As has already been said on here, before the crisis, the Tories were proposing to match Labour's spending. Cameron was saying that whilst the economy may be ok, "society was broken." Gus O'Donnell the head of the civil service under Major, Blair and Brown has said that the civil service didn't see the crisis coming.
I think some blame can be attached to a Labour government not regulating the banks, but the zeigeist was "the market is always right" As with many of this country's ills, the banking crisis can be traced back to Thatcher.
The British economy shrank 7% in 2008/9, the deficit was a product of that reduction. TBH I reckon Darling did well to pull the economy through that and nurture some growth. Osbourne killed that growth stone dead. He and Dave the Kipper should pay the price at the next election. I sincerely hope they do.
As an added vindictive bonus I'd like to see Clegg kicked out of Sheffield too. That'd larn 'im!

They were comfortably affordable in the short term, whilst the going was good, sure. The problem is the good times were never going to last forever and Labour should have, after such a long boom period, have left the public finances in a better state.



You'll have to ask some claiming it's all Labour's fault that one. You seem to be the one blaming Labour for the banking crisis - something I haven't done.

Labour could have spent less. That would have left us in a better position now. I doubt whether they could have put effective regulations in place to prevent the banking crisis - even after the crisis no-one has actually managed to come up with any effective regulation. That's with the knowledge of what went wrong. Expecting regulation against problems which have never happened is asking a lot in my opinion. That's why I blame Labour for what they did have control of (overspending) not for what they had no realistic control over (the banking crisis).

The only one is ignoring it is you because without the banking crisis there wouldn't have been crisis.

You seem to also be confusing the spending levels with the crisis that came after the banking crash. The spending levels were nothing out of the ordinary. As the figures show.

Without the banking crisis there would not have been a problem. As the figures show.

As to Labour could have spent less. How much less? Go on put a figure on it.

They could have kept the public service budgets in line with what they were when they took over the reins in 1997.

Then things would have been REALLY crap, a bit like where we're heading now.

Aye, they should have emulated the Tories who after 18 years, during which they engineered two dreadful slumps through their magnificent fiscal management, left us with a debt at a level that is now considered by the same Tory party to be unsustainable.
And that even omits all the massive North Sea oil revenues that they, the Tories, managed to spend as well as the debt.
Plus all the huge amounts of cash from selling-off gas, telephones, electricity generation, electricity distribution, water ... etc etc.

So, it seems that when the Tories spend money, that's careful management but when Labour spend the same without privatising or getting the same monies from the North Sea, that's shockingly wasteful profligacy.

I'll say it again (and this is going to be very boring because I'll keep saying it) ... the Tory Jackanory Story about debt and spending, whilst it has a grain of necessity in it, is a handy cover for rolling back the state in a big way.

The Thatcher/Major era was all about the rolling back of state-owned enterprise, de-regulation of the markets and smashing Union power regardless of who got hurt, this one is about the shrinking of the welfare state and filling the pockets of their sponsors regardless of who gets hurt.

Here's the graph, again:



To be very clear I'm talking about the spending from 2001-2007. Which is in a nice contrast to 1997-2000. As the figures show Labour were running a significant deficit during those boom years. Quite similar to those in the preceding recession.



Without the banking crisis (and the causes of the crisis being present in the period preceding it) we have no idea what state the economy would be. What we do know is that economies are cyclical and Labour failed to prepare for the inevitable (whatever the cause) bust.

You have pointed at 2001 in an earlier post.
Brown had refused to over-spend in the previous four years, building up what the press referred to as his "war chest".
I think you'd agree that the time to spend is when there is a danger of recession?
Well, in 2001 GDP growth fell to 0.3%.
Exactly the time to start spending.

Added to which was the cost of the stupid war in Iraq.

Pointed out in response to his first posting of the graph, good luck on getting a response this time around

Where have you been since summer 2008?

The crisis was causes by massive over-spending on public services and the gold-plated pensions of public sector workers.

...and those greedy disabled people.


I think we're keeping immigrants in reserve for another spin-day.