Originally Posted by clitheroe1:
“That's what the facts show. Labour cut the deficit until the global financial crisis hit. You may find the truth inconvenient because it doesn't fit in with the right-wing propaganda you have been fed for the last 7 years but is true.
Far from over spending, Labour was paying off the deficit it inherited from John Major. After the global financial crash, all governments were forced to bail out their economies, not just the UK one. Had the Tories been in power, they would have been forced to do the same.”
“That's what the facts show. Labour cut the deficit until the global financial crisis hit. You may find the truth inconvenient because it doesn't fit in with the right-wing propaganda you have been fed for the last 7 years but is true.
Far from over spending, Labour was paying off the deficit it inherited from John Major. After the global financial crash, all governments were forced to bail out their economies, not just the UK one. Had the Tories been in power, they would have been forced to do the same.”
It's not what the facts show at all, irrespective of the lies fed to you. You don't appear to know the difference between debt and deficit. You can't pay off a deficit. If we are to assume you meant 'debt', then Labour did indeed pay some off. That they were in a position to do so was that they kept to Conservative spending plans between 1997 and 2000. GDP fell from 42% to 31%. Prudence ruled. Brown then launched into his massive public spending increase (and £ 55 billion PFI liabilities).
The apparent fall in public sector borrowing occurred during a period when most other industrial countries were doing much more to strengthen their public finances. On the OECD measure, the UK had a structural budget deficit of 3.5% of national income in 2007. This was the third highest among the G7 countries and the sixth highest among the 26 OECD countries for which comparable data are available (behind – from highest to lowest – Hungary, Greece, Japan, France and Poland). Eleven of these 26 countries actually had structural budget surpluses in the run up to the global financial crisis. Furthermore, the UK saw only the 18th largest reduction in its structural budget deficit between 1997 and 2007 – in other words, the vast majority of other OECD countries did more to strengthen their public finances during Labour’s first eleven years in office than Labour did in the UK.
In 2007 we had the eleventh highest level of debt when compared with the other 26 OECD countries for which data are available. Between 1997 and 2007, 16 out of 23 OECD countries saw a bigger fall in ratio of debt to national income than the UK.
Crucial to all of this as well is that our GDP was increasing on debt fuelled spending on the housing debt bubble and on uncertain receipts from an unstable financial sector, making us even more vulnerable to a downturn. Labour overspent and left the economy and country in a mess just as in 1979
PS I thought I blocked you! 
