Good old Guardian - A remarkable piece of writing trying to dredge up a glimmer of hope for the most unenvied man in the UK. It's been a struggle but you have found the odd thing that (on the most optimistic reading) hasn't turned out quite as badly as the worse pessimists predicted.

However, on the debit side....................

Would you give a cowboy builder who created irreversible structural damage to your house the responsibility of completely rebuilding it? I don't think so.

There is no way Brown stands a chance in the next election because of his totally abysmal record both as Chancellor and Prime Minister. Granted Cameron often gives the impression of doing his best to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory but the countries in the UK will not forget Brown's many cock ups and will not forgive.

Labour will be hammered.

"The electorate's gravest concerns are found on economic terrain"

Indeed they are but your analysis seems to cling to the life raft of assuming Brown's competence in this area whereas the truth is now there for all to see- all bluster, no delivery.

Hopeless? Surely you meant clueless.

Gordon Brown, Alaister Darling & the Guardian Editor are like the delusional fools on Britain's Got Talent.

With taxes set to sky rocket, petrol about to hit £1.25 a LITRE and domestic fuel bills to rise by 50% within the next two years, we're going straight back to negative growth.

Today we live in a society which has forgotten that the wealth creators, as opposed to those that either push money around or work for the State, are part of a shrinking minority and the UK economy can now only be sustained by massive public debt.

Coupled to this, education is in a worse state now than at any time in living memory with many university graduates even unable to spell. We received a written job application recently from a one with an honours degree that contained no less than 13 spelling and grammatical errors on one page.

Labour will be hammered.

Be careful what you wish for. George Osborne has convinced most of us that he's clueless.

I'm convinced that the Guardian has it right this time. Absent any shock events, employment & perceived job security will be the determining factor come the elections.

And cast ye the useless servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 25:30

The highest level of part-time working reduces to decrease in demand to be a key economic index today.

Noël Coward once sang 'there are bad times just around the corner, and the outlook?s absolutely vile'. He could have been thinking of Brown's Britain. When the Dear Leader said he had conquered 'boom and bust' we did not realize he meant that from henceforth only 'bust' would be on offer. His New Year pledge to 'go for growth' and a decade of 'fairly shared' prosperity are the words of a true fantasist. The British economy has shrunk more under New Labour than at any time since the dark post-war days of WWI. Alistair Darling's preposterous Pre-Budget Report ludicrously claimed that a decade of solid economic achievements had equipped Britain to weather the global economic storm. I am amazed such drivel could be delivered with a straight face. The fact is that we are drowning in a sea of over-regulation, tormented by an opaque and unpredictable tax system, and burdened by a parasitic, toxic public sector of monstrous proportions. Thank God the Nasty Decade is gone and hopefully the departure of New Labour will not be far behind.

robbinghood

31 Dec 2009, 12:31AM

Would you give a cowboy builder who created irreversible structural damage to your house the responsibility of completely rebuilding it? I don't think so.

_______________________________

Well you might, if the alternative was another cowboy builder who was even worse. Prior to the crash, the Tories were arguing for even MORE deregulation of the banks. They were caught cold by the crisis, were silent for ages, had no response. Brown, for all his faults, at least acted swiftly enough to avert disaster.

Not that I'm advocating NuLab. Just that the Tories do not fill one with confidence either.

How any rational person can view the prospect of five more years of Gloomy Gordon without profound despair is beyond belief. Never has there been a figure who has done more damage to Britain in his appalling time in public life.

"Decade of shared prosperity"

My wife and I had a serious conversation about our children a couple of days ago. About how there lives might pan out and how we might provide the best start for them. They are eight and six.

This was a serious conversation between a couple that want to do the best by their kids. We are people who generally do what they say and are reasonably seriously minded not prone to spontaneous outbursts of emotion or looking before we leap.

At the end of this conversation we had agreed that if Labour get in again we would take the children to Denmark because we have familial connections and it may be the best chance they have of experiencing a fullfiling life.

