If there had been no financial crisis..

[raf_gti]

..how long would it of taken for Labour to have been 'found out'?

All I can recall ever reading was how GB was the most financially prudent chancellor..ever, yet that has now proven to be simply not the case?

Would we still be merrily spending away, simply racking up even greater debt?

[davepoth]

raf_gti said:

..how long would it of taken for Labour to have been 'found out'?

All I can recall ever reading was how GB was the most financially prudent chancellor..ever, yet that has now proven to be simply not the case?

Would we still be merrily spending away, simply racking up even greater debt?

Basically yes - but there were far too many things about to go wrong in the world for that to have lasted any length of time. If it hadn't been bad debt that tipped us over the edge, it might have been commodity prices or a house price crash but it would have happened eventually.

[F93]

They already had been, it would have happened sooner or later. I read in the Telegraph in 2006 that the current account deficit had grown consistently since 1997. I mean, after a while the bond markets get pissed off with you. As soon as debt passed 100% of GDP the bond markets would have crossed their arms, tapped their feet and got whoever the chancellor would be and get them to cut the budget deficit.

OR 5-10 or maybe 15 years from now.

Because old Brown used the pensions pot to fund the spending spree, when all the people born after WW2-the early 60s, the Baby Boomers, retire, they basically will go into just above poverty levels. This means that everyone would have gone WTF and basically would have traced it back to the downward trend in the budget account balance that oh so coincidentally started in 1997.

[Busa_Rush]

raf_gti said:

..how long would it of taken for Labour to have been 'found out'?

All I can recall ever reading was how GB was the most financially prudent chancellor..ever, yet that has now proven to be simply not the case?

Would we still be merrily spending away, simply racking up even greater debt?

We'd be paying more tax, those of us still with jobs, the NHS would be costing 1.2x what it did last year and more people would be on benefits, all paid for by higher taxes and borrowing. The time bomb would have got bigger until in a year or two, we'd be where Ireland was last year.