Recession

At the height of the internal Labour Party coup against Gordon Brown just before the last Labour Party conference even the Prime Minister’s greatest detratctors agreed that he did the international economic stuff rather well. I remember one senior Blairite heavyweight suggesting that after his removal, Brown should be allowed to occupy a new role as a roving economic ambassador. Since then, his reputation for economic competence has undergone an assault from which few would recover. But, whatever his opponents might say (and Fraser is right to say that it was largely done with smoke and mirrors), the G20 summit ended up as something of a triumph or Gordon Brown. I

It wasn’t so long ago that senior Labour politicians were suggesting that Gordon Brown should use the coup of the G20/Obama visit to bounce straight into an election. It seems bizarre now, but such was the confidence of the Labour Party in those early days of the economic crisis that there were close allies of the Prime Minister urging him to go to the polls this spring. Their only concern was that it might be too late. The ideal time for those urging a snap election (the second in a series of elections that never were) was February. Now, the idea that Brown will do anything but wait until the last minute seems inconceivable, but anything’s possible.

I don’t think it’s quite right for me to keep promoting New Deal of the Mind here on my Spectator blog. That should happen elsewhere and will. But just in case readers are interested, the launch meeting at Number 11 Downing Street was a fascinating affair. Cabinet Ministers Andy Burnham and James Purnell pledged their support as did opposition culture spokesman Ed Vaizey. It’s probably best to let others who were there speak about this so check out Lynne Featherstone’s report of the event. Lynne has been a great supporter of the initiative, designed to harness the innovative potential of the creative industries during the downturn. She made the following key point: “Admiration for

A rather impassioned piece on unemployment from Polly Toynbee in yesterday’s Guardian made me realise that there are a number of people on the liberal-left in Britain thinking very hard about the implications of the global recession. “Has the horror of it all struck Westminster with full force?,” asks Polly? I think they are beginning to, but the problem is that they are stuck in the politics of the late-1990s census, which had us all triangulating like mad. All the clamour for an apology from the Prime Minister stems from a desire for him to atone for all our sins. It was difficult not to embrace the market when the

The brutal truth about politics is that a whole career can often be telescoped into a single defining event. The judgement of history can be particularly cruel on  unlucky Prime Ministers. Ted Heath’s reputation is dominated by the 1972 miners’ strike, Jim Callaghan is synonymous with the “winter of discontent” and Anthony Eden, perhaps the most ill-starred of all post-war PMs, will be forever associated with a single word: “Suez”. All those years of vaulting ambition, grinding thankless work and genuine public service reduced, in the end, to those two damning syllables. And how thin sometimes is that line between success and failure. Who remembers John Major for his remarkable

As the Cabinet meets in Southampton today there is one issue that will be strictly off the agenda: the Brown legacy. I have it on very good authority that Gordon and those around him will not even allow the subject to be discussed in case it suggests that he knows the next election is lost. People coming to him with new ideas are told not to use the “L word”. I think this is very unwise. How can the Prime Minister expect anyone to come to him with innovative recession-busting ideas unless they can talk in terms of the legacy such projects will leave behind? No. 10 needs to get real.

From the response to the last post on this subject I get the impression that people around here don’t much care if the government can did itself out or not. Some readers of The Bright Stuff have asked how I can justify wanting Labour to win the next election? But more of that later. First I want to examine the horror of the situation a little. I have finally read the Independent on Sunday’s interview with HBOS whistleblower Paul Moore. Jaw-dropping or what! It’s always wrong to leave the Sindy till last in the weekend reading pile because so often it punches above its weight. It would be one of the