2015 UK General Election Thread

The record of the Labour Government from '97 to '01 is pretty good. The budget remained in surplus, the minimum wage was introduced, interest rates given to the Bank of England, didn't enter the Euro, the Good Friday agreement, Freedom of Information act and a number of equality laws for people who are gay.

Also from a London point of view the establishment of the GLA and the position of Mayor has helped a lot.

[Osem]

How much of that budget 'success' was down to what they inherited? God only knows what they'd have done had they inherited a total mess like the ConDems did. Meanwhile they opened up the immigration floodgates and changed this country massively and permanently, they signed us up to more EU interference, they embarked on a massive PFI fest, sold off our gold reserves, raided our pensions etc. etc. Given the economy they inherited, their term in office, the amounts they spent and the parliamentary majority they enjoyed and all their rhetoric about caring for ordinary people, anyone would have thought that stuff like education, the NHS etc would have been sorted in those 13 years. Instead we got Mid Staffs. hospitals, endemic abuse in the 'care' system, banking sector failure, discredited exams results and an NHS in hock to PFI. Great!

Given the opportunity they had, what good they did pales into insignificance when compared to the chaos they left behind and consistently refused to accept responsibility for until they were after our votes once again.


This is what Brown was telling those wonderful bankers he was so in awe of back in 2004:

Let me thank you first for the scale of the contribution you make to the British economy - the £50 billion of income, 4 per cent of national output, and the 1 million jobs that arise. And let me thank you also for the resilience, the innovative flair and the courage to change with which you have responded to not just the world economic downturn but to the greatest economic challenge of our times - the challenge of global competition.

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.g...ress_56_04.htm

And this is what he admitted in 2011, only after he'd been booted out of office and knowing his political career was over:

Gordon Brown has admitted he made a big mistake while setting up the FSA because he did not appreciate the entangled relationships of financial services institutions.

In a keynote speech to the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Bretton Woods conference in New Hampshire on Saturday, Brown said the FSA was set up on the assumption problems would come from individual institutions.

He said: “We set up the FSA believing the problem would come from an individual institution. That was a big mistake. We did not understand just how entangled things were.

“We did not understand how risk was spread across the system, we did not understand the entanglements of different institutions and we did not understand, even though we talked about it, just how global things were.

“So we created a monitoring system which looked at individual institutions. That was the big mistake.”

http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/gord...029361.article

Of course he doesn't say too much about why they ignored the warnings coming from insiders prior to the crash but then he might not be able to dismiss that as just a mistake...

Then there were the internal warnings about out of control spending which was ignored:

A confidential document presented to the Cabinet in January 2006 asks: "We've spent all this money, but what have we got for it?"


It warns that the efficiency of the public sector needed to improve rapidly and insisted that "spending growth will slow". The document drafted by civil servants also says that "ineffective spending" must be "closed down".

However, Gordon Brown discarded the advice and embarked on a £90 billion increase in spending when he became prime minister.

Another leaked memorandum warns Mr Brown and Mr Balls that plans to scrap the 10p tax rate would hit millions of poorer Britons and pensioners - but the change was still introduced.

Mr Brown later denied that there would be any losers from the tax changes – before being forced to announce an emergency compensation plan.

[Taf]

Just listened to the UKIP manifesto launch. It all sounded excellent. No chance of them getting into power though. Sadly.

[Osem]

This election won't see the end of UKIP, if we get another 5 years of Labour social engineering their popularity will increase accordingly as will be the case if nothing is done about mass migration by whoever else gains power.

I still think the UKIP vote will get squeezed out as people go back to the Tories or Labour when they see how close the election is going to be. Our electoral system makes it very hard for smaller parties to make any significant gains and realistically one of the major two will be the basis of a new Government but which one could be decided by a handful of votes in a handful of marginal constituencies.

UKIP are also suffering from having to fight a national campaign instead of a localised by-election. They don't have the infrastructure or capability to do it so are focusing on a few seats and in most of them they have to fight sizeable majorities for one of the major parties. Farage is also facing a real fight in his South Thanet target seat and his loss would really cripple UKIP so he is having to spend most of his time there instead of campaigning nationally which is hurting UKIP elsewhere. Finally it looks like Reckless might is serious danger of losing his seat too.

