Ed Balls and Co spent like drunken sailors before the recession struck

Tim Montgomerie

Interesting to watch Ed Balls today and his attempt to blame Britain's appalling deficit on the world recession. He cannot be allowed to get away with that lie.

This graph from Peter Hoskin shows that Labour was spending too much in the good years, when it should have been saving for a rainy day:

• We were borrowing in good times and in fact had had a structural deficit (ie not related to prevailing economic conditions) for the seven years before the recession even began.
• Labour entered the financial crisis with a larger structural deficit than France, Germany, USA, Japan, Italy and Canada.
• The vast majority of the deficit - £123bn of the £156bn borrowed in 2009/10 - was structural.
• By the time Brown, Miliband and Balls left office Britain had the largest deficit in the developed world.
• National debt doubled during the Labour years.

Under any measure Britain under Labour did worse than other countries. Having gone into the recession unprepared we then suffered the longest recession of the world's twenty biggest economies and suffered the deepest in our recorded history.

The over-spending might have been half-excusable if things had got better but Britain slid down league tables for educational competitiveness. Youth unemployment soared. The welfare state became a maze of complexity. Extreme poverty grew. NHS productivity fell. Defence procurement became a shambles. Britain missed its green targets.

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For those wanting more background on this I recommend Andrew Lilico's June 2009 Policy Exchange paper, Controlling public spending. The graph below captures how Government spending as a percentage of GDP took off in Britain much faster than competitor economies (we are the blue line):

Andrew puts it this way:

"The main driver of the deficit rise was that Labour stuck with plans to raise spending considerably (plans set in 2007 - mainly driven by rises in health and education spending) even when it became clear that the economy was going south.  Now what the other guys say is that that means it wasn't the spending rises that caused the deficit, but the economy going south.  I say that is like the claim of a man who had planned to buy a ferrari hoping to win the pools, didn't win the pools but decided to go ahead with buying the ferrari anyway, and then said the reason he had a £400,000 debt wasn't that he had bought a ferrari - it was that he *hadn't* won the pools!"

Top civil servants made formal protests over spending by Labour Government in its dying days

I would have expected this story to be run with big-time by the Right-wing press, but it is in fact The Guardian which splashes on it this morning:

Civil servants came under increasing pressure from ministers in the dying months of the Labour government to carry out expensive orders that they disagreed with and responded by submitting an unprecedented number of formal protests in the run-up to the general election.

The five separate protests came in the form of written ministerial directions – requested by the most senior civil servant in a department when they disagree with a minister's decision so strongly that they refuse to be accountable for it.

The revelation adds weight to the coalition government's claims that ministers were profligate in the final weeks of the last government.

Such ministerial orders are rare and signify an irresolvable dispute between a minister and his most senior civil servant. Whitehall sources told the Guardian there had been five this year. Public records also show nine last year and five between 2008 and 2005.

More here.

Jonathan Isaby

Labour pours another £11bn of poison into the wells

A fortnight ago William Hague compared Labour to a defeated army that poisoned the wells of the country it was retreating from.

The Independent reports the latest stage of Labour's attempt to handcuff any incoming Tory government to its impossible spending plans:

"Despite the looming squeeze on public spending, ministers are trying to push through several massive computer contracts before ballot day, which is widely expected on 6 May. The "break clauses" in some deals may make them very expensive to cancel, locking in the new government."

The Independent reports that last-ditch spending commitments planned by the Government include:

• "approving local supplier contracts for the controversial £12.7bn NHS electronic patient records scheme, the largest computer project in the UK, which the Tories would dismantle;
• signing a £1bn logistics software contract for the Ministry of Defence;
• speeding up a £600m contract to run new personal pension accounts due to start in 2012;
• completing an £800m agreement for communications equipment and services at the Serious Organised Crime Agency;
• starting to print the 30 million forms for the 2011 census, even though the Tories have said they would scale back the £482m project."

Francis Maude told the newspaper that "Labour's actions resemble a dying administration making reckless and irresponsible spending commitments to wreck the finances for any incoming government."

The Independent criticises Labour in his leader column:

"With an election looming, although not yet officially called, ministers ought to be pushing through no long-term commercial contracts, and certainly none that an incoming administration would seek to unwind. Labour ministers appear to be exploiting a loophole in our constitution and the Conservatives are justified in being aggrieved."

Hague compares Labour to a defeated army that is poisoning the water wells as it retreats

In very hard-hitting remarks, William Hague accuses Gordon Brown of running a scorched earth policy.

