Has the Corbyn factor lead the Tories more to the left?

Hope you don't me saying, but irrespective of political persuasion, that statement is economically illiterate and every time I hear someone stating this line it drives me bloody mad.

The national debt had grown to about 800 billion or so in 500 years, and then all of a sudden, because of the banking crisis, and the government's need to bail out the banks to save the banking system, the result was that the annual deficit shot up enormously, so that we were losing £150b PER YEAR in 2010, after losing about £800b in the previous 500. Within a year or so, with the deficit at these unprecedented high levels at the point of the 2010 general election, the Tories came to power and inherited the situation. It is just pure obvious fact that the debt would grow under their watch my more than it ever had before, as that was position we were in during 2010. For that not to be the case, they would basically have had to virtually stop spending public money full stop.


So a government takes over just at the point where we are losing £150b a year, and you say OK, we've only lost £800 billion in the last 500 years, but we will have a go if you lose more than anyone else. What would you have done to stop it being the case?

 

Not bothered with QE for a start. We'd have been better off giving everybody a share as it would have been spent in the real economy

 

Couple of points on that. Firstly it's nice to hear someone point out that the debt was a consequence of bailing out the banks and not the myth of Labour overspending.

Secondly Osborne failed to meet all his own targets that he set. Not ones anyone else imposed. What bugs me is that there are many economic arguments about what they should have done. Personally I believe in a Keynsian approach (as does Hammond seemingly) but Osborne and Cameron freely admitted that austerity was a gamble and may not work. Now if I was looking at which route to pursue, and I didn't know which would work, I'd definitely go for the one that wouldn't cause immense suffering to the most vulnerable in society.

 

And balance of payments getting worse. When we stop getting as many foreign students coming here we'll be even worse off too.

Looking forward to the "northern powerhouse", being built, or was it a miss spelling. The northern poorhouse maybe?