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.

I’m a Labour supporter and always have been so my answer is biased by that but it was so much better.

The closing of Sure Start centres by the Tories was nothing short of criminal in my opinion. The attainment gap between children from wealthy and deprived backgrounds was so big, children were starting school already so far behind their peers and Sure Start was tackling that.

I remember the National Minimum Wage coming in and how amazing a step forward that was for the country. I wonder where we would be now if it had never been introduced. It is policies like that the Tories are so adamantly against.

People have died because of the austerity measures brought in by George Osborne and David Cameron. People have died with an empty fridge unable to pay for their prescriptions because of the deliberate policies put in place by this government.

As to how Labour lost I place the blame squarely on the Mainstream Media in this country. They are owned mostly by people who support the Conservatives and who are often donors to the party. They can spin any narrative they like. There was a fascinating documentary on Rupert Murdoch on iPlayer a while back that is well worth a watch.

The Tories and the Media are brilliant at setting ordinary people against each other - home owners against Housing Association Tenants, people who work and those who don’t. The idea that someone who doesn’t work and claims benefits is making you poor. It is all nonsense. The country is run by the elite to benefit the elite.

I agree with this, although I’d argue that the calibre of minister started slipping earlier than 2019. The coalition wasn’t great (& put me off voting for the Lib Dems for a while), but the rot really seemed to start in about 2015.

I think you can see that when you consider Jeremy Hunt is one of the better current ministers! I never thought I’d be saying that a few years ago.

I remember one year when I was a child where the whole country seemed to be on strike the whole year. 1978, the winter of discontent with James Callaghan. Inflation was high and he imposed low wage increases and it seemed like everyone went on strike.

A lot better. Hopeful. Stable.

Yes, the Iraq war - which would have had the same outcome under the Tories.

They handled the GLOBAL financial crisis well.

As for PFI, yes in hindsight it has caused problems, but has anyone thought that had we not had the Coalition and then years of Tories subsequently handling it it might have turned out differently?

Certainly we'd not have some of the fancy new hospitals we have now.

I read somewhere that politics student numbers reduced during the Blair years. It was considered that politics was dull.Which, as I said before, means stability.

Life was better then. At least we had a few politicians with principles and morals. Not all, but some!

Peter Mandelson - say no more!

Not great. I remember the Trade Unions were king when Labour were in power, and strikes were abundant. The Unions really had the Government over a barrel. I think people now tend to look at how it was under Labour with rose tinted spectacles, because it was so long ago. Remembering the good and not the bad. A bit like childbirth or leaving an unhappy marriage - your memory mellows over the years. Best to use your friend google OP, then you can see the good, the bad and the ugly, and make your own informed opinion. Using MN to get balanced info on Labour isn’t a good move…..

They brought in anti social behaviour legislation which really made a difference to communities.
Life certainly felt more positive and optimistic back then.

Labour had policies that were properly thought through and funded to benefit the majority. They governed with competence.
uUnlike David Cameron whose complete incompetence handling Brexit has turned the UK into an ATM for his cronies
Sheer madness that twit has been allowed into government. But that’s the conparty

There were two distinct phases. Firstly, 1997 to 2003. Tony Blair won a landslide victory and the New Labour government took over amid widespread goodwill & public optimism. They seemed far more in touch with the modern world than the Tories. Public services were a mess, then as now. The big difference is that Labour inherited a strong & growing economy, which they used to pay for massive investment in schools & hospitals, Sure Start, infrastructure projects etc etc all without increasing income tax. Improvements were rapid. They introduced the Human Rights Act, Civil Partnerships and, most importantly, the minimum wage albeit initially at a pathetically low level. In 2005 we won the right to host the 2012 Olympics. Britain felt good about itself, our popular culture & sport led the world and it was a great place to live.

Then, in 2003, everything changed. Blair lost his mind and joined with George Bush’s US government in launching an illegal war by invading Iraq. The government’s own supporters felt betrayed. I resigned my own Labour membership. The biggest public demonstrations in our history were held in London to oppose the war. Blair ignored us. It was downhill from there. Labour won the 2005 election with a much reduced majority, largely because the Tories were still unelectable, but the hope, optimism & widespread public support had gone.
Gordon Brown took over as PM in 2007, but he never approached the radicalism or popularity of the first 6 years of the Labour government. One of the final things the Labour government did in office was to introduce the Equality Act, which set the framework for much of the toxic, divisive identity & culture wars which blight our politics today.

I think to the OP what you have is a bunch of morons on both sides who like to play out drama on twitter and see what sticks and doesn't . It's not the 90's now.

