Dirt Pile

Another terrible week for Gordon Brown. The man we feared would behave like a Stalinist emperor appears to be losing control over everything, and if the reports are correct, he will be forced to literally beg the country at his party conference for a "second chance". Seeing as one of the signs of insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result, we should hope no one is taken in. And just bear in mind, we still have potentially another year and a half of this!

This all comes after Brown received another kicking on the economic front. The head of Britain's biggest mortgage lender, HBOS, has warned him that the 'credit crunch' will last another eighteen months. He was followed today by "financiers" and "economists" in the Telegraph saying that Brown's spending policies for the last decade have left Britain heading for the biggest budget deficit since Denis Healey's in the mid-70s.

Economists said that it also showed how little room the Government had to cut taxes in the face of an anticipated recession. Michael Saunders, the chief European economist at Citigroup, said Britain already had the worst structural deficit of the leading industrialised economies. This would worsen significantly as the wider economy deteriorates. In a downturn, tax revenues disappoint and the Government has to spend more on unemployment benefits.

... As Chancellor, Mr Brown was repeatedly warned by the IMF and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to cut back borrowing or risk an even bigger crunch when the economy slowed. Experts say such a scenario has now come to pass.

How badly things have deteriorated is shown not just by these warnings and the state we're in, but also when you consider that we've swung from solid budget surpluses eight years ago to where we are now. This either shows Brown's arrogance or his stupidity, with his latter trait not helped by his bullying of the Treasury into accepting his "economic package" to help the "ordinary working families". Despite the fact that taxpayers might be a bit miffed at the prospect of losses of up to £300 million as a consequence.

Therefore, it is hard to feel any sympathy for him, nor for what lies ahead. He has to plug the deficit, but will not raise taxes nor cut bureaucracy (nor should he cut taxes). So, he will have to borrow more and at least slow down the rate of public spending. As we've seen in recent months, the victims will have to be the public-sector workers. As the Government struggles to restrain their pay, so resentment of it among the old Labour allies in the trade unions will rise.

However, there doesn't seem to be any other way for him. Oh, there could be, but they are ways antithesis to his cautious, socialist instincts. Gordon Brown is really like a man who has dug his own grave, and now the dirt pile is about to crush him.