Trevor Kavanagh shreds Brown's economic reputation
The former political editor of The Sun, Trevor Kavanagh, has a piece in that paper today which tears to pieces Gordon Brown's record of economic management.
I have considered Brown's economic reputation to be over-rated since his disastrous £5 billion a year raid on pension funds in 1997. In my book that was the worst single economic decision since Churchill put the country back on the Gold Standard eighty years ago. The £60 billion or so which Brown has extracted from pension funds since 1997 was probably the biggest single factor in wrecking this country's pension provision, up to that the best in Europe, which had been painstakingly accumulated during the term of the previous government.
But it is interesting to see that a wider range of people are coming to see that Gordon Brown is not just a failure as Prime Minister, he was not nearly as good as he always claims to have been as Chancellor.
Here is Kavanagh's article, published under the title BROKE BRITAIN
GORDON Brown’s days may be numbered as Prime Minister, but he can at least be sure of his record as one of our greatest Chancellors.
Not any more. That prize was brutally dashed from the PM’s fingers by his own Treasury successor last week.
Alistair Darling demolished Mr Brown’s reputation for prudence as surely as he shredded Gordon’s sacred Golden Rule on borrowing.
This was a landmark moment as catastrophic for Mr Brown as “Black Wednesday” was for John Major.
Indeed, it is worse. Saving the Pound hurt Major but it sowed the seeds for the longest period of unbroken growth in our history.
Last week’s U-turn simply exposed Mr Brown’s record as flawed and, in the long term, potentially disastrous for the UK.
Who says so? The message comes — unintentionally — from Mr Brown’s friend, the new Chancellor.
Mr Darling may be mild-mannered, but he is no fool. He knows he is carrying the can for the biggest and most irresponsible explosion in government spending ever.
In a frank interview with our sister paper, The Times, the Chancellor admits Britain is broke. We may have the world’s fifth largest economy but there isn’t a brass farthing to keep us afloat. We’re deep in debt and plunging deeper every day.
Mr Darling has told Cabinet ministers they must not ask for extra cash because he doesn’t have any.
What a humiliation after such a sustained economic boom.
Taxpayers have already coughed up a mind-boggling £1.2 THOUSAND BILLION for Gordon’s pet projects. Yet, if UK plc were a business, it would be bankrupt.
But unlike real businesses, its shareholders — taxpayers — can be made to dig into their personal finances to pay those debts which are mounting faster than bread and petrol prices.
Our national debt, similar to your mortgage, has hit a staggering £555BILLION.
It costs £31billion a year in interest payments alone — the same as we spend on defence.
In addition, State borrowing, like your credit card debt, is heading for £155billion. Who will pay for that? You and me, the taxpayer. Gordon’s Golden Rule may sound boring, but scrapping it will have consequences.
It will damage Britain’s financial reputation, hit the Pound, increase pressure on inflation and keep mortgages dear. Gordon and Alistair insist we, along with everyone else, are being clobbered by a global surge in oil and food prices.
But most countries with our remarkable era of prosperity would have put a little aside for a rainy day.
Australia, for instance, paid off its national debt and stored a multi-billion-dollar surplus. They can boost their economy in lean times with tax cuts if needed.
Yes, Australia is minerals rich. But it isn’t one of the world’s five allegedly richest economies.
When Gordon Brown walked into the Treasury, Britain had a strong economic structure needing a little TLC. Tories accuse him of failing to fix the roof when the sun was shining. It’s worse than that.
Mr Brown was a DIY Chancellor who rejected expert advice, knocked down load-bearing financial walls and hollowed out traditional support mechanisms.
So we ended up with Northern Rock, a pensions collapse and the disastrous merger of tax and customs, to mention but a few.
He tinkered with the wiring but failed to rebuild worn-out systems and created an NHS monster which costs more to feed than it delivers.
Then he tunnelled under the foundations, leaving piles of debt all over the place and a risk that the whole enterprise will be condemned.
Labour may mean well, but as the 10p tax fiasco proved, it is shockingly incompetent.
How else do you explain 658 missing laptops at the Ministry of Defence, the blunders over Equitable Life or the unbelievable shambles over school exam papers?
And they were only last week’s shockers.
In his Times interview, Mr Darling says the question on voters’ lips at the next election will be: “Who can get us out of this?”
