To wonder if life was better under a Labour government?

[Wasloafbetter]

Or are people looking back with rose tinted specs?

I started teaching in the Blair years and I found it pretty awful, although how much of that was down to my own lack of experience and how much was down to government policies is hard to say.

I’m wondering if people are looking back nostalgically (have seen this on a thread this morning where apparently the 80s were a great time for freedom of expression with no pressure to conform, which don’t tally with my memories at all) or whether life was better then.

I’m 42, by the way - was 17 when Blair was made PM.

As a teacher my life was much better under Blair (despite the pension issues). There was much more money. It’s shocking how little pay and funding is in place in comparison and give us a c* for what he did to a levels and GCSEs.

Much better under labour. I’ve worked in civil service under Blair, Brown, Cameron and May. Much better under Labour. I think Starmer is a credible person who could do well. We are unlikely to get embroiled in as many overseas conflicts than we did under Blair. I don’t think that’s his style. And he would genuinely take into account and understand professional advice.

Much better under Labour. I think Starmer is a credible person who could do well.

Having seen his tenure at the CPS my opinion is he isn't that credible.

Labour will struggle to get in these days as a number of Their vote was in Scotland which got them elected which has now gone to the SNP which hinders labours election chances.

@sst1234

Life is always better under labour, until the chickens come home to roost. The last labour government did structural damage to the country’s economy. Low skills, low wages subsidized by high taxation and benefits. Insane public spending with no thought for budget balancing. Illegal wars and helping create one of the largest refuge crises in history. Things like these take generations to correct.

This^^

In 1998 our council tax went up by 200%

Tax credits encouraged many employers to pay ridiculously low wages because virtually everyone was on benefits, even families with 2 decent incomes.

Blair opened the doors to the poor and unskilled of Europe, driving down wages further and worsening the living conditions of thousands of people in manual jobs and eventually leading to Brexit. Does anybody honestly believe it would have happened had it not been for that?

PFI was a Labour scheme and has been a disaster.

Labour did away with the Assisted Places scheme for bright children from poor families. Luckily for us the outgoing Tory Government deliberately created loads more places so our DD was able to go to a decent secondary school.

Maximum 30 children in KS1 also hugely impacted on those of us in an area with few decent primaries and meant the chance of getting a place anywhere near home was remote. (DH drove a 500-mile a week school run from 1997 to 2002 ).

Blair thought it would be a great idea to send 50% of 18 year olds to university, so now everyone expects to go, and a job that would once have required 5 GCSEs now demands a degree, while degrees themselves are devalued because everyone has one.

At the same time the massive increase in students has certainly fucked up the area where I live. Housing is in short supply and everything that comes up is bought by a student landlord. We all suffer from the consequences of adult-children unsupervised for the first time with antisocial behaviour, noise, litter, parking problems. They pay no council tax so everyone else pays more to cover for them. From what I see on SM it's the same story in every town with a university.

Everyone drips on and on about the current government not providing more housing, and Thatcher selling off council housing. Labour were in power for 13 years. Did they build any? They had the perfect opportunity to overturn Thatcher's policies but didn't. I wonder why.

I don't know which of your buttons relates which way, but I believe they did untold damage to the country (and the middle east) which is continuing to reverberate all these years later and leading to the problems we all have now. No-one remember the "money's all gone" note as they left office?

I was 16 when Blair came in and I spent my first day under a Labour government.
I worked in both the NHS and teaching in the Labour years.

While I was in the NHS, huge amounts of money went into paying staff overtime to shift waiting lists. Getting your name down for an "inituative clinic" was about 3x usual salary.

Significant investment in the building stock of schools/ hospitals... BUT PFI was a poor value method of doing it, is still being paid for an I knew schools that concluded that they were better off ploughing on in crumbling buildings.

Education was mixed. There was an effort to standardise education standards, but it was the begining of the data and target culture that cripples staff workloads today. Labour started the academies movement. Working conditions were improved with PPA and other changes to roles. Funding still wasn't abundant, but was not as bad. The curriculum was more mixed and inclusive. The 5A*-C culture meant that a lot of effort was put into the C-D borderline, and those securely above or under did not necessarily get stretched to their full potential.
Education was broadly better and happier, but there were foundations in place that have been exacerbated since 2020.

