Radio 4's 'PM' to Cover the Dan Hannan Story
Iain Dale 1:07 PM
The PM Programme on Radio 4 will be covering the Dan Hannan video. Isn't it fab that the MSM is catching up with it a mere 48 hours after the event?
UPDATE: Channel 4 News is also covering it. I'm doing a short interview with them later.
Matthew Norman has written a fabulous attack on Brown in today's Independent. Here's its conclusion...
UPDATE: Channel 4 News is also covering it. I'm doing a short interview with them later.
Matthew Norman has written a fabulous attack on Brown in today's Independent. Here's its conclusion...
If Gordon, ever-more remotely marooned on his fantasy island of vast global influence and unfettered domestic command, backs down and muffles the stimulus hunting cry next week, it will leave him looking, to borrow from the resignation of yet another embittered former Chancellor, in office but not in power. If he doesn't – if he ploughs on with the demand for even more colossal spending and debt – he will be at war with the Bank of England, and at DefCon Two with his next-door neighbour.
There is no obvious way out of this one. He has been on his electoral death bed for ages, of course, ever since that definitive week in October 2007 when he cluck-cluck-clucked his way out of going to the country. But this may well be seen as the week he ran out of appeals for clemency, because the only quantative easing available to him now appears to involve the child-proof lid on that bottle of Downing Street strychnine.
The Stench of Decay Gets Stronger Each Day
Iain Dale 6:34 PM
A reader writes...I was told last week at a private dinner by a prominent Shadow Cabinet Minister, that recently, at the end of a routine meeting at the department that he shadows, one of the junior ministers said to him: 'You might as well come and see where your office will be' and he took him around and showed it to him! Following your piece about Dawn Butler, it does seem that parts of the Labour Party have thrown in the towel.
Hilarious.Gordon With Hindsight
Iain Dale 6:18 PM
This is an excerpt from Gordon Brown's first budget speech in 1997. It makes rather interesting reading in retrospect...The Chancellor is first and foremost the guardian of the people's money. But during the 1990s the national debt has doubled. This year alone the taxpayer will pay out 25 billion in interest payments on debt, more than we spend on schools. Public finances must be sustainable over the long term. If they are not then it is the poor, the elderly, and those on fixed incomes who depend on public services that will suffer most. So, as with our approach to monetary policy, so in fiscal policy: we will now establish clear rules, a new discipline, openness, and accountability.I have this image of Gordon Brown arriving back from his trip to the sunny climes of South America telling the waiting media: "Crisis? What crisis?"
My first rule - the golden rule - ensures that over the economic cycle the Government will borrow only to invest and that current spending will be met from taxation. My second rule is that, as a proportion of national income, public debt will be held at a prudent and stable level over the economic cycle. And to implement these rules, I am announcing today a five year deficit reduction plan.
Together, these rules and this plan will ensure a historic break from the short-termism and expediency that have characterised the recent fiscal policies of our country. As with our monetary policy, our fiscal policy will be all the more credible for being open and accountable.
Any Budget seeking to achieve high and stable levels of growth and employment must be guided by the true state of the public finances, but also by a clear assessment of the state of the economy. And to that I will now turn.
We have seen a rapid growth of consumer spending, of nearly 4 per cent over the last year. With the prospect of further windfalls' from the building societies, consumer spending is likely to remain strong. There has been a sharp rise of 7 to 11% in house prices, with even higher rises in the South East.
The growth of average earnings has accelerated to 4.5% a year. The rate of broad money growth has been, around 10% for a year. These increases in consumer spending, earnings, and money supply are continuing even as industrial production and manufacturing output have been recovering only slowly.
It is essential that consumer spending is underpinned by investment and industrial growth. Britain cannot afford a recurrence of the all too familiar pattern of previous recoveries: accelerating consumer spending and borrowing side by side with skills shortages, capacity constraints, increased imports and rising inflation.
Already there are warning signs that this pattern could be repeated. In similar circumstances some of my predecessors have ignored these signs while others have deluded themselves into believing that growth, however unbalanced, was evidence of their success. I will not ignore the warning signs and I will not repeat past mistakes.
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