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The day Gordon Brown settled our fate - and GLOBE! (Bet you haven't heard of GLOBE - right?) |
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The day Gordon Brown settled our fate
July 14, 1998 was the day Gordon Brown turned from Iron Chancellor to misguided Santa Claus
If there is one date future historians may look back on as having heralded the eventual self-destruction of Britain – let alone that of the New Labour "project" – it is July 14, 1998. That was the day Gordon Brown first indicated that, after initially sticking to the strict curbs on public spending he had inherited from the Tories (which by 1999 had cut back the Government's share of national spending to 36.3 per cent), he was now preparing to let rip. As The Economist put it at the time, it was the moment when the Iron Chancellor morphed into Father Christmas.
By 1997, public spending stood at £322 billion. After Mr Brown's 1998 Comprehensive Spending Review, it was projected that it might almost double, over 10 years, to more than £600 billion. So it turned out. The public sector exploded in every direction, as these additional hundreds of billions began flooding into health, education, social benefits – and into the inflated salaries and pensions of our new lords of local government. Nothing better symbolised the way that much of this new money was spent than the fact, noted by the King's Fund a year or two after the start of the spree, that the number of managers in the National Health Service had risen by 66 per cent – much faster than the numbers of new doctors and nurses.
The overspend is so colossal that the Government itself predicts that in just four years' time our national debt will have doubled, to £1.4 trillion – equal to our present annual national output. And if our international credit rating is downgraded, as seems very possible, we will have to pay even more to borrow the money. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, we may soon be shelling out some £74 billion a year – £60 a week from every household in the land – not to reduce our debt, but simply to pay the interest.
The chief reason for this was reflected in last week's revelation that the public sector has become so grotesquely swollen by Mr Brown's 10-year spending spree that it accounts for 52 per cent of our economy, up from 36 per cent in just a decade. This leaves the other 48 per cent to foot a barely imaginable bill, still hurtling up with every week that passes – at a time when the private sector is steadily shrinking with each new tax and regulation laid upon it.
Our manufacturing sector has already declined in the 12 years since Labour came to power from 20 per cent of our economy to 11 per cent. Our biggest remaining earner, the City, is now threatened still further by the EU's seizing of the power to clamp down on financial services – assisted by the Lisbon treaty that Mr Blair and Mr Brown were happy to sign up to.
The weirdest thing of all, as we step out from the cliff edge over 5,000 feet of nothingness, is that neither of the parties competing for power at this election seems to have the slightest idea what to do about it. The last thing either is prepared to do is to consider taking an axe to that bloated public sector created on a flood of imaginary money.
Like rabbits in headlights, they wait paralysed for the crunch that must inevitably come. And all this was set in train by that fateful day in 1998 when the hubristic Mr Brown, puffed up by the renaissance in Britain's economy that he owed to the Thatcher years, announced that he was going to abandon those financial constraints he had likewise inherited and float off into the stratosphere. At least when Icarus plunged to destruction in the sea, he didn't take a whole country with him.
Can we trust the 'Climategate' inquiry?
Sceptics have not been surprised to find that almost all the members of the 'Climategate' inquiry are committed advocates of global warming
Most recently, the sceptics have been particularly intrigued by the background of the man chosen by the university to chair an assessment of the CRU's scientific record. Lord Oxburgh declared on his appointment that he is linked to major wind-farm and renewable-energy companies. He admitted that he advises Climate Change Capital, which manages funds worth $1.5 billion, hoping to cash in on the "opportunities created by the transition to a low-carbon economy", in a world market potentially worth – its website boasts – $45 trilllion,
The international president of this lobbying organisation turns out to be none other than Stephen Byers MP, now best known for his description of himself on last week's Dispatches as "like a cab for hire", happy to take £5,000 a day for using his influence as a lobbyist.
Globe clearly knows how to pick its men. Its UK parliamentary team also includes Elliot Morley MP, Globe's former president, and David Chaytor MP, both of whom now face criminal charges for fraud in connection with their expenses claims, Considering the record of some of his colleagues, it is perhaps not surprising that Lord Oxburgh was not too keen to declare his interest in this odd little outfit when he was appointed to chair an inquiry as to whether the world can rely on the evidence produced by the CRU to support its advocacy for global warming. But I am sure we can all have every confidence as to which way his inquiry's conclusions are likely to point.
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