Politika u UK

[pacey defender]

A tvoj omiljeni "dobri covek Rasim"?

Ljudi su preči od velikih reči!

[Budja]

Malo infoa a Krozbiju, mastermajndu iza pobede konzervi:

 

 

Moji utisci:

- Labour je pukao ponajvise zbog toga sto je Ed zapravo bio iza popularnosti svoje partije i zato sto im je UKIP uzeo glasove, posebno na severu Engleske. Totalno odbijanje saradnje sa SNP-om iako im je agenda bila progresivna je posebni fail.

- SNP je uzeo ovoliko i zbog odstupanja Salmonda jer Sturdzen ocigledno ume da privuce jos vise glasaca. Sada predstoji prava nacionalisticka bitka za promenu sistema UK unije izmedju SNP-a i Torija a to nece biti lepo za gledanje jer ce dodatno uzburkati strasti.

- LibDems su jednostavno platili ono gazenje jednog jedinog obecanja o placanju skolarina. Mogli su posle da urade 100 dobrih stvari ali njihovi glasaci Klegu jednostavno vise nisu verovali. Posebna ironija je sto su Toriji uzeli veliku vecinu izgubljenih LD sedista jer ce sada Toriji tim istim glasacima da zavuku trostruko.

- UKIP je osvojio vise glasova od SNP-a (56) i LibDem-a (8) zajedno a ostali su sa jednim poslanikom. Inace, njihova kampanja zapravo cilja na 2020 jer kad Toriji konacno uniste ekonomiju i kad krene prava kriza i siromastvo u post-EU-referendumskoj atmosferi plus prepucavanje sa SNP-om oko osteritija i unije, UKIP ce postati novi populisticki Toriji kao sto je sada SNP postao novi Labour.

- Torijevci se nisu nadali ovoj pobedi a nisam siguran da ju je Kameron zapravo i hteo. Vecina mu je sada tanka, moc evroskeptika u partiji je mnogo veca a ucenjivacki potencijal ogroman u vreme teskih rezova, pregovora sa EU i pregovora sa SNP. Bice razapet jos gore od Dzona Mejdzora koga su evroskeptici na kraju isto tako skresali a Nika Klega ce praviti od blata dok Boris ceka da mu odrubi glavu.

- I, na kraju glasaci - dobice ono sto su trazili: siromastvo, sve nizi standard i kvalitet zivota, nastavak klasnog ciscenja stanovnistva iz skupih cetvrti, dalje totalno unistavanje ekonomije kroz neprestano pumpanje balona nekretnina i bankaraskog sektora, jos vecu socijalnu nejednakost, ogromne rezove u socijalnom budzetu (12 milijardi!) koji ce pogoditi pre svega working poor, a mala klasa na vrhu ce se dalje bogatiti. To se dobija od prevelike konzumacije Daily Mail-a i ostalih gluposti.

 

Solidna analiza, osim malo uobicajenog elitistickog podmetanja "glupi biraci".

 

Inace, najbolji novnar dnasnjice ubedljivo, Endrju Mar se pitao kako to da Lab u kampanji nisu uopste govorili o pitanju produktivnosti koji je problem Britanije i umanjuje njenu  kompetitivnost. To jeste vezano za ovo o cemu Anduril prica, fokus na finansijski sektor i hipoteke.

 

Inace, balon u Britaniji i nije balon. Niti je prethodni ikada pukao, niti je ostalo praznih blokova kao u Spaniji a to je rezultat onog nedostatka solitera o kojima Praslin govori i ljubavi britanskog coveka ka pastoralnoj prirodi: ne gradi se masovno ulsed velikih lokalnih restrikcija. The Economist bi da te restrikcije olabavi, a Zeleni bi da ukvadrate krug: i jeftini stanovi i restrikcije gradnji.

[hazard]

Nisi pratio kampanju.

 

Stuergon je istupala kao sampion anti-austerity. Da li si video sta je ona klinka od 20 godina izjavila posle pobede nad Alexanderom? Nista od Skotske, ali anti-austerity, Trident i tako to.

SNPu se sa te strane nema sta proigovoriti. Otvorili su se fino ka engkelskoj publici ali Labour su tu priliku promasili.

 

E baš su ljisice. Pitam opet, gde je to SNP izašao i rekao "mi smo sada za UK"? Naravno da par meseci posle izgubljenog referenduma nisu škotsko pitanje stavljali u fokus ali i svaki pijanac u Engleskoj zna da je njima škotsko pitanje uvek stavka br. 1 bilo to otvoreno ili prikriveno.

