Tories no longer ignore Labour’s economic success

‘We are critical and quite angry, actually. Over the last 10 years the government has set nothing aside for a rainy day. They should have used the decade to reduce borrowing and cut taxes. They did not – and now we will all suffer’
– Alan Duncan, shadow secretary of state for business, enterprise and regulatory reform

Blah, blah, blah go the Tories in response to Alastair Darling’s first budget.

I’m not quite ready to forgive Alastair Darling for screwing up so completely at transport, but with Gordon Brown’s hand firmly on his shoulder I expect him to continue the government’s good work on the economy.

But what’s most telling is the Tories’ line. Trying to look all upset because ‘Labour failed to use the good years to prepare for the bad years’. Ten good years in which the Conservatives and their friends have forecast nothing but doom and gloom… blah, blah, blah.

They will continue to cry wolf and the wider international situation presents challenges, like the credit crunch which will make banks act more responsibly – lending less to safer bets – and slow the housing market, but leave us all better off in the long run.

But what really gets Tories angry is not Labour’s now undenied economic success, but that the success has been used to make Britain a better place, rather than fund tax breaks for the already well off.

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2 graffiti on “Tories no longer ignore Labour’s economic success”

1. Sasha says:
   

   Unlike the rest of Europeans, an average Britton devours the idea that he/she is better off if the country’s economy is doing well, strangely remaining blind to plain truth – that what matters to an individual is his/hers quality of life and not the economic wonder that the Labour has apparently performed in the last then years. Thirteen million Britons live on £145/week or less (the figure adopted by the government as the limit bellow which an individual that earns it is classified as “poor”). Thirteen million is more than the whole population of many European countries … Also it is the legacy of the above mentioned government, as well as the 86% of the British population that is in debt. When one knows that debts usually have to be paid (or else), one wonders as to Stephen’s statement that the Labour’s economic policies will “…leave us all better off in the long run”.

   Have all a very pleasant future!

   March 25th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
2. Stephen Newton says:
   

   That Labour’s opponents now recognise poverty as a political issue shows just how much New Labour has changed the political landscape. The Thatcherite vision of a ‘flexible’ labour market with no minimum wage, no trade unions and little protection from unscrupulous employers is now dead.

   Sasha’s claim that current levels of poverty are a legacy of this government is rather silly as that could only be the case if Labour had inherited a poverty free nation. There are one million fewer pensioners and 600,000 fewer children in poverty than ten years ago.

   Nevertheless, that’s still not enough and plenty of work remains to be done.

   But while the Conservative Party may have changed its rhetoric, the idea that that the poor would be better off under a Tory government is preposterous. Alan Duncan is angry not because some people are poor; he says he’s angry because the government invested in health, education and more instead of cutting taxes.

   And the Lib Dems opposed increasing the minimum wage; happy to see the low paid remain low paid.

   March 25th, 2008 at 7:46 pm

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