Just The Job

Marking the fortieth anniversary of the coming to power of Margaret Thatcher, Newsnight unusually mentioned the fact the five poorest regions in Northern Europe were all in the United Kingdom. Here in County Durham, we are one of those five. Take a bow, Simon Henig.

As everyone who knows about the subject not only knows, but assumes that everyone else also knows, it is easy to cure unemployment, it is easy to control inflation, and it is the easiest thing of all to do both at the same time.

The choice not to do so is not economic, but political. Every Government since the War has made that political choice at least once, and often more than once. But that is what it is: a political choice, by the Government of the day.

For there have not been Conservative Governments continuously since 1979. 13 of those years were spent under the only Labour Government that most Labour MPs will ever acknowledge existed, and the first 10 of those 13 were under the only Prime Minister that most Labour MPs will ever regard as legitimate.

Yes, every Labour Government has left more unemployment than it found. Until 1997, that had been because every Labour Government had moved sharply to the right economically in what therefore turned into its last days; the monetarist era began, not in 1979, but in 1977. 

New Labour, however, came in that way, and it not only carried on as it had started out, but it signed away the monetary means of controlling inflation, which no Conservative Government had ever done, and it arbitrarily refused to consider exercising the fiscal means, a self-restriction that no Conservative Government would ever have considered.

Lo and behold, the five poorest regions in Northern Europe are all in the United Kingdom. Here in County Durham, we are one of those five. Take a bow, Simon Henig. Such was the only Labour Government that most Labour MPs acknowledge ever existed, and such was the only Prime Minister that most Labour MPs will ever regard as legitimate. Take a bow, the very long-serving MP for Sedgefield, Tony Blair.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.