To us it is hopeless if Labour stay in power.

No I don't want a continuation of the current Labour administation, but I certainly do not want a Conservative administration either. Perhaps the time has come to emigrate to a country that exhibits some sanity.

I'm not surprised by the article. The Guardian after all has a duty to rally the New Labour troops for the battle ahead.

However it does seem a bit delusional.

This article should ensure much profit from Government advertising for gender equality consultants or gay-rights protection officers for the coming year.

You really do live in hope, even if many like me do not vote for any of the morally corrupt big three you will see such an implosion of the Labour vote that the Tories will win not by their popularity but by so few voting Labour or many voting for alternative parties to show their disgust at this most rotten of rotten Parliaments.

Surely the best solution is the replacement of Brown? Some people say that the public won't stomach another Labour leadership change but most don't care for internal party politics, they want something sound and optimistic to vote for once every five years.

Brown has a legacy as possibly the worst Chancellor in history and is proving to be one of the weakest PMs too. For example he tried to sack his Chancellor but Darling stood his ground and Brown had to back down. Mocked by the media, pitied by the public, he's the primary reason David Cameron's is getting such an easy ride.

"Labour's upbeat claims could prove hard to sustain..."

'Hard'..?

In the same way as the Titanic found it 'a little tricky' to stay afloat, I presume?

Like most people, I don't understand large-scale international economics but, like the Queen, I am puzzled and annoyed that those in the government who should understand such things seem not to have foreseen the recent economic shock and that they had not put measures in place to anticipate it ("anticipate" in the proper sense of to take measures beforehand to ensure that the consequences will not be harmful - like anticipating the rain by taking an umbrella).

There seem to be some indicators that Britain suffered worse than some comparable countries. The exchange rate of the pound against the euro is one. The pound fell. Should it have?

Labour/Brown might do better than expected in the election, but not because of Brown's non-stewardship of the economy, which has been wreckless (running a budget deficit in boom years should disqualify any chancellor, not to mention the lack of operational excellence highlighted by all those wrongly paid benefits (a cool few billion pounds)).

Labour might spring a poll surprise helped by abundant use of postal votes in labour marginals, while a big slice of the electorate has been bribed by beneifts and/or all the new and very productive public sector jobs with luxurious pensions (benefits recipients and public sector employees easily add up to over 10 million, even if you adjust for the double counting of employees receiving benefits).

If you want a more accurate assessment of the damage NuLab and the McSaviour of World have wrought on Britain you should look at the article in this morning's Times.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rosemary_righter/article6971960.ece

A few highlights

" the worst non-wartime year for the British economy since . . .

Not 1979, the Winter of Discontent, Not the postwar 1940s, Not even 1931 but the steepest fall since 1921 when Britain was physically and materially drained by the Great War.

The Treasury estimates that some 5 per cent of productive capacity has been wiped out. Per capita GDP is falling like a stone.

In real terms, this year?s £178 billion deficit is about twice as large as it was when Healey turned to the IMF, and the Treasury does not expect to get overall public debt back down to its target 40 per cent of GDP until well into the 2030s"

This is the legacy of the great master. It makes you wonder just who's side this bunch of goons were on. In any other country they would have been tried for treason. Not being considered for re-election

And that's only the economy. They have trashed our society, ruined our children's lives, wrecked our culture, allowed the financial sector to run riot (and then rewarded them with £trillions), lied their way into illegal wars, ruined our name in the world. They have turned us into one the most unsustainable countries in the world and built up massive problems that can probably never be repaired.

And this all with the favourable environment they inherited. And they want us to trust them to repair the havoc they have created.

If this clown and his henchmen is re-elected, this country will be a third-world state before long.

Then God help us all.

'pocket-book' voting? is this a little notebook one carries around to make shopping lists and such like?

This is the UK we vote with our wallets.

Mr Editor use a UK-US English checker. There's probably an ap for that on your mobile.

Or do the Islington/Hampstead Guardianistas literally speak a different language to the rest of us?

