A Labour Governments 1997-2010 record in power – lest we forget.

[Isitmebut]

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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I'm with you OP. I don't understand why anyone would want a Labour government again.

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P.S. FYI the "Not the way I personally swing" reflects my sexuality, not my opinion. Frankly I don't give a rats ass what goes on between consenting adults and why shouldn't everyone be married and miserable. lol.

I repeat: "Strongly against equal rights; strongly against laws to promote equality and human rights." Go on, I REALLY want to hear this....

And the point is my local MP clearly has the same moral compass as the rest of his cronies. Vote Tory? I'd rather stick pins up my arse. Sideways.

Entrepreneur's tax relief is still at 10%.

including Osborne NOT putting Capiital Gains Tax up

I am confused - are you saying that I said CGT remained the same under the Tories? Quite clearly there is now a 28% tax rate for higher rate tax payers. Certainly many higher rate tax payers aren't rich. I'm still not sure whether you think Labour should have increased or decreased CGT. However, most individuals don't pay CGT because it doesn't apply to things like cars and primary domestic residences and any 'capital gains' are usually within the annual tax free allowance. You can avoid CGT completely by not selling assets. CGT accounts for a relatively small amount of tax income. Governments don't want it to restrict business investment (hence government schemes to help investors to avoid paying it), but which ever way you play it you aren't going to pay for the NHS by relying on getting a cut when a rich person sells a painting.

I didn't really understand your last sentence. However, my main point is that whoever gets in it won't make much difference. Businesses survive or fail regardless of who is in government. Perhaps in the 70's you could have argued that Labour would nationalise everything and be in the pocket of the unions, but that really isn't likely now - we will just get more of the same. Labour might claim they are going to do something radically different, but they won't.

I do think the additional tax rate is largely window dressing, but the fact remains that while it was introduced by Labour in the final month or so of their government, the Conservatives chose to reduce it rather than abolish it, and 5 years later we still have it.

As LittleLion says, it really comes down to values.

merrymouse .... last first, for a UK trying to encourage inward and internal business investment, if a potential or sitting Leader puts taxes up for ideological reasons that raises diddly squat (or even costs tax receipts) - it sends the wrong message to those people, as its a stupid, petty, policy mainly for votes - hardly the 'stuff' of leadership.

Next why did Labour lower Capital Gains tax to 10%, before leaving it at 18% if soooo for "millionaires taxes" mentioned in nearly EVERY speech;

I will quote a few more paragraphs from Mr Pestons link I previously provided.

"Some of the largest donations came from private equity. Sir Ronnie Cohen and Nigel Doughty, for example, have donated £2.8 million between them since 2001. Cohen co-founded Apax - a private equity firm behind the leveraged buy-outs of companies such as Waterstones and Virgin Radio. He is now chairman of Portland Capital hedge fund and an adviser to the government on ‘encouraging enterprise’ in deprived areas. Once a Liberal Party member, he moved over to Labour after meeting Blair in 1996."

"Other contributions include £750,000 from former Goldman-Sachs partner, John Aisbitt, £500,000 from hedge fund executive, William Bollinger, and an estimated £17 million over the past decade from supermarket tycoon, David Sainsbury. Sainsbury became a lord in 1997 and was given a position in the cabinet. Paul Drayson, a healthcare entrepreneur, donated £1.1 million after being appointed to the House of Lords by Blair. Drayson had already courted controversy by donating £100,000 to the Labour Party before his company had won a £32 million government contract supplying a smallpox vaccine. In May 2005, he became a junior defence minister."

I suggest m'lud, that there is more chance of THAT "MILLIONAIRE" LOT paying (a low of 10% on assets/earnings) more for the NHS, than the painting that you are focusing on.

• So either Labour WAS for wealth/business creation back then (with a Brucie Bonus that real millionaires appreciated it and coughed up donations to Labour),

• Or we now have a 'Red' Ed MIliband now needing trade union support to fund them and their elections (so swerved far 'left') and anti business.

• And/or Miliband's 2015 electoral strategy is cynically to promote an 'us and them' class or wealth division, DESPITE their record in power.

LittleLionMansMummy .... Re 'a moral compass', if you can't see that Labour's record over 13-years (10 of ££plenty) trod on those they SAY they represent - and need to blame the Conservatives for 2010 policies sorting out what they didn't leave - then you already have those pins 'stuck up', especially when Labour immorally chose NOT to even try fix it, for 2010 electoral gains.

Worse still, Ed Balls did not want ANY higher taxed EVEN MENTIONED, an honourable Mr Darling tried to warn the voters about.

