IN an interview on BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland on Monday, about the 2008 financial crash, Alastair Darling continued to conflate the crash with the budget deficit.
In 2007, Mr Darling followed Gordon Brown as chancellor. While in that position, they seemed oblivious about what lay ahead – we are entitled to question the role of the government agencies such as the Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority and the Treasury itself on the issues. Mr Darling recognised he had no option but to bail out the banks but that created more government borrowing that inflated the national debt.
When Gary Robertson, the interviewer, mentioned the effect on the economy, Mr Darling lost no time in blaming the 2010 Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. But it was the extent of the borrowing by Labour for day-to-day running costs that directly affected the economy. It borrowed at the rate of about £30 billion each year, funding the recruitment of one million people in the public sector at an average cost of £30,000 each.
So the budget deficit accumulated to about £160bn and it fell to the incoming coalition, with George Osborne as chancellor, to clear up the mess. The first port of call had to be the reduction in staff, and that meant dismissing tens of thousands of public service workers. Had that not happened, the debt would have continued to grow. Reducing the numbers played no part in paying down the debt; money had still to be found to cover that.
It was impertinent of Mr Darling to mock the optimistic intention of Mr Osborne to eliminate the debt within five years. Had Labour not irresponsibly borrowed excessively, there would have been no need for then alleged “austerity” in the first place; it was Labour that caused that.
Douglas R Mayer,
76 Thomson Crescent,
Currie, Midlothian.
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