The Horsell's Mouth Politics, pedantry and personal interests

It's all gone a bit wrong for Brown

Following America is what Labour has done best throughout its tenure – in Iraq, Kosovo, Iraq again, Afghanistan and finally Iraq yet again. On each occasion we’ve gone in with America and been the last ally to exit ahead of them. What a shame that the recession has not been a similar story.

We learn to today that the recession, which famously “started in America” is no longer there. Last week, we learned the British economy, which was “better placed to weather the financial storm” than ever before, it still in it. This was totally unexpected by the government, who had used its new-found comradeship with the Daily Telegraph to place an article that anticipated recovery. Er, that was a mistake.

Guido has a great account of what actually has been going on here.

The fact is that once again Gordon seems to have an entirely different view of the world from everyone else. Either his civil servants are so incompetent that they were unable to see the “shock” figures coming, or his Treasury officials are too scared to tell him the bad news.

Either way, the PM is still denying that there are tough times ahead when most of the rest of the country – who don’t have the benefit of access to dodgy Treasury estimates – have figured out that the party is over. I’m not altogether convinced with Conservative performance on the economy over the past 18 months – it’s been patchy to say the least.

But the reason it’s been patchy is becuase there are any number of traps for an opposition without access to proper information to fall into. By and large, DC has avoided falling into those and Gordon looks determined to hurl himself into them instead.

The idea that the Conservatives want to prolong a recession by ordering unecessary spending cuts is ridiculous. Either the cuts don’t need to be made – in which case why would you contrive to reduce the size of your economy? – or despite recovery, which just means growth, the cuts still need to be made because we are spending more than our income.

That’s the point. Gordon spent 10 years at the Treasury, so we can be sure he understands income and expenditure – but it’s an interesting example of how quickly economics goes out the window when political considerations start to dominate instead.