Tony Blair was as 2nd best prime minister since Eden
As every self-respecting Englishman knows, what really matters is the price of housing, in particular by how much it has risen in price recently. Thus this seems the best metric by which to judge Tony Blair's premiership.The following table could be of use. From left to right it shows the starting house price in pounds of each PM's term in office[1], then the ending price in pounds, the peak price if it was higher than the ending price (this is only true for Mrs Thatcher), the % gain over the premiership, and the quarterly gain. The winner in teerms of total gain is Tony Blair, at 200%, followed by Mrs Thatcher, on 168%. In terms of quarterly gain it's Ted Heath, with an astonishing 5.8% per quarter. "Honest" John Major manages just 7% over his 7 years, or 0.27% a quarter. Pathetic.
The second table shows these figures adjusted for inflation. Ted's 5.8% a quarter falls to a still winning 3.34%. Tony Blair manages 2.24%. Mrs Thatcher only saw a 0.44% increase. Poor old Harold finds himself 2.51% a quarter lower in his 2nd term in office. John Major also saw falling prices. In real terms when Alec Douglas Home took office the average house price was £44,000, less than a quarter of today's price. In fact real house prices were relatively flat between Ted Heath and John Major (though you could also point out they doubled between 1964 and 1990, i.e, 26 years, and have done so again in 17)
[1] I took the first full quarter in which they were in power, so this might mean slightly different results than others you see.
[2] The bolding shows the peak, but it went wrong for JM in the second table and I can't be bothered to redo it.
Labels: Antithesis of Worstall's June experiment, house prices
posted by Matthew @ 6/28/2007 12:06:00 PM
Comments: 0
