Labour: Still Not Getting It On Spending

A new Labour sound bite (apparently):

Indeed, the Labour leadership have come up with a sound bite of their own on spending - "Building schools and hospitals did not create the deficit."

If it is a soundbite, then it is quite simply a terrible one. Firstly, from a tactical point of view, it doesn't work as it is entirely defensive. It is highlighting one of the areas in which Labour is most vulnerable, and then defensively claiming that parts of their operation while in government where not responsible for it.

Secondly, it wilfully ignores that fact that it wasn't just spending on the NHS and the education system that fucked the British economy. What about bailing out failed banks? The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? They weren't exactly cheap, you know. And the Millennium Dome - that notorious, enormous breast built on the south bank of the Thames that once symbolised New Labour profilgacy - was actually the tip of an iceberg when it came to a government determined to spend as much as possible without it having any meaningful result.

Which is the third problem. Yeah, Labour spent a lot of money on education and health. Well fuck-a-doodle-doo. Such boasts would be far more impressive if that spending hadn't large been a waste of fucking money. The NHS remains largely fucked - a vast bureaucracy floundering under unthinking mangerialism that is capable of swallowing pretty much any amount of money thrown at it. The education system turns out school leavers unable to write a coherent sentence and utterly unprepared for adult life. Spending should only be championed if it has done something good; Labour should not be boasting about their spending in these areas since it was, with very few exceptions, utterly ineffective. Ok, so they are technically talking about building schools and hospitals. But what about those existing hospitals filled with overworked and underpaid medical professionals struggling to keep their heads above water? What about the fact that so many hospitals were so dirty that they actually became lethal for some patients? And what about the education system, which was focussed so much on hitting meaningless targets that it ceased to be effective at, well, educating? Yeah, you built new hospitals and new schools to throw into two failing systems. Well fucking done.

So this soundbite doesn't work on any number of levels, but there's a final problem that it is worth considering. The very fact that Labour remains unashamedly proud of its spending ways shows that it remains, as a party, utterly unfit for office. Labour needs to show that it understands the damage it did to this country while in power, and that it understands that the citizens of this country - and the majority of them never voted for Labour - are still paying for their idiotic spending in a number of different ways.