Is anyone prepared to defend the last government?

[Tony]

With the benefit of hindsight, what aspects of their 13 years in office will go down in history as Labour's achievements in overall terms.

 

Try to consider all aspects, from effectiveness to value for money, righteousness to popularity.

[crookesey]

With the benefit of hindsight, what aspects of their 13 years in office will go down in history as Labour's achievements in overall terms.

 

Try to consider all aspects, from effectiveness to value for money, righteousness to popularity.

 

The only one that comes readily to mind is not taking the UK into the Euro single currency regime.

[Expat owl]

The only one that comes readily to mind is not taking the UK into the Euro single currency regime.

 

The law of averages state that you've got to get something right on occasions.

[JFKvsNixon]

What was their mantra, an end to boom and bust, if you judge them by their own standards you'd have to say that they were a massive failure.

 

They showed great promise, moved away from socialism, but around halfway through their time, they seemed to be more worried with holding onto power than leading the country.

[Titanic99]

With the benefit of hindsight, what aspects of their 13 years in office will go down in history as Labour's achievements in overall terms.

 

Try to consider all aspects, from effectiveness to value for money, righteousness to popularity.

 

Which aspects do you want considering and with what/whom are you comparing this against?

[crookesey]

Which aspects do you want considering and with what/whom are you comparing this against?

 

Please forgive me for my error, I foolishly thought that the OP had asked a question that forum members could answer or not.

[Joe-b-1]

Yep. We would be in an even worse state if the shower that is in now had been in power in my opinion; oh and no I'm not going to try and justify it as it's just that - MY OPINION !

 

At least we had the boom first with Labour if this lot had been in we would have had nothing - ever. If you're a little rich boy you will clearly be singing from a different hymn sheet. Before you come out with the I've worked hard all my life tosh - so have I.

[Andy]

They did some good things:

 

Minimum wage

Civil Partnerships

Minimum Income Guarantee for pensioners

Trying to make people better off by working through the Working Tax Credit

Peace in Northern Ireland (although John Major's government did a lot of the ground work)

 

They also did some bad things:

Letting the public sector grow like an out of control balloon

Illegal and unjustified was in Iraq

University tuition fees

 

(Those are a few examples, each list could be endless!)

 

I think they made some mistakes but, on the whole Britain in 2010 was a better place than it was in 1997.

[I1L2T3]

I wager you would get a very different response if had posed the same question in 2007.

 

But, no although I'm a Labour supporter I've come to realise that the 13 years of Labour power were very much a continuation of what went before. And what we have now is very much a continuation of what the last Labour government did. Nothing has fundamentally changed and nothing the coalition has done is fundamentally different to what Labour would have done - some half-hearted cuts, easy on the banks and big business, continuing privatisation of key services, PFI, national debt growing etc...

 

When you get all parties all occupying the centre ground and totally sold on neoliberal policies then these kinds of questions are pretty pointless.