Monday, 14 July 2008

Back to the Roy Jenkins doctrine


I havee just caught up with John Major's appearance on yesterday's Andrew Marr show.

It was a considered interview and Major made some interesting points some made previously over the forthcoming "R" word

The former PM took the credit for the unprecedented economic stablity of the last ten years and he went on to say that

It is quite extraordinary that in the 10 years that the world has had the most benign economic circumstances in a very long time that we have run up such a huge fiscal deficit,we have increased taxes and we have a trade deficit that is 50-60 times higher than 1997.

Claerly not a fan of the Brown economy he also pointed out that with government spending at between 42-455 of national income,the government had broken the Roy Jenkin's barrier of 40%

This formed one of the bases of Thatcherism.Here is a speech that she made in 1975 to the Hose of Common's press gallery

You have to have high interest rates if the public expenditure is too high. If public expenditure's too high as a proportion of your national income your borrowing is too high. But everyone wants to borrow and if the borrowing is not backed by goods, you have to get the interest rate up. That's why we have to get public expenditure down as a proportion of national income


The doctrine was that followed by Roy Jenkin's under Wilson's 60's administration who consistently tried to balance budgets.

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