Our community reporter Spring Heeled Jack has written a series of short articles which we will share over the next few weeks.
Here is the latest installment of Hard Times.
New Labour-new problems
The previous political and economic situation regarding Britain had been stable for many years.
However, things were about to change significantly for the worse in 2007.
A worldwide recession took place where the markets collapsed, the British banks were almost bankrupt and there was no confidence in lending money to small businesses and individuals any more.
The banks had then been borrowing money on the ‘never-never’, using funds they didn’t have and were in desperate need of government assistance.
Media images and reports then showed queues of people trying to withdraw their funds from Northern Rock building society.
The Royal Bank of Scotland was hit hardest and needed £45 billion pounds of tax payers’ money to avoid going bankrupt but the latest figures have risen to over £64 billion of public funding subsidies to date.
Eventually, the true extent of the economic problems became apparent where ordinary people were losing their jobs and homes due to the games that had been played by corporate bankers and tax dodgers.
The media jumped on this matter and the British government led by Brown and Darling was posted missing when asked about answers to the recession and the economic problems.
Brown and Darling were found to be equally culpable due to their previous economic strategy of ‘light touch regulation’.
The folly of this policy had come to haunt them and Britain was in a deep recession with little means of rectifying matters.
Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money had to be used then to prop up the British banks or they would close, with the subsequent effect to individual savers and investors.
Worse still, a general election had to take place by 2010 and Britain was in the midst of a deep recession.
Swithering and dithering
Gordon Brown as Prime Minister was the only politician who could decide when to call a general election.
However, he swithered about the date and when to release this to the media.
Several media commentators picked up on this and were convinced that a general election would be announced imminently.
However, Brown again dithered and postponed matters, which caused great anxiety amongst political ministers and Labour party colleagues.
It was this indecision that was proved to be the beginning of the end for New Labour.
Article submitted by Spring Heeled Jack.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not the Digital Sentinel.
