Ah its all the tories hard work. So why did they do so badly at the General election. The voters clearly were wrong then, but now are right? The mistake has always been to believe that political parties in the UK have the best interests of the public and country at heart.

Its so lucky that the Conservatives had done so well at hitting their fiscal targets, and eliminating deficit, bringing down spending and so on. I wouldn't trust them with the economy either.

In terms of the PFI schemes, I'm inclined to agree, it wasn't a great plan, but the successive cuts and under spending by government over the previous decade created a massive problem that hadn't been addressed. Plus PFI also injected a massive boost into the UK tech industry - I'm surprised so many Conservative Voters regard PFI as something terrible, I'm pretty sure they benefited from it.

The problem of course, was it was more false economics, because ultimately it had to be paid for.

But then we're now back into the rounds of cuts with the promise of 'no impact on services' nonsense, as absurd to me as the idea that you can fund services without paying for them.

And they kept it in apple pie order, for longer than any other government in history, as well as seeing booms in the technology sector. That's what you expect surely of a government, the capacity to sustain. Of course they also, like the Conservatives before them, involved in deregulation of banking - which ultimately led to a disastrous end of the economy.

Brown was a f**king terrible prime minister, but he seemed to do fairly well as Treasurer, objectively speaking (and I hate Brown and Blair more than you do I suspect).

Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Blair or Brown, but it does kind of reject the notion that labour by default can't be trusted on the economy when they had the longest spell of growth and prosperity, which itself was only undone by a economic meltdown created in very unreliable private industry.

If we can't trust anyone with the economy, its private enterprise.

Yes, but then so have the assorted Conservative Parties over the years experienced recessions, and been plagued by boom and bust etc. Not sure about working tax credits and Child tax credits necessarily - again the problem generally remains not raising taxation in line with expenditure (something the Conservative party aren't good at either).

We're still enjoying the Conservatives selling off of private utility companies and council housing. As for PFI, there was a necessity for spending on public services produced by the underfunding and cuts of previous conservative governments - especially where fringe areas such as mental health were concerned. Care in the Community remains one of the most cynical reductions of public spending, directly linked to the rise in homelessness in the 80s and early 90s.

The basic difference between Labour and Conservative economic policy through history is that one was unsustainable and the other tried to fix the former.

Catch 22- can't trust Labour with the economy, or Tories with the NHS and public services.

There seems to be a fantasy among some that the NHS is sustainable in it's current form and that the constant extra demands on it caused through immigration,an aging population and wider services can be funded without greater taxation or use of private companies. This is a socialist pipe dream.
The NHS was created using borrowed money and is now a creaking disaster waiting to happen that is kicked around by the usual suspects for political point scoring.

Edited by Hrolf The Ganger (15 Mar 2016 4.48pm)