It’s been a common political refrain: Labour planned massive cuts in public spending, Labour lost the election and but then Labour campaign repeatedly against cuts without ever saying what it would have cut.
We’ve never been told how Labour would have cut that £44 billion it was planning on. Nor have we heard why Labour think the government is an extreme right-wing baby-eating one even though after all the cuts the level of public spending will still be higher than it was for seven years under Labour.
But with the Budget round the corner, Labour has broken its silence this week. We’ve had the Ed Miliband / Ed Balls press conference setting out what they think should be done differently in the Budget next week.
And the sum total of their plans? £2 billion. That’s 0.3% of the planned total public spending, with 99.7% left untouched.
If Labour thinks the government’s approach to spending is so wrong, shouldn’t this week’s plans have amounted to rather more than a 0.3% difference?
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30 Comments
You’re good at the wonky stuff, Mark, but you’re not much cop at political attack, are you?
Personally I think Mark’s approach is all the more credible for emphasising the simple facts rather than the hyperbole.
@Liberal Neil
“Nor have we heard why Labour think the government is an extreme right-wing baby-eating one”
No herbole there.
And the winner of weirdest spelling goes to….
Hyperbole of course sorry
It would still be immensely gratifying to compile a detailed shadow budget on Labour’s behalf showing all the cuts they had opposed in terms of spiralling public spending and the rocketing level of debt that it implies, plus a few scenarios involving the markets pulling the plug on the UK – which is what would have been the result of a Labour government’s strategy of “cut later and lighter” presumably at some undefined, nebulous point in the future or, in reality, not at all.
Not to mention the habit of saying they would pay for something by taxing the bankers, money which they then proceed to spend ten times over for different purposes.
I am just waiting for the Labour supporters to pile in now saying their opposition to cuts doesn’t mean they actually wouldn’t make any cuts and that Labour wasn’t to blame for the mess of the public finances etc. etc. blah
Yet more Labour bashing… geez what the hell is wrong with you guys, you seem to be in opposition mode all the time.
The parties in opposition don’t put plans forward, the government does that; that’s their job, the job of opposition is to oppose proposals that they feel is wrong for the country, to try and represent their voters as best as they can.
Liberal Democrats cannot get their own plans and proposals accepted in government, and you want Labour who is in opposition to the government, to become as foolish as Liberal Democrats.
Dead horse and flogging comes to mind.
@ Scarlet Standard
Herbole is hyperbole that has been calmed down using a nice natural remedy to make it less “hyper”….
@ Jim
“Yet more Labour bashing… geez what the hell is wrong with you guys”
Presuming you are a Labour supporter, the winner of the “Mote and Beam” Award 2011 goes to….
Seriously, though, we’ll stop when Labour stops making cynically trying to make capital out of cuts that they would have had to make themselves and pretending they are not to blame for the state of the public finances.
My guess is that on that basis, we are not going to be stopping soon.
Jim – “The parties in opposition don’t put plans forward, the government does that; that’s their job, the job of opposition is to oppose proposals that they feel is wrong for the country, to try and represent their voters as best as they can.”
Yes, but opposition has to go a bit further than just repeating the mantra “These cuts go too far and too fast” at every conceivable opportunity.
Happily people still know exactly whose profligate spending is to blame. From Ipsos Mori:
“The previous Labour government is blamed for the level of cuts in public services. When asked to make a choice between the two, half (49%) blame Labour while a quarter (26%) blame the Coalition. However, when given the opportunity, the public also apportion blame to the banks and the global economy (although more still say the previous government is responsible than anything else). ”
http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/2740/EconomistIpsos-MORI-Budget-Poll.aspx
Since Vince and Clegg were against the depth and speed of the Tory cuts, until they were joined at the hip to Cameron after May, this is a fairly silly attack as is trying to say the cuts aren’t really cuts.
Are Labour being dishonest about their cuts? Yes they are. But since everyone was lying about the cuts in the campaign that high ground you’re attempting to stand on doesn’t exist. Nor does a public willing to excuse anything the coalition does just because Labour are still floundering with the detail of some of their economic policy.
Sorry, it’s easy to forget some people still won’t understand until May. Not long to go thankfully.
