Brown’s reputation for economic competence has gone. The Tories should seize the chance

Wednesday, 23rd January 2008

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

The Tories cannot do much about the economic turmoil itself, but their mission is to sound more plausible than Mr Brown. This should not be hard. The Prime Minister’s strategy has so far been one of denial. He boasts about low inflation at a time when the Bank of England’s Governor warns of the opposite and food prices are rising at the highest rate on record. He talks of low interest rates, at a time when 1.6 million are bracing themselves to remortgage, and repossessions are at their highest since 1992.

One could write a book listing the magic tricks and sleights of hand Mr Brown has used in the last ten years to embellish his record. Triple counting is just the start. There is the currency trick, where he uses misleading conversion rates to claim (hilariously) that Britain spends more on defence than Russia or China. There is the ‘false proxy’ (Bank of England base rates do not equal mortgage rates) the ‘dud backdrops’ (comparing Britain against basket-case economies such as France, Italy and Germany) and ‘metric switch’ (comparing RPI inflation of 10 per cent under Major to CPI inflation of 2 per cent now). The list is as long as it is imaginative.

But Mr Brown’s fatal error has been to stretch the truth so far that the elastic has finally snapped. His claims of high employment and low inflation may still wrongfoot his political opponents often enough. But — at the visceral level of real politics — such assertions simply do not ring true with the type of people who decide British elections — those on modest incomes who, unlike most MPs, actually know how much a pint of milk costs. Their concerns are mounting debt, heating bills, petrol at 104p a litre. One can guess what their reaction is to Mr Brown’s preening over all the tough ‘long-term decisions’ he has taken.

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Frank Leader

January 25th, 2008 5:31am Report this comment

In answering a question in Prime Minister's Question Time. Gordon Brown said "Only yesterday this morning" this would seem that he does not know what he is talking about. Further evidence of this, when replying to Kenneth Clarke he made a remark that Labour in 1997 inherited the economy in a mess from the Tories. This can't be true, we have had 61 quarters of uninterupted growth (61 quarters = 15years and 3 months). Labour have only been in office for just over 10 years. Therefore 5 years of the uninterupted growth happened under the Tories. I would seem that being Prime Minister is too much for him to cope with.

Dr. David Spooner

January 25th, 2008 10:04am Report this comment

The title of Fraser Nelson`s article promised much with its appendage "The Tories Should Seize the Chance." But he, like all leader writers, then drew back in apprehension. A `No Confidence` motion in Parliament is urgently needed, even if lost in the first instance. Action, not still more critiques, is the necessity.

Fraser A

January 25th, 2008 5:06pm Report this comment

I genuinely think that Gordon Brown believes his own hype and that his initiatives such as tax, borrow and be profligate really are a benefit rather than a hindrance for the economy. These are the policies which have so obviously caused the stagnation of Continental European economies he compares with so favourably – even the French seem to have woken up to the fact that the state does not hold all the answers. Brown has squandered the economic record he is so proud of by borrowing when the economy and tax receipts have enjoyed growth. He seems ashamed and unmanned by the few good acts he is responsible for such as the independence of the BOE and the reduction in capital gains tax to encourage entrepreneurs. The freedom of foreigners to live in the UK and bring their capital with them. Consequently we have little room to manoeuvre in a downturn and he has alienated those aspects of the economy which have helped sustain economic growth. When will he learn taxing less increases receipts, he only has to look at his own CGT concessions to see that.

Jon Livesey

January 25th, 2008 5:46pm Report this comment

One issue not mentioned here is that to some extent people no longer talk about parties, but about 'nomics. The party in power changed in 1997, but we all still talk about Thatcherism and free markets. The joke about Blair being a better Tory PM wasn't really a joke, because it said something deep about the reality of the situation. Continuity was a real strength for Blair as the "heir" of Thatcher. And that means that Brown is pretty safe as long as this perception continues. There are signs of creeping leftism in his policies, including closet nationalisation for this and that enterprise, but so far these are lefty grace notes. When Brown lets thing go so far that one can say that Old Labour is back, then the public psychology will change, but until then the perception that Brown is finished is pretty much one for commentators, not for the mass of voters.

j. pourreau

January 29th, 2008 2:26pm Report this comment

The chickens are coming home to roost! However much GB tries to rewrite history, most financial commentators would agree that he was handed an economy which was in a much stronger state than the one he will beqeath to Geortge Osbourne in 2010. It is a testament to Kenneth Clarke's excellent strwardship of the economy from 1992 to 1997, that the country has so successfully withstood 10 years of economic incometence so typical of a labour government.

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