 

 

 Tvoj politicki odgovor na tacne premise 1 i 2 je potpuno porgresan. Trebalo je raditi na pomeranju premisa, strah od SNPa je indukovan u referendumskoj kampanji, nakon toga i surge SNPa, Labour tu nije imao sta da trazi, strategija je trebala biti minimiziranje straha od SNPa, a LAB su radili sve suprotno od toga iduci konzervativcima direktno na vodenicu.

 

Mislim, u debatama je Stuergeon pobedjivala, fina tetka, smirena, simpaticna, nije to Salmond ili Galovej.

 

Sa takvom osnovom moglo se na razbijanju tog straha i te kako raditi sa uspehom.

 

Iz ugla gledanje unionista otprilike najgore što može da ti se desi posle dobijenog referenduma je da SNP dođe na vlast u Vestminsteru kao deo koalicione vlade ili da od njih zavisi podrška manjinskoj vladi. Ovo je za unioniste najbolji mogući ishod (izuzev toga da je SNP skroz potonuo, ali ako uzmemo čišćenje laburista i libdemsa u Škotskoj od strane SNPa kao datost, onda je ovo najbolji mogući ishod). Izborne strasti će se smiriti, Kameron će održati obećanje o daljoj devoluciji, SNP će biti opozicija bez zuba, za 5 godina će se izduvati i njihov referendumski zalet i zalet sa ovih izbora, škotski glasači će shvatiti da su glasanjem za SNP poslali sebe u political wilderness. To što ti kažeš ima smisla da se radi na narednim izborima, ovi izbore iz ugla unionista nikako nisu bili trenutak da se SNP prihvati kao ,,normalna" stranka, već upravo da se ostrakizuje do besvesti.

 

 

gde sam napisao da su jedini?

 

 

Napisao si ,,ako si se borio da Skotska ostane u Uniji, kako se onda moze pojavljivanje njihovih predstavnika u Westminsteru" što nekako implicira da su SNP jedini škotski predstavnici. Ako sam pogrešno razumeo, sori

Edited May 8, 2015 by hazard

[Dr Arslanagić]

Od danas jesu jedini škotski predstavnici u Vestminsteru.

[Budja]

E baš su ljisice. Pitam opet, gde je to SNP izašao i rekao "mi smo sada za UK"? Naravno da par meseci posle izgubljenog referenduma nisu škotsko pitanje stavljali u fokus ali i svaki pijanac u Engleskoj zna da je njima škotsko pitanje uvek stavka br. 1 bilo to otvoreno ili prikriveno.

 

 

 

Iz ugla gledanje unionista otprilike najgore što može da ti se desi posle dobijenog referenduma je da SNP dođe na vlast u Vestminsteru kao deo koalicione vlade ili da od njih zavisi podrška manjinskoj vladi. Ovo je za unioniste najbolji mogući ishod (izuzev toga da je SNP skroz potonuo, ali ako uzmemo čišćenje laburista i libdemsa u Škotskoj od strane SNPa kao datost, onda je ovo najbolji mogući ishod). Izborne strasti će se smiriti, Kameron će održati obećanje o daljoj devoluciji, SNP će biti opozicija bez zuba, za 5 godina će se izduvati i njihov referendumski zalet i zalet sa ovih izbora, škotski glasači će shvatiti da su glasanjem za SNP poslali sebe u political wilderness. To što ti kažeš ima smisla da se radi na narednim izborima, ovi izbore iz ugla unionista nikako nisu bili trenutak da se SNP prihvati kao ,,normalna" stranka, već upravo da se ostrakizuje do besvesti.

 

 

 

Napisao si ,,ako si se borio da Skotska ostane u Uniji, kako se onda moze pojavljivanje njihovih predstavnika u Westminsteru" što nekako implicira da su SNP jedini škotski predstavnici. Ako sam pogrešno razumeo, sori

 

Da, u tih pet godina poteci ce med i mleko i mirisace ljubicice, a nece biti referenduma o EU, daljih budzetskih kresanja i sl. sto sve jako prija skotskim glasacima.

 

Razumem da pravis analogiju sa Kvebekom. Da bi asocijacija imala smisla, mene zanima (posto ne znam) da li se osim kulturno-nacionalnih prosecni Kvebecanin po vrednostima razlikuje od prosecnog ostalg Kanadjanina.

