Frank Field takes to the pages of the Telegraph to lend support to the paper’s justice for savers campaign. Field proposes gilts for pensioners and using the state-owned banks to lend to companies who need credit. But this being Frank Field, he also takes several shots at Gordon Brown:
“Worse still, few people believe that Gordon Brown’s strategy to mitigate the impact of a mega-recession on jobs is likely to work. The Government has dangerously raised the stakes by borrowing an additional £20 billion to finance its VAT cuts. What is the sense of this policy when firms are rushing to cut prices by up to 50 per cent? A 2•5 point cut in VAT is simply spitting in the wind of the economic hurricane that is gaining strength. … This brings the argument back to the centre-stage issue: the Government has failed miserably to confront the banks about the level of their toxic assets. Why haven’t the Chancellor and the Governor of the Bank of England brought the major bankers into a room and threatened that none of them will leave until they declare the extent of their dud assets?”
Brown has brilliantly used this crisis to rebuild his poll standing, to present himself as a man of action saving the world. The flip-side of this is that it makes it credible for people to lay the blame for the economy’s failure to recover at Gordon’s feet.
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