June 2010; ”Balls accuses Darling of costing Labour the (2010) election”

”Ed Balls today lays bare his differences with Alistair Darling accusing him of costing Labour the chance of winning the general election with his stubborn refusal to rule out raising VAT.”
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/7825548/Balls-accuses-Darling-of-costing-Labour-the-election.html

”And amid Labour fears that the party leadership is not doing enough to counter the Coalition’s economic plans which include public service cuts and a possible increase in VAT, Mr Balls urges Mr Darling, the shadow chancellor, to start opposing Tory economic policy “tooth and nail”.

And in 2015 their manifesto is nearly as bad, as even now I can hear Ms Harman being ripped apart on a Daily Politics Special for saying Labour will pay our debt down or 'balance the books' by 2020; a lie HIGHLIGHTED on page 1 on the manifesto, and all the heavy lifting on their spending cuts, and tax RISES Labour is famed for, MISSING, except for (surprise) some ideological cuts on the wealthy, that raise next to nothing.

if a potential or sitting Leader puts taxes up for ideological reasons that raises diddly squat (or even costs tax receipts) - it sends the wrong message to those people, as its a stupid, petty, policy mainly for votes - hardly the 'stuff' of leadership.

That would make more sense if the Conservatives had abolished the additional tax rate when they came into office. I think both parties wanted to give the impression that they were taxing the rich, although the tax take from the additional rate has been small.

So either Labour WAS for wealth/business creation back then

Yes - I think Labour would argue that they are in favour of wealth and business creation - their only bone of contention would be that the benefits should be more evenly distributed.

I suggest m'lud, that there is more chance of THAT "MILLIONAIRE" LOT paying (a low of 10% on assets/earnings) more for the NHS, than the painting that you are focusing on.

Could you rephrase this so it makes a bit more sense? At the moment the sentence seems to say "I think they will pay more for the NHS than the painting".

From an international perspective, whoever is in power on Thursday, we will have a leadership that is to the right of many countries in Western Europe and more left wing than the Democrats in America.

And of course nobody will be in power on Thursday and we probably have weeks more of this.

“Alistair Darling attacks Gordon Brown's election failures”
www.scotsman.com/news/alistair-darling-attacks-gordon-brown-s-election-failures-1-821511

”In a pointed reference to Mr Brown's mantra of "investment over cuts", he will use the same phrase to illustrate how he believes the party lost the support of the electorate. He will say: "Labour lost because we failed to persuade the country that we had a plan for the future. What is important now for our party is we take stock and be honest about what went wrong.”

"By failing to talk openly about the deficit, and our tough plans to halve it within four years, we vacated the crucial space to make the case for the positive role government can play.

"You will only convince people you've got the answers if they believe you know what the question is in the first place. You can't have political credibility without economic credibility."

As another no so bright politician once said, "De-ja vu all over again."

merrymouse ... re your post above

• Why should during Labour's time, a Head Teacher or other public sector worker pay 40% tax, and the very wealthy pay 10% or 18% tax ON ANYTHING??

• If you don't know that the top rate of tax and CGT should be a lot closer on many levels, I can't help that.

• If you don't realise the ££sums we lost on large asset sales from the likes of private landlords Labour encouraged and Miliband now hates, or say Private Equity companies, you may remember one quote from a Director owning one "my tea lady pays more taxes than I do".

Look all this is history, but for Ed Miliband a minister in that administration, to now state that the Labour Party is "not for the rich & powerful, but for the working families" - well it really is a bit rich init, based, on that RECORD.

In the spirit of 'lest we forget' and what tricksy words we can expect in the next parliament.

If you don't know that the top rate of tax and CGT should be a lot closer on many levels, I can't help that.

No I don't 'know' that because there is no 'correct' tax rate.

You will find that tax on insurance, cigarettes, and stamp duty and company profits also vary.

A head teacher pays tax on chargeable gains according to the same rules as anybody else - but following the introduction of the 28% rate will pay more under the Tories. There don't seem to be any plans to increase the rate.

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/tax/10954502/Cut-Capital-Gains-Tax-everyone-avoids-paying-it-anyway.html

- If you don't realise the ££sums we lost on large asset sales from the likes of private landlords Labour encouraged and Miliband now hates, or say Private Equity companies, you may remember one quote from a Director owning one "my tea lady pays more taxes than I do".

This would make slightly more sense if were able to quantify what you are talking about and show that any of it had changed over the last 5 years.

