To ask what the country was like under a Labour government?

[user6776]

I'm too young to remember a proper Labour government. I was 12 when the Tories got voted in back in 2010 so that's all I've ever really known.

How much better was it than it is now? Why did Labour lose the election back then anyway?

Interested to hear people's opinions.

Please stop with the blatant lies, you know that isn't true.

Pre global crash, the countries borrowing was 35% to 40% debt to GDP, Labour run a budget surplus for the first 3/4 years and the economy grew very well.

Like i said, even after the Global crash, debt to GDP was around 65%, now after 13 years of the Tories, it has increased to 98% - thats bankrupting the country!!

(though in the true sense of the word, its not possible to bankrupt a country)

What do you think we have to show for that increase in debt?

It was pretty good. But they inherited a country where the coffers were full and proceeded to spend all the money until the 2008 financial crisis. It won't be like that again. There is no money.

It always seems to be really bloody immature and rude to dismiss someone's point of view with a laughing face. Can't you think of anything to actually say?

You think "the pandemic" and Ukraine is a sufficient excuse for the utter fucking shambles of the last few years?

I'm no Starmer fan. However I'm willing to take a punt on him after the last few years under the current brand of Toryism. It always puzzles me when people say "oh the you think X would be any better?" Under that rationale, we'd never have any change of government at all.

No, it won’t be like that again. The next government is going to have to be much more innovative and targeted in its spending. At least it won’t be handing it over to the likes of Michelle Mone to spend on yachts though.

The meaning of the word 'woman' being so distorted as to be meaningless. And its subsequent erasure.

One of the few things you can say for the Tories is that they (mostly) know what a woman is.

Wow life is easier in many ways for people who are financially stable? Who knew! Groundbreaking stuff thanks.

Your chart shows consistently higher public debt since 2010. Despite austerity @Clavinova.

The ranks of sexual predators among its MPs certainly do.

It’s not just about where you are in life, but the direction of travel. Blair and his government had a vision and offered hope for the future. Any politician or party that can harness the feel good factor will always be onto a winner.

Austerity is by its very nature the opposite of the feel good factor and aside from the highs of the 2012 Olympics there’s been little to be happy about since 2010. The Scottish referendum and Brexit have split the U.K. and neither cor fully resolved anything. The Tories have no tangible plans to improve the economy or the wider society. They’re doomed. And in reality Starmer can only offer a slightly less shit version of the current administration.

Tough times ahead.

Not just employers not paying higher wages, the 16/30 hour working thresholds meant people had little incentive to work more hours, they'd just work the 16 or 30 and refuse additional shifts etc.

The badly drafted 16/30 hour rules also opened the doors to people "pretending" to be self employed, as dog walkers, ebayers, market traders, car washers, etc., not actually making any money, but "working" enough hours to meet the thresholds for tax credits, bearing in mind "working" included admin at home, research, etc. Huge numbers of "businesses" only broke even, as the claimants didn't want to lose money so they "worked" enough to cover their costs, and lived on working tax credits! The whole system was insane.

This idea get banded about that Tories are better with the economy and labour are not but it’s just not the case, it’s such a simplistic notion. Depriving the public sector of funding, privatising welfare assessments, making the system adversarial have cost the economy now and in the future vast sums of money, not to mention morally wrong.

The domino effect of Tory policy is so short sighted it ends up costing tax payers so much. If you don’t protect the population from destitution, making sure the working class have money to spend and protecting the health of the work force is crucial for any functioning economy. Plus, the system costly a fortune to administer. We have ended up with vulnerable people and disabled dying, which they have due to pip reforms. Increased crime, lack of hope for younger generations can only lead to more problems.

The cost of living crisis is not unique to the U.K. but Tory policy decisions, especially welfare reforms in 2012 have made many worse than they needed to be. Aside from creating these issues the management of the economy has been abysmal, supporting Brexit was completely foolhardy. Only the very rich have benefited in the last 13 years.

Designed to fit around childcare/school, made a huge difference to my sister, she could actually work PT instead of being stuck at home whilst kids at school.

However, if you think its a stupid policy, one has to ask why the Tories haven't really changed it much, they had (stuck record) 13 years to do so.

Significantly better. I miss proper funding for public services.

BIossomtoes
Your chart shows consistently higher public debt since 2010. Despite austerity

My chart shows;
Net Debt (including public sector banks) as a % of GDP falling from 148.5 % in Dec 2009 to 97.2 % in June 2014 (110.9 % Sept 2023).

