The selective rendering of the reasons for the financial melt down

Watching Nick Clegg deputise for David Cameron during Prime Minister's Questions, on a number of occasions he managed to repeat what has, of late, become a mantra-like timeline of events, a highly selective, simplified version of what went wrong and how we got to where we are. I don't remember another government being quite as intricate or insistent with its selective rendering of the past.

Essentially, the narrative being put forward is this: the historical effect of all previous events and governments, up to and including Margaret Thatcher's and John Major's, is erased, even when it is direct. The universe in which we live begins at the 13-year Labour administration. The clearest example of this is the idea that the energy oligopoly, which is causing so many problems in that market, is a result of Labour's policies and specifically those of Ed Miliband as energy secretary in the year and a half between October 2008 and May 2010. The direct contribution of previous Conservative governments, for example, in privatising energy and setting up the regulatory framework is nil.

The global financial crisis in 2007-08 was the result of Labour's spending record. It was having too many nurses and teachers that caused the sub-prime lending bubble, the US housing bubble, and the collapse of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Northern Rock and Lehman Brothers. In Nick Clegg's words, "Labour was the party that crashed the British economy." This is despite all parties acknowledging, at the time, that they were in the midst of an international maelstrom and broadly endorsing, applauding even, Gordon Brown's reaction to events.

Anything negative that has occurred since May 2010 is down to external factors – namely, EU regulation, immigration, profligate southern European economies, the euro crisis, aggressive Chinese expansion, the weather being too hot, too cold, too wet or too dry, the "mess we inherited", the extra bank holiday, the dog eating our homework. Conversely, every plaudit for anything positive is due exclusively to the "difficult decisions" this government is making.

Part of:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/17/global-financial-crisis-labours-fault


Oh how true!

It certainly is true and they still keep pumping that out even at PMQs. These people are deceiving the electorate with this rhetoric and it's time that the opposition got stuck into them on it.
Maybe they're just keeping their powder dry until the time is right because the evidence is there in spades.

I certainly hope so, they should be socking it to them at every opportunity by now. Perhaps you and I better write to them and tell them how to do it LOL