confused.

Imagine and economy which only grew and exported flowers – lets call them ‘Holland’ – and let us assume they sell ‘Tulips’ and let us assume there is currently ‘Tulip mania’.

You have the worlds largest – and greenest economy simultaneously.

You are making an amatuer mistake by assuming that just because UK GDP is heavily dependent on ‘dirty’ industries – that GDP is linked to the environmental damage – which it clearly isn’t.

So the budget line in Wales isn’t comparable with England.

Ah. I’m not sure that alters the fact that in Labour’s last budget they envisaged fairly substantial cuts in departmental spending on the NHS, a position they maintained in their manifesto. I don’t think this is a controversial point is it?

@Bob B

It seems I was wrong. Although the link you provide doesn’t directly address “green” politics in the UK, it did cause me to go and have a closer look at the Green Party manifesto and related documents, and I would say that they do in fact support the assertion that the Green Party would like to see zero, or perhaps even negative GDP growth.

Their justification as to why they could do this would seem to be a “Citizen’s Income”; the details of which I’m going to need to look up.

I guess you learn something new every day!

I should just add that I still don’t believe the Greens should be celebrating Osborne’s “achievements”, as I don’t think this was the method they had in mind .

@ 62 Andy

“I would say that they do in fact support the assertion that the Green Party would like to see zero, or perhaps even negative GDP growth.”

Could you provide a source for that? From your phrasing I assume you mean that the Greens are actively seeking zero/negative growth, as opposed to you looking at their manifesto and declaring it would lead to negative growth.

“they envisaged fairly substantial cuts in departmental spending on the NHS, a position they maintained in their manifesto. I don’t think this is a controversial point is it”

No, but it is a meaningless point. What you have to do is look at health and social care as the same system – regardless of how governments present the data. So essentially what you have is 2 positions for England:

(1) The tory position; cut social care funding massively but protect departmental spending on health. Overall effect – services in both decline, people stay longer in hospital and people don’t live independantly.

(2) The labour position; smaller cuts in both health and social care. Overall effect; services in both decline, but if the cuts are managed in a sane manner (a big if…) the decline in service is less. This is because good non-residential social care that keeps people living independantly saves the health service substantial amounts over the long run. If you can join up the budgets and have far more working together between social care, primary health care and secondary health care then there are substantial savings that will be made, and the service will be improved.

To some extent the size of england, and it’s overly centralised system of government, means it will always be behind the smaller nations when it comes to joined up thinking in government, but the tories aren’t even trying with their policy of protecting departmental spending on health, but massively cutting social care.

Tim J @ 61

It doesn’t really matter what Labour ‘promised’ to do in its manifesto, because what it promised to do was devised out of a combination of political cowardice and expediency. We can quibble over what proportions of these tensions drove the Labour manifesto, but what ever the rights and wrongs of cutting government spending during a recession, the Labour Party are not a philosophical ‘cutting’ Party.

On the other hand, the Tory Party ARE a cutting Party. Irrespective of the financial position of the country, you people actually want the government to be doing less. That is not me trying to trick you into saying anything that you rather wouldn’t, that is your Party’s ideological position. It may be easier to sell that in a rescission, but even if we were in a boom, you would still be a ‘smaller’ government type Party.

Cut to the car chase, Tim, you smuggled ‘smaller’ your smaller government agenda under the camouflage of a need to cut spending.

Now, this is at the crux at the matter. The Labour Party promised cuts for obvious reasons as mentioned above. Fear at being punished because they did not support popular cuts, perhaps a complete failure to articulate an alternative strategy and, lets face it, if the cutting strategy had been perceived (rightly or wrongly) to be working, then Labour would not have wanted to be seen to be on the wrong side*.

However, if the cuts are actually damaging the recovery, then Labour’s rationale for supporting those cuts disappears overnight. You could say Labour wouldn’t do anything different, but that ignores the pretty obvious fact that Labour did not support the cuts in the first place. You could argue that Labour’s support of the cuts, was based on their relative ‘success’.

The issue is not would Labour have done if the cutting strategy would have worked, because that is not really the point. The real issue is what would Labour have done when the cutting strategy started to fall about its ears. Of course the answer is either it would have dropped that strategy like a stone or it would have stoically carried on.

