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.

Genuine non goody question, are there not Sure Start centres any more? My DC were born in 2010 & 2012 and they were brilliant! Health Visitors, Baby weighing, free 'Tiny Stars' parenting courses, free or very cheap stay & play type of things, loads of opportunities to meet new Mums etc

Low income families could still live reasonably cheaply.
Food banks were for the homeless / about to be homeless.
You barely (I cannot recall a single time) heard of parents/step parents mistreating their children/step children so badly they died from the neglect

More optimistic. Better generally for NHS, education. A real drive to make things better for the people at the bottom.

BUT all paid for with money we didn't have, which came back to bite once they were booted out.

As for why.... a) Iraq and alleged weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be an excuse to keep America happy and get rid of Sadaam Hussein. That did NOT go down well with the public - anti-war protests that were ignored completely. Was it the moral thing to do, as Tony Blair claims? Possibly. But not the legal thing or the right thing for this country at the time. B) The public get bored of the same party in charge after around 8 years or so. Familiarity breeds contempt, and the opposition promise the world on a stick, which is enough promise of change that the long-standing government get booted out. C) Gordon Brown. Some finagling behind the scenes ended up with Gordon Brown, dour Scot, as PM and the UK was up in arms about having an unelected PM. He didn't give off positivity vibes and the country wanted rid of him.

Basically, the voting general public are fickle children in search of something shiny and new.

Let’s not forget the note that Liam Byrne (who was Chief Secretary to the Treasury before the conservatives won the election) left.

He left a note to his successor saying that there’s no money left.

for all those really generous labour policies that the conservatives killed-it would be fascinating to know what would’ve happened if Labour had won but couldn’t have continued funding.

It was better but then most of their time was before the global crash...

What happened to all of the PFI contracts?

You mean pre-1997. Lol.

I was still at primary school then.

But yes, cheaper.
Although some probably wouldn’t have been able to afford to stay on for a-levels and had to go to work.

Many are still running

It was better - but to be fair, Europe was better, the world was better. It was generally a better time all round.

PFI was the worst thing to ever happen to the NHS. It costs them over £2 Billion a year in repayments. They are paying back over £80 Billion for an initial £12 Billion investment. Some trusts are spending more per year on PFI repayments than they are spending on medicines.

It was certainly better if you worked in the public sector or were on benefits. In a nutshell there was a boom and then we went bust. People like me who worked in the private sector took a pay cut to avoid redundancy then to add insult to injury taxpayers like myself had to bail to the banks out. Regarding the Iraq fiasco personally I think Bush alongside Blair should be in court charged with war crimes. Do I think the Tories are a better bet? Nope. Don't kid yourself that life under labour is any better though unless your believe in the magic money tree (taxing working people to death)

Not a parent / step-parent, but this was pretty big news at the time

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Victoria_Climbié

They did some good stuff and some very very badly judged stuff (PFI, Iraq war etc)

But it doesn't really matter what the Blair government was like, a starmer government will have to be a completely different beast because today's finances are very different from 1997

PFI sounds like a nightmare. Are the contracts long running or will they be due to expire soon?

And Adam.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_(murder_victim)

I was a single parent with a disabled sick child. Housing was better, I was rehoused due to Gordon Brown building more social housing. No problems with dentistry. My daughter saw a specialist NHS dentist. We all saw a GP easily and there wasn't a problem with hospital appointments. I came out of an abusive relationship and rehomed in nice area, able to start new life. Food was cheaper and our European neighbours were easily accessible. Many nurses from Italy , Portugal and Spain. No food banks!

Can anybody explain to me about Iraq? I will go off to have a Google as well but if somebody can explain in simple terms that would be helpful

Councils could keep the streets clean.

Much better. I worked for the NHS which had been gradually run down for a few years and when the Blair government came in it was transformed very quickly. Patients charter, care in the home, etc. It's a pity that Blair believed there were 'weapons of mass destruction' and the Iraq war.

@Snorkmaidenn I was also made homeless this year and have a disabled child. Was basically told no chance of getting a council house as we were so far down the list. Housing is a real problem these days

Excellent summary. Very true.

Well, not as many people went to university and you could get a reasonable job with just GCSEs. Don’t know if that is a better or worse thing - just a different time!

Most people I knew did stay on in education after GCSEs, though, either for A-levels or vocational qualifications. Generally funded through evening and weekend work, which seemed easier to get.

It depends on what you mean by last govt. Taken as a whole New Labour was a mixture of wonderful and horrific. They spent absolutely fucking tonnes of money and saddled the country with gigantic economic problems, then sat on the sidelines blaming the other lot for austerity, as if the whole country are idiots. Also bankrupted the NHS behind the scenes with private finance chicanery. They assisted local authorities in burying tens of thousands of child rapes for political reasons. They buried huge amounts of infant and elderly deaths in hospitals in similar incidents. They went to the UN security council, knowingly lied in front of the world about WMD thoroughly disgracing the UK, and despite a MILLION of us marching against it, pressed ahead with that war and caused 6 figures of largely civilian massacres. They got caught rigging local elections in the midlanda. They created the immigration problems in rural parts of the UK intentionally to (according to whistleblower) punish them for not being Labour constituencies - the direct quote was "rub the right's nose in diversity". They torched the benefits system with over expansion.

On the other hand they fixed the holes in the roads, hospitals and social programs were lavishly funded, and we all had about 6 months of uplifting hope when they were elected. Great until the payback came.

The political parties in the UK are all terrible cynical semi-evil shits. Sometimes people believe in obe or the other or both for a few decades before realising this.

Have a look at how shit the Welsh Labour government are , with their ridiculous backward ideas

oh ffs. This was a JOKE, a tradition in the secretary, and one referencing the global recession that has just occurred.
It wasn't a literal admission that they had spent all the money