The OP's question was "what was the country like under a Labour government?"

Lots of people are posting anecdotes of what their lives were like 20 years ago.

With respect, someone's individual experience of school or work or motherhood or poverty might not be greatly influenced by the government of the day. For example, I am personally much better off financially now than I was during a Labour government. However, that's because I am much further on in my career and my children have left home.

To understand what the country is like, you need to look at the general economic and social trends. On average, under the last Labour government, people had more money (look at stats of things like wage growth and average income), there was less inequality between rich and poor (look at income distribution facts), public services were better funded (look at things like NHS waiting lists), fewer people relied on food banks, and fewer people were living on the streets.

I wasn't claiming to break new ground. I was addressing a specific poster who claimed that government policy (i.e. economics) had no bearing on rates of rickets and scurvy. Also that it was not connected to poverty. I was putting this there to counter that suggestion. I think the idea she is proposing is that the poor could overcome these challenges with sheer willpower, therefore the problem doesn't actually exist. I was seeking to demonstrate that, given the assumption that the distribution of exceptionally persevering and self-motivated people is about the same across the class system, the likelihood of being deficient in various essential vitamins is higher among the poor as they have more to overcome to get to the same place.

I was there. I remember the 1970s Labour Government and the Conservatives in the 1980s. Very little has changed but, broadly, the difference between the two has been how much the state interferes in every day life. Altho, to be fair, Tony Blair was a bit more hands off than traditional Labour and Boris J (during the pandemic) sadly relinquished his libertarian ideals. But if people worked hard and did their best, there was not much difference between Governments over the last 30 years. History shows that this stuff is always less exciting than we think!

@user1497207191 The 16 hour thing is still in place - you can't get any overtime from anyone on it because they can access benefits which they'll lose if they do any overtime at all.

Data and statistics can always be manipulated, they need to be read in conjunction with lived experiences. Just because reported lived experience doesn't live up to your data sets doesn't mean they aren't real experiences and answering the question.

Britain under labour was, if the media is to be believed, our boom era. We were thriving in the arts, and (borrowed or recouped from sold assets) money was being thrown around all over the shop. It doesn't mean those of us who a labour government should have supported thrived. UC and PIP are only hated because they're better controlled, they're actually more equitable benefits for those who are actually in need and not playing the system. Food banks get a lot of hate but life was horrendous without them.

So debt is huge now, as most bank shares have been sold off.

Lloyds shares sold off for a profit in 2017, less than 40% of RBS shares still held.

So what has the Govt got to show for 110% debt to GDP ?

Pretty much the only post that matters really. If you want to know what it was like don't listen to individuals, look at the stats. Just like if you want to know what the effects of poverty are, don't look at the wholesome story of my mate soandso who pulled himself up by his bootstraps and worked three minimum wage jobs and went to night school and now he runs his own business and lives in a mortgage-free 5 bed mansion, look at the overall outcomes for people in a particular economic bracket.

25 March 2010

Alistair Darling admitted tonight that Labour's planned cuts in public spending will be "deeper and tougher" than Margaret Thatcher's in the 1980s, as the country's leading experts on tax and spending warned that Britain faces "two parliaments of pain" to repair the black hole in the state's finances.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said hefty tax rises and Whitehall spending cuts of 25% were in prospect during the six-year squeeze lasting until 2017 that would follow the chancellor's "treading water" budget yesterday.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/mar/25/alistair-darling-cut-deeper-margaret-thatcher

But they're irrelevant unless they can be shown to be representative. There will always be outliers. But they don't enable you to make good decisions that will affect everybody.

From pp
Net Debt (including public sector banks) as a % of GDP falling from 148.5 % in Dec 2009 to 97.2 % in June 2014 (110.9 % Sept 2023).

That is the boom and bust cycle

And very high exposure to risk with low regulation and high dependence on FS sector

Taxpayers don't mind a 'tax and spend' government as long as the money is spent well. Labour are much better at tax-and-waste. Anyone who's worked in government will be familiar with the imperative to grow the head-count and spend the entire budget - if you underspend then your budget gets cut next year - that's the 'reward' for efficiency.

For people mentioning PFI (it actually started under John Major's government, but ballooned under Gordon Brown's watch) - it would have been much cheaper to just borrow money in the bond markets, especially as Labour presided over a period of historically low interest rates. The National Audit Office said exactly that in 2011. The reason they couldn't was because of EU rules. People asking what's changed after Brexit - well, we no longer adhere to a load of arbitary rules that ended up costing us a fortune.