by James Ruddick
The truth is out there, and not even a smooth and accomplished liar like David Cameron can hide it.
The truth is that you pay off more debt through growth than through austerity. It’s a plain fact. History confirms it again and again. Right now, in the US, where Obama snubbed austerity, the economy has not only come out of recession, but is booming, and the creditors, getting bigger and bigger monthly cheques, are swooning with surprise and delight.
Of course you never hear this in the UK media, which is lazy and self-interested and in thrall to the austerity lie of the hard right. You never hear that growth means more tax receipts and less deficits. No reference is ever made to the period after the Second World War when the whole of Europe was broke and in ruins, and yet boomed back within five years on Keynesian growth. Hush hush, that.
But now the lie is about to be exposed because the French people, sometimes a more sophisticated electorate than our own, have junked austerity and voted for growth. Unemployment in France will now fall, tax receipts will rise, consumer demand increase, debt repayments accelerate. It is what always happens. This is a disaster for Cameron and the Tory lie machine. Voters in Britain will see the extent to which their leader has duped them. They will realise that had we kept Labour’s economic recovery of 2009 going we would now have repaid more national debt.
As the truth emerges, we will at least have front row seats. It’s a small consolation but it’s not to be sneered at. We can watch the excruciating pay-off from this particular commedia dell’arte – David Cameron climbing the spiral staircase with the mob trailing behind him. The coalition is already teetering and his backbenchers, knowing the voters are going to sack them at the first opportunity, want his head. He has no answer. He finds himself in waters that are unchartered for him: no one now believes a word he says. There will be an election before long and he will lose. And who can feel sorry for him? He has been discovered secretly poisoning the patient he was supposed to be caring for.
For David Cameron it is the end of a great project. That project was not about economics or national recovery. He hasn’t a scintilla of interest in economic prosperity beyond its potential to get him re-elected. He doesn’t care if you can pay your bills – only if you might one day credit him with your capacity to pay them. His great project was much more ambitious and far reaching. It was to destroy the public services by claiming we had too much debt to afford them. That’s it. You can write it down in a single line.
It’s all he’s ever dreamed of. Every conservative has wanted to do this since the war – tear down the state and return Britain to a Victorian society. It’s what kept them alive, that dream. Ordinarily, of course, it was just the sort of utopian fantasy that politicians picture on the far hinterland and know they will never reach. You can’t sell the NHS to Richard Branson when people have enjoyed fifty years of free health care. Silly even to think of it.
But then the global crash came.
Eureka! A once in a lifetime chance to change everything. Use the crisis as a weapon against the people. Con them into believing that they can no longer afford a state school system, a health service, pensions or welfare. Tell them that Britain will sink without trace unless everything they cherish is taken off them. Repeat this ad nauseum. Tickle the media into repeating it too.
And it was all going so smoothly. Branson got his hands on the hospital contracts and started working out his profit margins. How much can you squeeze out of an end-stage cancer victim?
Could you do a house swap for the drugs? Gove signed off on schools for profit and closed the universities to anyone but those who could afford their fees.
Marvellous, heady stuff. The sort of thing that Thatcher salivated over. Yes, true, it wasn’t easy at times to keep the lie going – occasionally Cameron would have to climb down the ladder into the stinking cesspool of News International, say, and put his mouth into fetid places.
And every now and then something would happen that put everything at risk – George Osborne closing another hospital ward while giving £10 billion to the IMF, or going on TV to explain how broke we were while at the same time giving handouts to the super rich with a budget tax cut.
The trickiest moment came when Osborne said that the credit rating agencies would snitch on us to the markets, who would raise our interest rates, unless we cut our deficits to satisfy them – and then those same agencies turned round and said that no, no, it was Osborne’s own austerity that risked a rise in rates. On the whole, however, Cameron had the run of luck.
Journalists and editors on six figure salaries saw no reason to make a fuss. Put that credit rating agency press release in the waste paper. Shame about the hospitals, but Bupa and private pensions come as standard employment rights for Nick Robinson and Stephanie Flanders.
Now, however, it’s all over. Cameron lost his legitimacy when he lost the last election. Now he has lost his credibility, too. Bloody French.
The game is up.
James Ruddick is a writer and broadcaster. He has presented Inside Out for the BBC, amongst other programmes. In 2003 he was nominated for an Edgar Award for non-fiction.
Tags: David Cameron, French election, James Ruddick, Tory lie machine
Bacon says: ‘The Virtue of Adversity is Fortitude.’
Bu he didn’t mean plough on with the same dogged determination with the same failed policies what got you nowhere. What he meant is you start from scratch, look at problems afresh and try new solutions. And what better time than when you are at your lowest, rock bottom.
So the good news from France is a blessing. A democratic socialist govt saying that there is another way: growth is the way back to prosperity.
So it’ll be an interesting experiment as to how Hollande does it, and all eyes will be on the crucible of revolutionary France pointing two fingers at Merkel and austerity.
Hollande has to face up to the main poblem which Liam Byrne put so eloquently: ‘there is no money left.’ Simple: We print more.