No real Liberal Democrat has to be told why the Conservatives are such a selfish and unscrupulous lot of right wing public sector haters, yet the Lib Dem activists and delegates as the conference are still waiting to hear whether Clegg has got the message..because it looks suspiciously like business as usual on the NHS reforms with Cameron doing just as he pleases and Clegg automatically backing him 100% in whatever he does. And whatever Osborne dreams up on the economy.
This article is a complete distortion of what the Eds actually said, which was :-
“We are under no illusions that at this stage this government will abandon their deficit reduction plan—they are too dug in for that. But at least they should take some steps to deal with faltering growth in our economy. Together, our plans can create 110,000 jobs in our economy and it can be done by continuing Labour’s bonus tax on banks.”
In other words they explicitly stated that their plan is NOT intended to be a full alternative to the government’s deficit reduction scheme; rather they are reluctantly taking the government’s overall strategy as a given, but suggesting realistic ways in which it could be modified to halt the alarming drop in growth we have seen recently.
It’s a reasonable and constructive suggestion and the spin you have put on it simply isn’t accurate.
What would the Lib Dems do if they had a majority and weren’t in coalition with the Conservatives?
‘No real Liberal Democrat has to be told why the Conservatives are such a selfish and unscrupulous lot of right wing public sector haters, yet the Lib Dem activists and delegates as the conference are still waiting to hear whether Clegg has got the message.’
Are you a Lib Dem, if not then stop trying to say which Lib Dem’s are real and which aren’t.
If you are a Lib Dem then don’t try and presume the rest of the party agrees with you!
Have you been to conference? Because I’m fairly sure Clegg would get a majority of delegates broadly supporting what hes doing in government and asking him to continue.
@Simon McGrath
Wonder why you left that little nugget out of your Mori quote 😉
RC: A thread about economic polices and cuts isn’t where I’d expect to find such a deft touch of humour, but nice one 🙂
Stuart Mitchell: The problem with saying ‘The government isn’t going to do what we want so we won’t give a full alternative’ is that you can apply that to most areas of policy – and it becomes an excuse to say almost nothing. It’s also quite obviously what Labour doesn’t believe across plenty of other areas – because in other areas Labour does put forward policy ideas knowing the government isn’t going to adopt them. Why should economics be any different?
In terms of cutting spending, an obvious start would be with the £1.8 billion cost of the NHS reforms. Then we have the large sums earmarked for elected police commissioners, free schools and so on. It seems that spending restraint does not apply to the pet projects of the Tory Right!
And on the wider subject of spending cuts, the key issue is not that spending shouldn’t be reduced, the point made by many commentators is that the cuts are being carried out in a way that falls most harshly on the least well-off.
The local government financial settlement treats Northern cities with high levels of deprivation much more severely than leafy Southern shires. To quote David Faulkner, leader of LibDem controlled Newcastle Council: “It fails the fairness test”.
Why did Vince Cable never once say between 1997 and 2009 that Labour were spending too much?
@Daniel
To be fair Vince has been warning about excessive consumer Debt for years which ultimately caused the credit crunch.
I also recall he said they would modestly cut spending by 6 billion or so in the years before the credit crunch took effect. I’ll see if I can find the information
And as promised ..
http://www.vincentcable.org.uk/en/document/speech-for-liberal-democrat-spring-conference-2006.doc
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/sep/20/speeches.libdems2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/sep/20/publicservices.business
Daniel: “Why did Vince Cable never once say between 1997 and 2009 that Labour were spending too much?”
Of course ten years ago – at a time when Labour had just spent four years PAYING BACK the national debt – the Lib Dems were slagging Labour off for not spending enough, and pledged to increase spending if they were elected.
The 2005 manifesto also contained a (more modest) pledge to spend more than Labour.
Lib Dem criticism of Labour’s spending record is hypocritical oportunism to put it mildly.
I don’t know the exact point at which the Lib Dems decided that Labour had been spending too much. Probably a little later than the Tories, who dropped their “pound-for-pound” spending pledge in November 2008.
So basically, Labour had been spending “profligately” for at least eleven and a half years before anybody noticed. How quickly time flies.
