‘Myth’ of Labour overspending

THE Conservative Party has based much of its campaigning strategy in recent elections around the repetition of what its campaign directors consider to be short and snappy slogans. Recently we’ve been treated to the patently ludicrous “strong and stable government” being repeated ad infinitum. This idiotic slogan has of course enjoyed a background chorus of screeching support from an increasingly unbalanced right wing, rottweiler, English tabloid press, the owners of which are often “non-doms” who pay no UK tax.

Now that this particular piece of demonstrable nonsense has been discredited the Tories have fallen back on the outrageous myth of the “Labour deficit” to justify their refusal to relax the mindlessly self-defeating policy of austerity which has undermined the economy of Wales and the UK since 2010. The financial crash was caused by the banks pure and simple. Wall Street and the City were entirely responsible for torpedoing the Western economy as they encouraged a veritable Himalaya of unsecured indebtedness in the pursuit of endless, greed driven profit.

Governments seemed transfixed by the rapidly developing collapse of financial institutions. Certainly, voices in the Tory party were initially all for non-intervention until the banking system was 24 hours away from total implosion. The UK Government then stepped in at the last minute to prop up the banks and prevent total financial collapse. Gordon Brown is not a man I have much time for but he and the then Chancellor, Alistair Darling, did what was necessary to prevent economic chaos and a 1930s style depression. The US administration followed suit.

Certainly, Brown can be criticised for not re-regulating the City and for an indulgence in “off the books” PFI schemes, but in this, as the Tories know full well, he was correct.

The deficit results entirely from the incompetent greed of the Tories’ friends and backers in the City and their American equivalents. It has absolutely nothing to do with Labour “overspending”. This is complete and utter myth. Indeed the economy had begun to quietly recover by 2010 only to be kicked badly where it hurts under the insanely stupid, deflationary direction of that economic imbecile, George Osborne.

Lunatics taking over the asylum – and exceedingly mendacious lunatics at that – has never seemed a more appropriate description of our predicament. Particularly as we in Wales are once again ruled by a government over the border we didn’t vote for. I Seaton Mumbles, Swansea