And so back to the economy...

Forlornehope

There are many situations in life where the correct response is to do nothing until an opportunity appears and then to grab it. The instinct to "do something" when there is nothing sensible to do is a Venus flytrap for those with a high balls to brains ratio. A bit of time pursuing those sports where stupidity can be life threatening teaches that lesson, to those who survive!

Short the UK

I strongly recommend that you seek out a t.v. interview that Nassim Taleb had with Charlie Rose last week. It is on Charlie Rose's website. Talib reckons that Roubini is under estimating the economic collapse.

Tis armageddon..

Anan

Yeah loser Brown stole "do-nothing" off McCain. I'm actually surprised Brown didn't add "country second" as well. It failed for McCain, and it will fail for Brown.

I think Conservatives had every right to make a fuss about the Damian Green affair, and in fact they haven't done enough! Just imagine how Blair would have reacted to something like this happening in 1995. PBR and Green are not mutually exclusive themes to fight on, it can be done simultaneously!

Cameron has not been effective on either topic. If he doesn't get his act together, he will lose the election this week, even if the votes are cast in 2010.

Gareth

Will Durant quote: "One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say".

oldtimer

I commented on this on the latesat poll thread but it did not get posted. I will try again.

Cameron is absolutely right to make this attack on Labour borrowing. For those that do nto believe the mess we are in they should take a look at Mr Peston`s latest analysis here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/newcapitalism.pdf

He does not say much about where we go from here - he really has no more clue than the rest of us. But there is no doubt that this is the time for tin hats, safety belts, water wings and whatever other means of life support that you can find and hang on to. The consequences, in the years ahead, of this new reality has not yet penetrated too far into the public consciousness. Brown & co, so far, have benefitted from giving the appearance of "doing something" beacause as the party in power they are in a position to do so.

However, whatever they do they cannot escape the grim reality that lies ahead as a result of a massive deleveraging of the UK economy. Brown and co were the people in charge of the growing economic bubble for the past ten years; and they are in charge of the "solutions" now that the bubble is bursting. These "solutions" will not work. This will become painfully clear in the year ahead.

The Conservatives were right to back support for the banking system but to criticise how it is being applied. The VAT reduction was just a waste of taxpayers funds. They have sensible ideas about the use of insurance of last resort. They need to stick to their guns and, like the people running Germany, warn against the price of a debauched currency and piling debt on debt.

Damien Vaugh

A respectable time has elapsed since the conferance season and the recent polls are more relaible.

Cameron should be worried that with an economic meltdown the Conservatives have such a small lead, and that he and his Shadow Chancellor have been over taken by Labour!.

Is it not the case that the conservatives have been so long out of government that they are lacking credability to govern?.

The tory proposal for cutbacks in public spending after 2010 is beyond the immediate concerns of the public. Whatever sound bite Cameron makes about the distant future is going to be pushed off the headlines by the next 6 o'clock news.

Brown appears like a world statesman and that plays well to the public. In a time of national economic insecurity he reassures and gives confidence that there is someone with gravitas at the helm. He has restored a bit of national pride, in the same way Margaret Thatcher did (althought he probably would cringe at the comparison).

Ivy Eileen

One (slight) criticism - on tactics. Why talk about "exceptional times" and "exceptional measures" ? Being his words, it does Brown's publicity for him.

Remember debating at school - if you are going to give the other guy airspace, you pull his quote to pieces, so people remember the rebuke and not the original. For example, label the "exceptional times" and "exceptional measures" as vacuous platitudes ... and then follow up with the simple "getting it right is right".... which thankfully Cameron says.

liz Brown

@Damian Vaugh
Brown has restored a bit of national pride? You are having a laugh aren't you?

Daniel

I am still strongly of the view that the Conservatives will win the next election, whenever it is held, as I just can't see Brown beating Cameron in an open contest under the full glare of media exposure over a three week period.

That said, the apparent narrowing of the poll gap is potentially worrying news for the Tories, as it increases the risk that they will end up with a hung Parliament or small majority that could prevent them from being effective in office.

It seems fairly clear to me why the Tory lead has narrowed. In order to win a comfortable majority, the Tories need the votes of those swing voters in the North and Midlands who voted Labour in 1997, 2001 and 2005. Simply piling up larger majorities in southern marginal seats by appealing to the core vote is not enough.

Crewe and Nantwich showed that the Conservatives can win in the North, but unfortunately their response to the deepening of the banking crisis in September and October was spectacularly ill-judged and guaranteed to alienate many of these voters.

First of all, they have tried to depict the crisis as a home-grown affair, when it is transparently obvious to anyone who follows the news that the crisis is global in nature, and arose from a malfunctioning of the capitalist system, not past socialist "excess". Secondly, they have criticised Labour's fiscal profligacy without offering any alternative, other than a return to the fiscal orthodoxy of the 1980s (which most Brits remember as a time of high unemployment and social strife, not some lost 'golden era').

Thirdly, the Tories have been very muted in their criticisms of the role played by the banks in creating the crisis. This is extremely ill-judged at a time when the public is seething with anger at those who rewarded themselves handsomely but failed to manage their institutions' risks properly and then had to go cap in hand to the taxpayer.

To cap it all, the Tories have reverted to a standard Thatcherite critique of Labour policies, when the nature of the situation (both in the UK and internationally) clearly demands something more urgent and imaginative.

The worst aspect of this is that it plays straight into the hands of those, like Mandelson, who have argued all along that Cameron's modernisation programme was essentially cosmetic. It has allowed Labour to evoke folk memories of the early 1990s recession, when the Tories were widely seen as lacking in compassion for those affected by unemployment and negative equity.