 

To je vazno, jer je i pre SNP pobede i referenduma, politicka slika u Skotskoj bila dramaticno drugacija: prosecni Skot izgleda da je prilicno levlje naheren od prosecnog Engleza.

 

 

I jos nesto. Ko je uoci i nakon referenduma bio na vlasti u Kanadi? Kretijen, ako se ne varam. Pretpostavljam da bi ekvivalent tome bio da je na vlasti u Londonu Gordon Braun.

Edited May 8, 2015 by Budja

[hazard]

Nisam mislio na paralelu s Kvebekom (znam da sam s njom smorio :D), gledam samo trenutnu situaciju.

 

Ali kad već pitaš, da, prosečni Kvebečanin je levlje nasađen od prosečnog anglofonog Kanađanina, slično kao Škoti prema Englezima (samo ne toliko u levo, jer je cela Kanada više ka centru nego Britanija ili Evropa uopšte).

[Anduril]

Solidna analiza, osim malo uobicajenog elitistickog podmetanja "glupi biraci".

...

 

Nisu u pitanju glupi biraci nego mehanizam kako funkcionise demokratija.

 

Znaju biraci dobro sta im je vazno i sta biraju u tom trenutku ali vec sutra mogu da promene misljenje kad krene seca benefita, obrazovanja i NHS-a.

 

No, onda je kasno pa ce biraci morati da sacekaju 5 godina da se svete kao sada LibDems-ima i Labouru.

 

Koreni mnogih velikih politickih padova se nalaze u najvecim pobedama.

[Hamlet Strašni]

 

Koreni mnogih velikih politickih padova se nalaze u najvecim pobedama.

Šifra BT-2008 :(

[condor]

Ali kad već pitaš, da, prosečni Kvebečanin je levlje nasađen od prosečnog anglofonog Kanađanina, slično kao Škoti prema Englezima (samo ne toliko u levo, jer je cela Kanada više ka centru nego Britanija ili Evropa uopšte).

U neku ruku levlje, u neku i "desnje": Kvebecani su u vecem procentu nacionalisti, manje tolerantni prema manjinama, pogotovo religioznim. No ovo treba posmatrati u okviru kanadskih standarda tolerancije, koji su za srpske prilike nepojamno visoki.

[MancMellow]

 

 

Znaju biraci dobro sta im je vazno i sta biraju u tom trenutku ali vec sutra mogu da promene misljenje kad krene seca benefita, obrazovanja i NHS-a.

 

mogu, ali kao prepreka tome da stvarno i promene ce se pojaviti situacija, rodjenima na Balkanu inace veoma dobro poznata, u kojoj su pogledi na ekonomska pitanja kod obicnih ljudi debelo "skewed" ovim velikim identitetskim debatama i da se one ostati zive i do 2020-te. Cameron verovatno misli (posto on sam nije neki anti-EU radikal) da ce tu pricu zatvoriti i nekakvim, makar i uslovno receno kozmetickim dobicima iz Brisela ucutkati sentiment koji je doveo do ovakvog rasta UKIP-a i koji daje vetar u ledja desnom krilu Torijevaca. Uopste nisam siguran da ce se to desiti vec do narednih izbora, najblaze receno. 

[Prospero]

Tom Devine: How Scottish Labour came to be routed in the General Election

Saturday 9 May 2015

 

To understand the external collapse of the Scottish Labour Party at the General Election, we must see it in two phases.

 

 

The first is what I describe as long-term structural influences dating as far back as the 1970s. Secondly, there are shorter-term factors that hastened the decline of Labour in Scotland to a comprehensive rout.

 

Many of the traditional policies of the party that has dominated the landscape of Scottish politics for so long had started to crumble from the late 1970s. These included the collapse of traditional Scottish industry in the 1980s, which led to a sharp drop in trade union membership. The unions had been pivotal in the establishment of the Labour Party in Scotland.

 

In addition, the Thatcher Government's remarkable success in its right-to-buy policy in the selling off of council houses undermined Labour's former public housing fiefdom. Moreover, under Jack McConnell's Scottish Executive the first-past-the post system was abandoned on Scottish council elections.

The result, paradoxically, was to end the old hegemony of the party in Scottish councils. Two other long-term influences were also relevant. First, since the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922, Irish Catholic immigrants and their descendants tended to vote en bloc for Labour as the party most likely to deliver social justice for a disadvantaged minority.

