ECONOMY - ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Liam Byrne - "There's no more money..."

George Osborne's task of balancing
the Government's books by seeking

a further 10% reduction in

departmental budgets is made even

more difficult by those within, who

are hostile to the concept of a

right-of-centre government and the

free market economy. 

As one former Labour minister

revealed, there was collusion

between Labour ministers and civil

servants to get as many contracts

as possible signed off before the

last general election. Its success

in achieving this can be summed

up by a note left by former Labour

minister, Liam Burn, to his Coalition

successor; 'There's no money left,

it's all gone'. It certainly had - an

annual surplus in public finances

when Labourtook office in 1997

becoming an annual deficit of

over £170bn by the time of the

election in 2010.  

Vince Cable also remarked " I

fear that a lot of bad news has

been hidden and stored up for the

new government." The £38.8bn of

waste identified could have been

just one example of the many fiscal

elephant traps set by union-financed

Labour to ruin the Coalition's

economic policy in the lead up to

the 2015 election.

It is, of course, quite possible that

such a mindset is part of a wider

pattern with regard to the leaders

of other groups, whose unrealistic

pay demands are manifestly not in

the national interest, but part of a

political strategy.

There are those on the Left who call
for legal accountability for the
directors of publicly-quoted
companies. This clearly already
exists under the Companies' Act
and the penalties are severe,
unlike in the public sector, where
there are no such sanctions.