I could only listen to a couple of minutes of Broon's sickening cant. As per stuck record usual he's blaming the US mortgage fiasco and airbrushing the joined at the hip nature of kleptocratic finance.

Edward Cahill, the banker in charge of collateralised debt obligations at Barclays Capital, resigned last week, and others in his department are understood to have departed. The best known is John-Paul Parker, who is credited as the inventor of "SIV-lite", the controversial structured investment vehicles at the centre of the worries in financial markets.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/aug/31/money

Naturally he totally elides responsibility for catastrophic regulatory failure although there is an excellent case for saying that he understood precisely the consequences and he made the ultimate Faustian bargain. Why, pray, were housing costs excluded from the inflation calculation? It was Broon who chose a bent measuring stick. Did it not occur to him that an increase of 65% in personal debt(2001-2007) was no miracle, but a huge bubble? It was Broon and Balls who toadied the bankers in a quite loathsome manner.

Broon says that austerity must lead to "unfairness", given his debt mountains heritage austerity(if we're lucky) is inevitable, but in any case this was not the experience of the 45 government. Broon's bubble economics has led to unprecedented inequality in any event

The notion of a "decade of prosperit"y is simply risible. There are only two possibilities here, either his kleptocrat City familiars are cooking up another massive scam or Broon is insane. It is obviously the latter, we all know the country is hopelessly screwed.

Then there is the whole war criminality issue, where naturally he will not be giving evidence to Chilcot until after the election.

When we had a more responsive political system Brown and Blair would have ended their "careers" on the block at Tower Hill.

Brown's problem is that he continued with Tory economic policies. Replacing him with Tories who really believe in policies that have been shown to fail is not the answer.

We have just seen the end of a Tory monetarist bubble that was based on putting the people of the UK in debt and an overinflated pound that led to a flood of imports destroying our local businesses.

At present Wall Street and the Pentagon have got Obama and Brown by the testicles. The question is whether they've got them by both or one, or one each. Obama's got time to extricate both of his, but Brown can only manage one in the time he's got.

Instead of trying to revive a brain dead, well past it's sell by date, non elected Prime Minister ,the Guardian should be campaigning for a change in leadership, the only way Labour can avoid a hundred seat or so defeat.
The thought of Cameron and 'we're all in this together' taking over the economy is terrifying, could lead to revolution in the streets.
Hmmm, on secnd thoughts.....

There is a big difference between being the cause of something and that something happening on your watch. Until the Brown bashers can provide evidence that Dr. Brown was the primary cause of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and personally created the trillions of toxic debt that brought the banking system to the verge of collapse they ought to shut up.

If it hadn´t been for Dr. Brown? intervention, millions of people would have lost their savings, their bank accounts would have been frozen and businesses would have closed their doors. Then the Brown bashers would really have had something to complain about.

As Andrew Rawnsley pointed out the other day, the British electorate don´t do gratitude, so he´s probably had it anyway, but I think history will prove him to be a far better PM than many people are prepared to admit.

Well on re-reading page 22,786 of the Lisbon Treaty I notice that as of 1st June 2010 all EU citizens will be required to maintain a pocket notebook to report on any fellow citizens they observe smoking, putting out ther bins on the wrong day, allowing grown up relatives to stay with them instead of being enslaved to buy to let landlords, breathing out carbon dioxide and warming the plant and all other such infractions.

So I unreservedly apologise to the editor for my mistake.

Mr Brown, however, is right to try and make the economy central to the political battle ahead.

Well, yes, I think he is. But that's a bit odd coming from you - because I think his record of sheer incompetence should be the central platform of the campaign to unseat him.

The 1983 and 1992 elections saw Tory incumbents triumph over untrusted opponents in the midst of slumps. Despite squeezed incomes, the electorate felt that handing the reins to the devil they didn't know might have made them even poorer.

