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I seem to recall Tony Blair's Labour government making one significant foreign policy decision that rather outweighs anything the Tories have done since, but if

I seem to recall Tony Blair's Labour government making one significant foreign policy decision that rather outweighs anything the Tories have done since, but if you'd prefer I stick to Labour's financial incompetence I could just mention PFI.

shawabawa3 6y ago
> outweighs anything the Tories have done since They're certainly trying to 1-up it with their coronavirus response (almost 70000 excess deaths compared to e.g France's ~30000)
pjc50 6y ago
139 of the 166 Tory MPs voted in favour of the war; it was a truly bipartisan failure, on both sides of the atlantic. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/how-mp-vote-iraq-war-8355179 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/how-mp-vote-iraq-war-8...
- growlist 6y ago
  Attempting to spread the blame like that is frankly a ridiculous stunt to try to pull - the Tory MPs weren't party to the execrable backroom shenanigans that we are now all very well aware went on.
tolien 6y ago
Given we're still making comparisons to the almost seventy year old foreign policy clusterfuck around the Suez Canal [1], before any partisan stone-throwing you should probably check you're not in a glass house. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis
willyt 6y ago
PFI started under the leadership of Conservative PM John Major. I don't agree with it, but the reason Labour carried on with it is because it's a neat accounting trick for hiding capital spending. Tories have criticised Labour capital spending since forever, so it's not surprising that the most right leaning Labour administration in years carried on using the new trick the Tories invented for hiding capital spending. Also the financial incompetence thing is a Daily Mail meme, the statistics show that Labour administrations have been consistently better at growing the economy and reducing government deficits since WW2, 2008 bank bailout notwithstanding. But you are not going to seriously argue that the Conservative party, which receives huge donations from the financial industry, would have let those banks go bust? And the deregulation that allowed the 2008 financial collapse to happen all occurred under the conservative governments of Thatcher and Major. The economy does better under governments that spend money because it has a lubricating effect. Surely it's obvious that if the NHS is the biggest employer in the country and you don't give anyone that works for it a pay rise for 7 years, it's going to affect the spending power of a significant block of consumers, NHS employees are somewhere between 7-12% of the working population of the UK. The doctors, paramedics, nurses etc will spend less in all the little businesses like pubs, hairdressers, day trips, builders... etc.

shawabawa3 6y ago

> outweighs anything the Tories have done since They're certainly trying to 1-up it with their coronavirus response (almost 70000 excess deaths compared to e.g France's ~30000)

pjc50 6y ago

139 of the 166 Tory MPs voted in favour of the war; it was a truly bipartisan failure, on both sides of the atlantic. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/how-mp-vote-iraq-war-8355179 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/how-mp-vote-iraq-war-8...

growlist 6y ago
Attempting to spread the blame like that is frankly a ridiculous stunt to try to pull - the Tory MPs weren't party to the execrable backroom shenanigans that we are now all very well aware went on.

tolien 6y ago

Given we're still making comparisons to the almost seventy year old foreign policy clusterfuck around the Suez Canal [1], before any partisan stone-throwing you should probably check you're not in a glass house. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis

willyt 6y ago

PFI started under the leadership of Conservative PM John Major. I don't agree with it, but the reason Labour carried on with it is because it's a neat accounting trick for hiding capital spending. Tories have criticised Labour capital spending since forever, so it's not surprising that the most right leaning Labour administration in years carried on using the new trick the Tories invented for hiding capital spending. Also the financial incompetence thing is a Daily Mail meme, the statistics show that Labour administrations have been consistently better at growing the economy and reducing government deficits since WW2, 2008 bank bailout notwithstanding. But you are not going to seriously argue that the Conservative party, which receives huge donations from the financial industry, would have let those banks go bust? And the deregulation that allowed the 2008 financial collapse to happen all occurred under the conservative governments of Thatcher and Major. The economy does better under governments that spend money because it has a lubricating effect. Surely it's obvious that if the NHS is the biggest employer in the country and you don't give anyone that works for it a pay rise for 7 years, it's going to affect the spending power of a significant block of consumers, NHS employees are somewhere between 7-12% of the working population of the UK. The doctors, paramedics, nurses etc will spend less in all the little businesses like pubs, hairdressers, day trips, builders... etc.