Ed still in denial on economy

Labour leader ‘proud’ of the profligacy that left Britain with giant deficit

THERE was uproar yesterday when Ed Miliband insisted the last Labour government did not spend too much taxpayers’ money and he was ‘proud’ of its record.

The Labour leader, pressed on why Britain had entered the financial crisis with one of the biggest structural deficits in the industrial world, refused to accept his party had been profligate.

‘On the increase in public spending, I’m proud that we increased spending in hospitals, in schools,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

‘There was a financial crisis – and the financial crisis drove the deficit upwards. The debt and the deficit before the financial crisis were lower than those we inherited and that’s clear.’

Labour’s critics say that had it not allowed public spending to run riot in the years before the crash, it would have meant less austerity – which has come mostly in the form of public spending cuts – to repair the damage.

Britain entered the crisis with a structural deficit of 5.3 per cent, the largest in the G7. Even Tony Blair has admitted Labour should have sought to rein in its deficit as far back as 2005, well before the financial crisis hit in 2007 and 2008.

Lord King, the Bank of England governor at the time, said that Britain ‘ came into this crisis with fiscal policy on a path that wasn’t sustainable’.

Even some senior Labour figures are exasperated at Mr Miliband’s refusal to apologise f or t he party’s borrowing record.

During last week’s Question Time debate, he was heckled when he was asked if he accepted Gordon Brown had spent too much and replied: ‘ No I don’t.’ The Prime Minister said yesterday: ‘I thought he was completely skewered on this point.

‘If you haven’t learnt the lessons of the dangers of overspending and overborrowing and overtaxing there’s a real danger that that would be what a Labour govern- ment would do again.’ Chancellor George Osborne said: ‘I never forget as Chancellor that taxpayers work very hard to earn the cash that the government spends.

‘There’s a heavy responsibility to spend that money well, to make savings where you can, and to return to people whatever you can in lower taxes.

‘The attitude Ed Miliband takes to spending other people’s money is completely different.’ Mr Osborne said the risks of a Labour govern- ment propped up by the SNP were ‘real and present’.

‘If Ed Miliband is in Downing Street, Britain and its economic recovery will grind to a halt.’

SHAMELESSLY unrepentant to the last, Ed Miliband asserts he is ‘proud’ of the l ast Labour government’s massive increase in public spending, which left Britain reeling from the financial crisis of 2008.

With truly shocking disregard for the truth – not to mention voters’ intelligence – he goes on to claim: ‘The debt and deficit before the financial crisis were lower than those we inherited.’

In fact, official figures show that when Labour came to office in 1997, annual borrowing was only 3 per cent of the nation’s output, while net government debt was 45 per cent of GDP.

By 2008, borrowing had almost doubled to 5.1 per cent of output – far higher than most of our competitor nations – while debt had soared to 51.8 per cent of GDP.

All this was before the mighty spending splurge of Labour’s last two years, which saw debt rocket to 76.4 per cent of national output. Nor do these figures take into account the massive loans kept off the books under the deceitful Private Finance Initiative.

Indeed, it is impossible to argue with the Question Time audience member who asked Mr Miliband last week: ‘How can you stand there and say you didn’t overspend? You’re frankly just lying.’

Meanwhile, the Labour leader continues to evade the truth that he cannot hope to govern without the agreement of the SNP – which wants to saddle our children and grandchildren with even greater debts.

It isn’t merely terrifying that he appears hell bent on repeating the mistakes he refuses to acknowledge. It’s downright immoral.