And they were probably right. At the time, the electorate probably remembered what happens when you vote in a Labour government - it makes you poorer. It's something that was forgotten in 1997, but just look at what happened ... hereafter it won't be forgotten again.

@englishhermit

There is a big difference between being the cause of something and that something happening on your watch. Until the Brown bashers can provide evidence that Dr. Brown was the primary cause of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and personally created the trillions of toxic debt that brought the banking system to the verge of collapse they ought to shut up.

Of course Broon & Co were responsible. It was normally argued that the UK was the single most important banking and financial centre in the world. Who do you imagine was responsible for its regulation and control? It was NuLab with significant parliamentary majorities throughout the period. NuLab was happy to take all the credit for the UK financial services sector when it was (allegedly) successful, but then deny all responsibility when its true face and the results of its deeds emerged.

Dr Brown (PhD thesis "The Labour Party and political change in Scotland, 1918-1929: the politics of five elections" 1982) as you fondly call him was hardly an economist.. He's what the rest of us mere mortals call 'a slippery politician' - quick to take credit and slow to take the blame.

When the economic stats roll in early next year, the Conservatives will be in panic mode. They don't want good news to spoil their election plans.

We have a rigged, two party first past the post electoral system with two neocon, free-market, modernisation loving cabals of university educated rich kids, both determined to protect the wealthy elite minority who actually run this country. It matters not a toss which of this lot get in. Nothing has really changed in 30 years and it is not going to do so in the near future. Perhaps in about 30 years people will demand change. But probably only after one of the newly built, privately owned nuclear power stations fucks up through inadequate mainenance, poorly trained employees and greedy shareholders, causing most of the South Coast to resemble Chernobyl. Until then its X factor as usual.

The Brown/Cameron Factor ?
The dilemma facing the British electorate is whether they should go for a politician with Hugh Grant looks , with policies as realistic as most of Hugh Grant's movie plots , or whether they should stick with "dull &dour one eyed Gordon" as some parts of the Tory orientated media would make Gordon Brown out to be (and that's just the BBC! , let alone the views of Sky/Fox news) . The fact of the matter is that David Cameron's policies do have the "thinly veiled" similarities to Thatcherism , with the difference being that it is a different leader intending to implement them , with a slight Blairite/Thatcherite spin . According to the Conservative party , Britain is in the same position that Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan left it . With that being the case , then David Cameron will have exactly the same policies that Margaret Thatcher did . But on e problem which David Cameron will face is that unlike his Conservative party mentor , he does not have many industries to sell off anymore , therefore there is no possibility to sell of the family jewels to foreign investors for as much revenue which Thatcher managed sustain . Cameron has no realistic policies to tackle high unemployment. He will have unemployment levels at the same rate as Thatcher did , with perhaps another Job training Scam (sorry I meant scheme. honest!) which the last Conservative Government ran , which meant that unemployed people were doing real jobs being paid unemployment benefit or supplementary allowance , so that the employers who "volunteered" to run the scheme would not have to pay them real wages which would be up to twice or thrice the unemployment benefit rate . Of Course it made it look as if people were working when in fact those people were on the scheme , because they were unemployed and needed a job ,were not being paid any wages ,even though they were working with company employees .
We have faced the same problems with regards to house repossessions a s we did under the last Conservative Government , and David Cameron ha s not offered any sort of comfort to those who are still in danger of losing their homes , in the Conservative party pre election manifesto. Despite all its glitz and glamour , the conservative party policies do not offer any kind of comfort to the low income people in Britain , which is now nearly one fifth of the British working population ( a conservative estimate,as opposed to liberal estimate). This should leave both Brown and Cameron with an uncomfortable feeling and should also hit home why the MP expenses scandal has infuriated the public and will continue to do so . However the culture within the Conservative party would certainly not suggest that David Cameron is being sincere about any reforms of MP expenses as , Conservative party members have been the most boisterous in resisting any changes , and I have doubts over Mr Cameron's own sincerity regarding any action to carry out any changes , if he were to be elected Prime Minister . What makes it even more of a farce of David Cameron is his comparison to Liberal party ;" Liberal Dave"? or merely a ploy to attract votes from people that he will ignore if Cameron elected to Government ?
There are too many if s and buts about Cameron and as he remains untried and untested in a crisis , Gordon Brown should be given the edge in attempting to get the United kingdom though one of the most trying times in its economic and political history . It should also be remembered that while Britain faces its "worst case of Bankruptcy since the late 1970's" the FT share index does not suggest that the stock market is in the grips of a 1920's style panic . Perhaps the Conservative party protest a bit too loud? It should also not be forgotten that the banking crisis actually started under the last Conservative Government , when a certain Nick Leeson created black wednesday by bringing the Barings bank to its knees and wiping out millions of the shares board . There are still hundreds of Nick Leesons in the Banking industry , the question is whop is better equipped to deal with them? Will be Gordon (the one to blame ) Brown? Or David (the b anker's friend) Cameron ? Perhaps Hugh Grant or Jeremy Clarkson should be the real alternatives ? After all they have more in common with David Cameron than Gordon Brown .

