March 26, 2008
Is Gordon Brown more Macavity than Stalin?
One Downing Street official expressed surprise to me the other day that the Stalin nickname had stuck to Gordon Brown more than Macavity, T.S Elliot’s mystery cat. Both names, of course, were pinned on the prime minister by Lord Turnbull in his infamous interview with my colleague Nick Timmins.
The thought of Macavity disappearing from the scene of any crime reminded me of an answer given by Mr Brown in his last Downing Street press conference. One journalist had the gall to suggest that as chancellor Mr Brown should have spent more time watching the problems in the credit markets and less time preparing to take over from Tony Blair.
“Maybe your right,” Mr Brown sneered. “Maybe I should have spent the first half of last year looking at the subprime crisis in America and looking in intricate detail at what was going to come out of it.”
A couple of journalists couldn’t see the joke and shouted “yes, yes”. Mr Brown pressed on: “No-one could have anticipated what was going to happen out of the subprime market”.
It is a refrain that is becoming more and more common, and indeed emerged as one of the main strands of the Budget. The prime minister is betting that the public will see any downturn in the economy as triggered by “global” forces out of the government’s control. Britain is more prepared than any other economy to withstand the troubles, he says.
This is a bold claim, particularly as it is likely that the worst of the downturn is yet to come. With Labour’s polling numbers for economic competence slipping, one has to wonder whether it is convincing the public. Perhaps Mr Brown is losing his Macavity touch.
What amuses me that none got back to Mr. Brown point out that for example the infamous bear Mr. Roubini was pretty much predicting 2007 in 2006. His timing was about three months off, but, in general, given a track record of other forecasters, that’s pretty good.
Posted by: vlade | March 26th, 2008 at 8:35 pm | Report this commentJust about anyone not blinded by big bonuses and three brain cells could see what was going to happen, although, admittedly, the question was when. How many people (on the dealing floor) could actually act on this is a different story, as betting against a raising market is one hard to sell proposition, if you have to follow limits and monitor your PnL.
“Maybe your right”
Posted by: JH | March 26th, 2008 at 11:52 pm | Report this commentFFS
To add to Alex’s blog: Brown claimed yesterday that interest rates hit 18 per cent in the early 1990s (wrong) and that there were 200,000 repossessions in 1990 and 1991 combined (wrong).
It is almost as if the prime minister is playing up the size of the last recession to make any current data look less bad.
Posted by: Jim Pickard | March 27th, 2008 at 11:55 am | Report this commentAndrew Turnbull surely was well aware that Stalin was never officially present when anything went wrong; someone else was always to blame (just as for McCavity). Now Gordon is faking the figures for the past to make the Age of Gordon look better. Pure Stalin; but Gordon’s Mr. Bean personality looks to be slowly becoming irrepressible. Getting lost before a state banquet is yet another sign.
Posted by: Diversity | March 28th, 2008 at 4:29 pm | Report this comment