Apart from the usual suspects of George 'Baby Face' Osbourne, David 'Goody Two Shoes' Cameron, Vince 'The Enforcer' Cable and Nick 'Who?' Clegg, this weekend we had several political heavyweights of the past joining the fray largely to urinate on Gordon Brown's week of supposed fireworks.
Blasts From The Pasts
In the Telegraph, Norman Lamont was calling the PM an 'Arsonist posing as a Fireman' which was a description I had conjured with and still doesn't seem right as it tends to indicate that somewhere along the line Brown knows or knew what he was doing. It stills seems to me he lit a fire and rather than dousing it he's trying to stamp it out with his bare feet. Well something along those lines.
William Hague is given an interview and he's reminded of his beer-swilling, laddish days when he precociously addressed the Tory Conference as a thoroughly snotty 16 year old and told Maggie what for. Being of my generation he has one of those faces that Chris Tarrant would describe as 'The sort of face you would never tire of hitting,' or 'Looking much better with a fat lip'. It's always better to use someone else's descriptions but it was that McKinseyian Yorkshire drone that always annoyed me which sounded as if he was always looking down his snub-nose at everyone - probably was - but at least he married a Welsh, good taste even if it was a might contrived.
Ken Clarke has joined Hague as a Front Row man of experience and a little more girth. A much more believable beer drinker and former Chancellor of some incompetence he was commenting on the gleeful undercover work by The Sunday Times who had uncovered a 'Shock, Horror' scoop that was so obvious it was spine-chilling - 4 Labour Peers had allegedly indicated they were willing to take money to amend laws. Being of the naive type I actually thought this went on all the time in their roles as consultants or Non-Executive Directors and in The House of Commons it usually involves drinking minibars dry with your 'Big Brother Celebrity' wife and staying at your benefactors' expense in a swanky hotel. Somehow the benefactor was omitted from any charges of corruption in that case even though he openly admitted it. Given we have just witnessed Big Ken's opposite number, Lord Mandelson, somewhow omitting to let his EC colleagues know that he had met Oleg Deripaska prior to a crucial vote on aluminium tariffs, it now seems Mandy was much more qualified for the job as a Peer than I had previously thought as he has plenty of 'form'. Big Ken was very diplomatic when he fumbled for words and described what the Peers had allegedly done as 'Some might even call it corruption'. With that kind of biting comment, he's going to make a big impression on the Front Bench.
Dominic Lawson - OK I thought it was his Dad when I started writing this - was putting rabbit punches in and moaning that the PM is writhing around and showing his incompetence but going slightly further on the insult front. He claims that Brown, despite his widely reputed intellectual powers, is in fact rubbish at adding up and absolutely inept as a financial wizard being actually academically unqualified. Further, he goes on to agree with my habitual gripe that it was a flawed financial model in Britain that caused our version of the Credit Crunch and not small town America's sub-prime issues - it was only a matter of time before it all imploded on us and it had all to do with our spending associated with equity increase not the nation's apparent wealth.
And I thought he was just a decent cook. Oh, that's his rather lush sister.
Facts, Hercule, Facts!
'Facts!' was the watchword of Inspector Clouseau and this week we had some beauties. The pound has dropped 25% against a basket of currencies which is the worst devaluation in a century and from the pen of just about every reporter and former politician came Gordon Brown's old quote, 'A weak currency is the sign of weak economy which in turn is a sign of a weak Government'.
I am sure the PM had a fabulous weekend chattering away with his 'War Cabinet' of self-interested Investment Bankers who I pointed out had advised for a £30bn equity for debt swap for RBS in the second bail out and just days before the announcement the ban on shorting was miraculously, not in any waysuspiciously, lifted to allow RBS shares to be shorted so heavily that they lost 67% of their value on the day of the bail out announcement and ensure the Government had poured the £30bn into a 'Drain' valued in total at £5bn. If I can see the connection then surely someone else can? You mean these 'Advisers' are actually thinking about all those poor souls losing their jobs or having their houses repossessed? Yeah, sure.
The real nasty facts were that business confidence as measured by the Lloyds TSB newly publicly-owned survey has gone down 32% which is the lowest ever recorded by them which didn't stop their CEO, Eric Daniels, paying himself £12.3m in 2007, repossessions have gone up 92% compared to 1997 when the 'Brown-Blair Dynamic Duo' first assumed Presidential powers, unemployment is now 6.1% which is higher when the duo took over and the really gob-smacking one was that 440% is now the proportion of Britain's GDP which is made up by bank balance sheets - i.e. the taxpayers' liability. Woohoo!
The talk of Britain's solvency was on most 'Tory inflamed' reporters' tongues. Rumours that the credit agency, Standard & Poor, was going to downgrade British Sovereign debt was denied but Spain has had theirs cut and they are in a better borrowing position than us. With our Current Account Deficit at £7.7bn there is an argument that UK Government bonds will not sell for fear of us defaulting and that if the crisis gets worse then all our decreasing tax revenues will not cover our losses. There is a dawning realisation of the vision of Britain going to the IMF for money at Third World rates and the spectre of a 'Banana Republic' Island springs to mind or the equivalent of all of us following one of those Utopian TV adverts and despite our bad payment record rolling up our debts and signing the rights to all our possessions away for a lovely single debt repayment option that would bankrupt us if we default.
The General Gist
The general idea was that it was a free-for-all on the PM. His Financial credentials and credibility of the last 10 years were called into question and specifically his handling of the Bank Bail Outs which has stuttered and caused widespread jitters in the stock markets but worse still a great deal of external concern that Britain is slowly slithering toward insolvency. Many replayed Brown's own soundbites which are now becoming empty brags and his puerile taunting and bullying of previous Chancellors coming back to haunt him as they turned the tables on him.
I never, ever thought he was a good Chancellor. I think he had a false boom and his attempts to correct it show his basic lack of understanding of how economics works, not that I'm anyone qualified but even I knew what had made our economy apparently stable. Even I knew that this recession would hit us and harder because of our idiotically out of control housing market, our borrowing levels and the lunacy of the Banks as they fuelled the false boom. Even I know this was not CAUSED by sub-prime mortgages in the US - we caused it.
However, I have sympathy with him. I could not solve these problem. But I know one thing - I would not ask the people who directly contributed to the problem to come up with the solutions to it. We got another show of City greed this week over RBS shares and shorting - a very obvious outcome of the second bail out and the lift on the ban on shorting curiously so close together, yet for some reason the learned people allowed it.
It's what you get when you ask bankers to solve the problems they created - self interest. Brown fell into his own trap - again - and for that I have zero sympathy.
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