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Friday 4 July 2008

Politics

Now Gordon Brown has been found out, the Tories should think twice about copying him

The Potemkin Chancellor might be found out now that he is Prime Minister

This is not necessarily a bad thing. The capacity to boost confidence is the key attribute for any Chancellor and Mr Brown left the Treasury as perhaps the greatest master of this particular art. And the intricate Potemkin Village he has carefully erected has indeed survived Labour’s decade in power. Yet now it is starting to disintegrate and there is every chance that it will collapse during 2008. On most Hogmanays, Mr Brown has been able to look ahead to a relatively clear horizon. Now, he sees a sky black with chickens coming home to roost.

The problem was outlined best — as so many problems are these days — by Vince Cable, the acting leader of the Liberal Democrats. The UK economy ‘may not be built on sand,’ he said, ‘but it has been built on a floodplain.’ The reason is our massive exposure to debt. The average British household has spent almost all of its earnings since 1997; only house prices are making people richer. In the event of a house price crash, much of this assumed wealth would vanish. When property prices fall, governments usually follow.

Brute facts are piling high to contradict Mr Brown’s claims of growth. It will be hard to boast about low mortgage rates when 1.4 million are next year renegotiating their mortgage and many finding they are unable to do so at an affordable rate. This week we had the truly extraordinary revelation from the Statistics Commission that four in every five jobs created since Labour came to power have gone to (or been created by) immigrants. This explains why a quarter of the population of Liverpool, Middlesbrough and Glasgow are dependent on benefits in this supposedly booming country.

The truth lurking behind Mr Brown’s daft claim that he can deliver ‘British jobs for British people’ is that he owes an embarrassing amount to immigrants. Their rate of arrival has more than doubled to 1,400 a day during the Labour years — and they have patched over many problems. Without immigrants, this year would be the first in recorded British history during which most children were born outside marriage. Without immigrants, London’s birth rate would halve. Without immigrants, Brown’s record on job creation would be worse than Thatcher’s.

This, the true record of the last decade, is becoming clearer by the day. Instead of an economic miracle, Mr Brown has slowly squandered the golden legacy he inherited in 1997. Just as good economic work takes years to dismantle, so profligacy and waste will take years to repair. The Brown inheritance has already destroyed Alistair Darling’s reputation as Chancellor. The pitiful Mr Darling had kept so quiet during the last decade that the first the public heard of him was his stuttering explanations as to why £30 billion of taxpayers’ money has been loaned to Northern Rock.

More articles from: Fraser Nelson | this section

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