[richard s]

More Tory's will defect. Helen Grant will probably loose her seat in Maidstone.

Originally Posted by richard s

More Tory's will defect. Helen Grant will probably loose her seat in Maidstone.

They won't defect if UKIP do poorly.

^This.

In fact I'd go further and say that Tory MPs are not going to defect unless UKIP does extraordinarily well. Which it won't.

The next real "jumping off" point for disaffected Eurosceptic Tories will be when the in/out referendum campaign kicks off, and how many of them jump, will depend on what the "in" offer turns out to be.

Originally Posted by richard s

Neither are the Tory's. Bankers are Tory's!

Except for the ones who fund and/or support Labour.....

Martin Taylor

Labour in the City

PwC

And let's not forget John Mills, who gave Labour £1.65 million in shares to avoid paying tax on his donation.....

And this article shows that the Financial Services sector are the Labour Party's second biggest donors, after the Trade Unions....

So what was that you were saying about "Bankers are Tories"?

[blackthorn]

I get confused with all this EU stuff ( but thats me all over) but havent the Torys said there will be a referendum after the Uk has renegotiated its membership but today, the EU has said there will no renegotiation for the UK. So are we being told fibs?

Originally Posted by blackthorn

I get confused with all this EU stuff ( but thats me all over) but havent the Torys said there will be a referendum after the Uk has renegotiated its membership but today, the EU has said there will no renegotiation for the UK. So are we being told fibs?

Cameron intends to go to the EU and ask for a renegotiation. The European Commission may well wish to assert that this is not possible before 2019, but in reality it's not their call. If the member states want it (in particular, the biggest ones, and most particularly, Germany), then it will happen.

The exact nature of any "new deal" is another matter. Cameron has already said that whatever he is offered, he will recommend we accept with an "in" vote, which to me suggests he's not terribly serious about the whole thing.

The only way of getting maximum leverage over the EU is to invoke Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon, announcing our intention to leave and compelling the other member states to negotiate our post-membership relationship with the EU. At that point we can remind them that if they want to keep selling their cars and sausages in the UK, they had better give us a favourable deal.

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by blackthorn

I get confused with all this EU stuff ( but thats me all over) but havent the Torys said there will be a referendum after the Uk has renegotiated its membership but today, the EU has said there will no renegotiation for the UK. So are we being told fibs?

Basically Cameron had to find a way to turn down the volume from some of the anti EU members of his party, So he offers them a chance of a referandum knowing that he will call for a no to leaving vote anyway. The EU will offer him some token changes that will have no affect at all on the parts of the EU that really matter to you and me in the first place.

There again he may have lied and just not have the referandum like he did last time.

And this all depends on Nicky boy joining up with him in another Con - Lib lovin

[richard s]

The Treaty of Lisbon reminds of the time when Nevil Chamberlain went to see Herr Hitler and when he got back, got of the plane, he held his hand up and said, I have Here a Piece of Paper. Peace in our Time Speech.

And we can't sell or cars or sausages there either.

[Osem]

Originally Posted by Hugh

Except for the ones who fund and/or support Labour.....

Martin Taylor

Labour in the City

PwC

And let's not forget John Mills, who gave Labour £1.65 million in shares to avoid paying tax on his donation.....

And this article shows that the Financial Services sector are the Labour Party's second biggest donors, after the Trade Unions....

So what was that you were saying about "Bankers are Tories"?

Too true. Same old 'they're all Tories' garbage from people who haven't got any other argument. It'd be laughable if it wasn't so pathetic.

Originally Posted by richard s

The Treaty of Lisbon reminds of the time when Nevil Chamberlain went to see Herr Hitler and when he got back, got of the plane, he held his hand up and said, I have Here a Piece of Paper. Peace in our Time Speech.

And we can't sell or cars or sausages there either.

Well, we can, actually, to the extent that we even make them.

The point is, we are better at selling to the rest of the world than most EU member states, so trade barriers between the EU and the UK would hurt them more.

I'm not sure what your point is regarding Chamberlain. He believed he had an understanding with a dangerously unstable fascist dictator. We are bound by treaty with a couple of dozen democratic states. Hardly the same thing.