Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
But please don't tell me you actually think Labour did a good job with the economy?
The Tories were promising to match Labour's spending plan, almost to the pound, and enthusiastically supported the de-regulation of the banks when they were in opposition, so it's a complete myth that there would've been a different outcome in 2008 had the Tories been in charge, and up till that point Labour had NOT been doing a bad job with the economy, not in relation to previous Governments. And furthermore, almost every incumbent government worldwide, whether they be fiscally conservative, liberal or socialist, experienced a recession at that time, and there was very little that the Labour Government done to exacerbate the recession in relation to anywhere else. If you actually want to look at a more home grown recession, you only need to look at 1990, where crappy policy resulted in interest rates hitting 15% and inflation through the roof and where choosing to have sterling tagged with the Mark at an inflated rate had disastrous consequences. Who was in charge making those decisions then? Oh yeah, that'll be the 'economically responsible' Tories.

And the same Tories have now been in charge for over 6 years and yet they have missed (and now effectively abandoned) all their previous fiscal targets, despite 6 years of the austerity we were told we needed to meet those targets. At what point does the economy become theirs and they take ownership, or will it be Labour's fault Ad infinitum in your eyes? And yet despite all this, the Tories have somehow managed to keep this narrative of economic competency going despite it being, by almost anyone's fair analysis, nonsense. And, for the cherry on the cake, they decided to offer a referendum, entirely for their own self interests, the result of which will almost certainly hit the UK economy incredibly hard if/when Brexit happens. And you and peterb voted for it. Oh the Irony. Don't worry though, eventually (at some point) Labour will be back in power, and no matter what happens in between, you can just blame them. What's that saying about repeating a lie often enough that people will believe it?