At last night’s Full Council meeting, Labour claimed that when the Conservatives leave office we would leave a worse legacy than them.
Nothing could be further from the truth. For them to make such a remark shows how they take the public for granted, have no remorse on how they left United Kingdom on the verge of bankruptcy and refuse to apologise.
Yes, things are still tough now, but take a moment to think why:
- By the time we leave office we would have regulated the banks, something that the then Cities Minister, Ed Balls, failed to do at the start of the financial crisis.
- We won’t have raided pensions by raking in a £5 billion tax per year, in fact we would have made the state pension fairer for all and delivered the biggest ever rise in this.
- We certainly won’t be selling our gold reserves for just $3.5 billion; this was at a time when we had rock bottom prices. If they were sold in 2011 they would have been worth $19 billion. Gordon Brown’s disastrous decision earned him the nickname ‘Brown Bottom’ from traders.
- Huge progress has been made in reducing our budget deficit by 25% which is a fantastic achievement considering we were left with a budget deficit of 11.4% of GDP, the largest of any G20 nation.
- Under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Council Tax rose by 128% in Crawley. Under the Conservatives we will soon be in our third year of a Council Tax freeze.
- When Gordon Brown made his last Budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer he proudly claimed, “We will never return to old boom and bust.” This comes from a man who failed to fix the roof when the sun was shining.
I challenged Labour on these facts and got heckled, perhaps because they don’t like the truth? As the old saying goes, “The truth hurts.”
President Barack Obama recently said, “Yes, our path is harder, but it leads to a better place. Yes, our road is longer, but we travel it together. We don't turn back. We leave no one behind. We pull each other up. We draw strength from our victories and we learn from our mistakes.”
We, as Conservatives, are doing exactly that. We are fighting for the many and we won’t turn back on the course that has been set. To do otherwise would be disastrous.
Cllr Karl Williamson, Cabinet Member for Customer and Corporate Services, Crawley Borough Council
28 February 2013