Labour Party Conference: Ed Balls speech

Labour Party Conference: Ed Balls speech; Ed Balls speech SOT - And when the Tories and the Liberal Democrats say we have to cancel Building Schools for the Future, we had no choice, getting the deficit down is the first priority, when they say that there is no alternative to these cuts now, let us remember, first of all that the last politician to say there was no alternative was Margaret Thatcher in 1980, and we remember what happened to our communities, to manufacturing and youth unemployment rising year on year for five years. And the previous Prime Minister to say 'there is no alternative,' was a Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, in 1931, two years after the 1929 Wall Street crash, the second biggest financial crisis of the last hundred years. There is no alternative, MacDonald said, but to cut spending and unemployment benefits to get the deficit down and reassure the financial markets. But this party said No, and so did the Liberals and Lloyd George. And MacDonald had to go into Coalition with the Conservatives to make his cuts. And what happened? The Great Depression of the 1930s, mass unemployment and yes the deficit got worse. You either learn the lessons of history or you repeat the mistakes of history and that's what they are doing at the moment. Just think if Clement Attlee in 1945 when after the war when our national debt was over twice its current level had said that the first priority was to get the deficit down, there would have been no NHS, no new homes for returning heroes and no welfare state. But we don't need to go back to the history books to see the warning signs over George Osborne and David Cameron's economic policy we only need to look across the Irish Sea. Two years ago, the Irish Government convinced itself they had to slash public services and cut child benefits to get their deficit down as fast as possible and reassure the money markets. The IMF praised the Irish government for its 'sense of urgency'. And what has happened s...