Prepare for Brown's green shoot optimism

Jim

This is the first sign if the coming hyper inflation. Don't worry, by the election it will have built up a head of steam.

Forlornehope

A dead MacCavity bounce?

Scottish Cheeselog

I hope they keep him as leader. I want to see him crown his worst-ever-prime minister career by leading his repulsive, talentless, amoral (and immoral) party to utter annihilation at the next General Election.

Tim B

My reading of Brown is that he is absolutely convinced that he is The Man to lead us through the crisis and into the promised land.

If the men in suits turn up to tell him his time is up, he would tell them to go forth and multiply, and that recovery is just around the corner (look at the graphs!!! It's really happening!!), and that Labour could yet win an historic fourth term.

As I understand it it is almost impossible to topple a Labour party leader who doesn't wish to go, unless you can amass enough signatures (20? 50?) behind another candidate.

Labour could not have another uncontested leadership election - it simply wouldn't pass the smell test. Also the stalking horse candidate is unlikely to be the final victor. So Brown will stay as long as he wants to.

I'm reminded of what Walt Whitman said of president Herbert Hoover: "It's not what he doesn't know that worries me; it's what he knows for sure that just ain't so."

lawrence greek

All Brown has done is temporarily reflate the bubble, through QE and rock bottom interest rates. I just cannot see anyway the recovery will be sustained. We are mired in debt, personally and governmentally, we don't make anything and the financial economy is shot through. The worst case scenario is Brown takes credit for this false recovery, Cameron wins and the economy falters, with Brown crowing that they have spoilt his legacy. The thought makes me sick.

Irv

Looks like a dead cat to me!

Oor Wullie

850 people employed by Hewlett Packard losing their jobs in the west of Scotland: RBS IT staff receiving details of the company redundancy package; Lloyds still to reveal the job losses inherent in the HBOS takeover: thousands of Vauxhall workers facing an uncertain future.

Green shoots my a***!
Brown spin in fact.

Mitch

Dont be silly the mans a busted lush, he is a turd awaiting the flush. Gordon could raise the dead and we would still hate him.

Chuck Unsworth

House prices? Supply and demand. Who's moving house these days? Most people are clinging desperately to what they've got....

George Laird

Dear Fraser

If Gordon Brown wishes to speak with any authority regarding "Green Shoots" then I suggest he has a Chinese takeaway menu in his hands.

The housing bubble is still way out of whack for its own good.

No one is going to still their necks out for some considerable time.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

2trueblue

Green shoots.... definitely! 2.2million currently unemployed and the forcast is that it will grow. There will be very little sustained growth at all for a some time. The retail sector are not restocking, they can't afford it, so when they need to it will cost all of us dearly... major inflation. We will see the 2nd wave of this crisis. Only the village idiot could call any of what is going on as green shoots.

Dirty Euro

It will be a struggle to see him survive. I do not see why but the public are blaming labour for tory MPS corruption. It is odd, but that is how it goes. As if the PM was the man who got Bill Cash to cash a bill.

TGF UKIP

Careful chaps. Remember Gordon has the following going for him:

1) The Brown Broadcasting Corporation

2) The Tory lead is extremely soft particularly on the economic management issue

3) Given there is no clear alternative to Gordon and the messiness of the fights that would both be required to procure his departure and then to crown a successor, there is every chance that there will be no meaningful challenge to him

4) This will be an economic election and fronting for the Tories will be Gideon George Osborne. Now who would you put your money on?

Alex

Shhh ... please let's keep him in as long as possible

He's the only person who can lead Labour to utter annihilation.

RobC

Dirty Euro - Virtually the whole cabinet has been on the take including Brown whose peccadilloes on the flat front are arguably more serious than the Cash saga.Darling has flipped homes 4 years on the trot and avoided duty FFS!
Tory bashing by the BBC and MSM has suppressed endemic labour troughing at cabinet level. Thank god for the web I'm now off there for a bit of unbiast, unvarnished opinion by people who are not in Brown's pocket.
p.s. Best comment on here is Lawrence Greek's its positively prophetic.

Jon

TGF UKIP

4) Osbourne. Who would you; Darling? What a ridiculous question.

Bruce Robertson

Asset price inflation is always a signal of trouble ahead. This absurd attempt to re-inflate a globally-burst bubble will only increase the financial horrors we will face ahead.

john miller

How is it possible that people still think that house prices are any sort of guide to the economy?

When the cost of houses was raging upwards people believed, as they have done in every price boom since the war, that the economy was sound.

History has proven that they should have realised the bubble was being inflated.

When people realised that their bijou semi in Sidcup wasn't really worth 15 times the average salary that particular bubble burst.

House prices are only rising now because first time buyers who have been priced out of the market are trying to bale in, thinking prices are low, whereas in fact, they are about to dip again.

Lenders are still trying desperately to re-inflate the bubble by going back to lending 5 times salary, but with an inflated fixed interest rate (normally 4% minimum), a large deposit being required (25%) and a nice fat "arrangement fee" (first invented by the Mafia) of £1200.

When these new buyers lose their jobs next year, they will be ruined and the banks will be ventilating their reposessions at 80% of the price the buyer paid for them.

