On leaving UK Government in 2010, Labour bequeathed an economy on the brink of collapse, with the highest budget deficit in peace time UK history – but Conservatives delivered the fastest growing G7 economy in 2016.
In contrast, those countries which rejected austerity, got it in full measure.
In championing Keynesian economics as an alternative, Labour fails to acknowledge that although Keynes advocated deficit spending when an economy is suffering, he also advocated cutting back on Government outlay in the boom times - BUT Gordon Brown broke the economic cycle by pretending there was an end to boom and bust.
As any debtor knows, you can’t start reducing debt until expenditure falls below income.
If the Treasury had pursued faster deficit reduction, cuts would have been higher.
In the real financial world, borrowers borrow, but lenders set the terms.
If the Treasury had pursued lower deficit reduction, higher cuts would have been imposed.
Labour Members here sneered when I warned 13 years ago that Gordon Brown’s borrowing would lead to a day of reckoning.
They sneered when I said 12 years ago that the IMF had warned that the UK banking system was more exposed to sub-prime debt than anywhere else in the world.
They sneered when I said that the National Audit Office warned Mr Brown’s Treasury three years before Northern Rock nearly went bust that it needed to set up emergency plans to handle a banking crisis, but Labour did nothing about it.
They sneered when I said that the Financial Services Authority had reported sustained political emphasis by the Labour Government on the need for them to be light-touch in their approach to bank regulation.
No doubt they will sneer now, when I say that in endorsing Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to borrow an extra £500 Billion, Carwyn Jones is failing to tell the people of Wales that bigger cuts will be the consequence.
Carwyn Jones is not a modest man.
But he has a lot to be modest about.
He keeps stating that Wales has lowest unemployment in the UK, but the latest published figures show unemployment in Wales above England, Scotland and UK levels.
He keeps taking the credit for inward investment into Wales, when the UK Department for International Trade played a part in 97 of 101 Foreign Direct Investments into Wales last year, with the UK continuing to be the third largest recipient globally.
It is in the interest of Wales and the UK to have a strong, stable and prosperous European Union as our immediate neighbour.
Although we will not enter Brexit negotiations as supplicants, he preaches Brexit doom.
There will be no winner and loser, only two winners or two losers.
Any new impediments to trade and investment in Europe would not only be politically irresponsible, but economically dangerous – and not just for Europe but for the wider global economy too.
Throughout 18 years of Labour Welsh Government, they have presented themselves as the guardians of Social Justice.
But the more they have talked about it, the worse it gets.
After spending half a billion pounds on their lead Tackling Poverty Programme, “Communities First”, they are now phasing it out after failing to reduce the headline poverty rates in Wales.
Labour has given Wales:
- the highest percentage of employees not on permanent contracts, and the highest levels of underemployment across the 12 UK Nations and Regions.
- The lowest prosperity levels per head in the UK.
- The highest percentage of employees not on permanent contracts.
- Rates of low pay, poverty, child poverty and children living in long term workless households above UK levels.
- an increased percentage of children living in workless households in Wales’ most deprived communities.
- AND a housing supply crisis, with the lowest proportional level of housing expenditure of any of the four UK countries from 1999 and therefore the biggest cuts in the new, social and affordable housing.
UK Labour is in the hands of a Trotskyist Tribute Act, fundamentalist followers of a discredited and dangerous 19th Century ideology.
But Wales has been a pilot for them - and a warning to people across our islands.
Welsh Labour think they are entitled to rule and tell the people what is good for them.
In contrast Welsh Conservatives seek to empower people and communities, doing things with them rather than to them.
Instead of the Coalition of chaos offered by Corbyn and Carwyn, the people need the strong and stable leadership of Theresa May.