Welsh Labour vote to increase in Senedd Members from 60 to 96

[Eric the Half a Bee]

If you want to see a real increase in the countries debt, help elect a new labour government next time around and then you will see what real debt looks like.

Nice to see this old chestnut re-emerge. It's utter bollocks and has been proven to be nonsense time and again.

Out of interest, care to say make any comparisons between our national debt in 2010 after a global recession and any time close to the beginning of the Covid pandemic?

[HiVis]

Nice to see this old chestnut re-emerge. It's utter bollocks and has been proven to be nonsense time and again.

Out of interest, care to say make any comparisons between our national debt in 2010 after a global recession and any time close to the beginning of the Covid pandemic?

In 2007 debt/GDP was 34%, and it rose dramatically to its current levels following the financial crash in 2008. It peaked at 81% in 2016 and started to fall, rising rapidly again after the pandemic to its current level of 95%.

The debt/GDP rose continuously post financial crash, as to try and balance the books at that time would have ruined the economy. You cannot just remove £150bn of public expenditure from the economy to balance the books, it has to be undertaken by growing the economy, improving tax receipts and targeted cuts. Whilst the incumbent government succeeded in the first two (the Tories are not the party of low taxation), it is highly subjective whether they achieved the third aim.

We should see a faster reduction of debt/GDP this time around, as there was a lot of one off spending during the pandemic.

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[Eric the Half a Bee]

In 2007 debt/GDP was 34%, and it rose dramatically to its current levels following the financial crash in 2008. It peaked at 81% in 2016 and started to fall, rising rapidly again after the pandemic to its current level of 95%.

The debt/GDP rose continuously post financial crash, as to try and balance the books at that time would have ruined the economy. You cannot just remove £150bn of public expenditure from the economy to balance the books, it has to be undertaken by growing the economy, improving tax receipts and targeted cuts. Whilst the incumbent government succeeded in the first two (the Tories are not the party of low taxation), it is highly subjective whether they achieved the third aim.

I would argue that growth during the period was fragile at best. Lots of working class people never had pay rises that matched inflation yet wages continued to soar at the opposite end. Cuts that affected people's livelihoods also stifled growth.

I have always been of the opinion that the cuts were more to do with ideology as an attack on public services than economics. It's an easy one to win. People see less being done with the taxes they pay so they start to see public services as a waste of money.

So to recap your point, the incumbent government barely achieved 1, which stifled 2 and they probably felt they failed with 3 as they wanted deeper and more savage cuts, regardless of who it affected.