With the British soldier death rate escalating in Helmand province, the public is losing faith in the government and its justification for being in Afghanistan 7.5 years after first being deployed.
The economy was losing jobs at a rate of close to 700, 000 jobs a month, credit markets were functioning poorly, and real GDP was falling at a breakneck pace.
It's widely recognized to have broken the back of the recession, to have reversed the situation where we were losing jobs at a rate of 750, 000 per month to one where we've created over 4.2 million private sector jobs.