Friday 7 January 2011

'The Tories are rewriting history'

Ed Miliband has finally - albeit a tad late - started to fight back against the successful narrative that the Tories and their press allies have built up around the economy.

In the Tories' version of history, the banking crisis doesn't get a mention. Instead, the large debts that the country now faces were not caused thanks to the enormous £850 billion bailout of the banking sector, but were in fact created because Labour built too many hospitals, and spent too much money on teachers' wages... that kind of thing.

This narrative has, unfortunately, started to take hold. Ed Miliband's accusations in the last day or so that the Tories are 'rewriting history' have at least got some press coverage, thanks to an interview with the right-leaning Times and resultant follow-on coverage by Sky, the Guardian and politics.co.uk

If Labour are to even begin to reverse the Tories' narrative, they need to repeat endlessly the role that the banking crisis played in the current economic situation - and point out constantly that pre-2007, UK debt was in fact one of the lowest in the G7.

Update 11.00am: On a related note, it's interesting to hear that the government has now all but given up on attempting to restrict banking bonuses; and that huge rises in basic salaries of senior managers in the finance sector would have made these attempts rather redundant anyway.

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