Yeah, that's exactly what happened. Oh and the mega-trillions wasted in propping up banks, don't forget that!
Nothing that the tories have (or could have) done has fundamentally changed the balance of our economy (mostly because most of what they've done has been to attempt to cut benefits from people that don't add up to much money).
Our debt will continue to climb for a long time to come on the current trajectory.
Nothing to do with adjustments to:
* Welfare spending flat (maybe a couple of billion more or less on a total of over 100 billion).
* Pension costs climb linearly and will continue to do so until people stop living longer (the pensions cost has increased from £100billion when they took over to £150billion today).
* Education has been more or less flat over the time as well (scandalous).
The difference? Taxes. The government raised about £500billion in 2010 and hope to raise about £700billion in 2017 (not sure that'll happen). BTW, total government revenue as a percentage of GDP (since 2006) has always been >35% and <40% - i.e. the overall taxation burden has been pretty flat over this time - and despite people slagging them off, they have not really made much difference to who pays what taxes either (i.e. no one tax/bracket/sector has seen a big change in who pays what).
So, as usual, all that really matters is that the economy keeps thundering along and economic growth is the only way out of the rabbit hole. In my opinion every government policy should have to pass an economic growth test - i.e. is this a policy designed to stimulate economic growth now or in the future? No, then don't waste your effort on it because it will achieve nothing! If you have to borrow a few more billion along the way, don't worry too much about it (you can always print some later to pay it back with
).Once the economy is able to fund the state THEN drive through improvements in efficiency.
Cheers,
Robin