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Lucky
Gordon?
Gordon Brown’s new Golden Age
Some things are helpful, if not actually essential, to top politicians
or to those who are high enough up the greasy pole to feel threatened
by a fall. There is, for example, what might loosely be termed luck –
an unpredicted change of circumstances which so affects a situation
that it puts the politician in an unexpectedly favourable light. But as
a son of the manse Gordon Brown has to believe in something rather more
ritualistic than luck. He would not dream of gambling, especially where
his political fortunes are at stake. All through the nail-biting perils
of the past year he has carried stolidly on, diverting criticism and
the prospects of a catastrophic electoral defeat with ponderous
recitations of what he insists are the historic, enduring achievements
of New Labour, particularly of himself at the Treasury. While he did
this his poll rating sank lower and lower, he was humiliated at one
by-election after another and terrified, sullen rebellion simmered
along the benches behind him.
Credit Crunch
And then came the credit crunch and Northern Rock and Lehman and,
across the Atlantic, in the financial fortress of 21st century
capitalism, the fall of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Suddenly all those
precariously mortgaged homes and image-boosting loans ceased to be
symbols of comfort; they disintegrated into menace.
There was talk of
21st Century South Seas Bubble. Gordon Brown would not, in public at
any rate, have called it luck, and neither would anyone with so much as
a glimmering about the chaotic workings of the property based system,
but the timing of it for him was – well, lucky. Apparently transformed
in personality, he coined the phrase, as the climax of his conference
speech, which summed up his hope for survival: “Take it from me, this
is no time for a novice”.
This was said in the knowledge that Brown
would have no problem, in finding and naming the villains who have fed
off the groundless dreams of unsuspecting wage earners until the whole
diseased edifice of lies and fraud came crashing down. There were
enough of them – the bankers, the financiers, the traders in the City
whose ideas of a hard, constructive day’s work has been pushing other
people’s money around on paper and betting on the movement, up or down,
of share prices.
Brown rubbed salt into their wounds when, as part of the package of
state investment in the ailing banks, he ensured that certain City
favourites were removed from the boardrooms. This was accompanied by
Brown calling for “responsible” behaviour by the banks and then
Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling calling in their top
people to lean on them to pass on the 1.5 percent reduction in the Bank
of England lending rate. More recently Brown has used that word again,
demanding “a new, responsible approach”: by the credit card companies.
“I think”, he said “we have got to bring the credit card industry (yes,
they call it an ‘industry’) in to talk (yes, the call it ‘talk’) to
them to join with us in establishing clear principles to apply to the
costs people face on their existing debts”. And in case any bank should
still not have understood Peter (sorry, Lord) Mandelson will be meeting
them to draw up a “guide on behaviour” (yes, they call it ‘behaviour’).
There may be some questions about Mandelson’s suitability to
instruct
others in such a matter. He is, after all, the man who made himself
famous by informing the City that New Labour are “intensely relaxed
about people getting filthy rich”. Then there was his cosying up to top
Tory George Osborne on the yacht of the Russian billionaire Oleg
Deripaska, who did not amass his fortune through considerate reticence
towards his rivals.
Lord Mayor’s Banquet Mandelson’s boss in Number Ten has a consistent
record of sucking up to the overfed parasites of the City, when
mellowed by a slap-up
Lord Mayor’s banquet.
There was a time when Brown
would make some kind of obscure, ineffective point by refusing to wear
the traditional evening suit at this event, turning up in a work-a-day
lounge suit. Now that he is Prime Minister he does sartorially as he is
told – although he looks far from comfortable in black tie and tails
and in any case says roughly the same as before. Here he is in 1998:
“London is a city that is creative and responds to change. It has
excelled because of the hard work and skills of the workforce and these
are the essential British qualities – creativity, adaptability, a
belief in hard work, fair play and openness”. In recent times his
sycophancy has been more open: in 2005 he blathered “For three
centuries … your enterprise as businesses, your unique innovative
skills, your courage and steadfastness and your outward looking
internationalism have …helped Britain lead the rest of the world”. And
last June, as the recession was stirring, quite obviously, into life:
“Britain needs more of the vigour, ingenuity and aspiration that you
already demonstrate. Thanks to your remarkable achievements we have the
huge privilege to live in an era that history will record as the
beginning of a new Golden Age”. In fact Brown’s Golden Age was ushering
in what is expected to be the widest deepest, most destructive slump
since the 1930s. While Brown was bowing and scraping to the City it was
at the centre of a veritable culture of mis-selling, over-mortgaging
workers’ homes and tempting workers to take on loans which they simply
could not afford to repay.
When the South Sea Bubble burst in 1720 a number of the people
who were
considered responsible, including Chancellor of the Exchequer John
Aisable, were sent to the Tower and part of their estate was taken to
help the company back into business. There is no need to go quite so
far; there would be no point in punishing Mandelson and Brown and the
rest for capitalism’s brutal chaos.
IVAN |
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