who would you vote for in a general election tomorrow

[Simon Pieman]

I'm not sure that Labour can get out of their ways, they've been pretty Thatcherite in the last 12 years.

I doubt the Conservatives will be much better in terms of changing things up, Cameron's vote for change slogan (or whatever it is) has clearly been cribbed from Obama's Presedential election campaign and is quite clearly marketing guff.

New Labour, New Tories, old ideas.

[Phil_S]

dont get me wrong i think brown has made mistakes,and alot he has brought on himself.equally, alot he inherited.
people seeing the tories as a party to put things right,i think is a bit short sighted.i'm sure we as a nation would be in the same postition we are in now,or an even worse one,had they been in government now.
it's easy to slate and critisise,but damn difficult to get things right.
everyone was lapping it up when brown had the economy booming,but now it's all his fault when things are on the slide.what goes up must come down, it was inevitable.
labour have failed the nation on alot of issues,but i'm stuggling to believe that another party would have dealt with it all.

Brown Inherited an economy that was paying off the debts, & going well, we'd suffered the pain & he reaped the rewards. The boom years were NOT of his making at all. In fact if you remember he didn't change anything too much initially because it was going so well. In fact the economy was doing so well it kept growing in spite of him raising taxes continually throughout his period of mis management.

[Phil_S]

I'm not sure that Labour can get out of their ways, they've been pretty Thatcherite in the last 12 years.

I doubt the Conservatives will be much better in terms of changing things up, Cameron's vote for change slogan (or whatever it is) has clearly been cribbed from Obama's Presedential election campaign and is quite clearly marketing guff.

New Labour, New Tories, old ideas.

You may well be right there. I would prefer the tories to be a bit more right wing, & you clearly would prefer the socialists to be more left wing.
As fot the liberals I remember when they were in the centre, about 4 yaers ago they were more left wing than "new" labour, & are god know where now.

[Summerof69]

Historically Labour have been the party that has left the country heavily in debt. Don't forget the country nearly went bankrupt in the 70's due to they spend, spend, spend policies, and now Gordon Brown has done exactly the same.

As Phil S has said, Brown has ruined most people's pension funds(unless you work in the civil service) via his stealth tax when he first came in. I think nobody would object to paying extra if you could see something for that extra cash, but all I can see is that he's made us get more in debt and we'll be still paying it off in 20 years time.

[pauld]

Historically Labour have been the party that has left the country heavily in debt. Don't forget the country nearly went bankrupt in the 70's due to they spend, spend, spend policies, and now Gordon Brown has done exactly the same.

But as Si Pie said, the whole point of New Labour was that they basically swallowed the whole Thatcher monetarist legacy in its entirety - we are where we are not because of excessive government spending but because of reckless behaviour by a largely unregulated banking sector, following the Thatcher/Reagan doctrine that the markets must not be hindered. So any comparison between the Labour of the 70s and the Labour of the 90s/2000s is pretty pointless - they're two fundamentally different parties. New Labour is fundamentally Thatcherite economically, it has far more in common with the Tory Party of the 70s (and today in fact) than it does with the Labour Party of the 70s.

We are now paying the price for Thatcherism/Reagonomics - and yes New Labour certainly deserve their share of the blame for that, for failing to do anything to correct it because they were a) scared to go against the chattering class consensus that market ideology had won b) more than happy to cash in on the boom times the tail end of the wave brought.

[Spy]

One of the things I found most ridiculous is Cameron trying to blame the recession on Brown saying hes the one that got us into this mess, as if without the benefit of hindsight the conservatives would have managed the economy totally differently. Oh yes David I am sure you would have places more restrictions on the free market!!

[jonny72]

Oh yes David I am sure you would have places more restrictions on the free market!!

Depends what market you're talking about, I'm guessing you mean financial. In which case sure, the Tories wouldn't have placed more restrictions (possibly less though I'm not sure that's possible) but they would have placed greater regulation on it. Or at least that is what they would argue.

One major difference is that the Tories wouldn't have raised public spending the way Labour has. By raising taxes and cashing in everything they could to support public spending increases the cupboard was left bare, so when the recession started there wasn't much scope for them to increase public spending to boost the economy.

Plus whilst the economy was booming, Labour could have been saving for a rainy day. If they had, again they would have had more to play with to get the economy back on its feet. We'll never know what would have happened with the Tories in power but there are major holes in the way Labour have managed things since they came to power.

[RobertT]

I think it's fair to assume that no Government in the Western or Tiger market regions was able to do jack shit about the impending implosion of the financial markets and thus their economies, be they right or left of centre.  North Korea seems to have been rather stable, although that may have something to do with the fact they have no economy to speak of and essentially were already living off basic rations.  Once companies went global, governments were taken out of the equation.  The economy is not theirs to play with anymore, they need to focus on what they CAN do with any revenues they can generate.

