it's all about cuts, allegedly

COMMENT

The tory (sorry, coalition) government is telling us that deep cuts in public expenditure are essential to salvage our battered economy. Because of the reckless profligacy of the last labour administration (you thought it had something to do with the greed of the banks in concert with the greed of ordinary people who borrowed way more than they could afford to pay back? Wrong, apparently), there's now officially (remember Liam Byrne's quip about all the money having run out?) no money left, and what with our unprecedented national debt, well, cuts, deep cuts, are inevitable.

I beg to disagree. Cutting public spending is in the tory's blood: they've always believed that far too much is wasted on benefits and the health service (they voted against the NHS prior to its introduction in 1948, not now maybe, but that's only because that would be electoral suicide) A proper tory believes capitalism should be allowed to let rip, and devil take the hindmost.

Ed Balls (he's one of the labour leadership candidates who's going to lose to David Milliband) has pointed out (though who's listening?) that our economic health, to say nothing of our national debt, was (allowing for adjustment) even worse just after the end of World War 2 than it is now, yet it wasn't felt necessary then
to cut public spending to anything like the degree now proposed by George "Bullingdon Boy" Osborne. We didn't go bust: in fact we steadily climbed out of our recession to be, by the early 60s, one of the world's most vibrant economies.