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Originally Posted by Damien
You have to give them a pass on the COVID debt. It was universally supported and the consequences of not having the support in place could have been much worse. A crisis can happen and the deficit shoots up but it'll come back down again since it wasn't structural. Look at 2008 for the same thing.
The main economic failure of the Tories was the lack of growth during their tenure. They did austerity but that helped depress growth making the cuts worse and now we have the worst of all worlds: low growth, high debt and poor public services. It's a nightmare combination. We didn't take advantage of record-low interest rates to invest and drive growth either. Just a decade of stagnation and failure, even by their own goals.
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I agree with you on the Covid debt and the lack of investment. We've certainly borrowed! And we're now struggling behind most of the EU on growth except Germany which was over-dependent on Russian gas.
When we talk about austerity, it's important to note that overall government expenditure has generally risen year on year. Cuts in funding to local authorities have been tough but the savings there have more than been made up for by increased spending on pensions and health care for an ageing population.
Our problem has been that people want first class public services but the funding from taxes is insufficient despite our record percentage of tax take, due to our ageing population. Strong economic growth would help but putting up additional trade barriers with our largest trading block doesn't help here.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statis...-november-2023
expenditure.PNG