Rhoda Klapp

Tim B. That Walt Whitman was clever, taking shots at a president who only took office when Walt was long dead (1892). Sure you don't mean Will Rogers?

Kipperbreath

Alex.

No my friend. The Labour line-up features many who are ideally equipped to lead their party into oblivion. And will.

Aside of this, I think it's unfortunate and unfair that such a poor photograph of Mr Brown heads this article. All the highlights have been over-exposed, ruining any appreciation of his natural bloom, the engaging warmth of his smile and most of all that cheeky glint in his eye.

Yes I know but if Dirty Euro can talk bollocks then I can too.

Simon

I was reading somewhere that all the printed money is finding its way into commodities and stocks. Thus the recent bounce in the oil price, Dow, FTSE etc. Looks like some of it may be finding its way into the housing market as well.

cuffleyburgers

The first signs of a global recovery are starting to appear in some sectors, and this is leading to a small increase in confidence.

Any recovery in the UK will be stunted by the enormous costs of the dead hand of labour's attempt at a command economy, but it does not seem unlikely to me that we are close to the bottom.

What this will most likely mean, as the Economist warned, is that it will take the pressure off the government to undertake further unpopular measures.

Therefore, my reading of these tealeaves is that :
1) Brown hangs on
2) Economy stops tanking and begins slowly to turn
3) Growth remains faltering for obvious reasons
4) Labour lose the next election but not by so much as looks likely at the moment
5) DC and GO start work on the economy but lack the guts to make the really big cuts to the reach of the state, and run out of political capital after a couple of years
6) Recovery remains slow, taxes stay high, Tories become shocking unpopular (helped by the BBC), labour lie and lie, people prefer to believe their lies rather than see the obvious for themselves
7) Tories lose the next but one elecion, and the descent to hell in handcart resumes

I have been shocked by the extent to which the focus of the BBC has been on the tory expense-cheats, and has happily glossed over the offenders in cabinet. DC's courageous, and to my mind correct, tactic of being open about the failings of tory MPs seems initially to be failing. The public will soon be bored of even this story and if when that happens, only tories have resigned then that could be a problem?

No system of government can be effective without honour and decency in the ruling class.

That is why socialists are unsuited to government.

logdon

Is Brown preparing for a second career as a Bill Haley tribute act? I mean, that kiss curl?

The public tore the seats up then, looks like they're doing it again in a slightly different manner.

Then it was Rock 'n Roll, now it's rolling the rock, and boy aren't those dank little insects scurrying?

Rex Burr

I lived in fear of unemployment for 50 years in engineering so I don't under-estimate its effect. However, I only actually spent one week out of work and currently the vast majority of the population are in work, albeit in most instances not very well paid work.
In response to the prevailing mood I find myself saying “Recession, what recession?”
If I had not followed the news of politics and economics in the media for the past two years I would not be aware of any current problems in the economy. I would also not be aware of Brown’s part in the mess and there are many people who have not followed the serious news. Sure they are angry about the expenses scandal but that’s a people thing.
Life goes on as before and if this can be maintained till the election and we continue to hear of Tory efforts to abolish the minimum wage to disadvantage the poor and inheritance tax to give the rich a leg up, he could still win.

TrevorsDen

Lawrence and Oor Willie are right. We are getting a new bubble thanks to printing money. And the Scottish job losses at HP have hardly made a ripple nationwide but I suspect they will have been noted in Scotland.

These job losses are an indicator of what is still happening all over Britain.

Can a taken over 'GM Europe' continue to sustain jobs in Britain? This is a great threat to jobs and I cannot help but think Luton jobs are severely under threat.
What will the new company be called? Well it certainly won't be Vauxhall.

TGF UKIP

Rex Burr, yours is a dispassionate and, I would say, a very objective analysis of the situation.

The huge mass of the population are not political nerds and news junkies like Coffee Housers are and the news that huge numbers of them follow is more likely to be sports, fashion or celebrity rather than political.

Certainly in this corner of Northern England too, estate agents are busy selling houses, local builders are still busy and it is by no means uncommon to hear the question "Recession, what recession?"

Victor, NW Kent

The inheritance tax proposal has been monstered in a most cynical way. A prudent small businessman or mid-level executive could quite easily leave a £1-million estate if house prices recover. That would be the residue of 45 years taxed work. A large estate of, say £10-million, would normally stem from other sources. The legatees would pay 40% on £9-million of that - a mere £3.6 million. The Osborne proposals would have reduced the burden by 10%.

Secondly, the minimum wage - no fewer than a million people are working in the UK right now for less than the minimum wage. A good half of those are illegal immigrants. Others are waitresses, graduate interns and carers. Any Labour promise tends to be just words without any real effect. I have not heard any of the Tory front-bench advocate its removal.

There are lots of lies to come - witness the Balls claim that Tories would cut 45,000 teachers. Any figure will do the job as Blair and Brown have repeatedly shown.

hadrian

Not much to add save that Lawrence Greek's sentiments are my own. When the true effects of printing money and shoving banks into more dodgy mortgages to effect 'housing and building' recovery once these essentially dishonest measures come home to roost it won't be just the Labour Party that's in the shit, we'll all be! Poverty, thy Name is Broon stuff.