Harry Cole It’s not every day in these uncertain times that you get to laugh out loud at something you see on the internet. Though the nutters predicting the end of the world on Saturday night were certainly amusing, it was the invitation to join the Gordon Brown for the IMF group on Facebook that resulted in the unfortunate Diet-Coke-to-screen incident. Like the tireless men and women that turn up every day at Gaddafi’s compound to act as human shields, some apparatchiks loyal to the old order are blind to the notion the world would be a better place without their favoured, disgraced and humiliated leader. Upon realisation that this group was not a joke, there was only one thing to do, and that was to engage. Deep down, we all know that Gordon won’t get this job without the support of his own country’s government, and now that George Osborne has given his blessing to Christine Lagarde his candidacy is all but a lost cause. But that’s not to say the reasons he is being promoted aren’t worth debunking, if for no other reason than to wonder at the sheer delusional cheek of his supporters. So, here goes: 1. He’s a global leader who guided the world through an economic crisis, the loyal Brownites say. Well yes, it’s true, the G20 did meet in London to decide how to deal with the collapse in confidence in the world’s markets. But the vast bailouts involving astronomical figures, unimaginable just ten years ago, were hardly his idea. It was the consensus, for better or worse, of all the leaders assembled there. It’s not as if they were all saying “no, no we need some fiscal responsibility and can’t curse our children with this sort of debt” and then the wonder of Gordon’s oratory won them around to actually getting their cheque books out. The host of the dinner party can’t take credit for the entire conversation. 2. It was a global economic crisis that caused Britain’s huge debt. Yes there was a global crisis, yes the bank bailout and economic stimuli increased Britain’s debt, but supporters of Brown are academically and morally bankrupt in ignoring what was going on before the crisis. Mainly the deficit Gordon personally created. Gordon Brown claimed to have abolished boom and bust, and the only way he could do this was by borrowing vast sums of money even in the good times. Instead of saving, or running a balanced budget, from 2002 he was borrowing and spending, borrowing and spending. There was no thought for the future and no regard for the structural deficit being racked up that left us in the worst possible situation when the brown stuff hit the fan. Is this what he’d be recommending to the troubled economies he would be tasked with turning round in the role? We could have been better prepared. We should have reduced our spending. And we should have, at the very least, kept an eye on the shotguns and tins of beans in the cellar that we’d be needing come judgement day. But no, Gordon had flogged our gold reserves at the bottom of the market for a quick buck. If pigs fly and it actually gets to a stage where Brown is interviewed for the job, the first question that must be asked is how he could justify his calls in 1999 for the IMF to sell off their gold reserves, as he did in Britain, when they were worth just two billion dollars. The look on his face when it’s pointed out that those very same reserves are today worth eleven billion dollars would be priceless. How can someone with a track record of driving their own economy into a brick wall even have the audacity to show their face in public, let alone throw their hat in the ring for a job that requires someone who actually understands words such as “restraint”, “cuts”, and “responsibility”? These are just a couple of reasons why the drunken sailor who threw his money around on shore-leave cannot be allowed anywhere near the world’s finances. Britain is in a humiliating slump and generations to come have been saddled with tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt per head, and it’s all because of Gordon Brown. And that’s not to mention the secret debt in the form of PFI and the massive pensions black-hole. How is Brown meant to lecture other countries about cutting back, when he left office with government spending accounting for more than half of the output of his own nation? 3. Economists aren’t psychics, loyal Brownites say. This is their last stand. And yes that’s true. But a basic foresight is surely mandatory for the job in question. Brown certainly isn’t a psychic, but he is another word close to that, also beginning with a silent “p” but ending in an “o”. It cannot be ignored that Gordon’s personality is hardly one that is suited to the relentless onslaught of crisis after crisis that the IMF is going to face in the next couple of years. Former colleagues’ assessments range from “'psychologically flawed” to “mad and bad and beyond redemption”. So then, just what the IMF needs in order to recover its reputation after the DSK scandal. The end of the world may not have come as prophesised this weekend, but by sending Gordon to the IMF, we’d certainly be asking for something close. Harry Cole is a writer and journalist and the news editor for the Guido Fawkes blog. He also writes for Total Politics Magazine. Tags: Gordon Brown, IMF, harry cole, rapture, the commentator
Sunday 22 May 2011 07:47:00
Who's a funny chap then?
Monday, 23 May 2011
Apocalypse Please?
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/174/apocalypse_please_
The lunatics predicting the end of the world this weekend were wrong, but there’d be a different kind of rapture if Gordon Brown went to the IMF.
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