For children who have been naughty this year, Simon & Schuster have just produced the perfect punitive Christmas present: a new book from Gordon Brown, Beyond the Crash. It would be a mistake to write off our former prime minister’s musings on the financial crisis as an irrelevance, to be read only by Tories with a taste for schadenfreude. It provides a compendium of the dangerous thinking which brought such economic calamity to Britain, and threatens us still.
Brown claims, preposterously, that the crash would have been much less severe if only senior bankers had paid themselves 10 per cent less. He speaks darkly of ‘unchecked greed’, when the root problem lay with unchecked incompetence at the Treasury. Why was there no banking crisis in Australia, Canada or Sweden? Because they had a properly regulated banking system. Britain had an inept system designed by Brown himself, which encouraged banks to take greater risks. It was ministerial greed for higher tax revenues — and 40 per cent tax on bankers’ bonuses — that meant so few questions were asked. London was transformed into a bankers’ casino.
But as Brown has found to his delight, no one points this out. In his book, he speaks of the crisis as if it were an economic Sars virus, incubated in Asia then creeping to America and hitting a defenceless Britain. His mistakes — overspending, ordering the Bank of England to ignore the asset price bubble, thereby keeping debt dangerously cheap — are mentioned nowhere. The Conservatives are embarrassed because they accepted so many Brownite errors in opposition; he even taught them to say ‘investment’ instead of ‘spending’. The Tory manifesto was splattered with Brownian pledges — for example, to ‘protect’ the NHS and foreign aid budgets on the basis that cash means that you care.
Brown now likes to claims that George Osborne’s cuts imperil the recovery. This is bunkum. His own plans envisaged cutting total state spending by 0.3 per cent over four years. The Chancellor will cut by 3.3 per cent over four years. There is no vast difference between these two figures, though it suits both sides to pretend otherwise. The coalition’s cuts are milder than those imposed after Labour last blew up the public finances, in 1976. And yet Gordon’s ghost has not lost its capacity to scare.
There are two areas — education and welfare — where Brown’s thinking has been rejected utterly and a new theory put in its place. The rotten ideology which led to welfare ghettoes and sink schools is finally being swept away. But there is also the scope for Osborne to break free of Brown’s wretched intellectual inheritance. This means setting out what has so far been conspicuously absent: a growth agenda based on the understanding that lower taxes can mean higher tax revenue. And ministers should confront, rather than nod towards, the hang-a-banker mentality in Britain.
As Cameron’s circle are keen to point out, Margaret Thatcher was not radical from the start. She became bolder as the opposition grew weaker. If Osborne looks across the dispatch box he will see a stunned and disorientated party unable to unite around any policy, economic or otherwise.
Now is the time for the Chancellor to sweep away the remains of Brownism and return to the low-tax, low-regulation formula that saved Britain the last time around. There will, eventually, be something called Osborneism. This is his best chance to make the term a flattering one.
Join the resistance
Two weeks ago, this magazine ran a cover story about a growing group of volunteers, parents and church workers who have decided to protest against Britain’s obsession with Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks. We mentioned Annabel Hayter, chairwoman of the Gloucester Cathedral Flower Guild, who had refused to submit to such a check. Mrs Hayter resented the implication (by cathedral authorities) that the ladies of the flower guild might, if left unchecked, molest choirboys in the lavatory area. She also worried that blanket checks were counterproductive: the more officials worried about flower arrangers, the less alert they were to any real threats.
This week, instead of apologising and thanking her for 15 years of service, Gloucester Cathedral forced Mrs Hayter to resign. They also refused to show her the ‘risk assessment’ documents that they say justifies their position.
This is why we must all join the revolt: to prevent petty officials using petty rules not to thwart paedophiles, but to push around those who show insufficient respect. CRB checks are not better than nothing, they are far worse than nothing. They help create a society in which adults are wary of helping out and children are, as a result, more vulnerable than ever.
So far, five members of the guild have resigned, and the cathedral has had hundreds of emails. As part of our campaign against excessive CRB checking, we have set up a dedicated email account. Please send your own experiences to: CRBwatch@spectator.co.uk.
Comments