Economic recovery plan? Forget it, Gordon
23 August 2008
The Prime Minister’s survival is pinned on a September ‘relaunch’ to ease the voters’ economic woes. But, says Martin Vander Weyer, each door through which Brown tries to escape his predicament slams in his face. His room for manoeuvre is negligible
All this talk of Gordon Brown’s ‘economic recovery plan’ calls to mind the unhappy day, many years ago on a junior bankers’ training course, when I took part in a competitive team game which involved managing a computer model of the British economy.
We were told it was a version of the Treasury’s own model. In successive rounds, each team would have the opportunity to alter tax rates, interest rates and public spending levels, the objective being to maintain strong growth, low inflation and low unemployment. But also in each round, the game’s moderator would introduce random events with economic consequences: a sudden rise in oil prices, say, or a wave of public-sector strikes, or the outbreak of a small war.
Before the game began, my teammates went into a huddle. ‘You’re a clever bugger, Martin,’ one of them said. ‘We think you’d better be captain.’ So off we went, with me calling most of the shots. Two rounds in, we were looking pretty good: prudent and stable, you might say. But five or six rounds in, what with oil prices soaring and one thing and another, we were in deep trouble. Stagflation loomed. Public borrowing seemed to be irretrievably out of control. Our dole queue was lengthening. Attempts to correct past mistakes only made matters worse. The team began to mutter and squabble. We lost the game and for the rest of the month-long course my clever-bugger status never recovered.
I haven’t made that up: it took place in 1982 at a training centre in Sussex which is now a luxury hotel, and I can still recall the burning resentment of one colleague who felt, probably correctly, that he would have done a far better job than me as captain. So I really do know how Gordon Brown feels. In his high-stakes version of exactly the same game, there are only a couple of Pre-Budget and Budget rounds left to play before the run-up to the 2010 election. Even the new rule he introduced to deal with the 10p tax uprising, that really howling cock-ups can be reversed at will between rounds regardless of cost to the public finances, offers him little comfort. No one now thinks he can win: it’s only a matter of how badly he loses, and whether he is sacked as captain before the bitter end.
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James
August 21st, 2008 10:04am Report this commentBut surely there is no room for recovery only if you adhere to the Broon religion, ie spend, spend, spend on the public sector. The quango bill alone reaches into the hundreds of billions. Why can't these people be sacked and told to get proper jobs. What about the 5-a-day outreach workers? What about the billions the government has wasted on council housing? Why aren't these things slashed? There are quite literally hundreds of thousands of useless people on the public sector payroll.
Talk of tax cuts is all about timing. Yes, there was a time when the British electorate thought pumping all this money on public services would work. Not now. Imagine saying to the public, we can cut your Income Tax or Council Tax, or whatever. It's time to get the Samurai sword and cut, cut, cut the waste.
bill
August 21st, 2008 10:22am Report this commentThey could help the housing market by abolishing HIPS. They could simplify Stamp Duty rates. e.g. the jump to 3% at 250K. They could slash wasteful government spending (I'd start with all the consultants); they could slash spending on the arts; the armed forces or rather MOD could do with a kick up the proverbials; privatise the Beeb.
NimrodTroyte
August 21st, 2008 10:52am Report this commentThe nation is bankrupt - for a country that has enjoyed favourable conditions public debt is astounding; and due to greed, hedonism and stupidity private debt is at very worrying levels.
Why? Because Labour, Blair & Brown are also bankrupt - bankrupt of policies. The only ever had one, "Keep power, as long as possible in order to force the state into everyones' lives".
Trouble is, every building without firm foundations will be damaged when the weather gets nasty - nevermind earthquakes, tidal waves, floods and fires.
Roy
August 22nd, 2008 10:09am Report this commentThe answer for Brown in my way of thinking is not to try to give people more, but to give people less. When the overspending, overindulged, over-subsidised, over-mollycoddled, welfare milk sops of a large proportion of the population realize they will go hungry if they don’t pull their horns in and start to put their muddled brains into gear. These people will then start to admire the government for the first time!!! Their welfare payments should be reduced in all sectors and a clear-cut subsidy given to NEW INDUSTRY. Also a tax incentive given to employers taking on more staff, also new immigrants should be responsible for their own medical expenses and general welfare for the first five or more years, and so on. It’s no good sitting around pulling strings randomly like a mad puppeteer, people understand a good leader is a hard leader and will be prepared to pull their fingers out when they know they ‘have to’ or perish.
esotericbadger
August 22nd, 2008 5:16pm Report this comment‘What we need at this stage of the war is a futile gesture.’
Is that from Blackadder? Isn't it from Beyond the Fringe? Though I suppose it might be both.
A more appropriate Blackadder reference might be to the ineffectual lackey doing his master's bidding and desperately trying to stay out of the fighting lines - Darling...
Ray
August 26th, 2008 9:49am Report this commentJames and Roy are spot-on - the only way out of this quagmire he is in is for Brown to truly 'think the unthinkable': abandon socialist dogma and return the country to a small state sector that concentrates on basic public services rather than splashing out billions of pounds of our tax money employing a whole army of people to try and tell us how to live our own lives.
albert hall
August 28th, 2008 8:20am Report this commentI was once on such a course in Warwick University and we played a similar game of "Save the Country's Economy." Our team was doing extremely well until our course tutor, a mathematics professor, added in what he called "Cosmic Roulette," which is described as "something that could happen, any time, anywhere, without warning. Our economic plan was shot to pieces. Has cosmic roulette hit Gordon's plans or could he have seen it coming after more than a decade of economic imprudence?
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