Britannia Radio

TELEGRAPH   25.11.08
Why Gordon Brown the manic meddler had to take such a massive gamble
By Boris Johnson

You know what, I have now heard more than enough about how much 
Gordon Brown is enjoying this recession. Every time you read about 
the Prime Minister, they tell you that his mood is getting better and 
better.

Having been known as a gloomy old nail-biting misery-guts, he is now 
presented to us as a man "in his element", the life and soul of the 
party, a smile or a witty aside never off his lips.

They say that he was giving a speech the other day, and his mobile 
phone went. "Aha," quipped funster Gordon Brown, "that'll be another 
bank going bust!" Isn't he a scream?

According to Alastair Campbell - who is now back offering his 
Luciferian advice - the sheer gravity of the downturn has "brought 
out the best" in the Prime Minister. It is something to do with the 
humbling of the capitalists and the brutal necessity of government 
action - a reordering of our political economy that has put this 
manic meddler where he wants to be, at the very centre of the stage. 
"Gordon," pronounced Campbell, "is a round peg in a round hole."

Well, folks, I do not presume to comment on the geometry of Gordon's 
pegness, but there is no doubt that Campbell is right about one 
thing. He is in a hole, all right, and a hole very largely of his own 
digging.

He yesterday asked Parliament and public to approve a series of 
estimates for public borrowing that amount to a humiliation for 
himself and his Government. He is proposing to run a budget deficit 
of £128 billion by 2010 - that is, eight per cent of GDP. Overall 
government debt, currently running at 40 per cent, is going to hit 60 
per cent of GDP by the same year, more than it has been ever since 
Harold Wilson was in No 10.

He is like some sherry-crazed old dowager who has lost the family 
silver at roulette, and who now decides to double up by betting the 
house as well. He is like a drunk who has woken to the most appalling 
hangover, and who reaches for the whisky bottle to help him dull the 
pain.

And the reason he is taking such a frantic and unprecedented gamble 
is that he has no option. He is running out of time. The electoral 
cycle is drawing to a close; he funked the election in October last 
year, and ever since the public have threatened to punish him at the 
polls. He needs the economy to perk up fast; he needs some signs of 
life before May 2010, and with the patient prone on the slab, he 
needs to perform an emergency operation, no matter how risky it may 
seem. And he may yet be proved right, of course.

Perhaps we will all respond to his fiscal stimulus, like a bunch of 
overweight and exhausted lab rats shown one last piece of cheese. 
Perhaps we will all scamper off in the direction of the prize, and 
boost consumption, and keep the economy moving. Perhaps the news that 
everything has been reduced by 2.5 per cent will indeed cause the 
tills to ching for the next 13 months - which is the duration of the 
VAT reduction.

Perhaps there are millions of people out there who will rethink their 
plans for a credit crunch Christmas. Instead of giving each other 
presents of home-made chutney and second-hand books, perhaps they 
will be so filled with hope and confidence by Alistair Darling that 
they will pour out to Woolworths (if it still exists), and lash out 
on the traditional British Yuletide tokens of fealty - Wiis and 
Nintendos and Plasma TVs.

Perhaps they will think it sensible to buy now, while the tax holiday 
is there. We must hope that they do; that is, we must hope that all 
those who have disposable income will spend it, because otherwise the 
economy will simply seize up; and that, indeed, is the essential 
argument in favour of some kind of fiscal stimulus by government.

When credit has dried up, when confidence has collapsed, it is the 
duty of the Government to keep the economy moving with sensible and 
affordable investment. That is why it is vital to push on with the 
big infrastructure projects in London that will not only deliver jobs 
and growth in the short term, but which will help to make the capital 
and the UK economy better placed, long-term, to compete.
The tragedy of our current predicament, and the tragedy of Gordon 
Brown, is that by his previous profligacy he has left himself so 
little room for manoeuvre.

The Government may treat the public like laboratory rats, but they 
are not entirely idiotic. They can see that this respite is only 
temporary. They can see that the tax rises are round the corner, and 
even as they tiptoe towards the cheese, they can see Alistair Darling 
waiting with his cosh.

They may decide that they are better off keeping their money, and not 
spending it in the next 13 months, in order to protect themselves 
against the future rapacity of the Chancellor and the Prime Minister.

We now know that to fund this fiscal stimulus, taxes are going up on 
incomes over £40,000; we know there are going to be huge increases in 
national insurance that will hit employees, employers and the self-
employed. How on earth is that supposed to boost job creation?

Might it not have been better, if you were going to splurge £20 
billion in tax cuts, to spend it on cutting National Insurance and 
helping business to keep people in work?

There is nothing wrong in principle with a fiscal stimulus. What 
makes the remedy so desperate is that Gordon Brown managed to 
squander such eye-watering sums when times were good.

It now emerges that of all the jobs created since 1997, two thirds 
have been in the public sector. [AND 3/4 went to immigrants -cs]  No 
wonder the country is broke. The more Gordon Brown swanks and preens 
and claims he is the man to fix things, the more he recalls the 
firefighters in that American movie called Backdraft, who tried to 
claim credit for heroically (and abortively) attending an inferno 
that they had ignited.