"If you don't know that the top rate of tax and CGT should be a lot closer on many levels"

Raising CGT is a Lib Dem policy rather than the Conservatives who didn't go as far as the Lib Dems wanted.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/shock-capital-gains-tax-rise-angers-hardline-conservatives-1975070.html

The rise in CGT from 10 or 18% during an asset price boom would have been a no brainer for any responsible party - the Conservative 'hardliners' would have been pissed off at a 40% rate during a global slump when encouraging investment.

There is no evidence that the conservatives would have done anything to change existing CGT rates had they not had to go into coalition with he libdems.

There was no mention of CGT in their manifesto. The libdems wanted to align it with income tax. The compromise was 28%. Apart from introducing a higher rate (which according to the Torygraph has reduced tax revenues), the conservatives haven't really touched cgt and don't appear to have any plans to do so.

You are imagining policy where there is none.

You are imagining policy where there was none.

merrymouse .... why don't you worry more about the motives of Labour/Brown in putting 'the millionaires CGT tax' down to 10% when courting the donation money of those people when trying to free themselves on the trade unions - when there was a global credit and asset price BOOM not needing government help, _as UK factories were closing down needing help from Labour's higher taxes/regulation.

Why can't you see that in Labour BOOM you don't need such low rates, and after a global/Labour BUST needing every bit of investment you can get, you don't put them up to penal levels, even if that level is closed to the top rate of tax as usual - totally different business environments.

As to what the Conservative put in their 2010 manifesto, if Labour had either already done what was needed from 2008 to budget/cut costs, or Labour said to all opposition parties in 2010 THIS IS WHAT WE ARE GOING TO DO in detail - then expect all oppositions parties to itemise all their policies in their 2010 manifestos.

The Conservatives, without an independent OBR could not trust any figures in Labour's Uk books, so had to start from scratch, so why say put up CGT?

The Conservatives are the party of lower taxes, as proven by taking Labour's 1979 32% minimum income tax rate, over 60% higher income tax rate, over 90% tax on investment income and 50% Corporation Tax and SLASHING them over 18-years - but they didn't put in their 2010 they'd lower taxes either, as didn't know what they'd find, so it was irresponsible to promise any givaways/or tax rises in 2010 before seeing those books.

Labour in 1997 to 2010 chose to bribe the rich as they LOWERED CGT, once again, another Labour policy their apologists don't want to 'own'.

The 10% rate was a result of taper relief, not an actual rate. It has been replaced by entrepreneur's relief which still exists.

I don't worry about Blair too much. I think he gave up his seat in 2007.

Sorry, but the syntax in your 'bold' paragraph is eluding me.

STIDW …. Re your “lest we forget” comeback - please excuse me, I forgot your post on the top of page //// as got into a real term debate with others – as unfortunately blaming the 1980’s of what Conservatives ‘thought’, does not excuse Labour’s 13-year record.

On Private Pensions;It really matter not what happened in the 1980’s when looking at the conditions of companies to fund private pensions in 1997, especially the far better Final Salary ones the public sector enjoy.
In 1997 - if memory serves the UK companies had a Pensions SURPLUS hence my statement ‘the best funded in Europe’, so did not escape Labour’s more taxes eye.

The problem being with EVERY Labour raid e.g. Housing Stamp Duty, is that taxes only ever go UP and not revised back down whether a private pensions crisis or a housing one, as seen after the financial crash.

On Brown’s lighter Financial Regulation; You cite that back in the day, Osborne was calling for lighter regulation which was true, but there is a huge difference in asking for lighter UK regulation that is stifling ALL BUSINESSES UNDER LABOUR, than asking Brown NOT to for some reason, insist the UK deregulated London’s banking market (to copy the U.S.) as in America they were repealing the financial safeguards put in AFTER the Wall Street Crash.

“Repeal of U.S. Glass-Steagall Act (1933) Caused the (2008) Financial Crisis”
www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2012/08/27/repeal-of-glass-steagall-caused-the-financial-crisis

In the UK, it wasn’t only a pro business Osbourne concerned about the weight of new regulations on economic growth, even Blair was worried about, funny enough (not), by the FSA Brown formed in 1997 as part of a regulatory tripartite that was to totally drop the supervision ball.
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2918368/What-Blair-really-thinks-about-the-FSA.html

“Tony Blair is gripped by a desire to slash red tape - or so he claimed in a speech last month. That address attracted notice principally for Tony Blair's surprising and controversial statement that the Financial Services Authority is "seen as hugely inhibiting of efficient business" - but his assertions roamed wider than that.”

