So what emerges from Alan Sugar’s interview with Gordon Brown, a transcript of which is published by the Sun today? Not a great deal, really. The headline-grabbers are Brown’s sort-of-admission that the downturn has strengthened his position, and his “No, no, no,” when asked about joining the Euro. The first of these is almost certainly true; the second may not be.
Apart from that, the rest of the interview is largely a collection of the usual Brownite platitudes. Sure, we’ve heard all the “Global crisis which started in America”-style lines before, but here they’re perhaps more brazen than ever. Here’s how Brown sets up both America and British banks as the fall guys:
Alan Sugar: Why have we in England got this problem? I mean what has it got to do with America?
Gordon Brown: Out of America, a lot of people were persuaded to buy mortgages, they couldn’t pay for them, nobody quite knew when they bought these mortgage products that they were totally worthless.
They parcelled them up so you had thousands of mortgages, and some of our British banks made mistakes.
They were spending hundreds of millions of pounds of their own customers’ money buying products that they thought was going to make them a big profit.
…
AS: But you must have seen that while you were Chancellor. Surely those alarm bells should have been ringing for you?
GB: Well, I am angry at the behaviour of banks because we did not know what was actually happening behind the scenes. We did not know that they were operating all these investment vehicles. Now, Brown’s message may be blunt and even disingenuous, but opinion polls suggest that it’s also effective. When it comes to hammering home an economic or fiscal narrative, there are few more adept than our Prime Minister – the reduction of the tax and spend debate into “Tory cuts v Labour investment” is testament to that. The problem for Brown is that there are, daily, more and more voices of opposition to his plans. A number of today’s papers pick up on the German finance minister’s comment that the UK government’s engaging in “crass Keynesianism”. The more quotes like that leak into the public domain, the less Brown will be able to rely on his tried-and-tested routine.
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