16 blades,
Whilst you are right that Labour returned more MP’s than the Tories, or all other parties combined, my original point is still valid, more people voted Labour than Tory. 9,556,183 voted labour as opposed to 8.772,598 who voted Tory, so it actually IS exactly the same thing isn’t it?
As to your little private fantasy about the future of the Labour party, dream on. The Conservatives are the ones who now need to take a good hard look at themselves and decide where they go from here. Labour has the luxury of a third term for the first time in their history with a larger majority than Thatcher had in 1979 and are about to prove that New Labour is far more than just Tony Blair.
As to your summary, remove the Blair and Iraq war effect from voting habits and you will see a very different outcome. In a few years time those effects will have passed and the Conservatives will have a real battle on their hands again.
airborne-artist,
Seeing as it wasn’t an “English” election what is your point?
engineer(retard),
No I am not a politician, I am ex RAF GD(P) and am now a Barrister, I specialised in commercial law for quite some time, as such I was deeply involved with some companies who had a very keen interest in what happened to the Defence budget when RAB was first being proposed. This was in 1993 when RAB was first put forward as the new methodology for public spending accounting and reporting and prior to the 1995 White paper.
I simply do not have the time or inclination to detail RAB in all of its glory nor to declare my sympathies one way or the other.
However accruals accounting is a recognised financial reporting tool and went a very long way to making Govt departments more accountable in terms of their financial goals and overall departmental aims than previous expenditure reporting. There is no need for me to repeat what Squirrel 41 has written other than to add that in theory RAB should make it easier to plan for major expenditure as cost is accrued when capability is delivered rather than when that capability is either purchased or budgeted for. This is more complicated but far more sensible than mere cash accounting.
Below is an extract from an old finance committee I have dug up, it sums up what I am struggling to say in a few words.
“This new system involves expenditure and income being recorded in the year to which it directly relates, irrespective of whether the cash is paid out or received in that year. Also, capital expenditure is spread out over the useful life of an asset in the form of an annual depreciation charge rather than a simple capital procurement sum.”
Roland Pulfrew,
As to savings and efficiency measures of the PUS etc, this is a sum which will be reinvested in the Defence budget so it IS taken into account in the overall size of the budget. IF the Tories had won they were going to find the additional £2.7b of front line funding by doing exactly the same thing only on top of the Labour target of £2.8b.