Gordon Brown - the White Queen of British politics
Posted by Andrew Adams on November 11, 2008
Filed Under Politics |
Another day brings yet another eyebrow-raising pronouncement from Gordon Brown.
In Sunday’s Observer he was singing the praises of progressive governments like our own Labour one for having the right kind of policies to help people through the current financial crisis and denouncing the kind of economic policies which have got us into this situation. Steve Richards’ description of this in today’s Independent as “chutzpah and astonishing opportunism” is an understatement.
Now he is criticising the Tories for proposing national insurance cuts for businesses worth £2.6bn on the grounds that they are “unfunded”. This is after the government has already made unfunded cuts to personal allowances to get them out of the 10p tax hole, delayed petrol duty increases and reduced stamp duty, in total reducing the tax take by about £3.5bn, and are hinting at more tax cuts to come. What’s more they have abandoned their fiscal rules and promised a public spending splurge in order to stimulate the economy. And I’m assuming that they will ultimately get back the billions they have spent in bailing out the banking system.
And of course he continues to maintain the fiction that the UK is somehow better placed than other countries to weather the storm despite all the evidence being to the contrary.
I find myself so dumbstruck by the continuing absurdity of his pronouncements that in trying to imagine how he might justify them I could only think of the following -
“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again, draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said. “One can’t believe impossible things.”
“I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
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3 Responses to “Gordon Brown - the White Queen of British politics”
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He’s a fantasist isn’t he. All that guff abour being best placed to weather the financial storm. I don’t know if you remember Andrew but we had a bit of a debate debate over at Aaronovitch Watch a few months ago, before the big stockmarket meltdown occurred. I thought we were up shit creek then, but the scale of the equity collapse has really emphasised how an economy like ours, which is so heavily dependent on the City and with such astonishing levels of personal debt, is in big, big trouble. I don’t think a sterling crisis is out of the question in the near future and I think the expectations of a lot of economists that the economy will begin to pick up again at the end of 2009 is wildly optimistic. I don’t want to be a Cassandra but it really wouldn’t surprise me, given the level of personal indebtedness, the enormity of the asset bubbles and the structural weaknesses in our economy (not enough manufacturing, too much service) if we were to see the economy contract for 3-5 years. I hope I am wrong!
BTW did you see this article in last week’s Guardian by Prem Sikka. I think he’s a really good guy with some excellent ideas about how, if we are going to go down the route of increased public spending, we should proceed.
Although I knew we were a very unequal society I will still completely shocked by this draw dropping statistic in the article:
The UK state pension, as a percentage of average earnings, is about the worst in Europe. A single person’s pension is about 17% of average earnings compared with 57% in the European Union.
Makes you wonder what New Labour have been doing all these years…
Hi Bubby, yes, Brown’s inability to accept that Britain (and of course those who have been running it) is the author of its own misfortunes is as astonishing as it is infuriating. The same goes for the claim that we are better placed than other coutries to deal with the situation.
As you pointed out, the UK, with its high levels of debt and over inflated house prices was of course in exactly the worst possible position to deal with the sub-prime crisis and the general economic slump. Although other countries’ banking systems have suffered and there have been bailouts of individual institutions, with the exception of Iceland none have seen their systems come as close to complete collapse as the UK and US. And apart from UK banks being particularly exposed to sub-prime lending many of the derivative instruments based on this lending and which have proved to be so poisonous were devised in London.
It’s impossible to say just how bad the situation will get and how long it will last as we are in unknown territory. The sterling crisis you mention has pretty much already happened and will probably get worse. I still like to be fairly optimistic and think we’ll be on the way out by the end of next year but I could very well be wrong.
It is interesting that the US and UK are particularly hard hit because we have heard so many times in the past Brown lecture Europe on their economic “failings”, telling them they need to adopt the “anglo-saxon” model. Well those poor suffering Europeans with their high standards of living, workers’ rights, decent pensions etc. must be laughing now.
The article by Prem Sikka is interesting and he makes some good points about changes to the tax system. The thing is that if Brown realy does have serious redistributive tendencies he now has a perfect opportunity to indulge them without it being politically suicidal.
The tax on derivatives is a nice idea but like the “Tobin Tax” on foreign exchange transactions which has been mooted since the ERM crisis it is only really workable if adopted globally and I can’t see it happening.