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Howard in reply to @starfish&coffee

It's ridiculous that the deficit after Cameron's election in 2010 far exceeds that of the Blair years, yet hardly any Tory voter would beleive this you if you told them.

Looking at the chart, I think it's saying we borrowed a shit load of money to bail out the banks in 2008 / 9 and (not surprisingly) we can only pay that money off slowly over time.

It might also be that they measure the debt against the GPD of that year, so if in 2009 (presumably the year you are referring to) our debt stayed constant but our GDP shrank, it would look like our debt increased....

tl;dr I have no idea what I'm looking at, but I'd be surprised if Cameron and co. spent more money than Blair did, but I wouldn't be surprised if our economy contracted heavily post 2008 increasing the debt as a %GDP

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NickCJ in reply to @Howard

I'd be surprised if Cameron and co. spent more money than Blair did

It's the phenomenon of Keynesian "automatic stabilisers". When your economy crashes the fiscal position naturally becomes more expansive as income-related tax receipts fall and welfare spending such as JSA rises.

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Howard in reply to @NickCJ

Yeah you are right, bollocks.
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starfish&coffee in reply to @NickCJ

Keynesian

And I don't mind a bit of Keynsian economics. It's just that the Tory mantra 'you'll eventually run out of other people's money' only seem to be an issue if someone other than them is in charge.

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