From the 1970s, however, the rise of a Catholic meritocracy minority population achieved occupational parity with their fellow Scots by 2000. One result was that the former concern about the SNP as a Protestant party started to disappear. In due course, many within the community switched to the Nationalists and, indeed, at the independence referendum last year Catholics were more likely to vote Yes than Presbyterians.

Crucially, the Labour Party in the UK swung more to the right in order to be more attractive to future English voters. New Labour went down badly among traditional Labour voters in Scotland. Scots much preferred the policies that had founded the welfare state in the 1940s.

The Iraq war, regarded by many Scots with Labour sympathies as illegal, also damaged the party. It was clear that former Labour loyalists were declaring that they had not changed in their politics; it was the party that had done so and it left them behind.

Though these long-term factors were important they cannot explain the decline of Labour in Scottish parliamentary elections nor the rout on Thursday. At the General Election of 2010 Labour had remained by far the biggest party in Scotland. Yet, within five years, we had witnessed the destruction of Scottish Labour. A number of elements need to be considered in this context. The SNP exploited Labour's perceived failing as a party of the centre and moved in to fill the vacuum by selling the ideological clothes of "Old Labour". It did not help the Labour cause that the two SNP administrations in Holyrood were seen to have performed competently, compared with what was seen as a "semi mediocrity" of the Labour-Liberal Democrat Executive between 1999 and 2007. Of critical significance was the independence referendum campaign. Here, two influences sealed Scottish Labour's fate. First, between 2013-2014 an external festival of democracy and politicisation took place in Scotland that helped enormously to boost the Yes vote at the end of the campaign. As a consequence, many Labour supporters deserted the party in droves and they eventually made up a significant proportion of those who voted for independence.

Secondly, and perhaps most critical of all, Labour committed the ultimate betrayal in the eyes of many loyalists by standing shoulder to shoulder with the Conservatives in the No campaign. Quite simply, this was a monumental error of judgment that inflicted grievous electoral harm on Labour this week. Labour seemed to have forgotten that Conservatism remained a toxic brand in Scotland, especially among left-leaning voters. As well as committing themselves alongside the Tories, Labour agreed entirely with the stance of George Osborne not to share sterling with an independent Scotland.

In some ways, this did not simply harm Labour; it also had a serious affect on the Union because it seemed to confirm that the Unionist parties were not prepared to lift a finger to help a new Scottish state in its years of infancy, despite the fact that previous British administrations had allowed Ireland and several colonial territories to retain the link with sterling for a period after independence. Essentially, therefore, Labour committed several grave political errors. When the perfect political storm overwhelmed the UK, it was the SNP who were able to exploit the opportunities rather than Scottish Labour.

 

I was asked by a journalist about the possibilities for Scottish independence after the advent of the SNP minority government at Holyrood in 2007. I replied that, at that juncture, cessation from the UK was highly unlikely as less than one third of the Scottish electorate had during the previous years said they were prepared to vote for independence.

 

I added that, although the future was not my period, there was a possible scenario encompassing three elements that might be powerful enough to trigger a much greater commitment to a vote for independence.

First, a left-leaning nationalist majority government in Holyrood and a Tory or Tory-led administration in Westminster.

Secondly, an economic crisis that would trigger strategies of austerity from the London government which would probably attack welfare benefits, given the political complexion of the Westminster government.

Thirdly, a decline in the popularity of the only remaining party political bastion of Unionism in Scotland, namely the Labour Party.

 

All three have come to pass.

 

Professor Sir Tom Devine is Scotland's leading historian. His latest book is Independence or Union: Questions from the Scottish Past and Scottish Present (forthcoming, Penguin, 2015).

 

[MancMellow]

Ne bih rekao da je proces nesto mnogo dugotrajan. Labour je u Skotskoj 2010 godine dobio vise glasova nego 2005

 

U pravu je za tesku gresku kada su zajedno sa Tories prosle godine agitovali za No. Trebalo je prosto da to rade sami i sa nesto drugacijom porukom. 

[Prospero]

ima i ovo:
 

 

Notes on the Election

David Runciman

 
This election promised to produce constitutional confusion and uncertainty and instead it has delivered stark clarity. The British electoral system values clarity: few people dissent from the line that it is better to have a government that can pass legislation and take decisions when it needs to than to be stuck with one that stumbles on hand-to-mouth from vote to vote. We seem to prefer certainty to confusion. But why? What evidence is there that majority governments are better at governing? The fundamental long-term problems this country faces – inequality, a struggling education system, growing health costs, changing employment patterns, environmental threats – are ones that a series of majority governments (and I include the coalition, which had a big parliamentary majority) have failed to address. This is not just a left/right issue. Blair didn’t tackle them, despite his massive parliamentary ascendancy, any more than Thatcher did. Majority governments flatter to deceive. They are not more decisive. They are just more biddable.