[pauld]

Wot Rob said. As usual. I'm going to vote for the Rob T party.

[RobertT]

I'd vote for a party that outright accepted that they had very little part to play in the economy of their country and instead focussed on what regulation they may or may not use and produced a budget focussed on how they can raise revenue and where it would go to benefit me or people I care about (and I may care about more people than just my family).  The economy shouldn't even feature in an election debate anymore, or at least not what we all know and love/hate as the economy.  Let Branson and Gates sort that one out.  The only money they need to discuss is tax and expenditure and get involved more in how they'll regulate business.

[pauld]

Meh, we should get rid of all this fancy-shmancy modern global economics and go back to medieval barter systems. Then we could combine the "imminent economic collapse will cause entire nation to collapse in chaos and rioting" stories with the "yet another breed of livestock has caused a global pandemic that will melt your intestines as you sleep" stories into one easy-to-terrify-yourself-witless-with mega-scare. Imagine that - a currency that can cause economic catastrophe and global pandemics all in one. I propose we move to the International Badger Standard forthwith

[Talk Talk]

But as Si Pie said, the whole point of New Labour was that they basically swallowed the whole Thatcher monetarist legacy in its entirety - we are where we are not because of excessive government spending but because of reckless behaviour by a largely unregulated banking sector, following the Thatcher/Reagan doctrine that the markets must not be hindered. So any comparison between the Labour of the 70s and the Labour of the 90s/2000s is pretty pointless - they're two fundamentally different parties. New Labour is fundamentally Thatcherite economically, it has far more in common with the Tory Party of the 70s (and today in fact) than it does with the Labour Party of the 70s.

We are now paying the price for Thatcherism/Reagonomics - and yes New Labour certainly deserve their share of the blame for that, for failing to do anything to correct it because they were a) scared to go against the chattering class consensus that market ideology had won b) more than happy to cash in on the boom times the tail end of the wave brought.

What a load of crap. I haven't got the time or inclination to fisk this as I am too knackered but the problem with the finance sector was caused by over regulation, not by truly free markets.

Ever heard of the FSA?

<sigh>

[Nemo]

What a load of crap. I haven't got the time or inclination to fisk this as I am too knackered but the problem with the finance sector was caused by over regulation, not by truly free markets.

Ever heard of the FSA?

Sorry, the FSA who keep saying they didn't regulate hard enough?

[reeves4england]

I'd vote for a party that outright accepted that they had very little part to play in the economy of their country and instead focussed on what regulation they may or may not use and produced a budget focussed on how they can raise revenue and where it would go to benefit me or people I care about (and I may care about more people than just my family).  The economy shouldn't even feature in an election debate anymore, or at least not what we all know and love/hate as the economy.  Let Branson and Gates sort that one out.  The only money they need to discuss is tax and expenditure and get involved more in how they'll regulate business.

But for a government to come to power and just say "right, that's it, britain is now fully open to trade" is above all else impossible - you can't just strip down trade barriers overnight. Also, I can't imagine those who are already unhappy about immigration being overly thrilled at a completely open border policy - immigrants coming in and providing cheap low-skilled labour, and foregin products replacing those produced at high cost in the UK. And if you don't believe that's what will happen, you don't believe in the neoclassical theory from which free trade economics arises

[pauld]

What a load of crap. I haven't got the time or inclination to fisk this as I am too knackered but the problem with the finance sector was caused by over regulation, not by truly free markets.

Ever heard of the FSA?

Yep and the SEC. Neither of whom did their jobs properly. Although even if they had, both the US and the UK have deliberately "light touch" regulatory frameworks (especially the UK, it was one of the key attractions which the City used to promote itself as a global financial centre throughout the 80s and 90s in the boom years) and so they wouldn't have been able to do much anyway.

But please do explain how the wicked cruel FSA forced UK and US banks to involve themselves in such hugely overly complex derivatives and other financial instruments that even their own risk management teams were unable to truly assess the nature of the risk they were taking on? And how the FSA forced these banks to repackage and sell on that risk, so that when Lehman Bros went they all shat themselves because no-one knew how much of each other's paper they all held? Or what it was worth? So they all pulled down the shutters and stopped lending to anyone, even each other, because they didn't know who was going to be next to go pop.

The banks lost track of the basic value of their grossly overvalued assets against their woefully underestimated exposure? How did this supposed over-regulation force banks to get involved in products they didn't understand to the extent that Barclays (to take just one example) STILL don't know their actual exposure?

I'd have thought a simple stiffening of the regulations to require banks to hold enough capital reserves to cover their exposure and sufficient teeth given to the regulators to be able to inspect and explore to satisfy themselves that they do actually have that (and prevent the banks from undertaking exposures they can't adequately explain) would be a pretty obvious remedy to prevent it happening again, albeit shutting the stable door way after the horse is long over the horizon. I'm dying to hear how less regulation would protect us.