Ed Miliband says today the Conservatives are using the SNP to deflect from Labour’s record in office.
When coming to power in 1997 with over a 160 seat majority, the UK economy was the fastest growing economy in Europe, it had grown for over 20 consecutive quarters and was budgeted balance our tax/spend budget by 2001/2 and we had the best financed private pensions in Europe.
Here is a summary of the Labour policies that followed within their first 10-years, probably the best decade in a century to mould UK society for the better, flush with the once in a century tax receipts of a financial bubble/windfall; YOU decide who ruined the life choices of the poorest in society.
Economy; Ballooned the size/cost of the State, as the private sector (businesses) like Manufacturing suffered, relying too much on the deregulated growth of City profits & taxes = an unbalanced economy likely to crash on the first major economic recession, or worst still, a financial recession leading to an economic one.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1214001/The-cost-quango-Britain-hits-170bn--seven-fold-rise-Labour-came-power.html
Finances; In 19996/7 the National Debt was £403 billion, by 2009/10 it was £1,073 trillion, as the UK were running a deficit/overspend economy in the good times, so when the private sector tax receipts fell away in 2008, the States costs over 50% of our economy, and without tax receipts to pay for it all = £157 billion annual budget deficit/overspend passed to the coalition, the largest figure by far in Europe. The only way the accumulating National Debt could then be reduced, would have been for the Coalition to start slash spending by that amount, from Day One.
www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk/
Banking; Labour lighter regulatory approach encouraged UK banks to leverage up their balance sheets to business/consumer loans and mortgages multiplied from 1997, building an economy on asset price rises and private (and government) debt. Once the financial crash began, the closing of the global interbank market (the funding artery of finance) from 2008 - morphed into an economic recession, the worst in the UK for over 80-years.
metro.co.uk/2011/04/11/gordon-brown-i-made-big-mistake-on-banks-before-financial-crisis-650630/
www.theguardian.com/business/2011/dec/12/labour-regulations-city-rbs-collapse
Pensions; A terrible record from their first year in power, offering derisory increases in the State pension (75p in 2000) with much higher inflation than now, and a raid on Private Pensions, previously the best funded in Europe, that was to kill many company Final Salary schemes – and estimated to have cost, in lost returns to non government pension plans, over £260 billion to date.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2613609/Revealed-Labours-stealth-raid-took-118BILLION-pensions-paving-way-end-final-salary-schemes-suddenly-unaffordable.html
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/10698432/Final-salary-pensions-10-times-more-common-in-public-sector.html
Defence; A government in perpetual wars, who took us to war in Iraqi on a ‘dodgy dossier’ on Iraqi WMD’s and sent troops into Afghanistan without enough equipment i.e. bullet proof vests, roadside bomb proof vehicles and helicopters, which cost lives - with the Defence Secretary saying ‘ they might not fire a shot’. With no defence reviews for years, they left power with a defence £38 bil black hole, without a penny down on Trident.
NHS; With the proceeds of the financial bubble Labour more than doubled spending, but only around 30% got to the front line, and hid bad care e.g. Mid Staffs. In 2000 the NHS Act brought in private competition, the excessive government borrowing via the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) was to cripple NHS Trust budgets for decades to come and by 2010 there was to be 13,000 fewer general and acute beds than in 1999 – as our net population grew from economic migration and ‘baby boomers’ got 13-years closer to retirement age.
www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8779598/Private-Finance-Initiative-where-did-all-go-wrong.html
www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9356942/Blair-defends-PFI-as-NHS-trusts-face-bankruptcy.html
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2363808/Labours-NHS-denial-machine-Experts-verdict-ministers-covered-problems-failing-hospitals-thousands-died.html
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