Merkel is absolutely right and should say ‘No No No’ in THatcher’s ringing tones, if Greece or even France come with cap in hand and beg for more. Greece had had enough, but I think the rest of us in Europe have had enough of the Greeks because they’ve failed to rein themselves in. And it will not be too much of a loss if they go back to the old drachma; it’ll mean we can use those old jokes again about what’s a Greek urn …. .
The truth is out there, and not even a smooth and accomplished liar like David Cameron can hide it.
The truth is that you pay off more debt through growth than through austerity. It’s a plain fact. History confirms it again and again. Right now, in the US, where Obama snubbed austerity, the economy has not only come out of recession, but is booming, and the creditors, getting bigger and bigger monthly cheques, are swooning with surprise and delight.
That is complete bollocks.
Deficit = 150 bn for last year.
Increase in debt on top of the deficit was 350 bn. All those pesky off balance sheet debts such as the civil service pension, linked to RPI.
So that was an increase of 500 bn on total debts in a year.
Spending is 700 bn.
So how much growth is needed to stop the rot?
Well you need to increase taxes from 550 bn to 1,050 bn
That means you need growth of 100% overnight. If you don’t get it then the problem is that the debts need the interest paying on top to stand still.
So far from winning an award for non-fiction, you’ve just shown that you are eligible for an award for making up fairy stories.
Hidden debt is the problem.
What a strange, hyperbolic and wildly over-written piece. And shouldn’t a professional writer know that it is “uncharted”? Really, why on earth did you give this bilge column space?
Still, at least we can see why the BBC has used the guy.
What absolute drivel.
The only thing this government suffers from is bad PR and as soon as a tough stance is taken on Europe Labour voters in their hordes will either vote Cameron on abstain – just as the Tory voters did last week in reverse.
With UK supporters on board and disgruntled Labour voters who finally get sick of how complacent and out of touch Miliband is with his childish “Phone Hacking” anti Murdoch nonsense the Tories are on track to sweep in next time.
Couple the changes to the boundaries and the popularity amongst Labour voters of benefit cuts and less immigration and the duff leader they have and it will be a walk in the park.
Labour need to stop reading fairy tales like this and use their own common sense. All the writer does here is try to treat ex-Labour voters like myself as if we’re idiots and as the next election will show we most certainly are not.
With the enormity of Labour’s last election defeat this is just lazy stuff…
OMG that’s funny! How far over the top was this article?!! I swear it reads like deliberate comedy 🙂
@AnonEMouse
“The only thing this government suffers from is bad PR”
This is the line being trotted out by Tory die-hards.
Time for Mr Mouse to take some of the bitter medicine he’s been dishing out over the past few years.
It is the Conservatives with the massive problems, not Labour.
Lagging by 13 points in the polls, Austerity a busted flush, Europe shunning the Tory strategy, slammed in the local Elections and with Scotland back in play for Labour, Cameron must hope 2015 can be delayed indefinitely.
For then he and his Party of the Rich for the Rich is as good as out on its ear.
“Now, however, it’s all over. Cameron lost his legitimacy when he lost the last election. Now he has lost his credibility, too. Bloody French.”
On that basis no politician has any credibility in the UK as they ALL lost the last election.
If the writer is a journalist he should write for the Daily Mail or the Morning Star. About the same level of intellectual rigour and adherence to facts.
BenM
As you know with your usual smearing I’m no Tory voter – just a disillusioned Labour one.
The Tories have no problems of any importance – where is there “Dodgy Dossier” that resulted in the commons being lied to and ultimately the deaths of thousands in Iraq.
So they have taxed hot food. Good. If fish and chip shops have to pay it why shouldn’t Greggs?
The granny tax? Well after Gordon Brown gave pensioners £0.75 / week rise I don’t care if they get taxed. Unlucky. They can lose their Winter Fuel Allowance if they live abroad as well.
Free bus pass for the Queen? Child Benefit for Eric Clapton? Over £26K in benefits for not working?
The fact is Ed Miliband wasn’t elected by the Labour Party or the PLP for a reason. The same reason the electorate will never vote for that unrepresentative individual.
Because he’s useless and once the Euro has hit meltdown Labour financially will look even more incompetent than they currently do.
Remember 70% of LABOUR voters agree with my view on the benefit cuts and after Miliband has annoyed everyone who like The Sun, The Times and Sky TV he has no chance.
The poll show it and all you are doing is being complacent and doing the coalition’s job for them….
@mouse
“As you know with your usual smearing I’m no Tory voter – just a disillusioned Labour one.”
On different blogs you have claimed to be many things. Given you’ve been caught copy/pasting entire paragraphs of tory press releases in comments before I am more than a little suspicious of your true identity.
Chris – Please direct me to where I have claimed to be anything other than an ex-Labour voter….
Chris – Which bit of what I posted isn’t true?
“Unemployment in France will now fall, tax receipts will rise, consumer demand increase, debt repayments accelerate. It is what always happens. This is a disaster for Cameron and the Tory lie machine”
Well, here we are two years on from this article and Hollande’s experiment has proved a total disaster for him and for France. Could the article have been more wrong?