The two countries that have seen the greatest rise in inequality over the past couple of decades are Britain and the United States. Both have a first-past-the-post system designed to offer a clear choice between two main parties. Yet whichever of the two parties wins, the drift towards inequality has been inexorable. This contrasts with continental Europe, where there are barriers in the way of vastly unequal distributions of wealth and power and where there also happen to be proportional representation systems that force multiple parties to negotiate for influence and outcomes. We live in a world where national governments are increasingly buffeted by forces – notably international finance – that are very hard to control. Decisive, single-party governments are not the way to resist these forces, because their freedom of manouevre makes them easier to buy off without anyone else being able to hold them to account. What national democracies need is not more autonomy but more barriers in the way of any single political faction or grouping being able to call the shots. The presence in government of multiple parties representing multiple interests helps to give democracy a measure of defence against the whirlwind of money that swirls around it. It makes it harder to sell out, because it makes it harder to do anything reckless. I realise that doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement of democracy. But for now it’s the best one there is.

What single-party governments do, instead of making the messy compromises that might offer their populations some real protection, is focus their attention on the areas where their freedom of action can make an immediate difference. The most chilling moment on election night was hearing Theresa May, when asked what she now wanted a Conservative government to do that it had been prevented from doing by having to work with the Lib Dems in coalition, answer that her first priority was to pass legislation that would empower the security forces and the police to conduct surveillance on the scale needed to keep the country safe. It is no coincidence that first-past-the-post states also tend to turn into national security states: their governments have the capacity to take aggressive action against immediate threats that appear amenable to massive concentrations of firepower, regardless of the long-term consequences. (France, which is a hybrid model under its presidential system, is also moving this way.) Unencumbered executive leaders worry about being lumbered with the blame for any failures of national security, because their autonomy leaves them exposed to carrying the can. Majority governments spend more time avoiding the risks that impinge on them than mitigating the risks that threaten the rest of us.

This is the reason, beyond questions of perceived unfairness or inefficiency, why the British electoral system desperately needs reform. The problem, though, is that electoral reform is a very hard sell and it is getting harder all the time. The public has bought into the idea that clarity about who rules is the primary virtue of any government. Politicians – most notably, I’m afraid, Ed Miliband – have been pandering to this with their increasingly absurd insistence on red lines that can’t be breached and manifesto commitments that can’t be touched. Miliband did it in the name of restoring trust in politics but in reality he was stoking the problem he was claiming to cure: by putting a premium on the ability of any party to hold the line he made it much harder for anyone to do what good government requires.

The Tory victory looks like evidence of how little the public is now willing to tolerate compromise of any sort: the message that hit home hardest during the campaign was the threat of constitutional chaos if a minority Labour government had tried to cling to power with the support of the SNP and a host of other minor parties. It would indeed have been extremely messy and there would have been an almost intolerable level of grumbling about the lack of transparency and the inevitable compromises required to keep it going. But those compromises and backroom deals are precisely what might have made it an improvement on what had gone before and on what we’ve got instead. We’ll never know, because we are never going to get it now. Far from putting proportional representation on the agenda, the Tories are now in a position to push through reform of electoral boundaries under the existing first-past-the-post system to make it fairer (i.e. better for them). That’s the thing about first-past-the-post: the winners get to decide. And that means doubling down on the current system.

It is not the case that a Tory government with a small majority won’t be messy too. Commentators are already pointing out that if this is 1992 all over again then David Cameron is going to have a hellish time with the rebellious fringe of his own party, just as John Major did back then. But this is the wrong sort of mess. It is not compromise and accommodation in the name of defending politics against the forces of nature, technology and finance that threaten to destroy it. It is blackmail and veto power, with small groups clamouring to get what they want from the people in charge. This is the current model of American politics, which for all its premium on clarity and executive power is also extremely messy, with all sorts of minor players holding the big boys to ransom. It is what Francis Fukuyama has called a ‘vetocracy’, which means a system that puts barriers in the way of reform more than it does in the way of social decay.