I am not even " old" and I cringe and what these people put on twitter and how their friends on both sides of the press play on it. You must understand that all these people in power and in the press mostly went to University together .

I can't find one politician with a political ideal. I just miss Mo .

This is why people liked Thatcher by the way. Before you all pile on- I am too young! However she had a direction and an opinion you either liked or didn't.

It's a confusing time. Re- Iraq , the films are pretty good, that will give you a nice idea of how awful it was .

Whereas under the current Conservative government there are hardly any strikes….

Yes, I think that’s one of the worst bits of societal sabotage ever wreaked on the economy by any government in recent time. Pre 1997 private sector pensions were, on the whole, pretty decent in large/medium sized and family businesses. Didn’t matter if you worked for Tesco, IBM or a local manufacturing/ services business you’d have a final salary pension scheme to join. But Gordon wrecked that in a desperate scrabble for money to support his unfounded promises. Within 5 years most private final salary pensions scehemes were closed to new members. Within 10 years most were closed to future accrual for existing members. Mind blowing really. Meanwhile, their core voters continued to benefit from state funded final salary pensions..

I'm old enough to have been a working adult under Thatcher and Major. I remember the large numbers of street homeless, the tent cities in inner London. Then I remember them going away again under Labour. Now they're back.

Whether you agreed or disagreed with them, the grown-ups were in charge. The calibre of politicians was significantly better (on both sides).

Agree. There was always a sense that most politicians were capable and mostly trying to do the right thing, rather than the overtly callous and corrupt bunch of incompetent we have had recently. Always a few in it for the wrong reasons, or not to be entirely trusted, but generally a feel of things being done with genuine good intent, even if it went pear-shaped. Or so it seemed, anyway.

Problem now is...where do we vote for a credible alternative? Is voter apathy due to that going to end up as we are? How do we get out of this mess? From a personal stance, it would help if our candidates were even vaguely local - last election, Labour offered us someone who lived 250 miles away and whose link to local concerns was that he had once stayed in a caravan on a childhood holiday in the county. Lib Dem and Green didn't offer us anyone!

Agreed

We had our oldest in 2009 so that’s as far back as a young parent I can really go with living in my own home etc. so I mean we seemed to have money coming out our ears even though dh had low earnings and I was at home or college. Child trust funds set up and what not but I’m not sure having more money than I knew what to do with so waste it was good.

then there was all the buildings with those stupid high loans or whatever they where called. Basically borrow borrow borrow.

Nothing that actually had a good impact for the future. Nor do the tories. This is the problem. There isn’t proper forward thinking to what benefits is just what wins elections.

Fuck me, that's 45 years ago!

I remember under the Tories we had food rationing, war in Suez and black and white TV.

A lot of them are still running in the NHS. It costs the NHS so much money every year.

Do people still not understand that this is a tradition?

I'm not sure I completely agree with this. I started working for the civil service under the Labour Gov and they had their share of incompetent Ministers and knee jerk policies rearing to the Daily Mail headlines.

Public sector pay rises (in my industry at least) were very low - about 1% and sometimes 0%!

Sadly their policies weren’t all funded, which is why they got hooked on the PFI drug. But neither they or the civil service had the skills to negotiate such complex contracts, and we are still paying the price from current tax revenues, money which could otherwise have been spent on actual services. 30 years of lost opportunity and reduced services as a result of less than 10 years of illusory unfunded feelgoodness!

I was a single parent from 1992. I used to get supplementary benefit paid fortnightly in a little book, which I cashed at the post office. I could have stayed on it until my daughter was 12; I had my rent paid in full, and my dd had a full-time nursery placement (free) from the age of 2.
I started a degree rhe year before grants became loans and still got some SB on top so I could manage ok studying and paying bills.
I'm not saying it was perfect, but we could have a 'normal' life - best we could - as a single parent family. The only thing, for me, that was hard, was that the maintenance my ex paid was counted as income and benefits reduced by the amount. Mind you, he refused to work, so he only had to pay £3 a week from his benefits, which was taken at source.

The GP would come out if we couldn't get to the surgery and any medical issues were dealt with quickly.

It feels like another world.

It wasn't all unicorns and sunlit uplands, as promised by Johnson.

But,we had surestart, New deal and peopl were not vilified because they fell on hard times and are now living in the streets.

because the masses believe what they read in the papers. The papers are own by the Rich elite who benefit from Tory policies. They would lose out heavily under a labour government - so the papers repeat the narrative they want you to believe - until it sticks .