Brown's nationalisation nightmare
James Forsyth 8:49am
Iain Martin’s column this morning on the political dangers to Gordon Brown of nationalising Northern Rock is essential reading. As Iain argues, the danger for Brown is that Northern Rock could destroy his reputation for economic competence and set in the public mind the idea that he—unlike that nice Mr. Blair—is too left wing for modern Britain. One senior shadow cabinet minister tells Iain that:
"It's very him,"...” It’s what people think he came into politics to do all along: nationalise banks."In The Independent, Steve Richards points out that neither Blair nor Brown have ever really grappled with the issue of ownership fearing that the whole issue was all too reminiscent of the era of the old left. There’s no doubt that Brown, who Iain reports is now personally managing the attempted sale, will not nationalise the Rock while any other option remains.
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Comments
Danvers
January 17th, 2008 10:03amPlease please please revert to the old format. The "click here to read more" link on each post completely ruins the reading experience as you sit and wait for the last 10 lines of the story to open. It is akin to those boring (mainly US) newspapers and magazines which have a taster for every story on the front page and then force you to go burrowing through looking for the rest....
Nick
January 17th, 2008 10:09amPlease remove the "click here to read more" function that you have recently introduced. Except for very long posts it is extremely annoying and hardly necessary.
An Accountant
January 17th, 2008 11:05amMartin misses the point that the failure to do the Lloyds TSB deal WAS Labour's Black Wednesday. Darling should have overriden King's objection (which is now 100% academic) and grabbed at the offer with bot hands. The Lloyds TSB 'brand' / name would have avoided the depositor's run. Plus, the loan to Lloyds could have been securitised, backed by the Govt and kept at a distance from the Govt's balance sheet. I bet Darling wakes up every morning and wishes that time could be rolled back but as Kipling said: Dayspring mishandled cometh not again.
Mitch
January 17th, 2008 1:27pmI totally agree with Nick above. Please stop it.
Anthony Kenny
January 17th, 2008 1:41pmI completely agree with the click and read more complaints. Who on earth suggested this? Management consultants?
David Lindsay
January 17th, 2008 3:27pmToo left-wing for the Spectator, perhaps. But pragmatic nationalisations, whether temporary (Rolls Royce) or permanent (electricity), are as much a feature of Tory as of Labour Governments. Here's hoping that Northern Rock is then turned back into a locally-based mutual building society. It had none of these problems then.
Mungojerry
January 17th, 2008 4:41pmStop the click and read more. Leave that to the Telegraph Three Line Whip.
Tom
January 17th, 2008 4:51pmHave to agree with the other comments on here. The 'read more' function ruins the (otherwise excellent) reading experience. There's far too much clicking read more, and then going back, and then clicking read more again...
Edward
January 17th, 2008 11:49pmi completely agree that 'click here to read more' is a negative deveelopment. The vast majority of readers read most of the articles in full, or at least skim all the way through them. The time wasted clicking through to the whole version is much more than that previously required to download the few bytes of text one did not want to read and then to scroll through them.
Jessica
January 18th, 2008 11:01pmWhen the fantastic Dermot Murnaghan from sky news suggested in an interview with Ed Balls that this government is starting to 'have a whiff of old labour about it ' it really riled Balls, he went blood red and starting speaking uncontrollably about why this is nothing like old lablour. Methinks he doth protest too much!