Liam Byrne demonstrates his fiscal ignorance
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In his speech yesterday Prime Minister David Cameron warned of “difficult decisions” on pay, pensions and benefits, set out the reasons for the “painful” cuts ahead and said that dealing with the deficit would be “unavoidably tough” and affect “our whole way of life”.
In response shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne claimed that Labour had “stopped recession becoming depression” and that “the coalition has inherited an economy that is growing, borrowing which is falling.”
If the ex chief secretary to the Treasury thinks that he bequeathed to the new government an economy in which “borrowing is falling” that perhaps explains his contribution to leaving the economy in such mess.
The truth is that borrowing is still rising at a frightening pace.
Perhaps Mr Byrne doesn’t understand that if borrowing was really falling the national debt would be reducing and the government wouldn’t have to make cuts which will affect “our whole way of life”.
Of course Mr Byrne may have confused “falling” with “the rate of increase is falling” and if he doesn’t understand the difference between the two it may help to explain why he also thought it was clever to leave a note for his successor saying “there’s no money left.”
Readers' comments (5)
Danny Lovey | 8 Jun 2010 2:21 pm
here, here Ray
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Keith Hood | 8 Jun 2010 2:46 pm
Absolutely, "inherited an economy that is growing"! What a complete moron, thank God he's gone.
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Anonymous | 8 Jun 2010 2:49 pm
Do you think there'll come a time when the previous government stop believing it's own hype?
I agree with Ray
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Anonymous | 8 Jun 2010 3:10 pm
The total of personal debt has apparently reach £1.46 trillion! Does anyone know what it was when New Labour came to power?
Not only have they sadd
led the coutry with an unimaginable level of government debt but they allowed personal borrowing to continue out of control.
What a legacy!
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Anonymous | 9 Jun 2010 12:20 pm
I doubt that I was the only one, but I had interpreted the comment "borrowing which is falling" as a reduction in the rate of borrowing, in the same way I take the CML's recent comments of "reduction / decline in lending" (when comparing lending from one month to the next) as a reduction / decline in the rate of lending, rather than a reduction in the total amount of monies lent.
As to the Anon 3.10 comment blaming the last government for the high level of personal borrowings - banks and the financial services industry generally had a lot to do with this with aggressive marketing, self certification and lenient underwriting.
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