Labour did not cause the economic crisis – it must counter the myth that it did | Kitty Ussher
The first priority of the next Labour leader should be to address head on the idea that the party was somehow responsible for the global financial crisis. Of course, it wasn't; the fact that so many people believe this is down to some brilliant politics from the Conservatives.
The combination of an exhausted Labour frontbench, an inward-looking leadership election, a recession, and an unfortunate joke note left on a Treasury desk set the scene for a confident Conservative party to ram that message home in 2010, and nothing Ed Balls said over the past few months could counteract that. Nor should we forget why the Conservatives were so eager to seize that chance: they saw the opportunity to wipe out the achievements of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, who demonstrated, over many years of hard graft, that the country's economic management was safe in Labour's hands.
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