The bleak economic horizon spells trouble for Brown

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As I wrote the other day, the British public is increasingly blaming the Prime Minister for the country's economic problems. He's no longer regarded as a steady hand on the tiller, but – instead – as a fiscal menace. A key aspect of Brown's latest relaunch, then, is to reverse this opinion; to convince people that he'll get them through the difficult times. It's a message he concentrated on in his various interviews this morning.

Will it work? The problem for Brown is that circumstances are going against him. Mervyn King's just stepped out to say: “Don't expect interest rates cuts for the next two years; inflation's going to be much worse than we thought”. This bleak prediction is splashed across the covers of today's papers. It adds to the sense that matters are now out of Brown's hands – inflation's going to sky-rocket, and people's day-to-day situations are going to worsen, regardless of what policies come out of Downing Street.

The best that can be done is damage limitation, and, for Brown, that normally means lying about the problems. He's still – against all indicators – peddling the “low inflation” line. This approach can only infuriate voters, and will fuel the idea that Brown's in some way culpable for all our woes.

P.S. A couple of good – but contrasting – articles on this in the morning's papers: Edmund Conway in the Telegraph, and Stephen Glover in the Mail.

P.P.S. For more on the economy, head over to Trading Floor.