It is only the first week in January and already the Labour Party has made it clear that they have learnt nothing from their past mistakes.
They continue to promise money to everyone, £21 billion in recent announcements alone, with no idea how they will fund it: the public know this will mean a massive increase in borrowing.
Labour must not be allowed anywhere near Britain’s economy until they accept their economic plans would lead us back to the brink of bankruptcy and, eventually, like Greece, Spain and Portugal, into the hands of the International Monetary Fund: leading to mass unemployment, blanket closure of hospitals, loss of state pensions and social services which inevitably follows when the nation loses control of its economy.
Let us, in the forthcoming election campaign, fully understand the three choices we face. A majority Conservative Government and continued economic growth; a return to car crash economics and national humiliation with Labour….or an unstable coalition between Labour, the SNP and others which will quickly erode international confidence in our economy built up over the past 4 years.
I, however, remain convinced that voters in both their heart and head are already aware of this choice…and that the Conservatives are best qualified to deliver improved living standards for all.
A few weeks before Christmas I met a young man, 28 years old, working hard at his job: to my surprise he ended our conversation by saying ‘I didn’t vote for you last time, neither did my mates - because we don’t vote Tory where I come from, but I will next year’. I asked him why and thought his three reasons worth repeating.
Firstly he thought the cut in benefits was overdue – he and his pals were sick of working hard whilst others idled away their time on our taxes; secondly the help for first time buyers was giving him the opportunity to buy a house – the first in his family to be able to own his own home; lastly, he felt his job would not be safe under Labour: in his precise words ‘I’m not going to let that lot mess up again’.
So as Labour politicians in South Derbyshire and elsewhere decry ‘the cuts’, promise ‘lower rail fares’, promise to employ ‘1000 more nurses than anyone else’ – whatever figure ‘anyone else’ suggests and insist that ‘The Tories are privatising the NHS’ let us just look at the facts.
Any public spending cuts are as a result of Labour’s 13 years of reckless overspending and borrowing, Gordon Brown’s failure to regulate bank lending and his selling of the Bank of England Gold at’ Poundland’ prices.
As for the Conservatives privatising the NHS – this claim is as dodgy as Milliband’s spending plans and Tony Blair’s dossier which led is into the Iraq war. The statistics are clear: under Labour, private sector involvement in the NHS increased from zero to 5%: it has increased a mere 1.5% under the coalition.
So let us be clear: the Conservatives will continue to increase NHS spending as the economy grows. However the current pressure upon a number of hospitals, with record numbers attending accident and emergency has seen the patients seen within 4 hours fall to 92%. This remains a problem despite the government’s recent input of a further £750 Million of taxpayers money into A & E, a problem which we will address.
Yet in the face of such short term problems one fact remains: the only danger to the NHS is a collapsing economy... and history shows us all Labour Government’s end with the economy in tatters.