Ben: those links are really interesting, and Vince’s analyses back then were certainly impressive stuff. Oh Vince, where are you now??
Note however that he (and his party) were still fully committed to matching Labour’s spending plans; he just said they would spend the money differently and better.
I can’t resist quoting this bit from Vince’s 2006 speech – it does kind of leap off the page :-
“When I was pondering his [David Cameron’s] invitation to me to join his Shadow Cabinet I concluded that I couldn’t belong to an organisation that had abandoned ties. They’ve also abandoned their principals and policies. But, more seriously, the idea of the Conservatives reinventing themselves as a liberal party is on a par with UKIP becoming a Euro federalist party advocating that we adopt Deutschland Uber Alles as our national anthem. The Tories have an identity crisis and it will take a great deal more than Dave’s sweet smile to persuade the British people that Thatcher’s children are really a party of warm, cuddly, caring human beings.”
Those articles from Cable only say that he wanted to redirect “wasteful” spending to other projects – nowhere does it say that he wanted to drop overall levels of spending.
Oh dear – Labour’s attempt to rewrite Lib Dem history are in full swing again.
The idea that becase the Lib Dems suggested slightly higher spending they supported Labour’s deficit growth strategy is nonsense.
it is perfectly possible to increase spending without increasing the deficit, by the simple expediency of raising income at the same time. It’s why in 1997 the Lib Dems proposed a 1p increase in income tax to pay for increased spending on schools and rightly criticised labour for not spending enough. It’s why all our manifestos were fully costed and explained where the income was coming from to pay for them.
It’s a lesson Labour should learn. And the fact their supporters equate higher spending with higher deficits says more than they realise…
Ok then – so why don’t the Lib Dems lambast Labour for not raising taxes enough, rather than parrotting the Tory line that they had a “spending binge”? And why, now they’re in government, don’t they insist on much more tax rises to close the deficit, rather than letting the Tories’ attitude that spending cuts have to bear the brunt prevail?
@Dan: Not sure how I can be rewriting Lib Dem history when most of my info came from the Lib Dem manifestoes of 2001 and 2005! For example see the orange box on page 2 of the 2005 manifesto :-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/LD_uk_manifesto.pdf
As you say, they proposed a modest increase in spending, financed by a specific income tax rise. Other than that, though they talk about moving spending around and redistributing certain taxes, it’s pretty clear that the overall level of tax and spend (i.e. the deficit) would be exactly the same as under Labour.
In other words, the Lib Dems were committed to matching Labour’s deficit at the time – it’s there in black and orange.
@ben well i left that bit out because it wasn’t relevant to who the voters blame.
any fool can see that at the moment the lib dems are suffering more electorally than the Tories. worth it though to get more than 60% of our manifesto being implemented
So does this end the myth that Labour wouldn’t have made any cuts and would put made the economy in the same state as Greece, something journalists of the Financial Times found hilarious on election night and laughed as being silly, or will that be reeled out in 2015?
Oppositons don’t play their hand, the Tories were promising to match Labour spending from 2005, they seem to have conveniently forgotten that and being the opposition, they’re allowed to do so as they weren’t at the wheel.
btw – I would have thought the economic statistic of the week was the increase in unemployment to it’s highest since 1994.
The two Ed’s were at least being constructive and promoting and idea for job creation. Nice to see it get slapped down by the coalition.
We’ve never been told how Labour would have cut that £44 billion it was planning on. Nor have we heard why Labour think the government is an extreme right-wing baby-eating one even though after all the cuts the level of public spending will still be higher than it was for seven years under Labour.
That’s a Tory line, and we should stop using it, unless we really have become Tories.
The obvious, but silly, attack on it is that we are seeing right now many services that have existed for years being cut – branch libraries and the like being obvious examples – so the government must be pretty incompetent if it’s spending more money and yet able to give less than Labour could.
The sensible line is to note that there are many reasons why what appears to be a standstill budget in terms of services requires much increase in expenditure. The biggest is probably the growing number of very elderly people, but there are plenty of others. I really would like it if we could be honest about this rather than engaging in right-wing stupidity which denies all that and just issues schoolboy “nah-nah-nah-nah-nahs”.