Saving Britain - the question is how?

Where do the claims and realities of the three main parties stand? First let's look at overall policy.

Labour fiscal tightening, they say, will build to 4.8% of "national income" or £71bn/year in 2010 terms, by

- withdrawing the fiscal stimulus during 2010
- tightening spending in 2011, with real pain in 2012-14
- then finish the job by 2016

Labour's policy implies £643bn borrowing over next 7 years

LibDem agrees.

Cons want tightening earlier & quicker, with an addtional £6bn in 2010, and all repairs done by 2015. This implies £604bn borrowing over next 7 years. Their targets would be to return borrowing < 40% of national income in 2031 - same as Lab & LibDem, just the shape of the curves are slightly different.

Composition of tightening

Labour has a 2:1 ratio of cuts (£47bn) vs tax rises (£24bn)
LibDems have 2.5:1 ratio fof cust (£51bn) vs tax rises (£20bn)
Cons call for 4:1 ration of cuts (£57bn) vs tax rises (14bn)

This shows a significant difference in cuts by the Cons.

Cuts & Tax

The current government has already put £17bn cuts into the pipeline, but they have not announced +£7bn more tax that they need to meet targets. Cons have announced £6bn tax on top of the pipeline and the LibDems announced £3bn on top of the pipeline.

Pubic spending

No one has announced any cuts in Social Spending, without this we will need big cuts in other areas. These are the party targets/year, versus what they have so far announced in reality

Lab £51bn (13% announced)
Cons £64bn (18% cuts announced)
LibDem £47bn (26% announced)

Clearly the one's who got us into this mess, Labour, have no idea how to get us out of it.

Here's some of the data graphically, first borrowing, this shows there is little difference between parties about the rate of borrowing trend.

At the end of all this the three parties converge when you look at the long term plans for revenue and spending.

Leaving our long term debt out to 2040 looking like this, but remember governments come and go, and the last peak leading up to a debt of 72% of national income was the highest ever and created by Labour. Can we trust them to change their tune and bring it down - I doubt it.

So when it comes to tightening our belts how do the three parties stack up? Very similar. So the big question is who can implement it, and will we, the people, support them?

Conclusion?

Forget Labour, they created the mess, they have little no philosophies or tactics to get us out of it. Chose LibDem and we stand a good chance of understanding the pain, but they will have to govern in a coalition, or force a change in the electoral system (to PR) and call a new election - difficult as the Cons are dead against it. Finally Cons, who are jolly in their approach but have little idea how to get the country behind them in what will be a very painful two years.