Yesterday's UK Budget statement by Chancellor George Osborne was about as good as it could get bearing in mind that,since Gordon Browns's abandonment of "Prudence" in 2000 in favour of "borrow and spend" there is no money in the kitty. There is simply nothing in the safe and worse, the interest we pay on the substantially increased,-and still increasing,-national debt every day pours £120 million in national debt interest down the drain. Think of what that could buy,- EVERY DAY. The "global banking crisis" happened seven years after the binge borrowing got under way so it's so use attributing our situation to that. Yes, it made things worse, but we were in trouble and disguising it by more borrowing and more artificial creation of public sector jobs way before that.
The nonsensical bleatings and noisy scorn emanating from Gordon Brown's two closest minions, Eds Miliband and Balls, enthusiastic proponents of "borrow and spend and pay-it-off-way-after-we've left power" offend the intelligence. Again and again the phrases of "Too much, too soon" and "We were going to cut the defecit by 50% by the end of 5 years " are bullishly repeated on TV and radio as if the first was some new irrefutable fact and the second even true without the missing word "annual" in front of defecit. Labour had no plan to even begin tackling the accumulated pile which bleeds the economy so severely every single day.
The wailings should be ignored by the listeners who should most appropriately outraged by the fact that those who brought UK Plc. to the edge of this economic precipice have never said a word of apology or recognition of what they have done, continue to be defecit deniers and worse still claim that they should be given another go at the helm.
Fortunately, as George Osborne is well aware, the next General Election is probably four years away and he is right to heap on all the pain up front thereby moving on to at least the beginnings of a genuine recovery ahead of that. He is also aware of Blair's lament that he wasted opportunities , especially for public sector reform, by not getting on with it as soon as he came to power in 1997. Brown, Balls and Miliband junior were of course not helping by lying across the tracks but Blair should never have allowed that either.Weakness and lack of resolve doesn't pay especially when up against time .Five years, although better than the American four, gives very little time for things to be done and results to begin showing through by at least the end of year four. The Con/Lib alliance hit the ground running in May last year, didn't stop after a heroic 100 days and have kept running up the mountain they have to climb. The clock is ticking loudly. There are just four years and really only three left to achieve the turnaround .They know therefore that calls for "Slow down" from the two Eds are nothing short of self interest to try to ensure failure at the 2015 General Election. They are therefore unlikely to pay much attention to the whinging (Ed Miliband) and snarling ( Ed Balls) or from the unions , who themselves have thrown away the opportunity to be part of and influence a massive change process/ structural revolution. These good folk have again chosen the old fashioned negativity, marches and demonstrations.What these activities did for motor manufacturing, the docks, coal mining, shipbuilding, printing and the rest is just as much forgotten/denied as the recent borrow and spend root causes of the UK's current financial crisis.
No amount of scathing Newsnight presenters or other ill-wishers should deflect the coalition from its course.The current offering from the opposition and unions is certain financial disaster via a deeper spiral into debt .At the very worst the outcome of yesterday's budget has to be better than that,