Where was The Bottler in The Day Of The Triffids? Of course, it took him 12 days to decide on his favourite biscuit, so I'm not surprised that he legged it when someone had the temerity to ask "Well, Prime Minister, what shall we do about these Triffidy things?"

@englishhermit: I think you've fallen for some spin. It was never a case of either saving the banks or everyone losing their savings, not that black and white. It's classic government spin to scare people in order to justify policy, whether its golden bank bailouts, 45 minute WMDs etc. With the banks you could easily have protected the savings but left professional investors to take a hit on their loans to the likes of RBS or Northern Rock but they were bailed out in full.

As for Brown causing the crisis, he didn't. But he was a key player, certainly a member of the cast in the film. And cast members get credits. Remember AIG's troubled operations were in "light touch" London, not New York. Many of the trades that brought down Lehman were banned by the SEC but permitted by the FSA.

Did one man cause all this? Of course not, it was a systemic problem. But who was in charge of the system in Britain, whether the public finances or the tripartite regulatory system? Like others I am somewhat surprised to see the man is still in office, it's not worked and I really think he'd be suited to a more technical role, maybe as head of the World Trade Organisation or a senior position at the World Bank.

But this is not an endorsement of any other politicians, Cable was right but ignored by his party, he was more famous for ballroom dancing. The Tories internally prayed for house prices to fall but they couldn't say this in public and they were equal, if not greater, cheerleaders of the City and the debt explosion.

What I don't understand is why so many are still willing to back Brown. He's surely an electoral disaster. My only suggestion is that there's no obvious candidate behind him and that nobody wants to inherit the Labour leadership in case they lose the election next year.

@joedoone

Where was The Bottler in The Day Of The Triffids? Of course, it took him 12 days to decide on his favourite biscuit, so I'm not surprised that he legged it when someone had the temerity to ask "Well, Prime Minister, what shall we do about these Triffidy things?"

I watched 'The Day Of The Triffids' I don't remember seeing Brown in it.

I do remember someone who looked like Cameron with a lot of spin.

jamescameron
What planet are you living on:over-regulated, over-taxed? ??

Instead of regurgitating the Cameroons fantasies ask yourself this question. If the financial sector had been more comprehensively regulated would we be in the mess we are today?

About taxes - at one time Barclay's had 100 people working in a department whose sole function was to produce tax evasion/avoidance schemes. What does this tell, you about the British tax system? Profit from asset stripping by hedge funds was allowed to be categorised as 'capital gains', thereby being liable for tax at a rate of 18% as opposed to the rate applied to income of 40%.
Lots of other examples, not forgetting the celebrated off-shore accounts and non dom status.

It's not just a matter of giving Gordon Brown a good kicking (although he does deserve one) the crux of the matter is the ideology that legitimised the asset strippers, risk takers and the industrial production of toxic securitisation and the whole edifice of the EMH. Eventually we end up in situation where those who are most vociferous in claiming the sanctity of 'private property' and fulminate against Government subventions to the less well off, cannot wait to receive hand-outs to prop up their toxic balance sheets. Clearly a case of privatisation of profit and socialisation of loss.

