I hadn't meant to add another to the lengthening Ed series so soon but unfortunately his words to the Times this morning, since repeated on TV and radio , leave no option.
Ever since the election lost by his leader, mentor (and senior) assosciate Gordon Brown,now the usually absentee Member for Kirkaldy and Cowdenbeath, Ed has struggled with and failed to accept Labour's responsibility for building up the huge annual government overspend from 2000 onwards. Indeed he does not seem to recognise that there was an overspend, or that it was of any significance.Instead, echoing his former master, he doesn't seem to see anything as having been amiss until "the global financial crisis that resulted in recession and a calamitous collapse in tax revenues". Anything before about 2007/8 seemingly just didnt happen.Later in his article he says "Labour has been clear that we need to reduce borrowing from levels that are far too high" and yet he doesn't admit that these levels were achieved by the former government in which he was a key player. He doesn't mention either that his party had and still has no immediate plans to seriously apply the brakes. They just say "the time isn't right yet". When would it be? When the national debt has trebled from its 1997 level? Quadrupled? And when he talks as always about "fair", does he think that being saddled with paying the soaring annual interest on this ,let alone paying it of, is fair on the next generation of young people, now in their 20s or younger? Does he understand that this is what was happening? Does he care? There is no evidence that he does.
Until Labour can admit that it brought us to the edge of economic disaster it is impossible for them to examine what in their creed always leads them to this state of affairs. Very simply when "The State " is so large, all controlling and expensive it gobbles up such a high share of our GDP that we can only do other things by borrowing. The bigger "The State" grows the more it has to borrow or the economy shrinks and we all get progressively, or rather unprogressively, poorer. This is not advanced mathematics. It isn't even arithmetic. It is elementary school sums. Unlike his brother, Ed is not a reformer or likely to look for the intellectual reason why socialist economies start off by underperforming and eventually failing. Along with colleagues on the left and in the unions ,he doesn't want to accept that is what happens as it questions the viability of their whole philosophy and would force them into a total rethink of their core beliefs. To them the very idea of doing that and looking at what the consumers/voters want from a 21st century political party is unthinkable. As we have said before ,they believe in the supply side of the economy and the consumers getting whatever they choose to dish out.
UK Plc needs a strong and relevant opposition. Labour could deliver one if it went into rehab ,rethought what it's all about and came out newly focused, energised and customer orientated. For rehab to work though,the patient has to recognise the problem and be determined to deal with it.No sign of that yet in Ed's pronouncements and doleful pontifications.