The former being popular and no doubt the latter would have generated the type of blog entries in similar veins to the above.

The Tories are in a different dilemma. Again, if the strategy of cutting spending is failing, then they have a major problem, because their entire ideology rests on the fact that cutting government is an end in itself. The reason the re is no plan ‘B’ is not because there is no alternative to the cuts; it is because cutting government is what they do.

For what it is worth, I think you can take solace from the fact that Labour are still as invested (but for different reasons) in the cuts as you are. If (and that is still a huge ‘IF’) the general voting public somehow manage to see these cuts as ideological, the flack will be shared between you and Labour because Labour are still unwilling to distance itself from the ‘destroy’, ‘destroy’, ‘destory’ rhetoric of the press.

*Complete bollocks of course, because had the cuts been perceived to have worked, then the fuckwits at the top of the Labour Party need not need to worry about their credibility, because they would have been unelectable for a generation.

@ Chaise Guevara

> From your phrasing I assume you mean that the Greens are actively
> seeking zero/negative growth, as opposed to you looking at their manifesto
> and declaring it would lead to negative growth.

That’s correct. You can see a limited statement around this in their manifesto:

http://greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/resources/Manifesto_web_file.pdf

The relevant section starts in the last paragraph of page 7 and continues into page 8.

A more explicit statement can be found here:

http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ec

The most significant quote can be found in the section on “Ecological sustainability”.

Hope that helps.

@ Andy C

“The most significant quote can be found in the section on “Ecological sustainability”.”

Thanks. I wouldn’t say that’s an anti-growth statement. It’s a declaration that the Greens would treat growth as less important than other governments. Here’s the quote:

“To this end, the Citizens’ Income (see EC730) will allow the current dependence on economic growth to cease, and allow zero or negative growth to be feasible without individual hardship should this be necessary on the grounds of sustainability.”

In other words: “In some cases GDP growth will take a backseat to sustainability, and we’ll develop reserves to tide people over when this happens.” That might be a bad idea, but it’s not at all the same as saying that you see GDP growth as irrelevant or actively bad.

Thank you for alerting me to this, as it’s important info, but you’re misrepresenting the party here.

@Chaise Guevara

That was broadly my position before coming across these details (as you can probably see from one of my first comments on this thread), but I’m having trouble reconciling these statements with anything other than an ultimate target of zero growth (I’ll ignore negative growth here).

The reason I say this is combining the manifesto quote with the sustainability quote. In particular

“if the economy gets too big it will grow beyond its ecological limits… Only the Green Party is willing to face up properly to these limits, and to say that limitless economic growth without thinking about the consequences is a dangerous and careless fantasy”

I can’t interpret that as saying anything other than that the Greens think the economy has a maximum size beyond which it cannot safely grow (rather than simply claiming we must be responsible; a statement I completely agree with).

I accept it does not immediately follow that the Greens think we’re already there (though I suspect they do courtesy of climate impacts), but it can be inferred, i think, that growth must stop at some point.

@ 69 Andy C

Fair enough. I’d be ok with them saying “we need to reconcile growth with sustainability” or even “rampant growth is normally caused by irresponsbile behaviour”, but I agree with the idea that the economy can get “too big” is weird. And also staggeringly vague, as you point out.

What if other countries don’t go along with the “GDP growth is bad” mantra of the Greens? Will that matter or should we just cheer on George Osborne for making it happen in Britain?

Btw according to the Club of Rome on: Limits to Growth, published in 1972, the world was supposed to be running out of raw materials by around the end of the 20th century. It didn’t happen.

I don’t know why George Osborne is the poster boy of Tory strategy. After the country took a nose dive with Labour at the wheel for 13 years he couldn’t even engineer an election victory with that open goal.
13 years in the wilderness wasn’t enough to earn enough trust back/get enough voters without memory of the past. Of course that just makes the idea that Labour can earn it back after 2 utterly ridiculous.
We’ll learn there’s more colours than red, blue or yellow one of these days.

None of the current leading parties will except that the fundamentals of the economic system are flawed and the only way to make things better is embrace them (growth = more debt permanently – paying down will never happen) or the creation of money/credit needs rethinking.