Every financial collapse in the City you can normally be traced back to a testosterone-sodden trading floor where young men believed a little too much in their own hype. Britain is in the unusual position that both our economic and political collapse can be traced to the same gang – the ones that Gordon Brown assembled in the Treasury. In my cover piece for today’s magazine, I detail the damage they did: to our economy and to the Labour Party.
At the heart of McBride’s fall was the hubris, the risk-taking. Imagine being so stupid as to put all those vile smears in an email sent from 10 Downing Street computer. But the risks the Brown-Balls-Whelan-McBride team took with the British economy were no less great. And far more significant. Imagine the sheer audacity required to tear up the system of banking regulation, and to invent a tripartite system based on nothing more than faith in your own brilliance.
Britain’s best politics newsletters
You get two free articles each week when you sign up to The Spectator’s emails.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate, free for a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first month free.
UNLOCK ACCESS Try a month freeAlready a subscriber? Log in