The Surestart/ Children's Centres were a positive development. I had my children during the coalition years as funding wound down. In the early 2010s it was good to be able to access those services and the local library that is now slashed to two short afternoons per week and inaccessible to school children in term time.

The Blair/ Brown years were superficially better, and had the advantage of a healthier global economy. But not all spending was well placed or good value in the long run.

Gay rights were improved to the point of Civil Partnership, and it was after that that they were extended to marriage. That is a positive legacy of both governments in the past 20 years or so.

I would say it definitely depends on the area you lived in under New Labour.

Lots of the educational initiatives related to early years, etc so we’re not on my radar at the time but I just saw a lot of chaos on the schools. In ‘97, you could sense the change and a definite optimism but it felt as though a lot of people thought right we don’t need to bother any more. A lot of the things that came in didn’t really seem designed to solve problems but rather pacify people and create jobs. I really struggled then as did my parents who suffered from a massive increase in crime and street aggression, and a real lack of community that included the elderly. I think there are lots of hidden places that got left behind. I remember feeling as though someone was having a party in my house, eating my food and playing my music but they had locked me out and every time I tried to get in they made it harder. It was a very strange time (and I had graduated, was at the star of a good career, but I just couldn’t ally what I was seeing happen to older communities with the attitude and approach coming through then.

A very confusing and unhappy time for many. I think New Labour got much wrong particularly regarding HE. Why didn’t they bring in student loans for masters sooner. A generation of W/c students who got loans when they first came out then couldn’t continue whilst competing with European students who has all of third level adulation for free? It never made sense to me. There was a lot of localised politics that dominated former neutral spaces and the tone changed in some areas to become very right wing. Why wasn’t that tempered more?

Apologies for some awful typing

Teaching didn't magically become easier in 1997 but at least there was some investment in education and early years support.

These days we are cut to the absolute bone. I work in one of the few state funded schools that are left around here. We are completely broke.

I don't agree with a lot of current Labour policies, but I do think they come from the basis of wanting to help rather than fuck you Jack, I'm alright.

@YoureAllABunchOfBastards

I agree that at the top level, Labour were committed to changing the social view of education from negative to positive and that has had a huge impact on aspiration and ambition.

Parents support the learning now whereas in the past so much of what we try and do was dismissed. I think the left tried to cut the fat out of teaching and make it more accessible to W/c students but in doing so I think we have cut some of the latitude that gave us breathing space. I also find things so poorly organised now compared to when I started.

We are so fragmented now, though. What unites us as a country? Where do our loyalties stand and who do we define ourselves as? I find it sad that we seem to be destroying the common ground that we all inhabit instead of working to make it better and accessible to all and secure for the future. But new Labour did govern at a time of huge social change (globalisation, internet) etc.

Oh and the housing market mess started under Labour as did student loans.

I hope that every MNer who whinges about boomers and their gold plated final salary schemes is fully aware that they were very much alive kicking and well funded until mr brown introduced tax on dividends and changed the funding regime

Better off you all ain’t

I’m 57. I remember the Blair government, Tgatcher and the current lot.

Yes life was much better under Labour. Life under Thstcher was grim and miserable if you were northern or young. Huge unemployment rates.

I taught under both Tory governments and Labour.

TORY; huge class sizes, no support staff, knackered broken equipment, high stress levels.
Labour: money everywhere to tap into. Money for support staff, new equipment, smaller classes. And also they set up SureStart, EMA, funded the nhs, reduced waiting times, introduced child tax credits, helped with childcare.

I was a single parent under the Major government, no supports whatsoever for childcare.

@Wasloafbetter

Would you be able to say more? I’m very interested in this but don’t understand it. I know Brown is accused of selling of gold but don’t really get the wider issues. Sterling no longer tied to gold in a fiat system? That wasn’t new in ‘97?

Choir girl, the housing mess started with Mrs Thatcher selling off council housing, and refusing to allow councils to build more with the receipts.

@crackofdoom

Although no fan of Blair, I still benefit every day from some of the things that New Labour introduced. I’m still on tax credits, and every time I go for a walk in my closest National Park and look at the big purple edged areas on the OS Map I’m grateful for the Right to Roam legislation.