 In an interview for the News of the World, the Tories' foreign affairs spokesman says "If [Brown] had actually planned to leave the country in the worst state possible, he couldn't have gone about it better."

Hague continues:

"To say we will inherit a poisoned chalice if we win the General Election is putting it mildly. It's as poisoned as it can get. Gordon Brown's troops are leaving as much poison as they can. That is precisely what Brown is doing by chalking up as much debt as possible, making as many spending commitments as possible which he doesn't know how to finance, partly in the hope of leaving a new government with a really difficult situation."

In his interview Mr Hague reminds readers that Britain is borrowing £277,719 every minute.

Brown's scorched earth strategy at Copenhagen

By Matt Sinclair of The TaxPayers' Alliance.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.  Increasingly, the Prime Minister seems to think that setting ambitious targets is a substitute for any real action.  We’re facing an unprecedented fiscal crisis, but instead of concrete measures to cut excessive spending we get a “Fiscal Responsibility Bill” with a target to halve the deficit.

The Government are particularly fond of this trick when it comes to climate change policy.  Ed Miliband is proud that: “We’re the first country to put carbon targets into law, and our target of an 80% reduction by 2050 is one of the most ambitious.”  We lead the world in setting targets!

The reality, of course, is that the challenge is to cut emissions without imposing a ruinous cost on families and businesses.  The research we released earlier this week shows that an excessive and deeply harmful burden is being imposed by green taxes and regulations.  The public don’t want to see ever more of their money go to ineffective measures to try and cut emissions, particularly in the wake of the Climate Gate scandal.

Instead of confronting that affordability crisis, the Government are going to – if they get any kind of deal at Copenhagen – sign us up to 42% emissions cuts by 2020.  This morning, at the TPA we’ve released a new research note showing that, even if Britain maintains its strong performance in getting more efficient and cutting emissions intensity, such a target could require cutting our national income in 2020 by 30 per cent, or just over half a trillion pounds.  Given that most analysts think that even existing options like nuclear power, tidal power and carbon capture and storage won’t be able to make a significant contribution in such a short time (and that even the existing 2020 target therefore locks in unnecessarily high costs) there isn’t much chance of a technological miracle giving us a get out of jail free card.

But, why should he care?  All Brown is thinking about now is the few months till an election.  The long term health of the British economy can go hang as far as he is concerned.

Brown's Britain borrowed £7,830 every second in November

New figures from the Office of National Statistics show that the Government borrowed £20.3 billion in November. Shadow Chancellor George Osborne issued this statement in response:

“In the run up to Christmas, Gordon Brown is maxing out on the nation's credit card - and doesn't care how we are going to repay these debts in the future. The record public borrowing figures equates to almost £1000 for every family this month alone. Now we're all paying for Labour's failure to fix the roof when the sun was shining - and after last week's PBR, we know they have no credible plan to get this debt under control. So the price of keeping Gordon Brown in office is clear: higher interest rates, higher youth unemployment and families being squeezed. Only a change of Government can now bring the prosperity and lasting recovery Britain yearns. The continuing decline in credit to business also revealed today shows that all those Government recession schemes have failed and the credit crunch continues for many smaller businesses. Our economy needs confidence and credit - and its getting neither under Labour.”

Earlier this week Peter Hoskin posted this chart which shows how Britain has been by far the worst affected by the global recession:

Our Prime Minister talks green but flies brown

Gordon Brown is promising to cut UK emissions TEN times faster than the USA. The commitment could be seen as part of his scorched earth legacy to a likely Conservative government. In addition to a quangocracy stuffed with Labour sympathisers and a dreadful debt problem he aims to saddle Britain with unaffordable green commitments. Matt Sinclair highlights the scale of the existing "green rip-off" on CentreRight today.

Mr Brown is also accused of hypocrisy on climate change in this morning's newspapers.

In the Daily Mail Stephen Glover notes that Mr Brown chartered an almost empty plane (not for the first time) for his 'world-saving' trip to Copenhagen. Glover notes that Prince Charles did the same:

"[Prince Charles] commandeered a jet belonging to the Queen's Flight, generating an estimated 6.4tons of carbon dioxide, 5.2tons more than if he had used a commercial flight. Meanwhile his fellow prophet of doom, Gordon Brown, was making his own way to Copenhagen the same day. This is the man who proclaimed in October that we had '50 days to save the world'. Before leaving he conjured up on a television programme the certainty of 'floods and droughts' with 'climate change evacuees and refugees' if agreement is not reached in Copenhagen. Mr Brown chartered a 185-seat Airbus to take him and 20 aides to Denmark. Was a smaller plane producing less carbon dioxide not available?  Could he perhaps have shared an aircraft with Prince Charles? Might he have considered taking a scheduled flight to the Danish capital, of which there were 16 on Tuesday?  Evidently not. It is odd, isn't it, how climate change doomsayers such as Prince Charles and Mr Brown are so often unprepared to make the smallest sacrifice in their own daily lives to address a threat which they assert is literally deadly."

