An aside. Apparently EdM confided all this to Winter, who has kept his counsel for seven-and-a-bit years until the pre-election period came round. According to the piece Winter has grown disillusioned with Miliband and says of him "He is ignorant of the real values of ordinary working class voters and holds his nose at their lifestyle." By giving the vilest shit sheet in the land a front page and providing succour to the Tories, some might say Winter is equally as ignorant. He might want to look 'scabbing' up, for instance.
Did Ed Miliband say what he's alleged to have said? Who knows. Off the record usually means off the cuff. Nor is there anything particularly cynical about the observation. If you want to win in politics it's best that you choose the ground you're going to fight on, and undeniably had Brown not bottled the election that never was Labour would have walked it. Also, do recall that no one in Westminsterland and the media cocoon spun around it was talking about an economic catastrophe in the offing. There's no evidence either of the two Eds possessed an insight lacking among professional economists, city slickers, and those who track such things.
What Labour needs to pick up on quickly is this heralds a new wave of personal attacks heading the leader's way. For years we've had the weird/weak Ed meme and still Labour are in electoral contention. As Dave would rather be branded a coward than face Ed in a debate, the "weak" lines are going to be rested for the time being. Instead, the Tories are going after what are perceived by the electorate as his strengths. Poll after poll shows that, as a whole, people think Ed is a nice, genuine bloke who empathises and cares about those less fortunate than he. Lynton Crosby's job is to turn this around. Instead of cuddly Wallace, the Tories are trying to colour him Skeletor. They want to portray him as an inept, scheming manipulator whose veins run cold with the ice blood of cynicism. Another classic case of Tory projection.
Think about it. Osborne provided The Mail some words: "This first-hand account shows Balls and Miliband were more interested in saving their own skins than saving the British economy." And this line bears some resemblance to the "weaponising the NHS" teacup storm Dave spent time trying to whip up last week, again designed to show Labour up as a cynical exploiter of the NHS than a party ideologically and genuinely wedded to it. And, to a lesser extent - though a bridge too far for even the stretched credulity on which so much official politics hangs - Dave attempted to claim Ed's calls for the PM's participation in the leaders' debates was a cynical way of avoiding facing the Greens' Natalie Bennett. Yeah, I had to scratch my head a few times too.
We're going to see more of this. Cynical Ed. Calculating Ed. Even perhaps Sinister Ed. Oh what a joy British politics is.
"Also, do recall that no one in Westminsterland and the media cocoon spun around it was talking about an economic catastrophe in the offing."
ReplyDeleteTrue. But that was due on the one hand to a superstitious fear of jinxing something that was making some people very rich. The same behaviour was observed in the run up to the Great Crash of 1929.
On the other hand, to a more rational concern about shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre (even though there was a fire).
The combination of these two motives explains Gordon Brown’s reassurance that “The fundaments are sound ”.
"There's no evidence either of the two Eds possessed an insight lacking among professional economists, city slickers, and those who track such things."
True again. There’s no compelling evidence to believe that “the two Eds” had any special insight.
However, it’s important to understand that most professional economists aren’t concerned with calling recessions. The same applies to “city slickers”. The latter have a very limited time horizon. For some it’s a day, for others it might be as little as fifteen minutes or less.
The place to look for people who follow the economy as a whole is the Treasury. There weren’t many who foresaw the dangers but there were some. To my certain knowledge there were two who raised concerns about the stability of the financial system back in 2005-6. Of course, this was all behind closed doors, but that’s where the “the two Eds” worked. So I’d be surprised if they were completely oblivious to the dangers.
Umm, the autumn of 2007? The interbank market had frozen, Northern Rock (and IKB and a few others) had gone tits up, unemployment was rising every month. You only needed to read the damn papers to see that the crisis had already begun. Alistair Darling was pilloried by the Mail for saying as much.
ReplyDeleteIts not true that no one saw it coming, but as these things go, that is convenient for those who should have seen it coming to say after the event.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, as a Staffordshire County Councillor I made quite a few speeches in Full Council, in the year or so before I retired in 2005, warning that exactly what happened was going to happen, and that blowing up house price and stock market bubbles was a fool's paradise, from which quite a few fools would certainly suffer.
Bill Cawley reminded me a year or so ago, of a rather heated exchange I had in the pub one lunch-time with Deputy Leader at the time, Derek Davis, when Derek was insisting that the huge rise in house prices, and the ability of people who couldn't afford them to do so by going into huge amounts of unsustainable debt, was really a very good thing.
In fact, although Northern Rock collapsed in 2007, as the Credit Crunch began, the real financial crisis did not hit until 2008. Even during the Summer of 2007, the economy was continuing to grow, and the problem appeared to be inflation with tanker drivers getting a 14% pay rise and so on.
Once again in 2008, just a few weeks before the real crisis broke out, I gave a Severe Financial Warning setting out almost precisely the scale and ferocity of the financial crisis that was about to erupt, and what its causes were.
As Boffy notes, there were rumblings to be sure, but only a few *in the mainstream* were forecasting catastrophe. I doubt very much whether the two Eds saw that a generalised crash was on the cards.
ReplyDeleteNot that this matters. Even if they had they were still right to press for an election while the waters were relatively calm.
"As Boffy notes, there were rumblings to be sure, but only a few *in the mainstream* were forecasting catastrophe."
ReplyDeleteTrue. But in the Treasury this was raised a possibility.
" I doubt very much whether the two Eds saw that a generalised crash was on the cards."
If by "generalised crash" you mean a world recession then you may well be right. However, given the UK vulnerability it's probable that they could see the British economy taking a hit.
Boffy’s article where he claims he predicted the crisis was in fact after the crisis had begun and many people, including the mainstream, were saying it was a crisis! So much for his predictive powers!
ReplyDeleteI remember Derren brown claiming he could predict the lottery numbers, but only after they had been published on live TV! Boffy reminds me of this.