Gordon has everything under control

I’m sure it came as no surprise to anyone last week to discover that the UK is now officially in recession. More surprising however is Gordon Brown’s claims that he has been warning for the past 10 years that the international financial markets needed to be more strongly regulated to prevent such an economic crisis. Apparently he learnt this pearl of wisdom during the crisis in the Asian markets during the 1990s and went on record in a speech he delivered in Harvard ten years ago.

Which is all well and good, but surely he might have chosen to do something about this whilst in his role as Chancellor from 1997 to 2007, before becoming our unelected Prime Minister. It is also surely no coincidence that his time in office coincides with the worst period of unbridled risk-taking by financial institutions in living history.

Mr Brown has however defended his record, claiming that Britain has “low public debt, low inflation and low interest rates”, and that corporate debt was far lower than in previous times of financial crisis. He has clearly chosen to ignore the fact that public debt is at record levels not seen since the Second World War once you include his spending on banks, that inflation was rising out of control until our economy hit a brick wall and that interest rates have been slashed in a desperate attempt to revive the British economy.

How much reassurance can be taken from low levels of corporate debt is surely questionable when 18 months into this ‘credit crunch’ we still seem unable to locate all the toxic debt. He also opted not to mention Britain’s record levels of personal debt, and the huge levels of sub-prime debt that stand little chance of ever being repaid to their creditors.

So in summary there is nothing to worry about as our Prime Minister and former Chancellor saw this bus coming and was prepared for us all to be run over ….  Feeling more optimistic now?