Originally Posted by
Keyser Soze
Hmm. The reality is that both New Labour and Conservatives have had periods and terms of sensible economics.
New Labour; 1997-2005. Brown, controlled by Balls and Blair, was a strong chancellor. After that, the numpty was bidding for his Premiership and let it all loose with promises everywhere, leading to a lack of control and attention, and eventually left us with a huge spending bill before the GFC struck. A bit like a straight guy dropping his pants before entering a gay bar, rather than keeping his pants and jeans tightly secured.
Conservatives 2010-2015. Osborne and Hammond strong chancellors. After that, a lack of control and attention. A string of numpties since, and Sunak's "free for all" during CoVid being the catalyst of a stabilised debt blowing out of control.
To me, party political tribalism matters not. Colours matter not. Understanding of economics and a sensible list of affordable priorities, backed by an iron discipline to implement it (management skills), are what matters.
The last couple of weeks I have been re-reading Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain and it just seems that politicians are mostly numpties. Even back in the day, the same issues arise on both sides time and time again. For me, here is the key thing: back then we still had aspects of the Empire to generate the revenues to cover up for silly mistakes. Now, not so.
Very few leaders have understood that we have changed for several reasons. It is not possible, when you have a trading deficit and a budget deficit, to run around like a weak-willed, ill-disciplined and gutless modern parent, responding to a spoilt child and saying Yes to every whim of every sector of society, and pay for it with increasing debts, because "feelings matter". Some people act as if money is unlimited and have that child-like approach. But the first principles of economics is that it is about the "study of the allocation of limited resources". Limited being the key word.
Whoever the party, and whoever the politician, we need to start from No and work backwards. Set the budget then decide the priorities. There will be Nos, and there will be Yes's. The politicians who come out with credit are the ones who can assess the priorities and say No to those who cannot make it, and stick to it. But that takes management skills - something most politicians of most colours do not have. It is baked into the cake, because to be a popular politician in power requires saying Yes to most people, and then pulling your promises once you secure power, or sticking to it and eventually bankrupt the country while saying Yes to most people. Most politicians, like most people, have terrible financial skills, life skills and decision-making skills, and most voters are in the same boat.
History tells us the truth
In the UK and US, the list of leaders running economic disasters are incredibly long. In the US, Obama and Bush junior were an economic joke. The damage done by these two, to me, appears irrecoverable, and it is clear with path the US and the dollar and US economic wellbeing will take. Biden is a cast-iron disaster, and is now compounding the errors of Bush junior and Obama, on steroids. Some of the numbers are eye-watering. Trump was only marginally better economically, by a fag paper, but still a mess. Jimmy Carter, disaster. Ford, a nightmare.
In the UK, Sunak a disaster. Truss a disaster. Johnson a disaster. Brown in the last five years, an absolute shocker. Callaghan, a disaster. Wilson, awful. Heath, a real numpty. Douglas-Hume, a joke. Eden, a total embarrassing disaster.
Thatcher, Blair, GW Bush Senior, and Bill Clinton are the only modern examples of US and UK politicians who were good at having the right people to manage the economy. Then the also-rans. Reagan was excellent initially, but it was the adventurous Star Wars programme that buggered his economic data up eventually. Cameron and Osborne were perhaps guilty of political error, but on economics they made a decent fist of a bad situation until Brexit and the economic data shows it, and would come behind the above list in my view. Maybe Harold MacMillan, so-so. But this is it since 1945 in my view. The pattern on both sides is clear, and numbers of success small. I can only identify six good leaders in the UK and US in about fifty years that seemed to have the intellect to grasp the importance of sound and sensible economics.
It just doesn't bode well. I pin my hopes eventually on Starmer leaving, and hopefully Wes Streeting running the show for a while. He seems to get it, but also is a straight talker I think he will prove to be a real star in the future, providing he keeps his hands clean and bats well from the crease.
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