While Brown is lauded as ‘Chancellor of the World’, Shadow Chancellor George Osbourne is a ‘bloody fool’.

I know the Conservative’s are just playing a waiting game at the moment, waiting for the recession to really start biting the public and watch them turn on the government and to the Tories, but in the mean time the contrast between the words of praise for Gordon Brown and the assessment of George Osbourne by the head of the FSA is too delicious for words.

Of course Osbourne and the Tories have been less than complementary about the FSA in the past but you can only presume the discussion was about the current economic situation. I’d love to know what Osbourne said/suggested to Lord Turner for him to be described thusly.

Oh how times change - After snubbing Brown, now Henry Paulson copies him.

Remember a few weeks back,  in that other era when the ‘Westminster Village’ thought Brown was a dithering dud? Gordon Brown flew to the US to try attach some importance to himself (so the thinking went) as the government tried to force through a $700 billion bailout bill.

Over on our side of the pond, how the press and opposition mocked Brown. He had to beg for an audience with George Bush, and he couldn’t even get a meeting the architect of the US bailout, the US Treasury head Henry Paulson.

Fast forward to this week, and Gordon Brown has been hailed as a ’superhero’ and ‘Flash Gordon’ by the world media (’Just Gordon, I assure you’, was Brown’s response). The man who has just won the Nobel Economics Prize has said the British Government has been far ahead of any other in the Western World in dealing with the crisis, and when asked says everyone else should be copying what we’re doing, ‘The Brown Plan’ as it is being called.

And that’s just what’s happened across the EU. And now this week Henry Paulson, the man who snubbed Brown a few weeks ago much to the delight of Westminster hacks, has presented his own version of ‘The Brown Plan’, apeing the man he wouldn’t even meet in person a couple of weeks ago.

How times change.

Nobel Economics Prize winner lauds Brown as potential economic world saviour

Blimey, what a turn around for Brown, now being hailed as the leader of the government who came up with the best plan, now being adopted by Europe and possibly the USA, in dealing with the credit crisis.

As the Guardian live blog points out, Paul Krugman, the writer of above linked article, has just won the Nobel Economics Prize.

Similar headlines are popping up here and there - Andrew Grice of the Indy mentioned Britain’s legitimate claim to trail blazing at the moment, but we’ll have to see how it pans out.

Always worth remembering however, is the bottom line for Labour supporters:

18 months until an election.

15 points behind in the polls.

Cameron more popular than Brown.

Voters rarely vote a government back in during or immediately after a recession.

 

A fourth victory is still a long way away. Brown’s more enduring legacy may be rescuing the banking system, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that the voters will thank him for it.

Cameron gets clunked by Gordon’s great big fist

At last! A knockout for Gordon Brown today at Prime Minister’s Questions. After months of dancing and dodging Cameron finally had to plant his feet firmly on the ground and face the Prime Minister on the issue of policy alone, and not surprisingly, he came away looking uncomfortable and distinctly lightweight against the far more experienced and confident Brown.

In fairness to Cameron he had an almost impossible juggling act today in trying to appear statesmanlike and offer all-party support while simultaneously holding the government to account. However he has only himself to blame for the endless U-turns and knots he has tied himself up in over the past few weeks, doing Brown’s job for him in marking him out as a politically vacuous lightweight who can’t be trusted on anything.

Lately Cameron and George Osbourne have done so many U-turns over their economic position they’re in danger of smacking themselves in the face with their own arses.

For anyone watching, the biggest problem for Cameron was the obvious delight his every word was greeted with by Labour MPs, who couldn’t believe their eyes and ears to see and hear a Conservative leader condemning city bonuses and demanding the government hold these city bosses to account.

The problem for Cameron was that on a day the government was offering a £500 billion bail-out, city bonuses seemed quite irrelevant and merely allowed Brown to expound on the myriad of things the government are doing to help the economy, all of which came across as more important than the matter of city bonuses.

Constant ridicule was bad enough for Cameron, but Gordon saved the best till last, and delivered the clunking blow to Cameron we’ve been waiting so long for at the end of their debate.

All through the session Cameron had decided to stick with the city bonuses line, probably desperate to be seen on the side of angry families rather than any real desire to see them punished, and unusually for someone as deft on his feet as Cameron, setting himself up perfectly for Gordon’s clunking fist to knock him for six when Brown quoted Cameron on his appearance on the Andrew Marr:

What you won’t hear from me this week is sort of easy, cheap lines kind of just beating up on the market system, bashing the financiers.

The howls of derision and laughter from the Labour backbenchers must have been sweet music to Gordon’s ears after the troubles of the summer, and a dangerous reminder for Cameron at how exposed he has made himself by twisting, turning, manipulating and u-turning over the economy and the banking crisis, the one issue set to dominate the political scene from now until the next general election.

The Tories can’t even copy the Government right.

