This is a first for this blog. I couldn't have put this better myself, so I'm not going to tryWhat follows is an excellent review of Gordon Brown's new book by Supertzar. When you read Tony Blair's response to the coalition's plans, when you consider the ideas Frank Field had to transform welfare in Britain, when you look at the spectacular growth in ultimately ineffective tick-box City compliance, when you consider the £6bn the UK Exchequer lost from selling the country's gold reserves or the decimation of private sector pensions, when you consider which country alone had a run on its banks or look at the level of indebtedness and structural defecit in the UK, you begin to notice a thread.
It's quite clear that the country has paid a high price for the grandiose delusions of Gordon Brown. Whether delaying welfare reform, jacking up taxes with precious little to show for it, reducing the UK's competitiveness, increasing spending in huge (Labour voting) swathes of the country to Soviet levels or crushing incentives to create the wealth we need to both close the defecit and pay down the £1 in every £4 spent that we currently borrow, this deranged, abusive, out-of-control lunatic has his hands all over the crime scene.
Having failed the first test of democracy he has faced outside of his constituency, one might expect Gordon Brown to have spent his time reflecting on his 'contribution' to the UK. Or perhaps make amends by devoting his time to serving his constituents. Not a bit of it. At the date of publication, the poor deluded folk of Kircaldy and Cowdenbeath have been represented in parliament for a mere handful of the 200 odd days for which their MP has been paid. Instead, Gordon Brown has devoted his time to knocking off this 300-page exercise in personal exculpation.
As he notes in his introduction, Brown is neither a financial expert nor an economist. Which might explain, but does not excuse, his lamentable diagnosis of the causes of the financial meltdown he fomented. It was all bankers paying themselves too much apparently. If only they'd paid themselves 10% less, all would have been fine. What about if public sector payrises had been pegged to inflation or a certain Chancellor hadn't raided - and thus destroyed - private sector pensions or what if the banking regulation system that had worked for hundreds of years had been left in place or what if the asset bubble had received some attention by, say, increasing the banks' capital adequacy ratios?
You can take your pick of brilliant hindsight-derived ideas, Gordon, but ultimately, you were in charge and your delusions about abolishing boom and bust meant you spent so much of our money, we now have to borrow just to pay off the interest. Your diagnosis is utter delusion from start to finish.
Nurse, the screens please...
