Successive Conservative governments have been poor at managing the economy - Yorkshire Post Letters

The most recent Opinium poll tells us that for every 32 people who thought that Labour would run the economy better, 30 thought that the Conservatives would. So, neck and neck – but it should not be so because over the years the Tories have a track record of serious errors. Too many of the general public seem to be overlooking this.

I used to teach economics and still keep up my background reading – including blog posts by some of the top professors. These latter, to a man (and woman) would tell you that taking the long view, the UK economy has performed better when a Labour chancellor has been at the tiller.

All the internally generated economic crises have been when the Conservatives have been in power. For a start we have the inflation generated by “Barber the Printer” followed by the humiliation in 1992 of “Black Wednesday” when the pound was forced to leave the Exchange Rate Mechanism.

More recently it is widely agreed that Osborne's austerity policy 2010 onwards was fundamentally wrong-headed. To top it off, just six months ago, Kwarteng tanked the UK economy with his disastrous budget.

Successive Conservative governments have been very poor at managing the economy. Where they have excelled is in managing public perceptions.