Party Election Leaflets : Delivering Economic Stability? By Alfred N.Muggins

June 2024

Delivering Economic Stability? That wasn’t a phrase he would use to describe any of the recent years. Old wannabe Queen Margaret Thatcher had liked to put everyone on their toes, male and female, threatening them with economic change and divestment, the return of hire and fire, and the heavy handed use of start/ stop economic planning, ostensibly to tame inflation, but also as a kind of game to get the workers to work a lot harder, and make them more productive. As a result her times had been very uncertain ones for many workers, and many young folk had spent at least a number of years on the burgeoning dole at the time! She it was who let money go wherever it wanted to go in the world, without even exchange controls. Naturally a lot of it left the country, but also a lot of outside investers came in and took many operations over, and not necessarily for the better.

    Likewise the recent Tories of Cameron’s government, and Theresa May, Boris Johnson and now Rishi (Richy) Sunak had kept things pretty tight. Starting with Austerity, a reaction perhaps to Gordon Brown’s generosity towards the Big Banks who had exposed themselves with risky loans and investments, while governments all around the world were fast asleep in previous administrations. Public services had basically been slashed wherever they existed, so a lot less people worked for them and they didn’t work as well.

    At the same time people with money to invest were encouraged to buy and sell businesses or shares in businesses as much as they wanted. If they could make more money or profit elsewhere they were encouraged to sell up and buy into something else. So investment change and business acquisitions and mergers were happening all the time. People were employed just to watch out for new or better opportunities, so money could follow profit. But underneath all this activity how many good businesses were jettisoned, how many workers sacked? The modern economy was more a system of turmoil than a system of harmony and tranquility!