A right mess!

Labour were in power for 13 years, they sat in government for a period when this country had tremendous economic growth, this country went from being the 6th largest economy in the world to the 4th largest. Gordon Brown when Chancellor raised unprecedented sums of money through tax, he was able to spend at will, he increased the amount of people working for the government hugely. You would think that with all this money coming in he would have put a little aside for a rainy day, but unfortunately not, he spent and spent and spent.

So let's look at some facts. When Labour came to power we had a deficit of £6 billion and a national debt of £350 billion, that sounds like a lot of money, but when you look at the size of our economy it was very manageable. When they left power we had a deficit of £157 billion and were in debt to the tune of £1.3 trillion. That is good going! Gordon Brown argued that it was a global financial crises, which it was, but out of the top 20 economies in the world our economy was worst hit. Our economy was the last one to come out of recession, instead of paying off the national debt which he could have easily done, he carried on spending and then blamed everyone else for his stupid mistakes.

The reason we are in the mess we are in now is because of Labour's wastefulness. Labour allowed the public sector to get out of control, and did not help the private sector, so the profit making part of our economy got smaller and the part which created no wealth got bigger. Some people would argue that it does not matter what sector people are employed in, as long as they are spending money which drives the economy. But this has been shown to be very short sited, the problem is our economy is almost a one trick pony. Our economy is so reliant on people spending money, when anything goes wrong our economy struggles. Labour focused on this very one sided view and they almost forgot about the rest of the economy.

Labour neglected manufacturing to the point that in 1997 when they came to power it made up 20 per cent of our economy now it makes up less than 13 per cent. They deregulated the City of London which meant we saw huge growth in the financial sector, and now the largest profit making part of our economy is the finance sector. This means we are very reliant on this sector, if the big finance companies decide to go elsewhere our economy will be 'buggered'. It has been shown by the fact that the quickest growing economies in the world, China and India that manufacturing things works and keeps the economy growing, China and India have not really been affected by the recession and have continued to see growth.

A lot of people believe the Conservatives are evil, and whatever they do are bad. They believe the cuts they are making are bad, and they should not be doing it. But the simple truth is this, if Labour were in power they would have to do exactly the same thing, this country is in massive debt and if we do not cut we will lose our triple A rating which means it will cost us more to borrow. Labour were the ones who let councils employ chief executives on over £200,000 a year, Labour wasted Billions, they let our public sector get so big and employed millions of people doing none jobs. One example is the Ministry of Defence which employs £85,000 pen pushers and only has 160,000 armed personnel.

An interesting aside, did you know that in the dying days of the last government Alaister Darling was summoned to Brussels and ordered to hand over £13 billion to prop up the Euro, even though Britain has never joined the single currency. We have handed Ireland £7 billion, our net contribution to the EU this year is £8.3 billion, So in the last year we have handed over £28 billion for no return, we are in massive debt and the government are making massive cuts in public services. Doesn't that seem a little obscene?

I think the best thing that ever happened to Labour was losing the last election, they would have had to sort out the mess but now they are going to be out of office for a few years and the Conservatives will have to try and sort out the mess they made. When the next election comes around Labour will accuse the Conservatives of being the party of cuts and will make them out to be the bad guys. They will then be re-elected and we will be in an even worse mess. I am not a fan of this government but I do believe whoever got elected were going to have to make some painful decisions. Whatever happens over the next few years isn't going to be pleasant and whoever is in power is going to struggle, but I do believe if Labour had remained in power we would be heading into a huge black hole with no way of getting out.