Cameron’s biggest immediate headache will be how to deal with the SNP, since the Tories are now a one-party national government facing a one-party regional state within its own borders. It is hard to see how this relationship can be a constructive one. Cameron will make concessions to Scotland but there will be no meaningful collaboration, because neither side has any incentive to engage substantively with the political concerns of the other. The medium-term focus of the Cameron government will be on the promised in-out referendum on Europe. Perhaps this is not the time to be making predictions, after the most genuinely unpredictable election in living memory, but I think the referendum will happen and that Cameron is likely to win it. He will campaign for and probably secure a vote for Britain to remain in the European Union, subject to whatever concessions he is able to extract from Brussels. This will enhance his authority, and also his sense that he can govern effectively by asserting his own will.

None of this is good news for the Labour Party. This election has been a disaster for them, as it has too for the Liberal Democrats, who paid the price for locking themselves into a secure majority government for five years rather than seeing what they could achieve by working with a Tory minority administration. It is hard to know what the future holds for the Lib Dems. But for Labour it is finally time to abandon the idea that its primary purpose is to secure majorities in the House of Commons and that it should do nothing to put that prize at risk. It needs to become more like a typical European social democratic party, which recognises that nothing can be achieved without forging alliances with others. That is much easier said than done, not least because conventional social democracy on many parts of the European continent is facing its own uphill electoral battles. But this time there really is no alternative. Europe will become the focus of this Parliament and Britain’s place in Europe will be clearer before the end of it. That is where Labour needs to look not just for short-term tactical opportunities – a chance to split or defeat the government – but also for inspiration. Otherwise, this defeat really could be the end.
 

8 May

 

[Budja]

Statement of intent

 

[MancMellow]

Nema, vidi se, gde su nesto uspeli su ili "pojeli" LibDems ili su cak tukli Torije. Way to go, nema druge. 

 

Koliko vidim, slažu se svi  ^_^  od Toni Blera (no surprises there) do Čuka Umune 

 

Umuna:

 

 

 We tried to cobble together a 35% coalition of our core vote, disaffected Lib Dems, Greens and Ukip supporters. The terrible results were the failure of that approach writ large. We need a different, big-tent approach – one in which no one is too rich or poor to be part of our party. Most of all, we need to start taking large numbers of votes directly from the  Conservatives.    

We talked a lot – quite rightly – about the need to address “irresponsible” capitalism, for more political will to tackle inequality, poverty and injustice (and we must never give the appearance that we are relaxed about them). But we talked too little about those creating wealth and doing the right thing. That’s why I’ve always argued you cannot be pro-business by beating up on the terms and conditions of their workers and the trade unions that play an important role representing them. But you cannot be pro good jobs without being pro the businesses that create them. In spite of the fact that our policy offer was pro-business, the rhetoric often suggested otherwise. And sometimes we made it sound like we saw taxing people as a good in itself, rather than a means to an end. 

 

Bler

 

 

Scotland is a vast challenge. But we will never win it back by being more “Scottish” and more “left”. We will win when we confront the whole ideology of nationalism, which is a reactionary philosophy masquerading as progressive; and when we present the people of Scotland with policies that are forward-looking, progressive and not based on the myth that Scotland’s problems will be solved by a different relationship with England, any more than England’s problems will be solved by leaving Europe.

 

Alan Džonson

 

 

the biggest damage was done on the economy. We seemed to have no effective riposte to Cameron’s successful distortion of our economic record in government. Thus a succession of Tory ministers were allowed to describe the global banking crisis as “Labour’s recession” and to refer (as Jeremy Hunt did) to the economy contracting. There was no rebuttal from Labour pointing out the decent levels of growth being recorded before George Osborne choked off the recovery through his vainglorious emergency budget in June 2010. Nick Clegg’sludicrous comparison between the bankrupt Greek economy and our own also seemed to pass without question.

Even the entirely false statement that Gordon Brown had sold off the Britain’s gold reserves at knock-down prices to fund public spending went unchallenged, sacrificed to the strategy of fighting the 2015 election, not the 2010 one all over again. As a result it was open season on Labour’s record in office with the economy front and centre.

 

Even more perplexing was the fact that we did have a sound economic policy for this election, which we seemed determined to disguise. Our commitment to borrow for capital investment at a time when the cost of borrowing is zero and the economy is still underperforming was a huge and important dividing line between us and the Conservatives that we seemed to want to obscure.  

Edited May 9, 2015 by MancMellow