Alistair Darling may or may not be correct to say that economic times are “arguably the worst they’ve been in 60 years”. The UK may be facing recession but is not quite there yet. I’ll leave that debate to economic historians.
More depressing is that his honesty has been met with such an over-wrought media furore. Those damning the Chancellor for his “gaffe” are no doubt the same ones who accuse politicians of being mendacious and dishonest.
This is where we are; house prices are falling, banks are writing off tens of billions of pounds, mortgage lending has slumped by two-thirds, the price of oil has leapt since last year, retailers are reporting falling sales, the stock market was recently down 20 per cent from its peak. It’s not exactly rosy.
Do we really want senior cabinet ministers to continue pretending that everything is alright?
Here is some intelligent analysis of the situation.
UPDATE: Evan Davies agrees. Even if the rest of the commentariat doesn’t.
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey