The Government Is Good

No sooner had Alistair Darling sat down shortly after lunchtime than
the gilt market suddenly crumpled. Investors around the world started
selling British government bonds, pulling their money out of the
country as fast as possible. As markets closed last night, the stampede
was continuing.

This was not a full-blown sterling crisis: the kind that forced Denis Healey
to the International Monetary Fund in the 1970s. But it was a hint of
what could happen if Labour still wields control after the election.
This, after all, was Mr Darling laying out his plans for how he would
manage the economy.

Investors did not like what they saw. They saw a Budget which failed to increase the rate at which the Government is slimming itself down. They saw a Budget bereft of any concrete plans
on departmental spending beyond this year. They saw a Budget based on economic projections which are optimistic at best, delusional at worst. We know from observing Greece and Iceland that you can’t simply ignore these foreign investors. When the money men leave the country, you have no choice but to cut spending and raise taxes so fast that it leaves alasting scar on the economy and society. Even now, they are slowly increasing the rate they charge the Government to borrow, something which in turn lifts the cost of borrowing throughout the country, not to mention eating further into the Budget.

Which is why the market’s verdict on the final Darling Budget was so worrying. Such a
knee-jerk reaction would be understandable if the figures had been horrific, the sums unrealistic. But as it was, the Chancellor actually cut his borrowing forecasts. He resisted the Prime Minister’s efforts to try to use the extra proceeds from higher tax revenues this year for
one last pre-election splurge.

But markets were having none of it. Yesterday was a seminal point: the moment at which investors signalled that they had lost faith in Labour. That even an unusually honest, slightly more sensible Budget was simply not good enough. The rest of Britain will have to wait a couple of months before going to the polls, but investors have already cast their vote.

Edmund Conway- The Telegraph

Government is Good is the central thesis of the Labour Party, the more Government the better it gets !

Better for who? The utter madness of introducing another £19 Bn assault on the beleaguered taxpayer (the real pain is yet to come after the Election)is just going to suck demand further out of the economy.

The Political Elite of all three major parties believes that the individual cannot be trusted, only Government can stimulate demand, largely be debasing the currency through QE
(printing money). Wrong, start cutting taxes put money back into our pockets, we will spend it in the British Economy rather than indulge in apital flight. People will pay off debt, because individuals do that sort of thing rather than Government that is still racking up debt like
some form of junkie that cannot face cold turkey.

The sop to reducing the State is to move Civil Servants out of Whitehall. I have heard this chestnut so many times in the last thirty years. It never happens.

Alongside reducing taxes which will make us feel better and more confident about buying and selling things again, burn the Quangocracy, how many new ones was Darling creating yesterday I lost count. End our overseas foreign adventures. Bring the troops home, and start re equipping them properly, with British made equipment, replace the military slums with modern accommodation and start paying them properly. Ensure that military compensation schemes look after the bereaved. This is real stimulus to the economy, not some half baked Green Bank with £2Bn allocated to it.

The State is not Good, it is about the worst possible way of providing any service.
We are in a recession, and the State is determined that the State has to survive intact first at everybodies expense. That means you !

The markets have made their verdict, the jolly japes about Belize aside, we are in a world of crap and the party still goes on at Westminster unabated.

Westminster is gutless, and does not have the balls to tell the truth to the Electorate, hence yesterday's charade.

Andrew Withers
Deputy Leader Libertarian Party