We are in this mess because of deregulated markets, casino economics and short-term profit maximisation. If you must personalise the responsibilty for this state of affairs, then point the finger at General Pinochot' soul mate, Margaret Thatcher.

Happy New Year to you and to all the CIF'ers.

The parrot is DEAD why persist in such sycophantic botty licking even thinking Labour have a hope.
Fun to read though a dinosaur political creed followed by a dying Socialist PC brigade loyal to the Guardian all soon to pop their clogs.
What then for the future of this paper?

I think you've fallen for some spin. It was never a case of either saving the banks or everyone losing their savings, not that black and white.

Yes it was absolutely that black & white. If Brown hadn't taken a stand on Northern Rock/ Icelandic investments, every non-UK entity would have repatriated all their assets & cash. UK investors & savers would have been wiped out.

Brown got the courts to set a precedent that prevented such action by foreign entities which stopped the rot. He then prevented a global panic by supporting the UK financial sector & persuading other nations to do the same.

Anybody who suggests that Brown should have let the banks crash & allowed the market to sort it out is, quite frankly, not dealing off a full deck.

Dorothy, click you heels and make a wish.

I wish Gordon Brown was in Kansas...I wish

Cameron is on record as advocating all senior public sector jobs being advertised on line, in order to make savings and to widen access - rather than posting them in The Guardian. The Guardian as a very vested interest in trying to prevent a Conservative Government.

Two of my closest 8 friends are being made redundant wef 4 January and have no jobs to go to. Two others in the group were made redundant in the 2nd half of 2009; one is still unemployed, the other has started a home-based business. I expect, after the Christmas market and seasonal jobs end, employment will go up substantially at the end of January and February. I live in the South East - I am sure things are far worse elsewhere.

GammaFunction 31 Dec 2009, 7:54AM

I've been telling my sons (20 and 18) for several years that their best hope of a reasonable life is probably to emigrate as soon as they've qualified. If Labour get in again it will become a dead cert. With any luck, I'll be able to sell up and follow them out.

The prime minister's new year promise of a "decade of shared prosperity" will provoke wry smiles.

Wry smiles ?

I think you've mistaken that facial expression for "Grimaces of sheer anger and frustration"

Just call the bloody General Election and let's get on with our lives minus the appallingly repressive New Stassi Government that we are all suffering under.

Amberstar:

How much are the Labour Party paying you to 'glib - on' about how great Labour are?

You would have made an excellent Berlin radio announcer - circa 1945.

"Mein fellow strugglers in the great strife against zee hated Tories; Der Fuhrer has today announced from his Downing Street Bunker, yet another great victory for our glorious Nue Labourisch Reich - vee haf reduced yet more of the perimeter of our city to ruins by our careful management of explosives , thus making it harder for the invading hordes of the ungrateful electorate to storm our clearly unassailable lead in the polls"

"Remember, Vee are zee ones winning this war . . . and any Party member saying otherwise will be shot on sight by our roving bands of GestapoCifGauleiters"

"Herr Barry Sheerman - You haf been varned"

Looking at the comments, it is clear the Guardian remains firmly in touch with it's readers instincts.

Good grief!

And this is the response from a broadly left-leaning reader-base.

Now imagine the response if this editorial was published in a mainstream newspaper - a paper people still buy in large numbers, like The Sun or The Mail.

The editor would lose his job.

Just like Brown will lose his.

While the causes are a matter of speculation, Mr Brown can plausibly argue that his mix of flexibility in individual markets and proactive management of the economy as a whole has helped to smooth the roughest edges

Can anyone tell me what the HELL this means? And what on earth this "economy" that Brown is supposedly so good at managing consists of?

