Well since the Tories had no criticism of Labour policy until the financial crisis, they had commited themselves to Labours spending plans, they cannot talk. In fact if they want someone competant who foresaw the crisis that excludes about 99% of economists, and every politician.

He has a point (even if it is a bit hypocritical).
Brown wouldn't know how to balance the books or keep spending in check if his life depended on it.

National accounts are nothing like home accounts or business accounts no matter how simplistic you want to be. That is why talks of austerity will only make matters worse. On a domestic basis if you have an excess of spending you need to either raise income or cut spending. In national accounts one persons expenditure is another persons income so cutting expenditure is enforcing pay cuts on everyone else. That is why the Tory simplist model of the economy is wrong, it is nothing like a household account. In fact the US has only ever had a couple of years in surplus throughout its entire history since independance.

Again with the debt/deficit confusion. Two different things. We can borrow, and not be in deficit. We need not borrow and still be in deficit. The Tories really don’t seem to be able to stick to one term and use it consistently. Our national debt is nothing compared to what it was after WWII. We invested and worked our way out of that - massive public works (road network, infrastructure upgrades, etc).




http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/uk-ec ... onal-debt/

Yes they can. It wasnt until they got into power that they saw the horrendous state of the public finances.


That graph seems to be missing a quite important bit of time eg the last ten years!

Yes - the second one does miss off a decade - but does the spike shown in the first equate to a similarly sized on in the second? Given that both graphs appear to have much the same shape and form for the dates they do cover, it’s safe to assume that the spike around 2009/10 is significantly smaller than that from the late 1940s/early 1950s.

They were talking about cuts during the election so none of this we did not know how bad the finances were crap.

Yes they were talking about cuts during the election, even Labour were talking about cuts...admitidley very begrudgingly and usually on the "well cut less than them"