Imagine if you could have been on a wage no longer still being propped up by the tax payer

Half the country on tax credits to keep the labour vote

I agree. And what about the people who were just above the level of benefits/tax credits and had student loans to study ? Propping up one group of people and shifting the weight on to another group is not the answer. It just creates a new group of need.

Btl was unleashed under Labour and they ramped it up. I really feel that Labour did what the Torys would never have dreamed to do in uncoupling some mechanisms that protected W/c.

And it was during their reign we had the absolute public humiliation of W/c values and histories. Much of it was unforgivable and I think it’s the humiliation people won’t forget and forgive Labour for.

It does feel like everything has gone backwards in the last 10 years. I'm not saying Labour would be better, but we have not reached our potential under the Tories and I think a lot of things have gotten worse, not better. Labour appeared to be a much better government for families and social mobility, but I won't forgive them for the Iraq war.

Anything good that has happened in the last 10 years is due to social change and not political change.

*Choir girl, the housing mess started with Mrs Thatcher selling off council housing, and refusing to allow councils to build more with the receipts"

The problem is council housing sell offs were happening into labours days and they had no intention of stopping it.

I absolutely hate Thatcher and what she did to this country but labour didn't do enough to reverse it.

*Torys would never have dreamed to do in uncoupling some mechanisms that protected W/c.

And it was during their reign we had the absolute public humiliation of W/c values and histories.*

What does this mean @Choirgirl2021?

Can you give examples because I don’t understand?

Half the country on tax credits to keep the labour vote

Wouldn’t we still have a Labour gov if this was true?

Long term TC weren’t a good idea - I’ve never been a recipient btw.

But folk working decent hrs on UC and still piss poor isn’t progressive either in my opinion.

There must be a midway.

It depends what you mean by a Labour government.

It's not a popular view but I happen to think Blair was the best PM of my lifetime (born early 70s). He got a lot of things wrong but in terms of supporting the economy, trying to create a more equal society but without overspending and support for more social mobility he was certainly better than anything I've seen before or since.

If you're talking about a Corbyn government though my answer would be very different. I think he was at best dangerously misled and naive. And while I loathe this current government I think a Corbyn government would not have handled the pandemic any better.

@Pleasebeafleabite

I hope that every MNer who whinges about boomers and their gold plated final salary schemes is fully aware that they were very much alive kicking and well funded until mr brown introduced tax on dividends and changed the funding regime

Better off you all ain’t

It is (as I suspect you well know) much more complex than that. The Maxwell affair and reforms to governance and reporting also made a huge difference to final salary pensions, as did Thatcher’s contracting out changes and plummeting investment returns. Brown’s change made a difference but it didn’t destroy DB pensions - that’s a gross partisan over simplified bit of revisionist history.

@BananaBlue

I mean the way W/c communities were depicted (through the media) but also the perception that they had little say or knowledge of how to improve their environment.

I know you cannot blame politicians for media spin but where was the comeback? The defence of communities and histories? Why was everyone deemed racist in areas that had high immigration historically and comprised of groups as diverse as Jewish to Vietnamese? Why couldn’t there have been a recognition of what things those groups had done to help and we could build on that instead of writing off every area and blitzing old communities in disadvantaged areas. I grew up in an area where the far right was always known of and watched carefully from a distance yet I also saw people enter teaching at that time who had some very dubious views and since then it is really apparent the contempt some of them have for poorer communities. There was a middle ground that was destroyed. I have seen in my borough that many of the most disadvantaged families from one ward were pushed out to another ward just as the funding came through for them. Who got that funding? The new graduates in the area and the college which got university status and completely obliterated the old immigrant community that lived there before.So, a double blow to a vulnerable community. I also can’t believe the snobbishness that has crept in to these gentrified areas. So many people have moved in to my old area and I find the way they describe it and the people so disparaging. It was hardly the Bronx. It’s actually much worse now with the smell of weed in so many residential areas. I just feel really pushed out work and home wise.

I think the current government is crap - very high taxation whilst also providing poor public services. Paying this much tax you would expect education and the NHS to be leading the world but class sizes are still high and waiting lists are long.

The debacle of migrants crossing the Channel continues in their thousands but the government does nothing.

I think it was better under Blair, but he benefitted from a booming global economy. Labour now are likely to be even worse than the tories.