Labour in power has only one outcome: Our ruin
I AM at a loss to understand why the Conservatives don’t make any reference to the history of previous Labour administrations, apart from the most recent. They seem fixated on 2010 when they should be demonstrating how, after every single Labour government this country has ever elected, our economy has ended up on the financial rocks. 1) 1924 (March to October), Ramsay MacDonald’s first government: The country survived World War I, badly damaged, but with its basic financial systems intact. The latter, however, could not survive a few months of socialism and, in 1926, we were forced to abandon the Gold Standard. 2) 1929-31, MacDonald’s second government: A government of paralysis at a time of financial crisis because no one understood what was going on or what to do about it. It fell following the confusion caused by the administration wanting to devalue the pound by 25 per cent and being opposed, not just by the Conservative Party, but by the trades unions and its own supporters. 3) 1945-51, Clement Attlee: Instead of concentrating on rebuilding the nation and its economy, Labour instead introduced the Welfare State. This ensured wartime rationing continued until 1953, and the country was burdened with a welfare system no economy on earth could possibly sustain and one which has been driving Britain surely and steadily into decline for nearly 70 years. With today’s vastly increased and ageing population, there must come an inevitable and drastic collapse of this state-run behemoth within the next 30 years. In 1950-1, after devaluing the pound from £5 to £2.40 to the U.S. dollar, and with the country’s finances in a shambles, Labour had to go cap in hand to the U.S. (which not only turned them down but revised the war debt to take account of the devaluation!) and to the International Monetary Fund for a vast, debt-funded rescue package. 4) 1964-79, Harold Wilson and James Callaghan: I will ignore Edward Heath’s ignominious three-year term and count it as part of the same calamitous era. In this period Britain’s heavy manufacturing capabilities were destroyed and trade unions — led by men, many of whom, it has since emerged, were active agents of the Soviet Union — effectively ruled the country. The pound was devalued once more. In 1979, Callaghan once more went begging to the IMF for funds to rescue the UK economy. 5) 1997-2010, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown: Brown might have repeatedly claimed the financial crisis started in the U.S., but, yet again, at the end of another period of Labour stewardship the country was effectively bankrupt. Labour cannot produce a single example to demonstrate that Britain has ever prospered when it has been in power. If voters grasped this fact, perhaps they would start to understand what an inevitable disaster awaits them, and the country as a whole, if they once more vote Labour into power.
HENRY C. COMBE, Sutton, Surrey.