Last updated at 8:33 PM on 04th November 2008 Black Wednesday, which is frequently raised by Labour as an example of blithering Tory incompetence, was estimated by the Treasury to have cost the country £3.4billion. Yesterday, the House of Lords heard of an even bigger cock-up by Gordon 'Mr Economic Hero' Brown. Lord Glentoran, an unexciting Conservative peer, had a stinger during daily questions. Did Gordon Brown sell much of our gold reserves at the wrong moment? It was this: 'How many tonnes of gold have been sold from the UK reserves since 1 May, 1997; how much revenue was received from the sale of those gold reserves; what would the gold be worth at current prices?' In other words, did Gordon Brown sell much of our gold reserves at the wrong moment? What was the grand total, spondoolicks-wise, of his galloping incaution? Lord Davies of Oldham, a likeable Bryan, had the task of replying. He said the Government had sold 395 tonnes of gold since July 1999. The sales raised £1.9billion. At today's prices those sales would have been worth, er, £5.7billion. The difference between those two figures, you will notice, is £3.8billion. Well played, Gordon! Lady Noakes, a Tory frontbencher who once worked at the Treasury, noted that if a City investment manager made that sort of call on so much money, he or she would be out of a job. 'Did the Prime Minister authorise those sales?' asked Lady Noakes. Lord Davies, with delicious precision: 'It was the Chancellor of the Exchequer.' In other words, yes, it was Gordon Brown, who was then Chancellor but is now Prime Minister. David Cameron may like to bear this admission in mind next time Mr Brown blusters on about Mr Cameron being a Treasury gofer at the time of Black Wednesday. Lord Davies tried some halfhearted bluster about 'challenging-economic times' and 'reducing the risk factor in the portfolio' and 'volatility of gold prices' and 'gold not being a liquid asset'. But there was really no disguising the fact that Mr Brown lost us even more than Norman Lamont. Like a man throwing his last sand bag out of a plummeting hot air balloon, Lord Davies accused the Tories of not having complained at the time about the gold sales. This is a plain untruth. There were furious complaints back in 1999 about Mr Brown's gold sales. He was firmly told he was making a mistake. He insisted he was right. He was wrong. Lord Davies said it had been 'a small amount of gold'. Lord Grocott (Lab) came to the rescue, saying that he'd like to know how much the Tories' sale of public utilities in the Thatcher and Major years had cost the Government. Yeah, said Lord Davies. 'That was a huge amount of family silver they sold.' The other matter of concern to their lordships was the spread of Fallopia japonica, aka Japanese knotweed. The Upper House is home to plenty of keen gardeners. Peers fought hard to join the debate. The Minister for knotweed is Lord Hunt, in many ways unexceptional but for a ridiculous pair of red-framed spectacles. They are the sort of specs worn by provincial advertising creatives. Lord Krebs (crossbencher) declared that the species frequently spread owing to 'escapees from garden centres'. So if you see a knotweed legging it across a field you now know where it has come from. LORD Greaves, a world champion bore on the Lib-Dem benches, called the knotweed ' the largest female clone in the world'. He has obviously not been to the House of Commons recently and looked at some of the Labour backbenchers. Meanwhile, Lord Hunt said that the cost of eradicating Japanese knotweed from our shores would be £1.56billion, and this was 'beyond any realistic prospect'. Lord Hunt appears not to take Gordon Brown's relaxed approach to public money. The House heard that knotweed was 'a very, very nasty weed which is a great nuisance and can push its way up through concrete'. Does it not sound just like Peter Mandelson? The only hope was some insect whose 'juvenile nymph sucks sap from the plums'. We had better pursue the Mandelson analogy no further.How many spondoolicks did Gordon lose us in gold sales?
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Wednesday, 5 November 2008
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