Thats an exaggeration but you are correct that what the Tories often tell us that Labour made the deficit the worst its ever been etc, is wrong. The figure usually used as the 'deficit' is net borrowing, which is the second column on the table below (taken from the HM Treasury pocket databank: www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/pdb.pdf). Although the column heading is "net borrowing" it is, for simplicity's sake, written as a 'net surplus' so a negative figure indicates borrowing and a positive figure indicates surplus - otherwise its misleading to the reader. This is just government revenue minus government expenditure. The data here only goes back to John Major's day but you can see that the deficit was larger through Major's era than it was until the end of 2007/08, it only rose above that when we fell into recession in 2008/09. So Major's Tory government was borrowing more as a percentage of GDP than Blair's Labour government ever did, and than Brown's government did till we fell into recession.



The other relevant figure here is the first column, "current budget" which is government revenue minus government spending on 'current spend' rather than 'capital spend', the difference being current spend is stuff like public sector wages, capital spend is costs of investment in infrastructure. This is relevant because it gives a guide as to the sustainability of the deficit. If you have a high deficit on current budget then it's unsustainable. If you have a balanced current budget and a high net borrowing figure that means you are spending more than you are receiving at the moment on capital projects, but once those capital projects are completed, the costs are done with and they should start to yield revenues in the future by increasing GDP and tax revenues (eg building roads, schools etc should improve the productive capacity of the economy).

Thats an exaggeration but you are correct that what the Tories often tell us that Labour made the deficit the worst its ever been etc, is wrong. The figure usually used as the 'deficit' is net borrowing, which is the second column on the table below (taken from the HM Treasury pocket databank: www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/pdb.pdf). Although the column heading is "net borrowing" it is, for simplicity's sake, written as a 'net surplus' so a negative figure indicates borrowing and a positive figure indicates surplus - otherwise its misleading to the reader. This is just government revenue minus government expenditure. The data here only goes back to John Major's day but you can see that the deficit was larger through Major's era than it was until the end of 2007/08, it only rose above that when we fell into recession in 2008/09. So Major's Tory government was borrowing more as a percentage of GDP than Blair's Labour government ever did, and than Brown's government did till we fell into recession.



The other relevant figure here is the first column, "current budget" which is government revenue minus government spending on 'current spend' rather than 'capital spend', the difference being current spend is stuff like public sector wages, capital spend is costs of investment in infrastructure. This is relevant because it gives a guide as to the sustainability of the deficit. If you have a high deficit on current budget then it's unsustainable. If you have a balanced current budget and a high net borrowing figure that means you are spending more than you are receiving at the moment on capital projects, but once those capital projects are completed, the costs are done with and they should start to yield revenues in the future by increasing GDP and tax revenues (eg building roads, schools etc should improve the productive capacity of the economy).

The Chancellor doesn't need to be an economics graduate if he has the right people around him, however Osborne has surrounded himself with a cabal of 20something year old socialites from upper class backgrounds that are his 'special advisors':

whoknowswho.channel4.com/schools ... y_advisers

There's no way these kids who have no real lifetime experience of the real world are the best and most experienced people for a job at this level, they have just networked their way into jobs which will look great on their CV and are totally out of their depth directing a country's economic policy in such difficult circumstances.

The Chancellor doesn't need to be an economics graduate if he has the right people around him, however Osborne has surrounded himself with a cabal of 20something year old socialites from upper class backgrounds that are his 'special advisors':

whoknowswho.channel4.com/schools ... y_advisers

There's no way these kids who have no real lifetime experience of the real world are the best and most experienced people for a job at this level, they have just networked their way into jobs which will look great on their CV and are totally out of their depth directing a country's economic policy in such difficult circumstances.