Huh, turns out the rest of the world aren’t stupid. And when George Osbourne and David Cameron come out of a meeting with the Chancellor Alistair Darling, and suddenly do a U-Turn on their position over the economy and declare that state intervention is the only possible option for the government to take, the rest of the world notices this, sees it for what it is and realises the government must be planning a serious bail-out plan for our ailing banks.

Obviously they realise this means the economy is truly suffering and panic, selling lots of shares, creating more turmoil economically and shredding the value of our biggest banks in the process.

The Tories, after being chastised by Darling for offering a ‘running commentary’ have insisted they were not even partly to blame, as Ned Temko notes, but Jesus how stupid do you have to be to come out of a confidential meeting and take on what the government are secretly planning and claim it as your own plan to try look clever in front of the electorate?

Instead of coming up with their own ideas, are the Tories so clueless that they are just trying to second-guess the Government?

A rather odd scenario seems to be playing itself out at the moment. As more and more people wonder what the hell exactly would the Tories do if they were in government now, or what they would have done differently over the last eleven years, the Tories have made various comments trying to deflect criticism.

They’ve said they don’t back nationalisation but instead believed that Northern Rock should be sold to a private buyer. When it became clear that a) That’s exactly what the government had wanted to do and b) No one wanted to buy Northern Rock, they simply attacked the government for nationalising the bank and hoped that no one would notice their own vacuous policy.

Then, months afterwards the problem rears again, and this time they say that banks should be put into a Bank of England-led administration. The problem with this is that it means guaranteed job losses and the loss of savers deposits over £50k. No one thought it was a good enough idea to pay attention to so they had to come up with something else, as more people were backing the governments approach of nationalisation where necessary to try protect the bank, jobs and money and criticism of them was mounting.

Now, David Cameron is saying that it may be necessary for the government to take a temporary stake in banks, essentially part-nationalise the lot of them, for the stability of the system. It’s a complete volte-face since the events over Northern Rock where they blindly attacked the government over the ‘N’ word, gleefully hoping people would associate this government with the Labour governments of the 1970s and not notice their own position (or lack thereof).

He denied this was a U-turn instead stressing the need for political parties to work together, which isn’t really a proper answer but then what do you expect from such a vacuous man as David Cameron?

Potential issues with hiring and firing minority ministers

I’m all for a representative government. I believe that only by having a government that reflects more widely the society we live in, by having more women and ethnic minority MPs, can it be more sensitive to issues that affect certain groups of people and therefore legislate in their best interests most effectively.

Labour’s all women shortlists, although controversial, have undoubtedly lead to a steady increase in the number of female MPs, even though it can also be directly attributable to a loss of an MP in Wales because of a backlash against the selection rules.

That said, I have a lot of sympathy with the arguments against ‘all-xxx shortlists’. As a male, I know that were circumstances otherwise, it might be the case that at my local CLP I wouldn’t be allowed on any official post, because of a shortage of women, despite my potential abilities to fulfill the role. As it happens, this is not the case so it’s not something that affects me directly.

‘A Dear John’ (Rentoul),

Actually this isn’t a ‘Dear John’ letter at all, but I read John Rentoul’s latest on the Indie and it’s really annoyed me, and for want of a better headline, I’m sticking with it. Any better ideas on the back of a postcard to the usual address.

The thrust of Rentoul’s latest piece is that Brown’s reshuffle is a gimmick and not ’serious politics’. Rentoul is a self-avowed uber-Blairite, so it’s quite funny in one sense that he’d be so critical of the return of Mandelson but he reserves his biggest criticisms for the failures of the government at large.

Tories post-conference poll boost is a flop

Although you may not have noticed it with Brown and the Cabinet reshuffle dominating the news this weekend, the first poll has been released since the Conservative party conference and David Cameron’s speech.

Remember that the supposed ‘norm’ would be a four point boost for all parties, then reverting to nothing in the weeks afterwards. Remember also that for Labour it was a SEVEN point boost and a FIVE point drop for the Tories, with the result being that the Tory lead halved overnight.

With this in mind, the so called ‘Conservative boost’ can only be described as a flop. Their support increased by a measly ONE point, with Labour’s dropping by just TWO. This means that they have failed to increase their lead back to what it was before the conference season and as it stands Labour have started some momentum against the Tories and have made definite inroads into their lead.

The momentum is with us now, but we do need to maintain is as we’re still massively behind in the polls!

Reshuffletasticular! The Aftermath

Well nothing much else happened, as I predicted, once you have the money shot at the start it tends to drift off limply. Still, nice to see Beckett back even if it isn’t as a full member of the cabinet.

Funny there isn’t anything for Cruddas given that he’s been widely tipped…I wonder if he was offered something he didn’t want (ie anything other than housing) and turned it down again. More fool him if he did.

I’m not sure I understand some of the moves. Flint to ‘Europe Minister’? Is that a step up from housing or is it a step across or what? Same with Jim Murphy going to Scotland Minister, a role that is nearly pointless and will eventually be merged into a Minister for the Nations. Likewise Tony McNulty has been moved to Work and Pensions, is that a step up or across? Why bother?