I demand an apology for the credit crisis; an apology from the financial services industry. I don’t demand regulation; I don’t demand satisfaction; I simply demand an apology from the greedy, bonus paying, Tory-financing industry that has managed to damage the reputation of my Labour party through its profligate gluttony.
I demand an apology for the loans given to people who couldn’t afford to repay. I demand an apology for the bail-out, whereby the British government is expected to assume ultimate authority for risk, while the bankers maximise their fees. But most of all, I demand an apology for the misguided enhancement, in the minds of the British public, of the economic reputation of the British Conservative party.
On 1 August, one year following its creation, I’m going to send a birthday card to the credit crisis. Following this one year of steady crisis management from the Labour government, the British economy has been skilfully steered through the hazards that have marked this period. This has not been an easy job. It has been rather like steering a great ocean-liner through a sea of icebergs, any one of which could pierce the hull and suck the momentous vessel down beneath the waves.
The navigation has succeeded. For month after month the doom-mongers of the Conservative party have predicted the sinking of this ship, yet each time they have been proved wrong. The banks have raised new capital and refinanced themselves. The property market is still troubled, but not for a lack of housing need, or for a lack willing buyers, but maybe for a lack of confidence as people wait for prices to reach bargain levels before going in.
In short, things are not so bad as people at one point feared. This is not the 1990s. It’s not even a recession, as yet. There is no vampire-like chancellor telling us about the green shoots of recovery he’s discovered, while the newly unemployed and recently house-repossessed look on in a daze, as if hypnotised by the scratched record of his voice.
Retail sales on Britain’s high streets are up, while the Japanese stock market has grown by a whopping 15 per cent in the last 3 months. China continues to swallow up the world’s resources. In fact, the very cause of food and fuel inflation is the massive success of the expanding world economy. The stresses are adjustments and the adjustments are to accommodate the outstanding success of a ten-year economic miracle. Yet, the Tories claim Labour to be the failure, and they rise in the polls as a result: this is ridiculous.
Ridiculous or not, we’re at fault for these polls because we’re the ones allowing the lie to go uncontested. We’re the ones who are rolling over and allowing the vacuous Tories to blame us for the problems caused by the bad loans those bankers concealed in their ‘off-balance-sheet’ balance sheets.
The Labour party right now seems determined to be a victim. It’s as if we want to welcome Cameron and his mates into Downing Street.
Well, I don’t welcome it. I don’t want to let this calumny go unchallenged. I don’t want to roll over and be a victim to Tory manipulation of the facts. I want to get angry. I want to get angry because only by getting angry can we dig our way out of this hole. Only if we all get angry together can we start fighting back together. I want everyone who reads this to refuse to be a victim, to refuse to allow the Tories to spread their deceit, and to refuse any longer, to lose.
From now on, we get angry through every lie they spread and through this anger, we’ll go on to win.
Dan McCurry is legal executive and a member of Tower Hamlets Labour party