Commentary: 'Don't forget what happened four years ago'

 
Chris Grayling4 May 2012

Always remember one thing when you judge these local election results. Don’t forget what happened four years ago.

In 2008 Labour’s ratings were in the basement. Gordon Brown had chickened out of an early election. The economy was turning down. Ken Livingstone looked like yesterday’s man.

So Boris won in London. And Conservatives won council seats in places we would normally have little hope in.

Four years on, with Labour’s ratings recovered and with the coalition facing the usual mid-term challenges, Labour were bound to make gains. But even now they have fallen short of where analysts said they should be.

UKIP have gained a few protest votes – but have won virtually no council seats.

Given all the challenges we face, Conservatives have done better than we expected.

Of course we have had a tough few weeks. But we knew we would face difficult times. We inherited nothing short of a national economic emergency – described by the Bank of England Governor as the most difficult economic crisis faced by Britain in modern times. Only this week he pointed a big finger of blame for what went wrong at the policies of Gordon Brown.

Tough times mean tough decisions – and you can’t take those without making many people unhappy. But we’re determined to carry on taking the right decisions for Britain’s future.

The alternative would be much worse. The much bigger challenges faced by countries like Spain and Greece – with fast-rising unemployment on a scale far worse than here – show the risks of not acting to tackle debt.

It’s going to take time to sort things out. No Government can just wave a wand and improve things. But unless we restore long term financial stability in Britain, business will lose confidence and go elsewhere.

Right now employers back our strategy. And they are starting to invest here. In car making in the Midlands. In steel production in the North East. In food manufacturing in the Home Counties.

If we abandon our strategy, and go back to one where we borrow money without a care in the world, then business and jobs will go elsewhere.

But this Government is about social change too. We are mid-way through the most radical change to welfare for generations. We want the welfare state to be a ladder up which people climb, and not a place in which they live. So we’re capping benefits, reassessing people on incapacity benefit to see if they can work, improving back to work support and making work pay.

We’re transforming education – slashing red tape for teachers, giving schools much greater freedom, allowing people to set up new schools in areas where the existing ones are failing.

We’ve provided tens of thousands of new apprenticeships, and we’re investing in science and research and development.

We’ve always been clear that there are no short term quick fixes.

And the question people should really ask is this: would this country really be better off if Ed Miliband was in Downing Street and Ken Livingstone in City Hall? They believe the solution to debt is more debt.

Local elections are never easy for Governments. Good local councillors undeservedly lose their seats because of tough decisions taken nationally.

But you never get to your goal if you are blown off course on the way. We are not going to be: we are going to stick firmly to our course.

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