Three more Brown failures

Two weeks ago The Business newspaper revealed the devastating fact that the British tax burden (going up) was higher than Germany's tax burden (going down).  It was the clearest sign yet that the Brown-Blair axis was eroding the supply-side progress of the Thatcher years.  Today's Business newspaper provides three excellent more reasons why Gordon Brown does not deserve his reputation on economic competence....

Falling productivity - The Business:

"Britain's productivity growth has collapsed to its lowest rate since 1990, when Margaret Thatcher was still prime minister, according to an analysis of official statistics this weekend.  Output per worker increased by only 0.6% last year, the weakest for 15 years, in a devastating blow to Chancellor Gordon Brown, who has long emphasised that increasing productivity was his main economic objective."

Globally weak education standards - The Business:

"Great Britain is facing long-term economic decline and social chaos unless it urgently improves its schools, business leaders and economists warned this weekend after it emerged that children have suffered an unprecedented drop in reasoning ability.  Employers said a groundbreaking study of 10,000 children, which reveals that 11- and 12-year-olds are between two and three years behind where they were 15 years ago in terms of their ability to think and reason, confirmed their worst fears. They said that better skills are essential in the global knowledge economy and to compete against highly skilled workers from India and China."

Rising fraud - The Business:

"Fraud in Britain has risen to the highest level recorded since 1995, according to a new survey to be published on Monday.  The government and financial institutions are the main victims identified in KPMG’s Forensic Fraud Barometer which records big fraud cases heard in the UK.  It shows the figures jumped nearly three times from £329m (E481m,$583m) the previous year to £942m for 2005. More than 222 cases reached court over the course of 2005, up from 174 cases in 2004."

Comments

[Alexander Drake]

All very good points Editor - but none of these by themselves are likely to create a political perception of Labour as being poor economic managers.

My suspicion is that the perception of Labour as a dud economic manager won't kick in until the punters notice a connection between bad economic figures and their own personal financially-related problems, such as an increased difficultry in trying to get a (new) job, real wages start to head south, or the housing market starts to slide.

[Mark Fulford]

If you travel North in Canada you see that trees become starved of resources until first they’re stunted, with no spare energy for growth, then they die out all together.

Gordon Brown is taking our economy further North.

[Frank Young]

Excellent post Alexander. In the meantime it is sensible for us to reserve our fire by promoting our "stability" credentials, we are, rightly, trying to re-instate our credibility with the public on economic matters so that when the time comes we can criticise the government's economic record with public sympathy.

[Richard]

Perhaps Cameron ought to spend some time trying to inform the public of these statistics and what their implications are. The evidence is there for all to see, it's just that nobody takes the time to see it.

[James Maskell]

Thats true, educate the public on what economics basically means on a street level. The average voter wont really understand the Budget and the latest economic data, so we should teach them. Its what a responsible organisation would do.

[James Hellyer]

These are all problems that I can't see us offering anything to address (especially as the OECD shows a correlation between tax levels and productivity levels - and what are we scared to talk about, children?).

[James Maskell]

Real policy, James?

[malcolm]

It's a shame virtually nobody reads The Business.I think its circulation is below 100,000,nothing in national newspaper terms.

[David Sergeant]

I suspect Joe Public isn't interested in economic indicators. Indeed, I wonder if these sorts of critisms of Brown do him more good than harm. "There is dear old uncle Gordon struggling against all those nasty economists and Tories to squeeze the last drop of money out of this unsympathetic world to pay more nurses and teachers to teach my kids and look after my grandmother. When the E.U. says your calculations are £2.5 billion out ignor them Gordon, keep fighting! And if the nasty Tories ask awkward questions lie to them in parliament again if that puts them off!"

[Sean Fear]

Many opinion formers are, however, interested in economics. Conservative "modernisers" are always telling us how important it is to win back AB voters, but seem remarkably reluctant to talk about the economy which matters enormously to such voters.

[a-tracy]

And what's Mr Cameron got to say about this? Falling Productivity, Rising Fraud (we've already heard what he's got to say on schools for the moment).

[a-tracy]

Oh just another little snippet- if you need a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down what will we do when the sugar costs more than the medicine? Having awoke the sleeping giants of China and India by providing them with a ready market for their cheap goods they're now sucking up all the commodity products at an alarming rate. I think that Mr Cameron and Mr Hague had better think of another way of lubricating their tonsils than a 10 sugar cup of tea.