Slowly but surely a national debate is starting in the wake of the obvious failure of the Conservative lead Government’s economic policy. As a country we have been taken along a path which is leading towards disaster and economic depression. Already we are experiencing a second recession which shows no sign of ending and has been driven by savage spending cuts and a VAT hike to 20% decreed in Downing Street by the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer. This approach has now been given a further twist by the European Community’s own self-defeating austerity drive, with the terrible consequences we hear about every day in the news.
As the cuts bite deeply and hundreds of thousands of people are thrown out of work and onto benefits, the very demand for goods and services our businesses need to help them recover is sucked out of the economy. This then creates a vicious downward spiral resulting in further shrinkage of the economy, job insecurity, enforced short time work and dramatically reduced take home pay. A deeply worrying part of this grim picture is the rate of youth unemployment which now stands at over a million and represents an appalling waste of talent for the country.
The terrible pity of this situation is that this Government is repeating many of the mistakes of the early 1930s when politicians took the same scorched earth policy which resulted in mass unemployment. Labour politicians and sensible Conservatives learned the lessons of the Great Depression. ‘Never Again’ was the goal and there was cross party agreement that democratically elected governments had a responsibility to do all they could to bring about full employment. More and more of us are beginning to understand the folly of the Government’s economic policy. Labour under Ed Miliband is once more standing shoulder to shoulder with thoughtful economists and people of goodwill in shaping a practical economic policy which seeks to bring investment and economic growth and to re-balance the British economy away from its worrying over reliance on the City of London.