Quote:
Originally Posted by ianch99
But you consistently claim that the Labour Party is primarily responsible for austerity in this country when they are are not.
|
In 2010 The government inherited massive ongoing extra costs(eg Tax Credit system). A lot of that extra spending was set in motion long before 2008. The average deficit for 2002-2007 was £42.5bn, and that includes spending the surplus from the conditions that Labour inherited, that peaked at £15.7bn in a year. The spending wasn't the sort of a household 12 month contract and cancel without penalty any time after that. It was firmly embedded and largely irreversible. All that extra pre-crash spending, resulted in over £10bn/year extra just in interest payments.
So not only do you have over £500bn of pre-crash excessive spending/borrowing, you have the buy now, pay later of PFI. If after 2010 the borrowing had been kept at 2009/10 levels, then another £600bn would have been added to the debt.
imagine the scenario where you inherit a business, but your predecessor had signed up to irreversible contracts that were unnecessarily expensive. Who is to blame for a future required cost-cutting exercise? The predecessor is. They were the ones that signed up to the unsustainable costs, that you cannot get out of.
Really would love to know what the Conservatives were meant to do in order to overnight reverse a £158.3bn deficit. Now that would have really been austerity.