Harman v. Hague with Fraser Nelson from noon:
12:00 I’m still cross with William Hague for pitching up at that
12:05 Hague back again on Chapter 11, this time with FSB backing “would save thousands of jobs from going under”.
“Nor should he write our economy off” – Harman has obviously been briefed this line by No10 as a catch-all when Tories attack.
12:07 Moves on from insolvency to pensioners forced to buy annuity. Aye, the voting power of the grey electorate. This may be smarter territory if the annuities issue blows up.
12:10 Actually, Harman is using Brown jargon – meaningless guff. I hate to say it, but it sounds better coming from him. Harman is not nearly as accomplished a confidence trickster.
12:12 “We look forward to the action, Mr Speker” – Labour MPs moan, and rightly. You can say many things about the last few days, but there has been plenty action.
12:14 Darling shakes his head when Hague says nationalised banks can lend at 2007 levels. I have some inside info on this.
12:16 My God, Harman should be drawn back to the House to apologise – she repeated the Bronwie that debt went from 43% to 37%. There is no debt measure that says so. The ONS ruled in Feb that NR has to go on the accounts so it is 43.3%.
12:18 Hague finally on good form – boom and bust pledge “one of the most foolish, hubristic and irresponsible claims ever made by a UK prime minister.” Harman bleats on about not writing Britain off and meekly describes Brown as “man with a plan.”
12:20 Cable – seems to go on a Keynesian argument that the government shouldn’t be rationalising public sector staff in a downturn. Harman bleats on about 600,000 vacancies in the economy – as if that counteracts the soaring unemployment. That defence wont last long.
12:23 Cable has a good point on interest rates, and he looked genuinely angry as he delivered it. There is a good case to look again at BoE “independence” model – the last ten years led us to a horrible monetary explosion which fuelled the Brown boom. Its that kind of “out of the box” thinking I’d like to see the Tories do more of.
12:24 Now on to the Icelandic mess – 100% protection for charities who have money there. I wonder if she’d have frozen the assets if it had been the Bank of Texas doing all that cheap lending…
12:26 Labour backbenchers have not yet demanded that banks give away money to people with low credit ratings. Plenty of time for that, though.
12: 29 Crispin Blunt brings up Equitable Life.
Harman says that it is wrong to say Brown responsible for banking crisis when its origins were global. Well maybe he is because he drew up the regulation system that failed to spot we had the most over-extended banks outside of Iceland?
12: 30 Philip Davies (Con, Shipley) nails it – Brown’s tripartite system failed. Will the government take any responsibility? Harman goes back to her notes. “I do not think the crisis is the responsibility of the one million extra homeowners” (Brown used to say 1.8 million). And no, that’s not what he was suggesting. Please, Tories, keep going on this.
Jim Devine asks how many will benefit from minimum wage increase, and bashes the SNP (by-election coming up, anyone?) Harman said 90,000 people in Scotland would benefit. Tiny. That’s about the number on benefits in Glasgow.
Plaid’s Adam Price says Harman apologised for Iraq – why not the economy? Because Brown doesn’t do sorry. Harman reads out the answer she had been given on Iraq and withdrawal. The question was about economics.
Tom Levitt (Lab, High Peak) asks for assurance that target of abolishing child poverty by 2020 will remain in place. Yes, says Harman. We will have to sit back and watch poverty come back with a vengeance – social dislocation will be just one of the prices we may pay for the economic tsunami that is about to strike.
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