The following Twitter thread from John Burn-Murdoch of the FT is fascinating. It includes graphs which compare us (unfavourably) to peer countries on many different measures, and which highlight the differences between the situation under the Tories and Labour.
It finishes
"In conclusion, Cameron and Osborne are lucky to have escaped the fate of Truss and Kwarteng.
Like Trussonomics, austerity was ideology-over-evidence. Unlike Trussonomics, it was not quickly reversed, and so has gone on to cause enormous, lasting damage."
The need for austerity was rammed down our throats at the time, and organisations like the BBC were cheerleaders. Dissenting voices were not really given any space, and it brought to mind the words of George Orwell.
"At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it ..... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."
Labour was pretty weak on this at the time (austerity-lite), and it was only with Corbyn that the case against austerity began to be made and won.
I was a civil servant at the time the Tories came to power, and I remember challenging (without success) our Permanent Secretary in a meeting when he said there was no alternative to staff cuts.
EDIT: For those of you not used to Twitter, if you click on "Read the whole conversation on Twitter" you will be able to see the whole thread. [Post edited 29 Dec 2022 9:05]
|  |
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.
