This week saw the Labour Party conference. A buzz of socialism gathered together in one big hall, used as an attempt to try to promote the Labour Party to voters. However, this week the public saw who the real Labour were.
On day one I received an email from the Conservative Party taken from a survey of those who had attended the Labour Party conference (conducted by Labour). In it, it contained the damning evidence of Labour PPCs up and down the country, almost UKIP-esque in how each candidate gets notoriety:
85% of Labour PPCs said that the last Labour government didn't spend too much.
Ridiculous. According to the Institute For Fiscal Studies, "spending on public services has increased by an average of 4.4% a year in real terms under Labour, significantly faster than the 0.7% a year average seen under the Conservatives from 1979 to 1997." As Labour poured so much money into public services in their first 10 years from 1997 to 2007, productivity fell. Worse still, the real terms value of the pound fell by even more than productivity in these 10 years. The warning signs were there and Labour had already spent too much. According to the Institute For Fiscal Studies, "if the Government had managed to maintain the “bang for each buck” at the level it inherited in 1997, it would have been able to deliver the quantity and quality of public services it delivered in 2007 for £42.5 billion less." £42,500,000,000 of your money. Unnecessarily spent.
10% of Labour PPCs said that the last Labour government should have spent more money.
I'm not having a laugh, I promise. On top of the £42.5bn wasted between 1997 and 2007, the deficit increased from the £29.2bn deficit it inherited to £36.4bn before the recession - another loss of £7.2bn - and when the recession hit, boy, did Labour mess this up. Since 1979, the biggest budget deficit was in 1993 where the government that year, as a consequence of Black Wednesday, ran a budget deficit of £50.9bn. In 2008 Darling smashed that with £69bn. In 2009 he went even better and smashed it up to an incredible £156.3bn. One hundred and fifty six billion and three hundred million pounds was the government black hole. That was bigger than Greece. And at the same time taxes were going up. This wasn't working for Labour. And yet over 60 PPCs say that wasn't enough. They wanted to clog up the toilet with the wasted money being flushed away.
42% of Labour PPCs want to raise direct taxes to reduce the deficit.
Only 18% think we should cut spending.
Wow. Time to get this old poster out again:
And that was in 1992. This time around it's even worse. Labour have an £36bn black hole to fill of unfunded spending commitments, and they want 29.8 million taxpayers to pay for it. That's an extra £1,208.05 per year. An extra £1,200, we'll call it, every year. That's 4.6% of the average national income. According to Guido Fawkes, this tax isn't steeper for the rich. It isn't even flat. It will hit the poorest hardest. Besides, even if you taxed the rich at 98%, as Labour once did, you wouldn't be able to fund it.
So where will you find £1,200? You could cut back by £20 per week on food and groceries.
OK, maybe not. Another way? You could give up the family holiday, that should save £1,200 in one go. That won't go down popularly either.
So let's look at another way. You could sell your car - that's at least £1,200, surely? OK, maybe not.
All right, you can keep your car, but you'd have to give up your evenings and go minicabbing. Well that's no fun, is it?
You could try striking, but that never works, does it? Strikes go up under Labour, maybe that's why...
In that case, you'd just have to work overtime. A teacher would have to take classes for an extra few hours. A fireman would have to work a few extra shifts. A farmer would have to sweat in the field.
Judging by their tax bombshell, it's no wonder that
ED MILIBAND DIDN'T MENTION THE ECONOMY ONCE IN HIS SPEECH.
Also, not only did Blair and Brown's government make a mess of the economy, but Wilson and Callaghan made a mess of the economy too...
I shall leave you with the following tweet:
Ed Miliband couldn't run a bath, let alone the economy.
— Rhys Benjamin (@TheotherRB) September 24, 2014
