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Even Tory MPs think economy will get worse

January 27, 2012 10:03 am

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Mark Ferguson

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George Osborne thinks that the economy will pick up in 2012. However a poll of his backbenchers (published in the Independent today) suggests otherwise, with more Tory MPs believing that the economy will get worse than believe it will get better:

“In a fresh setback to the Chancellor, the ComRes poll of 150 backbenchers for The Independent found that only one in four (26 per cent) of Tory MPs believes economic growth will improve over the next 12 months. Four in 10 (39 per cent) of Tories think it will stay the same and a third (34 per cent) predict it will get worse.”

http://twitter.com/tommy5dollar Tommy Long
George Osborne thinks the economy will get worse too… it’s just the Chancellor isn’t really allowed to say that, otherwise he’ll be accused of talking it down and blamed when it does. The whole world is going to slip back into recession and there is no route our government can take that will make us somehow buck the trend.

http://twitter.com/gonzozzz dave stone
But they can make it a lot less worse.
By the end of the year Osborne will have listened to those wanting to put the brakes on the austerity drive, or he will be replaced. And the Bank of England will be printing money like there’s no tomorrow. Stimulus of every kind will be all the rage.
Sure, we have to start digging ourselves out of this hole, but unfortunately, it wouldn’t be so deep if it hadn’t been for the Conservative’s foolish fetishisation of austerity.
Sadly, Osborne thought it was still 1979.

http://twitter.com/Newsbot9 Newsbot9
You’re giving the Tories far too much credit. Osborne isn’t going anywhere.
(I’d LOVE to be wrong. I’m not ><)
Inflationary QE is *all* they'll be doing.
Anonymous
yes your correct whether it’s enough god will only know.
http://twitter.com/tommy5dollar Tommy Long
You mean 1979 when the Tories last had to fix our broken economy?
I really don’t believe this argument that it wouldn’t have been as deep under Labour. Growth in GDP has to have debt subtracted from it before it can be considered real growth.

Dave Postles
Cameron feels he can lecture everyone else at Davos whilst this country’s economy burns. That’s all Cameron does – lecture others. Meanwhile, his ministers are out of control and their legislation and cuts causing consternation, even amongst Tory peers in some cases: Smith; Lansley; Clarke; Osborne; May; late Fox.

Anonymous
There is more fight on this site then their is in Labour top table. Labour is so scared of losing it core vote it seem the Tories who swing from one Tory party to another.
We really do need Labour to find a reason for being

http://twitter.com/Newsbot9 Newsbot9
No we don’t, we need a party of the Left.

Anonymous
How many MP’s do you think are left leaning within labour, it’s believed to be twelve including Abbot and Johnson, you would not think these two would govern any different to Blair do you.
The fact is in 100 years of labour we have had left leaning MP’s /parties but never a party of the left.
http://twitter.com/tommy5dollar Tommy Long
Why the hell would we want a party of the left? Despite their obvious flaws give me the US over Russia any day of the week.
Anonymous
Tommy, how to break this to you gently: this is a website that supports a left of centre position, and FYI no Labour government could ever be compared to to the USSR.
I can see you are quite young, so you will not have personal experience of the 1970s, so you wont have lived through the 3 day week of 1973 – that, by the way, was a measure by Ted Heath’s government (e.g. not Laabour)

Anonymous
Glad you alluded to the health reforms Dave; some extraordinary backlashes appear to be being reported; it looks like a battle of PR.
The whole bloody thing has become far too politicized;
a real danger of losing sight of what is at stake perhaps.
I note limited coverage on this in main papers, or
articles hard to find at bottom of pages….?
Am trying to kep track as to what’s happening.
Jo

TomFairfax
You should have listened to that rather eminent economist David Blanchflower (previously interest rate hawk in his old job on BoE monetary policy committee).
GO has already bucked the trend, in implementing austerity measures and causing debt to rise to over a trillion and killing growth.
And I quote, ‘the data proves it’ because the US didn’t do this and have reasonable growth, rising employment, and their government didn’t spend all their time saying the country was bankrupt when it wasn’t, and saying it was another Greece, when it wasn’t.
In fact, it was the most complete demolition of the governments policies and record from an expert economist who can’ t be written off as a pinko liberal commie.
GO ignored all the lessons of previous economic crises’ and plunged headlong into a plan identical to that that caused the Long Recession in the 19th century USA, and exacerbated the great depression under Hoover.
Frankly, a pimply youth at McDonald’s couldn’t have come up with a worse ‘common sense’ plan and then tried managing the economy metaphorically by looking at the instruments on the dashboard to confirm the speedo didn’t go above fifty without looking through the windshield to see the truck in front was stationary.
There’s a lot wrong with education in this country, and it seems Eton is a basket case as well.