“No one in any business - be it vast or tiny - needs to be told that the burden of regulation has increased since Labour came to power in 1997. The British Chambers of Commerce estimates that the cost for business of coping with red tape from Whitehall and Brussels will be £39bn this year - four times as much as in 1997.”
“Of course the bureaucrats of Brussels are only half of the problem. At the end of May the prime minister delivered an embarrassing rebuke to the City watchdog, the FSA, which was set up by the new Labour Government in 1997.”

On UK Manufacturing; please tell me if you disagree, but UK Manufacturing as a percentage of our economy was around 23% of our economy in 1980 and similar in 1997 when the Conservatives left office as the SIZE of the economy had increased enormously – yet fell to 12% by 2010, much of the damage (especially to employment) in Labour’s first 7-years during the GOOD times.

In the “1 million Manufacturing Jobs lost under Labour by 2005” link I provide, apart from a stronger Sterling, the cite higher taxes and regulation and red tape, confirmed by the huge increase in regulation paragraphs above.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-389284/The-80-tax-rises-Labour.html

On Paul Kruman; The man in America is a left wing joke, as any spending cuts are “austeriy” and the last time I looked, the U.S. had about £16 trillion of published National Debt (a lot more in government liabilities including pensions) and no doubt still thinks they should borrow more.

Krugman and the other leftie Blanchflower(?) stated in 2010 Osborne was WRONG to rebalance the UK from an overweight public sector, WRONG not to rein in debt, as there would be millions more unemployed – and were proved to be 100% wrong, so screw him – and Labour will borrow hundreds of billions more than the Conservatives beyond 2020 anyway.

“Lest we forget” Labour screwed up on so many levels over 13-years, and now they want any 5-years to finish us off, while the Conservatives want the next 5-years to finish off what they started – factually a huge difference in the future prosperity prospects of the UK.

Ignoring all the bollocks you've posted I just popped in to say that "Lest We Forget" is from a poem about military men and women who died defending our country.

It's incredibly insensitive and offensive of you to use it in any other context.

Too late. I've voted and certainly not for the Tories.

They are the party for the privileged few. The bullingdon boys who have no clue. They think people who go to foodbanks are idiots. They think that workers deserve no rights and should live on minimum wage zero hour contracts while the bosses at the top dine on cavier.

Jog on bullingdon boys

merrymouse ... I have said a CGT 'taper relief' low of 10% many times, which was the award millionaires/investors were given for holding those assets over a period of time - so HOW van you say it was not a real rate? LOL

• The likes of private landlords Labour desperately needed to BTL would get a lower rate for doing what they wanted to do, rent out for years before selling.

• Private Equity companies or similar buying under forming businesses and turning them around over a number of years before selling them off, would qualify etc etc.

The point is 1997 was the best decade in 70 years plus, as a booming economy, lower interest rates than seen for decades - such low rates were not needed as another example of Labour unbalancing the economy.

October 2007:8 ”A speculator's budget?”*
www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/legacy/thereporters/robertpeston/2007/10/a_speculators_budget.html

”Although many will see the reform of capital gains tax as an attempt to force the mega-bucks earners of private equity to pay more tax, its signficance goes well beyond that.”

”There will now be a single rate of capital gains tax at 18 per cent.”

”When John Major was prime minister in the 1990s, that would have been seen as the very epitome of a pro-capitalist reform.”

”But Gordon Brown when he was chancellor reformed the system so that many entrepreneurs and business creators now pay only 10 per cent tax, so long as they hang on to the relevant assets for a couple of years.”

”So for them, and private equity, this reform represents a steep tax rise.”

”However for many ordinary investors in the stock market or property, there will be a big cut in capital gains tax.”

”They currently pay up to 40 per cent tax on their capital gains, and that will now fall to 18 per cent.”

P.S. By 2007, after Labour's performance on the economy, Labour no longer had the confidence/donations of businesses, never mind the Private Equity companies, so a coincidence THEIR CGT rate rose? LOL

Hell hath no fury like a 'clunking fist' scorned, ask Blair, Murdoch, Westminster etc.

Popped back in to see if this debate had become any more interesting. Bye.

Ouch .... the truth hurts; 5-years of Labour propaganda that they are 'for working families and against the rich and powerful', when their 13-year record shows something very different as the poor were hardest hit - wake up, you're being sold an economically incompetent bunch of lemons who say one thing and does another, its not too late. lol

Miliband and Balls were Brown's 'proteges' at the Treasury and opposed every Osborne economic reform over the last parliament as they though he was wrong - and now we are meant to trust the Miliband/Balls 'dream team' with the SNP's Sturgeon/Salmon, to CARRY ON with the recovery?

Well done on bold, underline and italics. Maybe next time try to concentrate on clarity of argument?