Saturday, 21st February 2009
Scots Tory MEP speaks to the Scottish Conservatives North East Fife Association
As we move towards the European elections on 4th June, Scotland and the rest of the UK has fallen into a deep recession. Gordon Brown first tried to blame the world for our economic woes and then to say his policies had saved the world! He is like the doomed U-Boat captain in an old war movie, frantically pulling at every lever as the wrecked craft plunges to the seabed! His outpourings have become the stuff of legend: 'NO MORE BOOM & BUST' - 'BRITISH JOBS FOR BRITISH WORKERS.' His opportunism has only been outdone by his ineptitude and incompetence.
Gordon Brown became Chancellor in 1997 when Tony Blair swept to power. He held that post until Blair retired in June 2007, then becoming Prime Minister himself, the job he had much coveted and conspired to achieve. So there is no hiding place for Brown. He inherited the strongest economy in Europe when he took office in 1997 and in 12 short years he has wrecked it. We are now the weakest economy in Europe. No other EU Member State, not even Ireland, not even the so-called economic PIGS - Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain, can match our spiral of decline. His vacuous attempts to steady the ship by reducing VAT by 2.5%, at a time when high street shops are commonly offering discounts of 50%, have even been ridiculed by Nicolas Sarkozy. His nationalisation of the banks and attempts to throw money at the problem has meant that every man, woman and child in Britain now faces a bill from the taxman of £17,000. Every baby that is born will start life with that enormous debt. Just paying interest on that debt will cost every child over £67,000 in taxes over their lifetime. For the average worker that is the equivalent of having to work four extra years just to pay off Labour's debt! It is scandalous!
And yet Gordon Brown presided over eleven years of boom. Where did all the money go? What do we have to show for it? An education system that is not fit for purpose and sends countless children into the world barely able to read, write or add up; a health system plagued with endemic infection; a police force wading through a tide of bureaucracy and red tape against a background of mounting violence and knife crime; a transport infrastructure that is the laughing stock of Europe; a fractured energy policy that has only 11 days gas storage capacity compared to over 100 days in France and Germany; What a legacy! What a shambles! Labour has once again bankrupted Britain. They spent too much and borrowed too much even before the recession began.
Having sown the wind we are now reaping the whirlwind, a storm of repossessions, closures, bankruptcies, job losses and redundancies. And worst of all, Labour's debts mean that Britain will spend more on paying interest than on educating our children. We will spend more on paying the interest on Labour's debts than on our entire transport system. We will spend more on paying the interest on Labour's debts than on police and prisons combined. We will spend more on paying the interest on Labour's debts than on building new homes.
Gordon Brown - the so-called Iron Chancellor - ignored the warnings, failed to put in place the necessary regulatory systems and entered the credit crunch with the biggest budget deficit of any major economy; worse than 104 other countries; worse than Bolivia, Serbia, Chad, Guatemala or even Uganda. And these record debt levels will simply delay recovery of the British economy and undermine people's confidence in the future. This has led to the historic collapse in the value of the pound.
Well, we have a chance on 4th June to show Labour what we think of their bankrupt policies. If we mobilise our Conservative votes we can win two of Scotland's six Euro seats and elect Belinda Don to serve alongside me in the European Parliament. What a victory that would be. For the Conservatives to knock Labour into third place in a national poll would be a resounding triumph and would act as a massive springboard for our candidates in the Westminster elections. This must be our target. But it means hard work. It means making sure that every Conservative pledge comes out to vote. And for those who say that Europe is unimportant remind them of this.....more than 70% of all the legislation that affects our everyday lives emanates from the EU. We have seen more and more of our sovereign authority drained away from Holyrood and Westminster to Brussels and if the Lisbon Treaty (or EU Constitution) is approved, we will cede even more of our dwindling power to the centre.
STRUAN STEVENSON, MEP