In The Telegraph Tory housing spokesman Grant Shapps has uncovered the failure of Mr Brown to improve the energy efficiency of Whitehall offices:

"As a whole, the Governmental Estate was rated amongst the least energy efficient buildings in the country, according to analysis by the Conservatives of information provided by the Department for Energy. The Department of Health’s Hexagon House was the least green building in Whitehall, one of 20 of the 49 buildings included in the survey awarded the lowest grade G energy certificate rating along with the Treasury, Home Office, and Ministry of Justice. Ministers recently announced that all new buildings would have to be zero carbon within a decade. Grant Shapps, the shadow housing minister, said: "We all agree that zero carbon for new buildings is a great idea but what about the buildings already in use? Gordon Brown lectures the world and his ministers lecture us about energy efficiency whilst the carbon emissions from their own government buildings are rising. It's about time they got their own houses in order.""

Brown recklessly overruled Treasury proposals to tackle the deficit in this week's PBR

It is rare for the BBC to lead news bulletins with a story based on anonymous sources; but they have been going very strongly today on something which shows sheer recklessness on the part of the Prime Minister.

It concerns his unwillingness to tackle the unprecedented deficit he will be bequeathing the country in favour of continued public spending for what he would appear to believe is political advantage at the general election.

On the BBC website, political correspondent Reeta Chakrabarti is quoted as saying of the Pre-Budget Report:

"The Treasury wanted a tougher package, mindful as it was of the need to start restoring the finances - and to be seen to be doing so.

"But, with an election just months away, it was overruled by Gordon Brown and his close political ally [Schools Secretary] Ed Balls, who in September spoke of wanting to see a real-terms increase in the schools budget."

> The Guardian reports that Brown blocked a Treasury plan to increase VAT rather than National Insurance.

4pm update: George Osborne has issued the following statement:

"If Gordon Brown has overruled the advice of the Treasury in order to put his own political interests ahead of the economic interests of the nation, if he has imperilled the jobs and prosperity of millions for the sake of his wretched political dividing lines, then he has betrayed the responsibilities of the office he holds.

"We now urgently need the Treasury to publish its own plan for dealing with Britain's debts, so we can see the truth and get this country back on track. Our proposal for an independent Office for Budget Responsibility would go a long way to exposing this kind of dangerous politicking.

"There was nothing in the PBR to reassure international markets about the sustainability of our public finances or the Government's willingness to get a grip on the deficit - as we saw from yesterday's negative market reaction, Gordon Brown is playing politics with Britain's economic reputation."

Jonathan Isaby

Welcome to LeftWatch

Although LeftWatch will look at the SNP, Greens, Liberal Democrats and other left-leaning movements we are most interested in the Labour Party.

I suggest the following trends within Labour should be our focus...

This is evident in, for example, the retirement of nearly all the leading Blairite MPs, Harriet Harman's equality agenda and Gordon Brown's embrace of the impractical, job-destroying Tobin tax.

Labour's reckless spending is their last throw of the dice.  The spending buys them some extra votes, they hope, but certainly adds to the awful inheritance for the Conservatives if it doesn't.  Peter Oborne has written a great article on this phenomenon.

Not unrelated to the previous category but please help us compile examples of wasteful Labour.  Grant Shapps MP exposed Labour's £30,000 champagne bill this morning.  The bubbly was, of course, all bought at your expense.  And there there are the big examples of massive waste.

I recently wrote about the increasing nastiness of Labour's campaigning.  The McBride emails.  The smearing of Michael Kaminski by David Miliband.  Harriet Harman's attempts to bracket the Tories and the BNP.  ConHome regular Mark Fulford is working on a list of Labour's biggest lies.

There is also the huge issue of the appointees that Labour will leave behind in the quangocracy and appointment-land more generally.  Dennis Sewell has written a brilliant cover piece for The Spectator on this subject.  Even if Labour lose the next election, much of the British state will still be stuffed with left-leaning appointees, like Katherine Rake.

Are these the best categories?

This site is an experiment. Jonathan Isaby and I don't have the time to run another blog so this will only work if you feed us content.

Email me if you can help.