There are some books that I treat as reference books even though that may not have been the intention of the author or publisher. One such book is ‘Squandered’ by David Craig published in 2008, two years before the New Labour era finished in 2010. ‘Squandered’ (ISBN-13: 978-1845298326) tells the story of how the Labour Party under the premierships of both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, spent approximately £1.2 Trillion extra on public services, with very little to show for it. Basically this book is the story of how Labour pissed our money at the wall or at worthless projects or even ‘make work’ Quangos.
If even ten percent of the instances of waste in the Home Office or the Health Department or the Departments of Education and others are correct, then it would represent a horrific degree of fiscal mismanagement by Labour. I find that I can’t read this book for too long without it making me angry at the waste of so much of our money on stuff that hasn’t had much long term effect as regards improving Britain’s public services.
I lived through the New Labour years and saw how the government brought in one flashy initiative after another and one bloated Quango stuffed with Labour leaning political appointees, all paid for with taxpayers cash. Few if any of these initiatives and Quangos did much to improve public services. We still live with an NHS that is more culturally suited to the old Soviet Union, rather than a modern Western nation and we still have an education system that is miles behind that of some other nations. None of the money that was ostensibly given by Labour to improve these services and modernise them has had any real long lasting improvement effect. What these initiatives and Quangos did do is enrich greatly those who managed them or staffed them.
Looking back on the Labour years and especially whilst reading this book, showed me just how badly Labour ran the economy and how much they covered up their waste and failure with slick PR.
Many of the problems that Britain faces today, especially with the domination of the adminisphere by those who are doctrinaire leftists, can I believe be traced back to the Blair/Brown years and the culture that they created with their appointees and Quangos. In effect, these two premiers stuffed government and quasi government bodies, used our money to stuff these bodies with leftist activists. The damage that this has done is all too plain to see with public bodies obsessed with intersectional guff, police forces who ignore crime but hunt down ‘wrongthink’ opinions (when they are not painting their fingernails pink for Pride Month that is) and a state run media behemoth that has long since departed from being an impartial purveyor of news.
The Blair/Brown years were rotten, bent and wasteful but it could possibly be worse. We could instead have the wrecker Jeremy Corbyn running the country and then we would be able to add another zero to the 1,200,000,000,000 that the gruesome twosome of Blair and Brown managed to waste.