Personally I'm surprised at the turn of events, as to date I have admired Cameron's strategic focus and his generally sure footed response to events. I am a little puzzled as to why he has fallen into such an obvious trap. But then, I had assumed that the modernisation programme was a genuine attempt to move the Tories back to the centre ground, not just a fig leaf designed to put unreconstructed Thatcherites back in power. Perhaps I was naive?

TGF UKIP

Peter, clicking on the link to Dave's LSE speech is each time taking me to a post of yours back in November - gremlins again?

My comment on Dave's speech most of which I did by chance see this morning and on his Todat Programme interview is to simply enquire why, as a political party, the Tories decline to do propaganda.

Consider, not once in the Today interview did Dave mention the trillion debt figure in three years time much less put it into the context where it could be understood of £40,000 per household. At the LSE he mentioned it just once in passing but again failed to express it as a burden per household.

The TRILLION figure is a huge gift to the Tories - just imagine what Alastair Campbell would make of it. Every MP, every spokesman would be under instruction to work it into every speech, article and interview regardless of subject, economy, baby P, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan etc, and if they didn't Ali would be personally kicking their arses from one end of Whitehall to the other.

The Cameron Tories on the other hand, don't do anything quite so vulgar as propaganda.

How Gordon must love them.

Don Logan

1p off a Mars bar. Yup Gordon Brown really is a genius.

cuffleyburgers

@old timer.

I read Peston's article, penned presumably by G Brown.

He dosn't mention how the regulatory system was tinkered with by G brown, or how the terms of reference of the BoE were set by G brown or how Greenspan's own legendary warnings of asset price inflation ("irrational exuberance") was ignored by regulators on both sides of the pond, but at least Greenspan had the wit to make the point.

Whilst it is true that the naks lent, and home owners borrowed and each is responsible for his own actions - if the govt then has to step in and spray tax payers' money around then the govt have been criminally irresponsible in not taking action to minimise the consequences and action could have should have been.

Where do we go from here? We batten down the hatches. Cameron's point that doing something doesn't require doing the wrong thing, and a good point was made in the DT today that rather than funding repayments of these immense loans through tax rises, a new model of government which spends less would enable repayment to be made at current levels of taxation and lower spending.

Brown truly is the John Sargeant of economics - the public, bless'em, just can't get enough of him.

Pete Hoskin

TGF: Thanks for spotting that. I've fixed it now.

And you're right about the Tories' shying away from "propaganda". Thing is, they don't even need to be disingenuous, as Brown is with his slogans ("Tory cuts" etc). The £1 trillion debt is a fact, plain and simple...

Short the UK

The Tories should just throw the election. Let New Labour be destroyed by the depression. If he has a small majority he won't last long and all the blame can be pinned on him. Such is the dire state of UK plc that it will take a decade to fix Brown's Boom. Why should the Tories win and take the blame for the Brown Depression?

The public still don't understand that they have been living in a false paradise. We are going back to a cash based society. Debt will never be so copious again. We may have to move to an Islamic Banking model. Our just-in-time debt fuelled economy is collapsing now that the huge amounts of debt are being curtailed. It ain't coming back. House prices may never recover to 2007 peaks. This is the end of asset based capitalism - bubble economics. Banks will become utilities.

The Debt Junkies and Bubble Addicts have yet to smell the coffee. Thankfully the market will bring them into Cold Turkey.

Tis armageddon.

Athesius the Facilitator

I have said it before and I will say it again.

It is the agenda of the TV media to discredit the Tories and this plays into the minds of the uninformed section of the electorate.

And even on radio 4 this morning the interviewer Evan Davis constantly interrupted D Cameron as he was attempting to answer questions.

Then at lunch time on the headlines Evette Cooper is allowed to go on at will about how we are well placed because of government prudence and we all know that is "crap".

Mr Cameron needs to 'get a grip' of this and hammer his points home. He can start by learning to hate the Labour party as much as they hate him.

He needs a few good sound bites eg. "The Conservatives still think the quid has some value and we are gonna get that value out of it unlike those idiots we have in charge now".

C'mon Dave give it some stick, play with a cross bat instead of that front foot push into the off side.

Finally, Damien Vaugh, Ithought that was a serious post till read the bit about Gordon Brown and his "gravitas". Phwewh! Is 'mundungus' a real word?

John Miller

People talk about Blairism and the Blairite approach. In fact, the source for this was Mandy and Brown is good at it as well. It consists solely of telling every group you are dealing with at any given moment that you are going to give them something for nothing. And that has worked a charm in the opinion polls.

Of course, Brown has nothing to give anyone. The country is totally bankrupt. The appeance of wealth was given by the inexorable rise in house prices. The average Brit cared not at all that his credit card bill was 10k when his house had just gone up by that in two months.

In the old days (!) the fall of the pound meant our exports were cheaper. Well, I don't know what we exprt now, because that is another economic indicator Brown has fiddled. But I suspect it is the square root of not very much.

The most telling point is that Brown was pleading for the Arabs to put more money into the IMF. Perhaps he's not as stupid as he looks...

THX1138

All a bit of a wind up that according to a poll in The Times today Joe Public when asked- Whom do do trust to fight the recession? They had Brown/Brown by +9

A bit worrying that given a sitter like the total f**king mess the economy is in Dave & Boy George still put it over the bar time and time again. The polls don't lie.

Problem is that public like Dave but think Osborne is the wrong kind of Toff an arrogant little snob who couldn't run a whelk store let alone UK plc. Dave should ditch him pronto, he's a drag on the ticket and get someone in who doesn't get right up the public's nose and who isn't living on a trust fund.

Mate of mine sat next to Osbourne at wedding and couldn't believe what an arrogant w**ker he was.