Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business
If life was a Doctor Who series and I was the scriptwriter, I would have the courageous Chilean miners tele-ported instantaneously to the surface — and replaced at the bottom of the collapsed shaft by 33 gloomy economists and market commentators. They would range from New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who says that the present recovery isn’t really a recovery at all, to Société Générale strategist Albert Edwards, who says investors should brace for a ‘bloodbath’ as the US slides back into recession. Instead of the antidepressants that are being sent down to keep the miners’ spirits from sinking, the economists would be fed a constant diet of cheerful news items.
‘Good morning down there,’ the daily bulletin might begin. ‘Up here, dozens of British companies in every sector from engineering to estate agency have reported increased profits, following a round of spectacularly improved results from the banks. Our economy grew at its fastest rate for nine years in the second quarter, at 1.2 per cent, and although we know that reflected a rush of public-sector construction as well as rebuilding of inventories, it’s still encouraging — as is the news for July and August, what with manufacturers forging ahead with exports to Europe, and retail sales looking stronger than at any time since April 2007. And Albert, if you’re listening, your SocGen colleague Brian Hilliard thinks growth for this quarter “should return close to trend of around 0.5 per cent… rather than plunging close to zero as some had feared”. He’s also upgraded his UK annual growth forecast to 1.6 per cent this year, and expects 2.1 per cent next year. What’s that? No, no need to reply — save your strength.’
What’s the point of this cruel scenario? It’s not that I’m simply a rabid double-dip denier. And yes, I’m well aware I’m quoting relatively good news from a UK economy that has not yet registered the impact of the Osborne tax-and-cuts shock — while the doomsters are scrutinising the US economy, where employment numbers look particularly worrying. The recovery is undoubtedly fragile, and the old cliché about Britain catching cold if America sneezes may still hold good even in a globalised economy and against health-ier influences from Europe and Asia. But my point is that the double-dip narrative is now infecting all economic discourse, drowning out the counter-argument that a slimmed-down UK public sector means a switching of resources into productive parts of the private sector that will lead to stronger growth in the medium term.
The habit of viewing positive data as anomalies in a wider pattern of doom, rather than as the pattern itself, is eroding confidence in a way that threatens to make the narrative self-fulfilling. In short, we’re talking ourselves back to recession and it really would be helpful to have a period of quiescence from the pessimists, even if that means incarcerating them until Christmas.
No eye contact with Ed
I’m intrigued by profiles of Ed Miliband (including James Forsyth’s last week) saying what a normal, amiable fellow he really is. That doesn’t sound like the Miliband Minor with whom I was stranded in November 2000 in an executive lounge at Newark airport in New Jersey, on the way home from a conference. It was during those fraught days when teams of lawyers were arguing over the Florida recounts that eventually enabled George W. Bush to claim presidential victory over Al Gore. Young Ed — then a speechwriter for Gordon Brown and clearly a Gore devotee even before the former vice president became the messiah of climate change — sat on a bar stool glaring furiously at CNN, occasionally breaking off to berate airline staff for not finding a plane to get him back to his desk at the Treasury.
It was understandable that he didn’t want to exchange banter, or even eye contact, with me (in those days I was often rude about Gordon in the Daily Mail) but the general impression he gave was of a humourless, unapproachable political obsessive. Still, at least he took a few days off for our conference: I remember being told by a Labour party insider a few years earlier that Ed’s big brother David was just too deep-thinking and too obviously destined for greatness to be asked to mix with ordinary mortals. I’m afraid, despite all the efforts of their spin teams, both brothers look to me like the work of a Doctor Who scriptwriter.
Time traveller’s return
Welcome back, Asil Nadir. It was good to see you fly in on a private jet like a head of state, install yourself in a Mayfair mansion and declare your belief that British justice will now give you the kind of hearing you felt you would have been denied in 1993 — which was of course (along with health worries) why you fled to Cyprus all those years ago. Well, showmanship was always your style in the high days before your Polly Peck empire collapsed, but let’s hope your lawyers are not seriously proposing an ‘abuse of process’ defence against the 66 fraud charges you have returned to face, based on the claim that they cannot now be fairly addressed because too much time has elapsed.
Prepare to party
The happiest news from the coalition government last month came from fun- loving Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, who says he wants to do away with what he called the ‘red-tape tombola’ facing anyone trying to organise a street party. The bureaucratic rigmarole of temporary road closure notices, entertainment licences, public liability insurance and health’n’safety risk assessments has all but killed off this benign form of community bonding, but the Pickles reform — in theory, reducing it all to one simple application to your local council — should make it possible for us to seize the streets for the extended weekend of 2-5 June 2012, when the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee will be celebrated with an additional bank holiday graciously granted by Lord Mandelson before his departure.
My plans for a mega-bash in Helmsley, my North Yorkshire home town, are already advancing — inspired by the marché gourmand nocturne at St Pompon, my bolt-hole in the Dordogne, where every Saturday night from June to September hundreds of people get together to eat, drink and dance in the street, without accident or fighting or food poisoning and with an absolute minimum of official bossiness. All we need is the weather.
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