Tony blair nigh on bankrupted the country has everyone forgotten that!
Sigh.
THAT IS NOT TRUE. It is factually inaccurate. It is contradicted by the evidence. It is a dead parrot.
It's so frustrating, how often people keep repeating soundbites that have no basis in fact. That's not the only one, either.
*Theresa May did not promise anyone £350 mill for the economy if we left the EU - she was campaigning for Remain! It had fuck all to do with her. People need to stop landing her with that one.
*The Bank of England didn't print money because that isn't what quantitative easing is, not even close... and nor did they hand billions of electronic money over to major corporations instead of nurses because they are evil moustachio-twirling capitalists, but because doing so was the only way to make quantitative easing economically safe.
*Labour did not spend this country into disaster by pouring money into our services at an unaffordable rate when the economy was thriving, instead of ensuring we broke even or better.
When Blair handed over to Brown, the national debt was lower than it had been in decades, and we had no deficit (deficit is different to debt - debt is total sum owed by gov.t to private entities, while deficit/surplus is the gap between money in and money out in a given year) to speak of. We were breaking even, and had actually run a surplus for 4 of the previous 8 years. Spending was eminently affordable, even with the heavy investment in the services. Brown was hit within a year by the global economic crisis - the clue there is in the word GLOBAL. This is a fabulous country, but it isn't capable of crashing every major world economy, no matter how much you disliked the PM at the time. At that point, spending was how we avoided the economy falling off a cliff. You don't run an economy as you do a household budget. The two are simply not comparable.
This is a nice helpful series of graphs, published by Full Fact - the independent fact checking organisation - which establishes that Labour in fact REDUCED the national debt in the years before the global economic crisis. And since then, Labour increased debt... but the Coalition and Tory administrations have been doing exactly the same thing, on the same trajectory, ever since. And they have not been dealing with a nation in recession, and nor have they been spending at adequate levels on our national services, either. In fact it looks rather as though austerity has been bad for the economy, on the actual cold hard economic facts.
Keynesian pump priming is spending your way out of a recession - we've already done that, and have the borrowing to show for it. Sure we can spend a bit more on public services, borrow a bit more, tax a bit more but ultimately it has to be long term affordable - pump-priming is not supposed to be a day in, day out way to afford your services - it's not sustainable.
Absolutely, which is why Labour only increased the national debt at a time when it was universally agreed that such spending was essential to avoid the global economic crisis becoming a disaster. But austerity absolutely does not work, if measured by national debt - it's been increasing at a scary rate under the Conservatives and we're not in recession any more. How is that evidence of prudent fiscal management?
More simply: in the good times, Labour reduced the national debt, while still spending on the public services. The Conservatives have cut public services and still increased the debt, and done so at a time when we aren't in recession. How is that evidence of fiscal competence? It just isn't.
It doesn't matter how you want to vote - there are valid reasons on all sides other than BNP maniac types. But people need to vote on the actual facts. And to do that, they need to actually research them.