Clearly (looks around for job..... yep, still none) it's nothing to do with me and the millions like me being able to go out and use our abilities and make some money and stop having to live on benefits.

@AmberStar: I'd disagree. There was simply no reason to offer Northern Rock or RBS bondholders 100p in the Pound when these banks were insolvent. Bondholders should have taken a "haircut" of at least 10% on their debt. After all, when the likes of Bradford & Bingley collapsed, the savings were ushered in one direction and the rest of the bank was sold off to the highest bidder.

You can guarantee the savings very easily, without having to prop up the rest of the bank, as any Icesave or Kaupthing saver will tell you.

@Raskalnikov

You make the common mistake in assuming tax avoidance is the same as evasion. Evasion is illegal , avoidance is merely organising your affairs to pay the minimum amount of tax legally due. I would be astounded if Barclays had a department specialising in tax evasion. Out of curosity, do you voluntarily pay MORE tax than is legally due?? No - I thought not.

Yes it was absolutely that black & white. If Brown hadn't taken a stand on Northern Rock/ Icelandic investments, every non-UK entity would have repatriated all their assets & cash. UK investors & savers would have been wiped out.

Northern Wreck was allowed to expand and expand and expand until it blew up - on the most charitable assessment it was a gross regulatory dereliction(of the system put in place by Balls and Broon)

He then prevented a global panic by supporting the UK financial sector & persuading other nations to do the same.

In fact it seems that the bankers went along and demanded a series of signed blank cheques to be drawn upon the Bank of the British taxpayer, as and when

The banking plan unveiled by the Government on Monday and now being copied around the world is based on a blueprint drawn up by Mr Sands and by Richard Meddings, Standard Chartered's finance director.
As the financial crisis deepened two weeks ago and several British banks appeared to be in distress, Mr Sands and Mr Meddings decided to put some thoughts together on how the problems could be solved.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/3205088/Standard-Chartered-chief-Peter-Sands-was-quiet-architect-of-Britains-bank-rescue.html

Hardly a matter for gratitude and admiration of Brown's genius and leadership qualities, AmberStar

Whatever criticisms people want to make of Brown, you're wasting your time on the banking crisis.

1) It's all very well carping about how his response might have been a bit better in hindsight, but they had very little time to respond in a situation changing by the hour... in the end they acted with the system hours away from collapse

2) We may yet make a profit on the whole affair in terms of what we have loaned the banks etc.

3) Yes, regulation could have been better, but dear God, the Tories wanted even MORE deregulation, and were like a rabbit caught in the headlights during the crisis, had bugger all to say... it was embarrassing.

4) It's no good carping about the loss in GDP etc., because many countries have taken a hit, and we were uniquenly exposed as a result of having such a large financial sector.

5) Brown was following the now obviously-failed neoliberal/Tory economic model. Except, with even more deregulation, the Tories would have done even more of it.

So, if it comes to handling the banking crisis, the Tories are onto a loser. The interesting debate is the question of public spending and the "structural deficit".

@heverale: "in the end they acted with the system hours away from collapse"
Why was the British system close to collapse? No other country in the world was close to meltdown. Of course there were problems everywhere but Britain was rotten like no other. In time half the British banking system collapsed, a feat not seen outside Iceland.

I agree that the Tories are stuffed on the issue too to but life doesn't boil down to Labour vs. Tory, after all that's a choice we can only make once every five years. Indeed, members and MPs in Labour should surely be asking why they think Brown's up for five more years.

Because one of the banks only just made it to closing, and there was a good chance when business re-opened the next day it would go down. And the interconnectedness meant dire consequences for other institutions, as with Lehmanns and AIG etc.

Apart from the ' payroll vote ' including the hoardes of non-jobsworths in the Public Sector............

Who is going to vote for an English - Hating , neo-marxist , bullying , overbearing , tax and spend idiot who's virtually bankrupted the Nation trying to save his own political skin before the country ?

The nation has made up it's mind about Gormless and his bunch of sycophants and Mc Mafia .

I rest my case m'lud.