Mystifyingly, he seems to think the answer will be Labour!
I have considered Brown's economic reputation to be over-rated since his disastrous £5 billion a year raid on pension funds in 1997. In my book that was the worst single economic decision since Churchill put the country back on the Gold Standard eighty years ago. The £60 billion or so which Brown has extracted from pension funds since 1997 was probably the biggest single factor in wrecking this country's pension provision, up to that the best in Europe, which had been painstakingly accumulated during the term of the previous government.
But it is interesting to see that a wider range of people are coming to see that Gordon Brown is not just a failure as Prime Minister, he was not nearly as good as he always claims to have been as Chancellor.
Here is Kavanagh's article, published under the title BROKE BRITAIN
GORDON Brown’s days may be numbered as Prime Minister, but he can at least be sure of his record as one of our greatest Chancellors.
Not any more. That prize was brutally dashed from the PM’s fingers by his own Treasury successor last week.
Alistair Darling demolished Mr Brown’s reputation for prudence as surely as he shredded Gordon’s sacred Golden Rule on borrowing.
This was a landmark moment as catastrophic for Mr Brown as “Black Wednesday” was for John Major.
Indeed, it is worse. Saving the Pound hurt Major but it sowed the seeds for the longest period of unbroken growth in our history.
Last week’s U-turn simply exposed Mr Brown’s record as flawed and, in the long term, potentially disastrous for the UK.
Who says so? The message comes — unintentionally — from Mr Brown’s friend, the new Chancellor.
Mr Darling may be mild-mannered, but he is no fool. He knows he is carrying the can for the biggest and most irresponsible explosion in government spending ever.
In a frank interview with our sister paper, The Times, the Chancellor admits Britain is broke. We may have the world’s fifth largest economy but there isn’t a brass farthing to keep us afloat. We’re deep in debt and plunging deeper every day.
Mr Darling has told Cabinet ministers they must not ask for extra cash because he doesn’t have any.
What a humiliation after such a sustained economic boom.
Taxpayers have already coughed up a mind-boggling £1.2 THOUSAND BILLION for Gordon’s pet projects. Yet, if UK plc were a business, it would be bankrupt.
But unlike real businesses, its shareholders — taxpayers — can be made to dig into their personal finances to pay those debts which are mounting faster than bread and petrol prices.
Our national debt, similar to your mortgage, has hit a staggering £555BILLION.
It costs £31billion a year in interest payments alone — the same as we spend on defence.
In addition, State borrowing, like your credit card debt, is heading for £155billion. Who will pay for that? You and me, the taxpayer. Gordon’s Golden Rule may sound boring, but scrapping it will have consequences.
It will damage Britain’s financial reputation, hit the Pound, increase pressure on inflation and keep mortgages dear. Gordon and Alistair insist we, along with everyone else, are being clobbered by a global surge in oil and food prices.
But most countries with our remarkable era of prosperity would have put a little aside for a rainy day.
Australia, for instance, paid off its national debt and stored a multi-billion-dollar surplus. They can boost their economy in lean times with tax cuts if needed.
Yes, Australia is minerals rich. But it isn’t one of the world’s five allegedly richest economies.
When Gordon Brown walked into the Treasury, Britain had a strong economic structure needing a little TLC. Tories accuse him of failing to fix the roof when the sun was shining. It’s worse than that.
Mr Brown was a DIY Chancellor who rejected expert advice, knocked down load-bearing financial walls and hollowed out traditional support mechanisms.
So we ended up with Northern Rock, a pensions collapse and the disastrous merger of tax and customs, to mention but a few.
He tinkered with the wiring but failed to rebuild worn-out systems and created an NHS monster which costs more to feed than it delivers.
Then he tunnelled under the foundations, leaving piles of debt all over the place and a risk that the whole enterprise will be condemned.
Labour may mean well, but as the 10p tax fiasco proved, it is shockingly incompetent.
How else do you explain 658 missing laptops at the Ministry of Defence, the blunders over Equitable Life or the unbelievable shambles over school exam papers?
And they were only last week’s shockers.
In his Times interview, Mr Darling says the question on voters’ lips at the next election will be: “Who can get us out of this?”
Mystifyingly, he seems to think the answer will be Labour!
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