Anonymous
GO? sounds to close to God with my problems with Dyslexia I thought you were writing God for the last ten minutes, and I though he not in the Tories is he.

TomFairfax
Crikee. You must have been wondering why I thought Gove was Chancellor.

Anonymous
Nope He may well be in a couple of months once he’s sorted out Education
TomFairfax
‘Sorted Out’
Def: Mixture of good and bad ideas with no discernible coherent link between the two.

Anonymous
Spot on Tom, as ever.
Jo

TomFairfax
Hi Jo,
Not really. That’s Prof Blanchflower and the majority of his colleagues who were against the Tory version of Voodoo economics, unlike the mere score or so who backed them.
I’m merely reporting.

http://twitter.com/tommy5dollar Tommy Long
Can we get over this concept that stimulus fixed America in the 1930s? There is a direct link between coming off of the gold standard and recovery. Systemic reform is what’s needed, not further debt.
Even if you accept the argument that stimulus worked in the past, thinking it will work again is an illusion. Markets aren’t dumb, they are a psychological effect. The people who make the market know the length and depth of the stimulus. They simply take the money the government is handing out or printing and when it runs dry they plunge you down again.
Yes, America is growing now on the back of debt but they’re going to have to stop eventually. And when they do, growth will falter until they clear off their debt which will take them some 10 or 20 years to do.
We can all make money by borrowing it but eventually you have to repay it and it always costs more to repay than it does to borrow and therefore you will always end up worse than if you hadn’t borrowed it.

TomFairfax
Your logic sounds like that from GO some while back.
Let me guess whose just authorised the BoE to extend quantitative Easying?
Reality, and real economists are the main considerations, and given that most economists, like most doctors, think the professional politicians in government haven’t a clue what they are doing and are demonstrably failing, I’m not sure how you justify your case other than it sounds like common sense.
Common sense of course used to hold that the sun revolved around the earth.

http://www.facebook.com/christhegoth Chris ‘thegoth’ Wilcox
This isn’t useful for us sadly.
We needed Europe to stabilise, and instead Europe has deteriorated. If Europe had stabilised it would have been clear as crystal it was Osborne fecking our growth. But with Europe deteriorating the waters have now been muddied.
It’s too complicated for The Public to understand. And that will make it harder to set Osborne up for the fall he deserves.

http://www.figurewizard.com Joe Jonkler
I think you are doing the public a grave injustice!
http://twitter.com/Newsbot9 Newsbot9
Yes, yes, the typical Tory view – blame everything any anyone else.
No, our unemployment and economy figures are MUCH worse than other countries. This is because of domestic policies. Meanwhile, keep propping Osborne up.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ZPXYLRVP4XOIGGDJWAL6HUO7U4 David
Which countries are you referring to? A quick google search shows:
UK 8%
Spain 22.9%
France 9.7%
Germany 6.6%
Italy 8.6%
So yes, much worse than Germany, but better than all the others.

TomFairfax
Mark,
Couldn’t you have found a better picture of the Dear Leader. This one makes him look like he’s just discovered a Lib Dem leader making like a tape worm.
Hugh
”Sure, we have to start digging ourselves out of this hole, but
unfortunately, it wouldn’t be so deep if it hadn’t been for the
Conservative’s foolish fetishisation of austerity.”
Actually that’s not true, according to the IFS, which calculates that under Darling’s plan we would, indeed, still be deeper in debt – even allowing for fact growth might have been stronger.
http://blogs.ft.com/westminster/2012/02/ifs-darling-would-have-borrowed-more-than-osborne/#axzz1l94VM6LW

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